That he was the least affected wasn't true. His brain was the most altered by far, but it worked, and he allowed himself to be administered the nanomeds.
"Who will you need help from? Panacea? That was one of our hopes coming to Brockton Bay," Trickster said as an IV slowly ran on him.
Taylor shook her head wildly, "Fuck no. I am not letting Panacea get within a kilometre of Noelle." Noelle had finally agreed to a demonstration of her "ability" and let Taylor duplicate herself. This was something that Noelle both didn't like and felt very self-conscious about, but it had happened accidentally enough that the Travellers and Noelle agreed to do it one time. Being in the same room with Noelle had been very scary, but Taylor's duplicate wasn't scary at all.
A duplicate of herself without a lot of tools and preparation wasn't a threat in the least, and Taylor had shot the doppelgänger directly in the heart before it could spill too many of her secrets, which it tried to do immediately after being "born."
Taylor couldn't help herself, though, and she just had to study precisely how her brain diverged from her "evil clone", which was on the ice in the medbay of the base. She'd already got a thorough scan of the brain and later would see if any of the other biologies were divergent during a thorough pathological examination as well.
If Taylor was correct about Panacea, then an evil Panacea clone could be an S-class threat on all her own. Taylor shook her head, "No. There are a number of power nullifiers, though, that might be useful and willing to help. Absent that..." Well, she might have to beg for the nano-thorn recipe after all, or alternately help from the Boss.
Taylor would try her best to help the woman and would try her best to kill her if that wasn't possible. She was a huge threat, as she was. The best shot would be if Taylor could bisect her, cleanly taking off the humanoid torso and discarding the "body." It might start regenerating, but most powers didn't create matter ex nihilo, so there would be a short window of time where Taylor would be able to perform brain surgery to disable her power by carefully lobotomising the Corona Gemma brain structure. Taylor was confident that she could do so as she had been able to see both Corona in Noelle's brain, but her scanner couldn't penetrate that far into her "bottom half", which was one reason she didn't want to risk dealing with that "part" of her. She might even be able to do it in a way that it might be possible to restore her power later in the future if Taylor could figure out why it went berserk in the first place.
From their story, Taylor was pretty sure that Noelle was significantly lacking in the "Balance" part of the vial, and that was why Oliver had almost no power to speak of. He got all of this portion.
It would take speaking to Doctor Mother about this, she was the alchemy expert, but it might be possible to give Noelle more "Balance", which might tend to repair her Corona Gemma after Taylor lobotomised it and induce a less crazy but still useful power. But that might kill her, too. Taylor wasn't an expert here, but Doctor Mother would no doubt be interested. It wasn't life or death, though, because the Boss wasn't popping out of the nearest portal, so she would just proceed as she had tentatively planned.
It might take a while to figure something out. Would her antidepressants work on Noelle? She had a fairly standard brain, so probably. The "girl" was clearly bipolar, although Taylor didn't know if that was natural or a result of her situation; either way, something to even out the troughs of her depression and the irrationality of her mania would be a good thing. At least they weren't dealing with a natural Agent on top of everything else, as there wasn't an appreciable conflict drive in the vial capes, at least from what the Illuminati had recorded and what she had read in the files they allowed her to access.
Now, to see if she could clone an adult bison. Babies, she could do no problem, every day and twice on Sunday. But rapid-cloning whole adult animals? That was more in Blasto's wheelhouse, but it might still be possible, especially with some of the data she now had from Night City.
There were a number of animals from the Brockton Bay Zoo that were wandering around the flooded remains of the city, and she could get genetic samples of all of them. Noelle seemed like she got hungry pretty often, after all. Perhaps she would like a variety sampler until she could heal her.
That, or she could ask the Boss to expand her Door access to some random Earth that still had a lot of herds of those animals traipsing around. As it stood right now, she could only go to and from a few discrete places.
The fedoraed woman looked tired. That had been normal, but Taylor hadn't seen her tired in the past couple of weeks. One of the first things the Boss demanded Taylor Tinker for her after looming over her dream meeting was one of Brockton-Taylor's sleep inducers. She, personally, solved this issue through brain surgery on herself, but surprisingly most other people didn't really appreciate elective neurosurgery.
