Entanglement [Worm AU fic x2]

We're all familiar with the idea of Taylor showing up in an AU where things are different. So what happens if she's in said AU, and also in her own familiar universe? And then they swap over?

Why don't we find out?

PS: Apologies to those people who hate locker scenes. There's a locker scene.

Index
Prologue: Causality is a Harsh Mistress
Part One: Not in Kansas Any More
Part Two: Confusion Intensifies

Explanation: The Story So Far

 

Entanglement


Prologue: Causality is a Harsh Mistress


Causality is a strange and slippery thing.

In the macro-scale of the observable universe, event A leads to consequence B. Things happen in a logical fashion; there is a timeline that the theoretical observer can follow, to learn how things happened.

However, when events are being observed in the pico-scale universe, down near the Planck constant, events sometimes occur simultaneously with results, or even occasionally after them. Cause does not necessarily lead to effect. Quantum entanglement experiments have famously shown that photons can be linked over quite a substantial range, to show identical reaction to stimuli despite not being connected in any understandable way.

For the most part, however, these causal oddities do not affect the macro-scale universe. However, in the odder corners of the multiverse, reality may be nudged in unusual ways. Take a variant Earth, with a few minor but significant changes. It is shadowed, separated by the thinnest of dimensional membranes, by another Earth. The sister planet – call it Terra – holds many similarities to this particular version of Earth, but there are also a few definitive differences. Certain cities and islands, for instance, are still there, while super-powers – and the changes wrought by them – are not.

The multi-dimensional spacegoing parasites which have infected this Earth's local sheaf of possibilities with parahuman potentiality are unaware of Terra. It exists in a dimensional direction along which they are unequipped to travel. In a very real sense, the laws of physics that hold Terra in their sway quite literally do not allow these creatures to exist in that specific local spacetime.

And yet, causality intrudes once more. One might assume that, having a vastly different history over the previous twenty-nine years and change, these two worlds would be literally poles apart, with no similarity, no shared frame of reference. And for the most part, this is true.

But for a certain few aspects, it is not, because causality has decreed otherwise.

The nexus point is the L̵̯̙̹̟̺̤̓͑ͫǒ̢͉̥̣̾̇̉ͩ̃c͍̰̬̞̞̺͗̓ͨ͊͊k̈́̐̇̓e̪̯̠ř̟̮̣͙̣̤̋͛ͤ͊ .

Many millions of words have been written about the Locker, and the consequences of what happened there. Sentient beings who know nothing else about the history of that Earth are aware of the Locker. It is where, in one particular world-line known as Earth Bet, a girl was set upon the path that led to her greatest feat and her darkest fall; an apparent death which led to a life renewed.

This … is not that story. Or rather, it is not precisely that story.

For in this story, there is not one Locker, but two. There are two girls called Taylor Hebert, both betrayed by a girl whom they considered their best friend. Each one is imprisoned in the Locker, mired in filth, screaming, begging to be let out. How each of them came to this point is a slightly different tale, as Earth is different from Terra.

But now, events begin to converge. The screams are approaching the same pitch, the motions of attempting to escape are mirroring one another. And then, for one significant moment, within the noisome prison, that curtailed micro-universe known as the Locker, they are identical to one another.

Entanglement.


End of Prologue

 

Entanglement


Part One: Not in Kansas Any More


The locker door opened abruptly; I tumbled out, writhing, still screaming in terror. I was out of my head; my wits had long since deserted me. Someone tried to restrain me; I clawed and bit and struggled, my mind still trapped within the locker.

Eventually, mercifully, someone sedated me.

I slept.

<><>​

Earth

I awoke. A nurse was bending over me, smoothing my sheets down. I screamed; she leaped back in fright. My arms were already strapped to the bed, probably as a precaution against a sudden and violent awakening. What do you know? I had a sudden and violent awakening.

I thrashed and screamed, not knowing what was reality and what was false. Odd visions in my head, strange noises in my ears, added to my memory of what had gone before, and I wanted to be free, to be gone from this place. I had no idea what was happening to me, and the more I struggled, the more firmly the restraints held me down. There was a man there, whom I might have recognised as my father if I were less agitated. But I did not, and so I fought to be free.

Coolness flowed into my veins from the IV, and I slept once more.

<><>​

Terra

I lay in the hospital bed. The restraints had been removed; although I was still a little shaky, I hadn't done much more than scream a few times. The nurse had been rather shaken, but Dad had apologised to her and then held my hand. I had cried, quite a bit, but he never let go.

I sniffled, then pulled a tissue from the box on the bedside table and blew my nose. “Sorry.”

“Don't worry about it,” the man in the suit told me. I think his name was Wallis. “I saw that locker. I'm surprised that you're doing as well as you are.”

“It's not the first time they've done something to me,” I admitted. “Nothing as bad as that, but … yeah. Not a total surprise.”

His brows drew down. I was surprised by the anger in his expression. “And nobody did anything to stop it?”

