I actually had to cheat in the History class, though. I used Dr Hasumi's implants to pull up some of the answers because I hadn't actually studied too much English history. It made me blush that their concerns about cheating were warranted, while their precautions were not good enough, but I wasn't about to fail this exam and then be told I had to take a semester or two of History classes. How stupid would that be?
The practical skills tests were mostly in virtual-reality braindances that had a very high fidelity with reality as far as medicine was concerned, which made perfect sense. These I breezed through, and I only spent about five days working shifts in the John Radcliffe hospital, overseen by one of their more senior doctors. They didn't call them "Attendings" like I was used to in the United States, though.
I intended to specialise in surgery, of course, but it wasn't like brand-new baby doctors in the UK did this, so most of the procedures I performed were minor-things like sutures, and the like that I had been doing even as a paramedic.
After the last day, I met both the Regius Professor of Medicine as well as the Dean in person. The Dean seemed a little surprised. He coughed and said, "Honestly, I did not expect this outcome. But you've definitely met and exceeded all of the requirements for the MBBS degree. Do you plan to stay here for further training? You suggested an interest in cyber-surgery."
He went from discounting me to basically offering me a job as an intern doctor, which I thought was nice. But I shook my head, "No, I'm going to head back to Night City and seek residency at one of the trauma centres, I believe."
He shrugged, "Well, fair enough. The degree should more or less be taken at face value for an American license to practice medicine. At least, I've never heard of anyone having any difficulties applying for and getting one, but who would want to go to America, anyway?" He said the last with a purse of his lips, disapproving of my choices.
There wasn't any kind of large ceremony, and I would be added to the list of this semester's graduates, as Oxford didn't want to advertise that they provided degrees by simply testing out of them. I didn't want any special attention either, so I appreciated that. The diploma itself was quite fancy, though, and written on something like synthetic vellum and bound in a leather portfolio. It took it with a handshake and departed in peace.
It was already getting close to dinner time, so I should probably-
I tripped, catching myself in time, frowned, and sat down at the nearest chair. I had hired Militech as protection whenever I drove somewhere in Los Angeles, and someone had just attacked the small convoy, using rocket-propelled grenades to disable the lead vehicle before firing at the trailing vehicle. It was an early-morning ambush, but they weren't, seemingly, trying to kill me, clearly, so I just triggered my Platinum Trauma Team subscription and put my little sports car into high gear and burned out, accelerating out of the kill box.
When I started to do that, they directed some fire into my precious car, but it wasn't enough to immediately disable the vehicle. Less than a kilometre down the road, though, my little Shion sputtered to a stop.
Fuck, they must have hit something important in the engine compartment.
I leapt out of the car, grabbing my submachine gun. Should I continue running? No. The Trauma Team was close by now. I took cover behind my car, aiming back the way I came and observed the running gun battle between my Militech defenders and the unknown attacking forces. The attackers hadn't gotten the clean kill on each vehicle that they had hoped for, and I felt that they were going to be lucky to get away alive, much less pursue me any further.
The AV-4 landed behind me, and I felt nostalgia as the security and medical specialists hopped out and approached me, "Dr Hasumi? Are you too injured to move?"
I carefully pointed my gun's barrel down at the ground before turning, which I could tell the Security Specialists appreciated. It was really a lot of paperwork if you shot a client, especially a Platinum client like myself. "I don't believe so. I don't think I'm injured at all, but someone attacked my convoy, and I managed to get free."
Thinking about it, I handed the SMG to the Assistant Med Techie, asking, "Would you mind carrying this? I'd like to have it back later."
"Uhh.. ma'am, you've been shot," the senior med techie reported, and I blinked. I muted all notifications as soon as the ambush happened. I glanced down and saw the injury and diagnosed it at the same time I got the report from the biomonitor. Serious penetrating trauma of the lower left quadrant. It must have been a rifle round or armour piercing or something.
I started feeling a little light-headed. It might sound ridiculous for someone who routinely conducted surgery on myself, but I liked all of my blood to stay inside my body.
