I glanced at the SmartWall that already had the patient's vital signs on board, being transmitted in real-time from the ground ambulance's monitors. One segment had the actual video from the ambulance, so we all could see the patient and one of the Med Techies still working on him in the back. The days of having to sit through a full report when handing over responsibility for care between clinicians were mostly in the past. This guy had a pneumothorax, multiple fractures and a ruptured spleen. It looked like the EMT wasn't bothering to perform a chest tube, leaving it to me as they were so close to the hospital.
I gave some preliminary orders to the trauma team, and when the bay doors opened and the EMTs started rolling the patient in on their gurney, I said, directing the clinicians under my temporary authority as a maestro would, "Well, let's be about it."
The first thing I did after coming home every day was take a long shower. While I was in the shower, I reviewed the messages from my employees downstairs. Occasionally, the techs would have an exceptionally complicated case that they would refer to me, and I would see a patient in the evening, in addition to my normal days off at the hospital.
I sometimes followed that by cooking dinner, but we had all been eating takeout lately due to how busy we've all been. Gloria, David and Kiwi were all in my living area by the time I finished with my shower, and I grinned, "How was everyone's day?"
Gloria groaned, "Tiring. One of the patients we were intaking attacked the professor I was assisting. Thankfully, although the patient was heavily augmented, it was all miscellaneous things, and he wasn't strong or fast. I just thumped him once and knocked him out. I got kudos for that, but how do you chart that?"
"Percussive therapy," I said instantly, with a grin. Gloria had received the scholarship, and in addition to being one of the "well-adjusted" control group for the professor's research, I was convinced he was paying her to be, in effect, a bodyguard when dealing with some of the patients listed as cyberpsycho. Maybe his research grant didn't allow him to spend money on security but did allow him to sponsor a scholarship for a nursing student as an assistant.
She rolled her eyes, "The doctor is researching and making adjustments to the normal therapy for cyberpsychosis. They'll disable all of his implants and use intensive braindance technology to provide therapy in situ in an in-patient facility." She shook her head and asked curiously, "Do you think that type of therapy is effective?"
I pulled out some chow mein and hummed, "That's been the standard therapy for years now. It certainly works better than doing nothing, but I wouldn't call it that effective." I wondered what difference Gloria's professor was adding to the mix in his research. There was no telling, really.
Gloria looked interested, "Oh? What would an effective cyberpsychosis therapy be, then?"
I snorted while opening my fortune cookie in advance of my meal in contrivance to proper fortune cookie etiquette, "You're falling into the same trap everyone else does. There is no definitive therapy for cyberpsychosis because cyberpsychosis isn't a single medical condition. It's a catch-all term for any number of anti-social disorders in the DSM whose end result is violent psychosis or disassociation. It's a stupid term."
I sighed and shrugged, "Having said that... remove all cybernetics, clone replacement limbs and organs and revert the patient to one hundred per cent organic. Follow this with intensive in-patient psychotherapy and possibly medication for any underlying mental illness and slowly reintroduce cybernetics over a period of a year or two."
I smiled at her, "And I can't take credit for this, either. This is called the French model and is decades old. Care to guess why this isn't the standard therapy offered to random cyberpsychos in the NUSA?"
"It sounds very expensive," Gloria said with a sigh.
I nodded, "Bingo. The research your professor is conducting sounds like he is hoping for iterative improvements on the current, somewhat cheap process that is standard in North America. I mean, that's not a bad idea, I suppose, if it works." I had my doubts, though.
After dinner, the only one to stick around long was Kiwi. She gave me an update on a job her team had handled last night.
Not only was Kiwi's team cheaper than the offered Militech service level, but I'd rather support her than Militech. Her work had been stellar, and my odd jobs were accounting for about of quarter of her workload, she had told me. Last month, someone tried to steal one of my customer's cars in my parking lot, so a floating security drone shot him. Then his friends that night tried to throw a Molotov cocktail through my window, and it just bounced off and made a mess on the sidewalk. The next day those people were found dead in their apartments, thanks to Kiwi and her team.