Dad squeezed my hand; I squeezed back. “I tried telling them. The teachers. But nothing ever happened. Emma's dad -” I stopped, wishing I could take the words back. I hadn't meant to say that, not in front of Dad.

“Emma?” His voice was strangled. He didn't want it to be true. “Please don't tell me …” His eyes searched mine, imploring.

I grimaced and looked away from him. The FBI man raised an eyebrow. “Who's Emma?”

“Her best friend,” Dad ground out. “Emma Barnes. When I see Alan, I'm going to -”

“No, Dad,” I begged. Pleaded. “There's a reason I didn't tell you. If I snitch on Emma, I'm screwed. It'll be worse than ever before.”

“More to the point, Mr Hebert,” Wallis said. “If you make a move against this girl's family, it'll muddy any case that we might be able to make. We're going to have to gather evidence, and that evidence has to be untainted.”

Dad frowned, brought back down to earth. “Tell me, exactly, why the FBI is taking an interest in this case,” he requested. “I mean, I expected the police, sure, but why you guys?”

I didn't say anything. It was something I'd been wondering about too.

“It's very simple.” Wallis turned a page on his notebook. “This goes far beyond an ordinary crime. In the case of a shooting or a stabbing or even a basic assault, such as shutting you in your locker without anything special in there, the police would be handling it. But this situation is different. Toxic waste is classed as a biohazard, and I'm here to look over the case to see if it needs to be punted up the chain."

"And if it doesn't?" asked Dad. "Does this get dropped back to the police again?"

Wallis shook his head with a reassuring smile. "No. Once you've got the FBI's attention, you keep it. No matter what, it's still a biohazard pure and simple. It probably won't get classified as a WMD, but even so, whoever did this is facing severe consequences."

“Will – will Emma be expelled?” I was hopeful.

He laughed briefly; my heart sank. But his next words buoyed me up again. “Miss Hebert, if she's found guilty, that's the least of what'll happen to her. Attempted murder, deprivation of liberty, misuse of a toxic biohazard, bringing said biohazard into a school … she'll be lucky if they don't try her as an adult. Worst case – for her, that is – is if my team decides that it's worth classifying it as a weapon of mass destruction. As I said, that outcome's highly unlikely, but if it did happen, then Homeland invokes the Patriot Act, and there's a good chance that she goes away as a terrorist.”

I blinked. Emma? A terrorist? “But … but …” I stumbled for words. “Wait. Who's Homeland and what's the Patriot Act?” I certainly didn't recall anything like that from my Social Studies class. Was Homeland a new cape I hadn't heard of?

Both my father and Agent Wallis were looking at me oddly. “What?” I asked.

“Kiddo, you know what the Patriot Act is,” Dad said. “You did a presentation on it in seventh grade. Got an A minus for it.” He grinned, turning to Wallis. “She wanted to do a diorama of the World Trade Centre, with smoke coming out. The teacher wouldn't let her, because it would actually involve setting fire to her project. She was convinced for months that's why she didn't get the A plus.”

Wallis nodded judiciously. “It would've been a safety issue. Not to mention being a little insensitive. This close to New York, there's almost certainly someone who lost friends in the attack living here.”

“Yeah, I know a few -” began Dad, then looked at me as I shook my head. “What?”

“No, Dad, I don't know anything about the Patriot Act,” I insisted. “I did a presentation, yeah, but it was about the PRT, and I did a diorama of the Protectorate base. But I made the force field out of cellophane and it collapsed on the base, and I still think they docked me points because of that. Not the World Trade Centre.”

“Hmm.” Wallis peered at the IV bag. “Okay, I think we're done here.”

“What?” I sat up a little. “I'm not sleepy. We can keep going. Emma wasn't the only one.”

Wallis shook his head slightly. “Miss Hebert, you're not tracking well, and it sounds like you're describing a scene from a comic book.” He closed his notebook and stood up.

“No,” I insisted. “That happened.”

Dad sighed. “I'm sorry, kiddo. But it didn't.” He took my hand. “The doctors say you've had a terrible shock, and you're also on drugs that have probably made you not quite sure of what's real and what's not. Mr Wallis will be coming back later once we're sure you're lucid, okay?”

“But I am lucid,” I insisted. “Ask me anything.”

Wallis sighed. “All right. What happened on September the eleventh, two thousand and one?”

“Um.” I tried to think back. Too late for Leviathan, too early for Simurgh. “That's a little unfair. I was only six years old. How am I supposed to remember what happened on a particular day when I was six?”

“Trust me, Miss Hebert, everyone remembers what happened on that day.” His voice was gentle, but his gaze never left mine.

“Oh, right!” I grinned triumphantly. Something big had happened in two thousand one. I'd thought it had happened earlier in the year, but right now I wasn't going to try to trust in my memory. “Ellisburg. Nilbog took over Ellisburg.”

Right away, from the looks on their faces, I knew it was the wrong answer. “Um … didn't he?”