In either case, it wasn't an immediately fatal wound, though. My nanites might even repair the perforated and ruptured spleen, but it was probably best not to rely on it. I sighed, "So I am."
I suppose I should let them treat me as a patient instead of as a rescue. How embarrassing.
Fuck. My Militech premiums were going to go through the roof. It was like insurance, and they charged by the risk profile.
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Sidestory: Junior Illuminati Agent
AN: Setting this as a "side story" since some people don't care about hearing what happens in Brockton Bay, but it is considered canon.
May 2011
Brockton Bay
Taylor had barely been in this universe for six months, and she was already a junior member of the Illuminati. Felt good, even if she didn't exactly have much of a choice in the matter. But they hadn't needed to do the hard sell, anyway. As soon as they let her read some of the non-public information about the projected date of the end of civilisation, she was onboard.
She didn't precisely know the enemy they needed to fight, except that it was linked to the reason people became parahumans, but it was clear that they were gearing up to fight something and had been for decades. She had been told that she was recruited because her power was especially strong and also that she would have likely been killed within a couple of years if they never approached her.
Taylor didn't really believe the latter, but she definitely believed the former. Her current job was to medically screen applicants that bought powers in a vial from this group.
However... what they were practising wasn't science; it was more akin to alchemy or magic. So what she ended up actually doing was curing various incurable diseases for them anonymously, when for one reason or another Miss Easy Mode Bitch couldn't be consulted. A warlord in Africa had a child with ALS? The work of an afternoon. Her Boss had the frankly disgustingly broken ability to know if curing said child would, in some way, assist their plan. If so, well, that's what Taylor did.
Some of these missions were obvious. A Senator wanted to live longer and be more youthful, so Taylor showed up. It was obvious where the quid and the quo happened in this exchange. But just as often, she would get a message to heal a random homeless person of cancer or something like that. Her Boss absolutely terrified her with these requests. Taylor couldn't see any point, which meant that the woman's ability was absolutely scary.
She also had the responsibility to "humanise" some of their failed experiments. The world called them Case 53 because her Boss released them into the wild, mostly on Earth-Bet, sans their memory. That wasn't something that Taylor would do if she was running a conspiracy that needed to be kept secret, but she wasn't in charge.
Taylor knew how these people were selected for experimentation. They were either dead men and women or seekers of power, one and all. Or both. So, she didn't really have any moral objection to the program. Not even the random ones that Boss had fished out of some dimension on Death's door for some reason. There was implied consent for medical procedures, after all. And receiving power in a vial could be seen as a lifesaving medical procedure if you squinted and looked at it just right.
"Alright, let's finish up with number nine-six-two," Taylor told the always-present breeze, which assisted her when she needed it. There were a few mundane doctors that also occasionally helped her, but she preferred working alone.
The mutations on this particular individual, Mr 962, were radical but easy to adjust to, something akin to a human form. He would have a mostly normal life after they released him. The Illuminati had a lot more prisoners that consisted of failed experiments down here than they released to the wild, but with Taylor here "adjusting" them, there were plans to release quite a few more.
Taylor couldn't help all of them. Some of them weren't alive . For example, Weld had been a boy with a terminal illness, but the process of curing him caused him to turn into fucking metal. Taylor hadn't had a chance to examine the young metal man, as he had been released several years ago, but from what she could tell, he both wasn't and shouldn't be alive, at least not in the way Taylor defined life, so there wouldn't have been anything she could do to him.
Others, though? She could usually make a lot of progress. 962 had been something akin to a monstrous quadruped before Taylor got her hands on the man. Now, while he wouldn't pass for a human, he was definitely a humanoid. Taylor even thought he looked ruggedly handsome. She would have dated him, even. The bright red skin gave him a sort of sexy devil-man look that she liked. It was almost enough for her to add horns to his head, but that wouldn't be professional.