But Contessa was down to use a device that accomplished the same thing. Taylor didn't really understand the distinction, as both interfaced with your brain in a similar manner. Still, she obeyed and provided the device to the woman, and that had gotten one of the most genuine thanks that Taylor had ever heard the Boss make.
Well, actually, she had never heard the woman thank anyone, but Taylor imagined how it would sound-monotone-and in this instance, she had actually sounded genuine, holding the wreath up as if it was a lifeline. Maybe it was. Taylor thought it must be hard to run a dimension-spanning conspiracy mostly on your own hook. Having an extra five or so hours a day would probably be very nice if you were as overworked as she had been.
"You're fortunate that you're included in the small list of people I spend a little time every day trying to keep alive," the Boss told Taylor amusedly. "Keeping you alive barely adds any steps to the Path, but doing so while helping you do whatever you're trying to do adds quite a few. I have five minutes budgeted for you to tell me what the hell is happening."
Taylor told her what had happened since Coil ran out of town on her, being as succinct as possible. Contessa rubbed the back of her neck and said, "He's trying, successfully, to kill you. What did you do to him?"
"Uh, nothing," Taylor replied. She had never even met the man, although she had done some work for some of his men. He had been one of her first clients, too. She had found him rather rational and easy to get along with.
Contessa sighed and said, "Let me unravel this, and then we can see about your monster girl."
Taylor nodded but stopped her before she left. She had arrived inside Coil's old office, "Although it was safe for you to come here this time, I honestly don't think you should be anywhere near her, either. Her evil clones are no joke. Could you imagine what would happen if something happened and you accidentally touched her? A clone of you, with your powers, that wanted nothing more than to destroy everything you worked for or cared about?"
That caused Contessa to pause, but it was more like an involuntary tick, like she was a robot that switched to a different running program. She didn't waste any more time, saying, "Door to headquarters. Follow me. Now."
After we were in the well-lit white-walled rooms in another dimension, she said, "Wait here."
After that, she departed. Taylor sighed and asked, "Hello, Miss Breeze. Did Doctor Mother look at nine-six-two? Has he been approved for release?" She hadn't reviewed her files here recently, but she had sent his data to her so that she could make final determinations. The breeze grabbed her lab coat in a pre-defined way that they had agreed upon to indicate an affirmative.
"That's good," she said, walking over to a chair and sitting down. She likely didn't have enough time to do any real work, given the unholy speed the Boss solved problems. Instead, she just pulled up a few things on her deck to work on.
About ten minutes later, Contessa returned, trailing a pubescent girl that she was holding firmly by the hand. The girl looked dirty and dingy, as if she hadn't had a bath recently, and had the glassy-eyed stare of someone under the effects of psychoactive drugs. Contessa said firmly, "Sedate her."
Well, she was the Boss. Taylor adjusted the dosage mentally and then pointed her index finger at the girl. The darts she fired were pneumatic, so they were mostly silent aside from a soft hiss and *thwap* of the small dart hitting the girl in the neck. She barely had any time to be startled before she slumped over, with Contessa grabbing her and laying her on a table. Contessa nodded and said, "You'll take her back with you and care for her."
"I don't wanna," Taylor said immediately. What did the Boss think she was? A daycare?
"Don't make me repeat myself. She's a strong Thinker, and Coil kidnapped her and had her addicted to a number of things. The quickest way to solve that problem is to give her to you. After you've treated her, you can return her to her parents in Brockton Bay," the Boss said, narrowing her eyes slightly.
'Oh, you should have just said treat her, then. The nuance was entirely different from care for her,' Taylor thought but decided not to push the matter. Instead, she just nodded.
"Door to Fragile storage, index A-111," Contessa said and then reached through the portal without looking, grabbed a small vial and pulled it out. She pulled a small sheet of paper that looked like it had been ripped out of a three-ring binder and handed both the vial and the sheet to me. She nodded, "Follow those directions precisely, and you should be able to save that girl. Diverge, and you will definitely die, and possibly a lot of other people, too."