Agent Wallis shook his head again, and there was regret on his face. “No, Miss Hebert,” he said sadly.

I tried again, wildly. “It's not when Leviathan sank Kyushu, is it?”

If anything, the look of regret deepened. “I have no idea what you're talking about.”

He opened the door; Dad stepped out in the corridor with him. At first, I only caught snatches of conversation, but their voices gradually rose.

“ - not going to drop the investigation -” That was Dad.

“ - course not. But if her trauma is so bad -” Wallis's voice was soft and understanding.

“ - once she's off the drugs - “

“ - psychiatric testing -”

“She's not crazy.” That was Dad's voice, coming through clearly.

“Mr Hebert, I never said she was. But you heard her. Speaking about things and events which she may well have made up on the spot. Possibly because of the trauma. I'm trained in picking up lies and evasion, and all indications are that she believes what she's saying. I can't risk having her fantasy world spill over into our investigation. So we have to be certain that her head is clear and that she's not suffering from any delusions when I get the next statement from her.”

There was a long silence. “God damn it,” Dad muttered.

“Hang in there, Mr Hebert,” Agent Wallis told him. “This is just a minor setback. We'll get there.”

Dad came back into the room and shut the door behind him. “Sorry,” I mumbled. “Didn't mean to sound crazy.”

He shook his head as he chuckled sadly. “That's okay. You probably couldn't help it. I remember when I had my appendix out and had a bad reaction to a sedative. The nurses later told me I'd been throwing my pillow at the wall, to kill the psychedelic spiders.”

“But I'm not making stuff up, and I'm not remembering it wrong,” I insisted. “I get good marks in World Affairs, at least when they're not stealing my homework.”

The look that came over his face then was a mix of compassion and worry. “Taylor, what if I could prove that what you're saying is wrong?”

I wasn't quite sure where he was going with this. “Well, you can't, but sure, go ahead,” I agreed.

Pulling up a chair, he sat down next to me. “All right then. You say you don't know anything about the Patriot Act, or nine-eleven?”

My head tilted as I thought about this. “They're linked, aren't they? Nine-eleven … you're not talking about nine-one-one, are you?” I paused, and he shook his head. “Okay … wait, that date Mr Wallis quoted. September the eleventh. Nine, eleven. So something big happened on the eleventh of September in two thousand and one, that caused something called the Patriot Act to be created. And someone or something called Homeland …?” I trailed off.

The lines on Dad's face etched themselves a little deeper. “You really don't know any more than that, do you?”

I spread my hands in confusion. “It's what I've been trying to tell you.”

He closed his eyes for a moment, and sighed. “Okay,” he said, opening them again. “Let's start with what you were talking about. The, uh, PTR? The Protectorate?”

“PRT, Dad,” I corrected him automatically. A suspicion was beginning to creep across my mind. What if there's a Master who's made everyone in the city forget that the PRT and the Protectorate even existed? And that I'm immune because of what I've just been through?

“Okay, PRT,” he agreed in good humour. “So what's it stand for?”

My suspicion grew. “Parahuman Response Teams, Dad. You know this one.”

“No. I don't. And what are 'parahumans'?”

This was really, really weird. But maybe if I explained it carefully enough, he'd remember. “Superhumans, Dad. Capes. Heroes, like Alexandria. Villains like, uh, Kaiser. Parahumans. You know.”

“Superheroes?” He was looking more and more confused. “You're talking about superheroes?”

“Well, yes.” Finally, he gets it.

He shook his head yet again. “But … superheroes are fictional. They don't exist.”

“But they do exist!” I was starting to get frustrated. “The PRT has a base right here in Brockton Bay! The Protectorate has a base here! How can you say they don't exist?”

“What's the Protectorate?” he asked blankly.

“Only the nationwide government super-team,” I told him, trying not to sound too sarcastic. “Like I said, they've got a base right here in the city.”

“Oh, really?” he asked, coming right back at me. “I'm guessing it's a secret underground base that only you know about?”

“Uh, duh, no,” I retorted. “It's the big thing on the oil rig in the middle of the bay, with the glowy force-field around it. I can show you if you want. It's not exactly inconspicuous.”

“Okay, so show me,” he invited, pulling back the curtains. Brockton Bay General is situated on a hill, and has a good view of the bay. “Where is it?”

“It's right …” I scanned the bay, then looked again more carefully. Come on, where is it? “It's right …” I began again, my eyes quartering each section of the bay. “Um …”

Eventually, I had to admit defeat. “I can't see it,” I admitted in a small voice.

“Because it's not there.” To his credit, Dad's voice wasn't triumphant. He sounded more sad than anything.

“No, it's there, I know it is,” I insisted. “They must've turned it invisible or something.” I didn't know for a fact that they could do that, but with Armsmaster I wouldn't rule anything out.