As she finished up, her phone, which she emulated in software through her deck, began yowling with an alert. She pulled up the notification, wondering again how precisely they had arranged service here before blinking. Armsmaster was predicting Leviathan would attack Brockton Bay within a few hours. Fuck! Dad!
She looked around, "Custodian Miss Breeze. Please put nine six two away, for now. I have to leave." A tug of wind pulled on her sleeve, which Taylor took for agreement. She looked around and started gathering things.
She almost forgot to turn the television on. She liked to put a DVD in for Miss Breeze to watch after she left, and she thought that the Custodian appreciated it too. Obviously, as a sapient wind elemental, she didn't have the same biological need for stimulus and couldn't, precisely, get bored. Still, Miss Breeze had started giving her DVD requests, so she thought the lady wind appreciated it.
"Door, my laboratory, please," she said, and a portal immediately popped up in front of her. It never ceased to amaze her, these magic powers. Taylor stepped through, and the portal winked out of existence. Once she was back in Brockton Bay and back on the real telephone network, she called Dad while gathering more medical tools.
"Of course, I'm going to help, Dad. Leviathan is one of the best Endbringers where my skills can be put to the best use; plus, this is our town," she told him after the obvious objections, "You need to get to either an Endbringer shelter or maybe just out of town. We've got quite a lot of warning this time, and an evacuation might be feasible. You should be safe if you're at least fifty kloms away, but I'd just keep driving even after that."
Dad was a lot better now that he was taking her antidepressants every week, but they didn't actually change the way you thought. He still had the same hangups, just without his depression that caused him to go into spirals of self-doubt and loathing. Before, he wouldn't have been able to see the logic in what she was saying, but now he could, even if he didn't like the idea that she was going to be in danger. It wasn't like she was going to punch the sea monster herself, though.
Taylor hung up and gathered the rest of her things, loading them into a nondescript white-panelled van that she had purchased just a month after arriving in town. She wasn't in the Protectorate, obviously , as she would provide her services to anyone who approached her if they had money or something to trade. Although they had wanted to classify her as a villain at first, even going so far as to get a pre-signed kill order for her, she was now considered a Rogue, especially after she had assisted when the angel-lady attacked Australia. She had been dragooned into the Illuminati shortly after that incident.
"Maeve, thank you for showing up," the PRT director, Thomas Calvert, told her after she walked into the staging area. The rain was still light, but she didn't waste a lot of time standing in it.
Besides, there was more than meets the eye with this man, but she couldn't quite place it, but Taylor knew he was hiding a lot of secrets, just not what they were. She could taste the outline of them, and they weren't the usual secrets a highly-placed governmental employee would be hiding either; they were his secrets and nasty ones too. Taylor didn't particularly like being around him, but he was very effective and always treated her well.
He didn't have time to do more than briefly greet me, but he did detail two strong, muscley men to act as porters for me, to bring all my gadgets and supplies into the medical tent. Given the resources she knew we would have, she glanced around at the unpowered medical professionals and immediately started taking charge. Triage would be most important. If they could stabilise someone briefly, they would survive. If she looked the sixteen years old that she actually was, there was no way they would let her do this, but she had already proven herself in the last Endbringer battle, so they acquiesced.
Taylor felt someone touch her hip, and suddenly the world slowed widely down, as though she had the best quality boostware available. Othala had touched her and given her super-speed power. Yes, that would be useful if she could keep doing that over the course of the battle.
The teenage white supremacist smiled shyly at her. Taylor had a pretty good relationship with her, as Othala had been one of her first for-profit patients after Lung bit off the girl's leg in some pointless battle that the White supremacists had against the Asian supremacists.
Luckily the Dragon hadn't eaten her leg, merely spit it out, so she was able to just repair and reattach it as good as new. After that, Taylor just had to heal a small number of very serious burns, and Othala was ready for a dancing night at the Biergarten again.
It was a bit more complicated than that, obviously, but Othala had full function again and no scars. Panacea hadn't liked that Taylor agreed to heal a Nazi, nor that she charged for her services, so they had gotten off on the wrong foot from the beginning.