Some pattern of this repeated three times, with the worst attack being one of my receptionists shot while waiting for the bus after leaving work. She had survived, thankfully. I had paid for her medical expenses, and for about a week, any member of that gang that left their headquarters was sniped. I was also now, for the moment, paying for a taxi to the nearest safe bus stop after the clinic closed for the evening.
When dealing with bullies, it was always important to escalate. If they punched you, you should stab them. If they pulled a knife, you pulled a gun. If they shoot one of your employees, you shoot all of their employees.
I had departed a significant way from the naive girl that found herself in this strange, new world. I wondered what my dad, not Alt-Dad but actual Danny back in Brockton Bay, would think about what I've done. He didn't agree with violence, in part, I thought, because he had so much of a temper sometimes.
"It seems like people are starting to tire from breaking their foot on our iron plate," I said, testing a Chinese idiom.
Kiwi nodded, "Yeah, mostly. Soon your biggest risk is going to be that you might make the few blocks around you safe enough that the Lotus Tong will be back and actually demanding their cut this time."
I scowled. Those assholes. Still, I was very careful to give them face, at least as far as anyone could tell. They were like the Tyger Claws in that way, in that they would pursue a vastly inefficient course of action if they thought they were being disrespected. They weren't as strong as the Claws by any means, but I still couldn't afford to directly piss off a gang of almost a thousand leg breakers.
"I'll dynamite that bridge when we get to it. Alright. Thanks, Kiwi. If you could check the background of this guy, I got a complaint that one of my receptionists was being hassled at her apartment. It's probably not related to us, but I wanted to make sure," I said, giving her another very small job. She was the one I went to for all my background investigations now when I was hiring people and also when situations like this developed.
After Kiwi left, I left my apartment. I was on the third floor, which had a ton of room that I wasn't using. However, one area that I did use was the highest security area in the entire building. I used a key, biometrics, and a code to unlock the door.
Inside was my laboratory; I stretched as I stepped in. "Alright, Kumo-kun... let's perform some self-maintenance today, then we will go over samples in group thirty-two."
A half-dozen small arachniform-robots skittered out of their ceiling-mounted charging-stations, walking down the walls as each of them performed a simple task to get tools and consumables ready for my self-surgery. I had made some additional modifications to my Kerenzikov, both to make it cosmetically more appealing as well as to squeeze some additional speed out of it, but it was a change that, at least as of now, needed weekly maintenance even for just going from an effective three to three point five acceleration factor.
It was kind of funny, as the attacks had resulted in many opportunities for me to acquire more neutral tissue ethically just in time for me not to need to do so anymore. These robots used cloned neural tissue, although Kumo-kun was still his normal self. I didn't have the heart to swap him out with a cloned replacement, especially since it would require me to completely retrain him.
Kumo-kun had the intelligence of a dog, more or less, and over time I had begun referring to him as him instead of it. I suppose he grew on you.
As I stripped naked, I glanced over at the table across the room that had over two dozen small samples of blue-green algae in small covered trays of seawater. That was the main reason this room was so secure. If anyone ever made a record of me studying blue-green algae, considering what I intended to accomplish with it in a year or so, the best I could hope for would be a quick death.
I was up to generation thirty-two on the algae, and my power eagerly assisted me in modifying it, but the changes I wanted were really radical, almost changing it into a multicellular lifeform, so it would be a somewhat slow process. But my ultimate success? That was something I never doubted.
Ever since returning from my vacation, I had been sleeping at least one night a week in my bed. I had forgotten how luxurious sheets and blankets could be, and since I was off tomorrow, I didn't have anything to do in the morning so I could sleep in.
However, instead of a romantic dream, I found myself sitting in a chair directly across from a duplicate of myself. The surroundings appeared to be a desolate plain as far as the eye could see, except the ground was composed of an eerie and dimly glowing dark-red crystal instead of dirt or grass. It reminded me of if HR Giger and one of those hippies back in the Brockton Bay universe that sold quartz crystals merged and painted this world.
My doppelganger and I said at the same time, "Well, this is weird." We then blinked at each other, and both frowned. Oh, so this was a nightmare, I guess. The doppelganger was probably about to kill me or something. I had a truckload of psychological imagery where this type of dream would be applicable, given the fact that I had stolen Alt-Taylor's life like a fay.