“Taylor.” Dad's voice was patient. “It's the year two thousand eleven, not twenty-two eleven. We don't have super-heroes, or force fields, or invisibility. Now, I don't know what comic books you've been reading, or TV shows you've been watching, but you have to understand that all of this you're talking about isn't real. And the longer you insist that it is, the harder it will be for Agent Wallis to make his case about you being fit to give evidence about what happened to you.”

Finally, his words began to register on me. He really meant it. Doubts began to assail me. Was everything I thought I knew just some huge dreamworld overlaid on what was real?

“Uh, okay,” I mumbled. “Um, can I ask one more thing?”

“Anything,” he said at once.

“Can you go to the nurses' station and ask for their oldest, most worn-out phone book? The one that's always stuck at the back of the cupboard?”

He frowned. “Can I ask why?”

“Um, I'd rather just check on something before I say anything,” I hedged.

“Okay then.” He left the room, but not without another odd look. I lay back in bed, trying not to fidget. My thoughts collided with one another, and I could make neither head nor tail of them.

Dad doesn't know anything about the PRT, the Protectorate or capes.

The Protectorate base isn't there.

Nobody else seems to remember anything at all about them.

Is the PRT building even there?

Have I been out longer than I thought, and there's been some event, and everyone's repressing the memory of there ever having been capes?

That idea chilled me, especially when my mind circled back to the idea of there being a Master forcing everyone to forget the very existence of capes. My fingers twisted against each other.

The door opened and Dad came in again. “Okay, got it. So what did you want to check?”

I didn't answer him; taking the book, I checked the date on it. Two thousand three to two thousand four. That should do it. Opening it, I began to check the P's. Dad watched, his brow furrowing. I went through the P section twice, in both the yellow and white pages, before acknowledging that there was no listing for 'Parahuman Response Teams' or even 'PRT'. Then I leafed over to where it listed government organisations. If the PRT was anywhere, it would be there.

It wasn't.

I stared at the page for the longest time, then scanned upward. “Homeland Security” had a listing, but not the Parahuman Response Teams.

What does it mean?

Closing the book again, I ran my thumb over the worn corners. This was an old book. When it was printed, I'd been in primary school. But the PRT had been a thing, then. It should have had a listing.

But it didn't.

Again I asked myself the question. What does it mean? I was starting to get the horrible feeling that I knew the answer.

“Taylor?”

I looked up at Dad and handed the phone book back to him.

“Did you find what you were looking for?” He knew I hadn't.

I shook my head. “No.”

“Is there anything you want to talk about?”

Again, I shook my head. “Can I … be alone for a bit? Please?”

“Okay. I'll be outside.”

Standing up, he took the book with him. The door closed behind him.

I lay there in the bed, in the sterile hospital room, and tried to think.

What's going on? Where am I? How did I get here? Because I'm sure as hell not on Earth Bet any more.

I had never felt so alone in my life.


End of Part One

 

Crossposting from SB.

1) There are two worlds. As noted in the prologue. (Which some people thought I should have left out.) One is called (for story purposes) 'Earth'. This is Earth Bet. The other is called 'Terra'.

2) Earth Bet allows entities and shards to exist in its local spacetime. Terra does not. Terra is, in fact, a close cousin to our Earth, with Brockton Bay inserted into local geography.

3) The version of Taylor from Earth Bet is called Bet!Taylor, Earth!Taylor, Taylor (B) or Taylor (E), depending on who's writing it. The version of Taylor from Terra is called Terra!Taylor or Taylor (T), depending again on the writer. They are not hard to tell apart.

4) Terra!Taylor has been swapped over to Earth Bet. Bet!Taylor has been swapped over to Terra.

5) A trigger event occurred at the moment of swap.

6) Terra!Taylor (on Earth Bet) now has Skitter's canon powers. Bet!Taylor (on Terra) does not.

I hope that deals with any lingering confusion.

 

Entanglement


Part Two: Confusion Intensifies


Earth
Taylor (Terra)

I didn't know what was going on. I was barely aware of where I was. The memories of where I had been would not go away; if I fell asleep I would wake up, screaming and choking and trying to escape once more. Worse, while I was awake, I was assailed by strange noises, bombarded by lights and moving images behind my eyelids.

It would have at least helped if the images made sense. But they were fuzzy, blurry and downright incomprehensible. Nor was it in the least bit helpful that I occasionally got the feeling that I was in ten thousand places at once.

My mind was one of the last places that I held sacrosanct. There was no other place that I could be at peace. With the school faculty ignoring whatever the principal's daughter did, she could bully me at her leisure, so there was nowhere in the school I could go and be safe. At home, I was away from Emma, but there was the situation with the Russells to deal with as well. Which I suspected that I was handling badly. So that was a no-show.

And now even my mind was going. I was losing it. In my lucid moments, I decided that I had to be going insane (or had already done so) because sane people did not see and hear things that weren't there.

It didn't help, of course, that the sedatives I was still on didn't help me think clearly enough to work at simply ignoring or repressing the strange impressions that I was getting. I was awake, but I was fuzzy-headed enough to not be able to think clearly.