That sounded a lot more dangerous than Taylor thought when she agreed to help. She skimmed the directions and pointed at one of the lines that mentioned Sundancer helping with incinerating the remainder or bottom half of Noelle after successfully separating her, "So I should just skip trying to help her and incinerate her."
"No. That would be a waste, and her friend wouldn't agree. If you do this, there is a very good chance that she will come out of this with a usable power that is on the same tier as Legend or Alexandria. We need capes like that. This is worth the risk," the Boss said, "But you're correct. It would be a disaster if I... or... another of us was duplicated. You'll have to do it. Just follow the directions, and you'll be fine."
Taylor had the idea that Contessa would tell her that even if Taylor wouldn't, in fact, be fine if the payoff was sufficient. There wasn't anything more important than saving the world, and the Boss was all about the ends justifying the means. Still, Taylor couldn't smell a secret hinting at personal betrayal from the woman, so she would trust her.
"Fine," Taylor said, standing up. The plan was somewhat similar to her own but included a lot of extra steps and refinements that she should have thought about, like using Trickster to swap out Noelle's bisected torso directly onto an operating table. That was a good idea and would save many seconds. But there were a lot of preparatory steps, like curing Genesis' paralysis and providing her with a customised sleep-inducer that she didn't understand the necessity for, but she would just execute the plan as provided.
After the Boss left, Taylor scanned the unconscious girl's body and frowned. Just what the fuck was going on with this girl's brain? Taylor had never seen someone with so many factors of addiction. It would take weeks to cure her of it, and it would be a lot kinder for the girl to remain unconscious for the duration.
Sighing, she picked the girl up and said, "Door back to my new lair, please." As always, she was polite with whatever entity was responsible for creating magic portals.
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An offer she can't refuse
November 2066
Los Angeles / Oxford, England
As I was getting loaded into the AV-4, with the two Med Techies working on me, I stood up from the chair I had briefly sat in inside the administration building outside the Dean's office back in Oxford.
Nobody, seemingly, had noticed my brief pause, which was good, although I couldn't quite count on that. I was sure that this area was under audio-visual surveillance, so it was possible that someone might have noticed it. I wasn't used to being credibly attacked, though, so I felt that I needed all of the brainpower I had in order to focus on getting out of my predicament back in LA.
Well, it was fine. I didn't like leaving datums that were obvious to correlate like the totally independent Dr Hasumi being attacked and the completely unrelated Taylor Hebert tripping and sitting down for a rest, but the only one that might put the two and two together was Gram or more likely, her AI. I didn't trust the Sídhe bitch, but she already knew my two clones were connected; I had just buffaloed her on the extent of the connection.
Although I considered my identity as Taylor Hebert, some observers, if they knew the truth, might consider me, instead, an unnamed, unknown entity that used to be Taylor Hebert, that controlled Taylor's body like a puppet. Since Gram had appeared to dote on Mom some, I didn't want to give her the idea that I wasn't actually her granddaughter, especially since I wasn't.
I had thought about this myself, too, in moments of philosophical whimsy and concluded that it was a pointless question. I was who I was. I thought I was Taylor Hebert, so I was Taylor Hebert. It wasn't like people were static in the first place, anyway, unless they were dead, of course. People changed and grew over their lives.
The Taylor Hebert that sat in Mr Gladly's Word Issues class wouldn't recognise the Taylor Hebert I had become even before I started cognitively expanding. That was partly because I had, for a long time, been using my own personal sleep inducer. This device, in addition to giving me a healthy night's sleep, also increased my brain's neural plasticity. That was, mostly, a good thing. It helped me learn new things, but it also had the effect of training my brain to be more like and to think more like a native of Night City.
That, I thought, was a bad thing, and I was always on guard to try to avoid slipping into bad habits-and not just habits, bad thought patterns, too. I was playing the role of a Corpo because otherwise, I might not have survived, but I didn't want to become one in truth. However, in many ways, it was difficult not to. You shouldn't practice what you didn't want to become, after all.