Yeah, I had no desire to do this. One thing I had always been able to accomplish was to wake myself from a dream, especially now that I realised I was dreaming. If anything, staying asleep was much more difficult once I knew I was in a dream.
I closed my eyes and willed myself awake, and found that nothing happened. Blinking, I got a strong impression from my power. Perhaps the strongest I have ever had, almost words.
Stay. Talk.
I pinched myself and then ran a hand through my hair. It was the extremely curly hair that I would have expected to have before coming to Los Angeles, but the pinch didn't have the same pain sensation I was used to. It felt off. I was pretty sure I was still asleep, then and my power was keeping me in a dream-state. It wanted me to stay and talk... to my doppelganger?
Wait, could it be? We then both opened our mouths and asked at the same time.
"Alt-Taylor?!"
"Brockton-Taylor?!"
Frowning. Why did we keep talking at the same time? We weren't anything alike. I felt that Alt-Taylor had a much more active personality, certainly, if we were going by how I was when I arrived, so if this was really her and not some kind of very interesting dream, I just closed my mouth and allowed her to talk first.
"This could be some sort of trick. I could be knocked out, and some illusion power being used to get all of my secrets," she said, crossing her arms over her chest.
That thought also occurred to me, but I was thinking more of a brain scanner tied to artificial intelligence, so I crossed my arms over my chest as well and said churlishly, "I was just going to say that."
She snorted and said, "Well, then. You'll have to tell me something that only Brockton-Taylor would know. Afterwards, I'll tell you something only I would know."
I didn't get all of her memories, though. Did she get more of mine?
Sighing, I said, "I had Armsmaster branded underwear."
She tilted her head to the side, "That could easily be determined by outside observation or postcognition."
Ugh. I had totally forgotten about the fucking ridiculousness of powers . Well, telepathy did not exist, so, "Ugh. I liked them. They were comfortable, and I thought the ridiculousness of his armoured head on my butt was hilarious."
She grinned then, "I do have those memories, yes. Okay, my turn. You're probably more concerned about brain scanners than powers, so I should tell you something without giving you a chance to know what it is in advance so that it can't be associated, right?"
Was this bitch smarter than me? I didn't believe it. But, she did have a lifetime of thinking like a corpie growing up, I supposed. Still, I frowned and nodded.
She had to try twice, but on her second try, she told me a very amusing thought that she had while in class several years ago that she had not told a single person.
Before asking her anything else, I asked, "How's dad?"
She frowned, "He's alive. He almost got drowned when Leviathan damn near sunk the city last month, waiting too long to go to one of the shelters, but he's alright."
"WHAT?!" I yelled. Had Leviathan attacked Brockton Bay? I mean, that had been one of my fears that just wouldn't go away. There were better targets for the sea monster, but those were also more heavily defended, and nobody really understood how any of the Endbringers elected targets except Ziz. She was somewhat predictable, which made her the worst.
I shook my head and said, "Wait... tell me everything that happened since you found yourself in Brockton Bay."
She nodded, "Then tell me everything about your time in Night City."
"Deal," we said simultaneously.
She told me about how she had what appeared to be the same power I had, which I found interesting. Usually, there weren't duplicates, just similar powers, but I had never really been a cape geek.
"Heh, the first thing I made was an anti-depressant as well," I said after she told me about how she had drug Dad in secret. I approved of that, although I wondered if it would have years ago. He was too proud, too stupid, and too attached to his own misery to make the correct choice.
I frowned after I heard about some of the things she had done. She wasn't holding anything back, "Wait, you're a villain?!"
She scowled, "No! I'm a Rogue. But villains sometimes need medical services too. Panacea is not only way too busy, but she's too much of a stuck-up bitch, sometimes and won't heal them. She needs an intervention and stat, or she is going to burn out and probably kill a lot of people." She sighed and then shrugged, "Getting your dad to be okay with me not immediately joining the Wards was a tough sell. But I discovered some things about the local PRT director. She was an Ellisburg survivor and is so bigoted against parahumans that she won't even let Panacea heal her end-stage renal failure. There is absolutely no way a bio tinker would get a fair shake in the Wards or Protectorate in this town. I almost grabbed your dad and moved to Boston, but he is too attached to the city."