Dad was there. He held my hand. I tried to squeeze it back. That, at least, helped. A little, anyway. But then I drifted a bit, and when I could focus again, he was gone. Hot tears squeezed between my eyelids. I was becoming more awake, more aware. If I had just been able to talk more coherently, I could have told him about what was going on inside my head. We could have worked it out. I was old enough to know that Dad couldn't magically fix everything, but he could certainly help.

At least he got them to take those damn restraints off of me.

I lay there, trying to ignore the flashes of light (dimming now, for some reason) and the odd noises. Sleep was hard to come by; not that I wanted to sleep, what with the nightmares. I drifted, slipping in and out of a vague level of unrestful slumber.

And then, in the early evening, I woke up.

<><>​

Terra
Taylor (Earth)

“Where's Agent Wallis?” I asked.

“He'll be coming around to the house to talk to you later in the week,” Dad told me. “Do you need a hand getting changed?”

I snorted. “I've been in the hospital for two days, Dad. Not two years. Gimme clothes and privacy, and I'm good.”

He smiled at my retort and retreated from the room; the door closed behind him. I sat up in bed and swung my legs over the side. The floor felt strange under my feet, the way it always does when you spend too long lying down. I felt weaker too; that was probably an after-effect of whatever drugs they had me on to get me through the trauma.

I smiled wryly. As bad as the locker had been – and it had been bad enough – if it finally helped get Emma and the other bitches off of my back, it might just have been worth it. In the long run. Maybe.

I had made good use of my time – and the TV in the room – while Dad was away. The nurses had been kind enough to supply me with all the magazines that they could pile on to my bedside table. I had devoured the lot, with the TV playing in the background.

Gradually, piece by piece, I had assembled a picture of the world I now found myself in. There was no Scion; in fact, there were no capes at all. That was the biggest shock. Capes had been around for thirty years, give or take. Longer than I'd been alive. They were a fact. They were a thing. Remove them from history and things were … different.

Fortunately, there were also no Endbringers. Which raised a speculation in my mind. Capes and Endbringers are connected in some way. Did capes somehow cause them? There was no way to tell.

No capes, no cape shenanigans, no Endbringers, meant that the world was a very different place. Switzerland was still there. I had come across an article on the Large Hadron Collider, and it was amazing. For all that this world had no Tinkers, the fact that they still managed to build something like that was kind of astonishing.

Of course, in Earth Bet, something like that would probably be used to engrave someone's name on the moon, as opposed to pure scientific research.

On the other hand, it was also disheartening to see that bad things still happened in the world. Kyushu was still there; so was Newfoundland (I checked). But since Nine-Eleven (I still didn't have all the details on that, or the Patriot Act) we were apparently at war. With the Middle East. (Which, absent Behemoth, was still producing oil. So there was that too.)

It shouldn't have been so depressing, but I'd had this idea in the back of my head that supervillains and Endbringers were responsible for most of the bad stuff in the world. The Nine, for instance; they killed towns. Endbringers destroyed cities. But even without them, people still stole stuff and murdered each other. And gay rights were stuck in the stone age; America was still squabbling about whether to allow gay people to marry each other, for crying out loud.

So, there was no Protectorate, and no PRT to oversee it. No Birdcage for the really bad villains. On the upside, no S-class threats. I found an article on the President, and had to smile. Wouldn't the Empire Eighty-Eight throw a shit fit over that one. I wished him all the luck. He didn't seem to have an easy job, even in a world where powers didn't exist.

I couldn't wait to sit down at a computer and really sink my teeth into the background of this world; if I was going to appear sane enough to testify in court, I had to look like I knew what was going on. This was my one big chance to get Emma and Sophia and Madison – even if they weren't my Emma and Sophia and Madison – out of my hair, and I was gonna grab it with both hands.

It took me a little longer than I expected, but I got myself dressed; I even managed to bend over to put my shoes on without fainting, though I did feel a little woozy.

Maybe I can talk Dad into swinging by Fugly Bob's for a burger on the way home. If there is a Fugly Bob's in this world.

I hoped there was; it would be one more connection to where I had come from. Not that I was sure how I would ever get back.

It must have been the wooziness that triggered the idea; I was halfway through putting the other shoe on when it struck me. Holy shit, what if I can?

Straightening up, I worked the idea through, excitement mounting inside me.

Fact one: I was in another world.

Fact two: I had gotten here from the locker (I ruthlessly stilled the internal quiver that even thinking about it gave me).

Surmise: What if I had somehow gotten powers in the locker, and the power was to step between universes?

I mean, this obviously wasn't Earth Aleph, but it could be another one. Well, it was another one. Obviously. But what if my power was to move from one universe to another? Either swapping with the 'me' that was there, or stepping into her body?

Slowly, I sat down on the chair. Either of those options had unpleasant connotations for the other 'me', the one that belonged in this world. She had either popped up in my world without any sort of warning (and wouldn't that be fun for her) or I was walking her body around like a puppet.

Oh, god. I hope she's still alive.

I've got to try to switch back.

Closing my eyes, I concentrated. I knew exactly where I wanted to be; in my world, where I knew what was going on. Be it ever so crappy, there's no place like home.

I breathed in. Concentrated. Breathed out. Concentrated.

Nothing happened.

I tried harder, holding my breath and pushing.

Absolutely nothing happened.

Crap.

Does this mean I can't do it, or does it mean something worse?

I was just preparing myself to try yet again when there came a knock on the door. “Taylor? You okay in there?”

I sighed and shot a betrayed look at my worn sneakers. I bet that would have worked if those were ruby slippers. “Yeah, Dad,” I called out, standing up from the chair. “I'm good to go.”

With a deep breath, I did my best to put the other-Taylor's potential plight out of my mind until I could do something about it. If ever.

<><>​

On the way home, Dad and I chatted. I tried not to gawk too much at the scenery, but it was difficult. There was so much there that was familiar, but so much more was different. And it wasn't just missing landmarks, either; the city looked newer, more prosperous. And no gang tags. Intellectually, I knew that there weren't any cape-led gangs, so they'd be a lot more low-key, but it was still a jolt.

“So … are you feeling better … from yesterday?” he probed delicately.

I smiled at him. “Yeah, lots. Sorry for my outburst. I must've sounded like a total loon. It's all my fault, really.”

“Really?” he asked. “How so?”

I manufactured a sigh. I can't tell him the truth, so here goes. "I kind of constructed a world inside my head. Being bullied, you want to be strong, you know? So I made up a world where superheroes existed and all that comic-book stuff is real. Where I could be a superhero and beat up my bullies. I put a lot of work into it, got all the details down. So when … well, when that thing happened, I must have retreated into my superhero fantasy world, to get away from what was really happening to me. And yesterday, I wasn't really firing on all cylinders, so I guess I went with what seemed real at the time." I paused. "Does that make sense?"

“Huh.” He sounded relieved. “So you are feeling better, then.”

I shrugged. “Well, it's not totally gone. But I'm working at it. I intend to live in the real world from now on.” Oh, I so wish.

“Glad to hear it.” His smile made him look at least ten years younger. “So when Agent Wallis drops over, do you think you'll be able to give him details?”

“Oh, sure,” I agreed, but inside I was less certain. I hope the 'me' who lives here has also been keeping a journal. Otherwise it's gonna be an uphill drag. Especially if the bitches who live here have been doing things differently from the ones that I know.

“You know,” he offered diffidently, “maybe you shouldn't just forget your fantasy world. Write it down. Maybe you can make a book or something out of it. I know I'd read it.”

“I guess,” I replied. “Though I still haven't worked out any sort of plot. It's kind of haphazard, to be honest.”

“It was just a thought,” he said. “Oh, I forgot to tell you. The indictment came through.”

“Indictment?” I asked. What indictment?

“Oh, sorry, sorry.” He shook his head self-deprecatingly. “You've been under a lot of strain. Theo's dad is going to trial. Finally.”

“Oh. Right.” Frantically, I wondered who the hell Theo was, and what his dad was being tried for. I vaguely recalled that 'indictments' were something handed down by a grand jury, so whatever it was, it had to be bad. But Dad seemed pleased by it, so I manufactured a smile. “Excellent.”

“Just don't bring it up unless he does, okay?” he suggested. “He might be a little sensitive on the subject.”

“Sure, I can do that.” Given that I didn't know who the hell Theo might be, that was an easy promise to make. “So, uh, what are they getting Theo's dad on, anyway?”

“RICO, of course.” He shrugged. “I'm just glad that part of it's done. It's been hell on both of them.”

Both of whom? This was frustrating; it was kind of like walking into a movie halfway through and not being able to ask anyone what was going on. “Well, yeah,” I agreed non-committally.

That seemed to satisfy him. He leaned over and turned the radio on. I would rather have listened to the news – any information about this new world would be welcome – but the music was nice, too. Some of the songs were almost familiar, or maybe it was just that I hadn't heard them for a while.

<><>​

“We're home.”

I was jolted out of a light doze as the car turned into the driveway; I heard gravel crunching under the wheels. It surprised me that I had been able to drop off at all, considering the number of things that I had to think about. Of course, I wasn't at my best, so sleep was probably a good thing.

Opening my eyes and looking around, I was treated to another surprise. The house looked good. The lawn was newly mown, the flower garden recently weeded, and the house itself bore what looked like a fresh coat of paint. A really fresh coat of paint. In fact, it was still being painted.

I stared at the pudgy-looking kid – about my age, maybe – who was up on a ladder, industriously working a roller back and forth over the wall, and barely restrained myself from asking who's he?

Dad stopped the car and got out. “Nice work, son,” he called out. “It looks really good.”

I got out of the car as well, shading my eyes as I looked up at the wall. It was actually a rather pretty shade of blue.

“Thanks, Da- I mean, Mr Hebert,” the kid replied, swiping the roller over a patch, then rolling it through the tray wedged into the top of the ladder.

Dad shook his head. “Theo, please call me Dad or Danny. If we're gonna be a family, I don't want you calling me 'Mr' Hebert.”

This is Theo? Okay. I filed that information away. Gonna be a family. Right. His dad's been indicted by a grand jury for racketeering. Wow. And I thought this world was gonna be kinda boring.

“Taylor?”

I looked at Dad, who was staring anxiously at me. “Uh, yeah?”

“You can close the car door and come inside, you know.”

With a start, I realised that I was still standing in the open door. Stepping back, I closed it; the car went bip-bip as Dad hit the key fob. Having a car that would electronically lock – that was new. As I started around the car, Dad stepped up to the ladder. “You can take a break now, Theo. Come on inside, too.”

I walked over to the path and up to the front steps. As I was about to avoid the bottom step, I took a closer look and realised that it didn't look rotten any more. Cautiously resting my weight on it, I didn't even hear a creak. With an ever-increasing sense of unreality, I climbed the rest of the steps.

As I did so, I heard Dad talking quietly to Theo. “Now, I know you two haven't been getting along, but if you could do me a favour and let her be for the moment, please? She's been through a lot.”

I didn't hear Theo's reply, as I opened the front door and stepped inside, but it made me wonder. Things were obviously different on the home front here in this world.

Inside, the house looked … nicer. It had a brighter feel to it. There was a sofa in the same place, even if it looked newer and softer than the one I was used to, and I flopped on to it. Even the short walk from the car had tired me out, just a bit.

Dad and Theo came in next; now that we were out of the glare of the sunlight, I could see that Theo was daubed here and there with blue paint. He pulled off the hat and sunglasses he had been wearing and wiped his face; I still didn't recognise him from anywhere. I tried to decide whether to make a friendly overture, or just leave things as they were. However, before I could make up my mind, Theo spoke.

“Hey, Taylor.” His voice was soft and diffident. “I'm, uh, glad you're out of the hospital. Are you feeling better?”

“Yes, thanks,” I replied. “It's good to be home.” Weird, but good. Anywhere's better than being in the damn psych ward.

Even that mild answer put a smile on his face. Christ, how much of a bitch have I been to him? “Want something to drink?” he offered. “I made up some fruit punch this morning before I went to school. It should be nice and cold.”

“Thanks,” I said again. My guess was that Theo's mother was the other part of the equation, and 'gonna be a family' was a strong hint that she and Dad were an item. I wasn't quite sure how I felt about having other people in the house, but right now I didn't want any more difficulty in my life, so I was willing to let it slide. Even if it felt really weird to think about Dad being with someone other than Mom.

Theo brought me a glass of the punch, and I took a sip. It was tart and cold and sweet, and I drank more of it. Before I knew it, the glass was empty. “Thanks.” I paused. “Uh, Theo?”

He'd been standing there, as if not sure to stay or go, and blinked when I said his name. “Uh, yeah?”

How do I say this? “Um, I might have been a little hard on you? But what's just happened, it's given me a bit of perspective. So can we make this a clean slate? Start fresh?”

“What, really?” He smiled tentatively. “You mean that?”

I nodded. “Yeah. I mean that. Friends?”

“Friends.” He beamed at me and held out his hand, before realising that there was dried paint on it. “Uh …”

“Trust me,” I told him dryly, “I've had worse.” Leaning forward, I shook his hand, paint and all. “Thanks for giving me a second chance.”

“No, uh, thank you,” he blurted. “I mean, I know you're not too happy with all this, and I can kinda understand. I've had to deal with a new mom in my life too, so yeah.”

“Which reminds me, Theo,” Dad noted from the kitchen. “Your mom said to tell you she was working a little late with a client tonight. She should be in about six or seven. Want to help me with dinner?”

I felt a faint stab of jealousy at that; I was the one who helped Dad with dinner. Something must have shown on my face, because Theo gave me a slightly worried glance. “Um, Taylor, do you want to help too?”

I decided that right now, I didn't really feel up to it, so I leaned back on the sofa and shook my head. “Nah. Invalid, here. Think I'll be lazy and let you guys wait on me hand and foot.”

That earned me a smile from Theo; he took the glass from me and headed into the kitchen. “I've just got to go and wash up first,” he told Dad.

“That's fine,” Dad replied. “I'll get started.”

I was as good as my word; lying back on the couch, listening to Theo and Dad chatting as they prepared dinner, I began to slip in and out of a doze. It was good to be in relatively familiar surroundings, even with the strangeness that seemed to be a hallmark of this new world. And the couch was very comfortable.

After a while, I slid into a deeper sleep. And then I woke up.

<><>​

Terra
Taylor (Terra)

I sat up on the couch with a gasp, eyes wide. Looking around wildly, I saw the familiar surroundings of the living room, all the little touches that Kayden had suggested which made the place look so much nicer. Ignoring the tiredness in my limbs, I jumped to my feet.

Had it all been a dream? The hospital, the weird stuff happening in my head? It was gone now, as if it had never been. “Dad?” I called out uncertainly. What if this is the dream?

“Taylor? What's up?” Dad's head popped around the kitchen door. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah, yeah, I think so. I think I just had a really weird dream,” I told him. “It was horrible. I got locked in my locker, and then I was in the hospital.”

He grimaced. “Um, kiddo, that actually happened. You've been in the hospital for two days. I only got you home this afternoon.”

I crossed the room and hugged him, hard. “I must've been really out to it. I only just now woke up.”

He hugged me back. “Not really,” he told me, his voice still concerned. “We were talking most of the way home. About this fantasy world you made up for yourself to get past the bullying.”

Fantasy world? I had no idea what he was talking about. But then I saw Theo. Breaking free from Dad, I hugged him, too. Normally, I wouldn't have, but right then I was so glad to see anything familiar that I didn't care.

“It is so good to see you two,” I told them. “Where's Kayden and Aster? I want to hug them, too.”

“Uh, they'll be back soon,” Dad said with a bemused grin. “I'm not quite sure what's caused your change of heart, but I'm glad to see it.”

I shook my head. “I was just … I don't know. I guess I'd gotten used to the two of us, and I didn't see how more people could fit into our family. But after going through that, I think I need all the family I can get.”

“Which reminds me,” Dad replied. “I'm going to be arranging therapy sessions for you, until I can be sure that you're feeling better about the whole thing. But first, we're going to be talking with Agent Wallis about what's been happening to you.”

Agent who? I yawned. “Um, sure, but right now I think I need to lie down. I feel really tired.”

I wasn't faking it. The feeling of lassitude that swept over me was getting stronger by the second. I barely made it up the stairs, and when I got to my bedroom, I flaked out face down on the bed without even taking my shoes off.

<><>​

Earth
Taylor (Earth)

I came awake with a jolt, staring around in some bewilderment. What the hell? Why am I back in the hospital?

It was like I'd never left; there were IVs in my arm as well as those round sticky sensor patches attaching me to the machine beside the bed. I couldn't understand it. But Dad took me home. Was that all a dream?

Then I saw the bedside table. It didn't even have one magazine on it, much less the dozen or more that the nurses had given me. All it held was a pencil and pad. Nor was there a TV in the room, where I clearly remembered there being one before.

Wait. What if …

Between managing the IVs and the cords, and my own weakness, it wasn't easy climbing out of bed, but I pulled it off. Leaning heavily on the IV tower thingy, I stumbled toward the window. The sensor patches pulled me up before I reached it, but I could grab the curtain. Pulling it back revealed evening falling over Brockton Bay, and the view of the bay itself.

And in the middle of the water … the Protectorate rig, encloaked in a glowing force field, casting its soft light over the waterfront. I felt a sudden release of tension; my knees buckled. If I hadn't already been leaning on the IV thing, I might have fallen over altogether.

I'm home. Oh, thank God, I'm home.

Which means other-Taylor is also home. She was sitting on the couch. She's good. That's good. We're all safe. All I have to do is tell Dad I'm all right, and I can go home.

Which was about the point that I noticed the oddity in the back of my mind. Occasional sounds and muted lights were popping in and out of my awareness. What the hell?

I had thought that swapping with an another-universe version of myself was my power. Wait, maybe this is my index. Maybe I can look in on other versions and pick which one to swap with.

Struggling back into bed, I closed my eyes and started trying to focus on the little points of light. But instead of looking into other worlds, or hearing conversations from other universes, all I got was weird fuzzy pictures, and jumbled sounds. Well, this is helpful.

Taking a deep breath, I focused harder. The images grew brighter and dimmer, more focused and fuzzier, without any rhyme nor reason to them. I wish they'd stop moving, I thought petulantly.

They stopped moving.

I felt a burst of surprise and excitement. I can tell them what to do? Okay … look around. Slowly.

Each viewpoint looked around. I zeroed in on what seemed to be the clearest one. At the same time, I got an idea of a location; a direction and a distance. It was a little outside the hospital. The area was lit, and I was looking at what seemed, after some consideration, to be a man. But from above, and upside down. I silently told the viewpoint to rotate; after a second or so, it did. I was looking down at a man standing at a bus stop. But the view was really fuzzy.

A few moments later, I realised that another viewpoint was also of the same man, from a different angle. I was still trying to figure this out – this has to be the crappiest clairvoyance I've ever heard of – when a feeling of extreme lassitude began to wash through me. Shit, I realised. We're swapping back.

I had just seconds to act. I had to leave other-Taylor a message. Snatching the pencil and pad, I scribbled a note, hoping that muscle memory would serve where lack of light let me down. By the time I had finished, I couldn't keep my eyes open; tearing off the sheet, I folded it roughly and shoved it down my top.

I never heard the pencil and pad hit the floor.


End of Part Three