Prologue
January 6th, 2011
I'm… everywhere.
Or at least, it feels like I am.
I can't tell what "me" even means anymore. People have this… instinct, I guess, where you just know your shape. You don't even have to really think about it. Two arms, two legs, a head on a torso. Even if you can't see, even if you're blind, you can just sort of tell where your hand is without looking. You know it belongs to you, how it moves, how it fits with the rest of you. It's not something you really notice until something breaks it that intuitive sense of what you're shaped like.
I still have a sense of my shape.
That part didn't disappear.
But it's… different now.
Bigger.
My sense of "me" isn't shaped like a person anymore. It isn't even close. It wasn't just that my limbs were missing. It was that my sense of where I started or ended just… dissolved, for lack of a better word. I don't have a center. I don't have a left or right. I'm not even sure where "I" start anymore. I could feel pieces of myself shifting, stretching, and brushing against everything around me.
Most of me is… tendrils.
That's the closest word I have.
Long strings of thin, branching vines spreading outwards in every direction. They were sticky in a way that made them cling to whatever they touched. They wrapped around stuff, dug into the ground or onto walls. Kind of like roots, I guess. I could move them, kind of, but only a little. Just tiny twitches, like I was flexing muscles.
When they moved, they made a sound like skin sliding against skin, and the sound of my movements rolled outward across the world. The echoes bounced through buildings and alleyways and returned to me in a hundred thousand overlapping reflections.
Woah.
I think… I think I can see like this. Not with eyes. More like… sonar? Dolphins? Bats? Something like that, I guess.
As those sounds propagated outwards, my awareness stretched across everything just enough to tell that I was sprawled all over the city. All over Brockton Bay. Miles upon miles in every direction. I was… massive… immense. Not fat or tall, not in a human sense anyway. I was just… draped across the city. Down streets and up walls. Across the streets and alleys, across walls, roofs, and rooftops.
What the hell even am I?
I tried to move the tendrils more deliberately. Each motion made the echoes sharper, painting the city a bit more clearly in my mind from the sound of their shifting. Most of the tendrils were anchored, fixed in place, and they could only move so much. The only parts of these… my tendrils that weren't stuck were the long, snaking pieces, and those I could actually drag around, curl, and twist. Kind of like tentacles on an octopus… only way bigger. Way, way bigger.
Still, they didn't have a whole lot of range of movement.
Thankfully, I wasn't just these tendrils.
Tiny particles of me drifted freely through the air. At first I barely noticed them. They were too small to really feel individually, like dust floating in the sky.
But they were me. At least, just as much as the tendrils were.
While most of these particles drifted in the air, some were falling. When they touched the ground, they started to grow. Each contact sprouted microscopically thin filaments that curled outward, reaching for the ground, walls, and air around it. More particles drifted close and more filaments grew. Soon those delicate strands twisted together into thicker cords.
Into more of the tendrils that sprawled across the city.
Almost like mold spreading.
Like… spores.
Not all of them fell, though; in fact, most didn't. Most of those spores were drifting around the sky and bumping into each other, or scraping over buildings, and every little tap made a vibration, and every collision fed the map of my surroundings. The soft tap of a spore against a rusted railing gave me different information than a spore sliding past a bit of broken glass. The more contacts the particles made, the sharper the image in my head became: the pitch of a scrape told me grain and hardness; the timing of echoes told me distance; the way echoes blurred together told me whether an area was open or cluttered.
I run another pulse of sound through the city, trying to "see" better. Tendrils twitch and scrape deliberately this time, sending sharper echoes racing through the streets.
The echoes race outward.
They don't go very far.
Or maybe they do, but they come back… messy. Blurred. Confused.
I send another pulse. Several tendrils scrape against brick and pavement at once, deliberately rough this time, trying to make more noise. The vibrations ripple through the streets and alleyways and return to me in warped fragments.
The information piles up in my mind anyway.
A corner of a building.
A stretch of empty asphalt.
A chain-link fence sagging slightly in the middle.
Little pieces.
Tiny islands of clarity surrounded by huge blank spaces.
I try again.
More scraping. More echoes. More vibrations bouncing through the city.
The map grows, but only in patches. A few buildings here. A strip of road there. The edge of what might be a parking lot. The inside of an alley choked with trash cans and broken glass.
But most of Brockton Bay is still just… missing in the mental picture my mind is creating from the sounds. Almost like the echoes scatter too much before they reach me again. Frustration prickles through me. I twitch the tendrils harder, dragging some of the longer ones a few feet across the ground.
The movement feels awkward.
Heavy.
Slow.
The tendrils grind against the pavement, and the sound echoes outward again, but moving them like this feels… wrong. Like trying to walk using fingers instead of legs. They're anchored, most of them anyway. Dug into walls and concrete and dirt like roots. Even the ones that aren't anchored still feel sluggish when I try to move them.
They don't feel like the right way to move.
Another echo returns, mapping a nearby stairwell.
I twitch a cluster of tendrils toward it. The motion sends another grinding scrape through the air.
Slow.
Too slow.
Something else brushes against my awareness.
The spores.
The drifting particles floating through the air.
I've been using them without really thinking about it. Letting them bump into things, letting the tiny collisions feed my senses.
But now that I focus on them…
They move.
Not just drifting randomly.
They shift when I want them to.
It's subtle at first. A few particles veer slightly to the left instead of the right. Another cluster slows in the air instead of continuing to drift.
I try again, more deliberately.
Move.
A small cloud of spores slides sideways through the air.
Oh.
That… felt easy.
Easier than moving the tendrils anyway.
I focus harder.
Millions… no, billions of spores respond at once, shifting direction in a loose drifting wave. They slide around a building corner, flow through a broken window, spill down into an alley. The echoes multiply instantly.
The map sharpens with each collision they make.
I can "see" the alley now. The dumpsters. The cracked pavement. A rusted ladder bolted to the side of a building.
And it didn't take scraping tendrils across half the street to do it.
I move the spores again.
The cloud bends around a lamppost like smoke curling in the wind. Some of the particles brush against the pole and bounce away, the vibrations returning to me with crisp clarity.
The lamppost's height.
Its diameter.
Even the roughness of the paint.
This feels natural.
More natural than the tendrils ever did.
The tendrils feel like roots, like things meant to anchor, to spread slowly and cling to surfaces. The spores feel like they were actually supposed to move. I let them drift for a moment, just feeling them out. Every little collision adds another fragment to the map forming inside my head.
But something about the picture still feels… fuzzy.
Incomplete.
I push more spores into the alley I mapped earlier, thickening the drifting cloud there.
The difference is immediate.
The echoes sharpen.
Before, the alley had been a vague outline, two walls, a dumpster, a ladder. Now it's clearer. The metal hinges on the dumpster lid. The warped slats of the wooden pallet leaning against the wall. Even the uneven pitting in the brickwork where weather had eaten into the mortar.
Huh.
How did I do that?
I pull the spores back a little, spreading them thin again.
The clarity fades.
Then I gather them back together.
The details snap into focus again.
Oh.
Oh.
The denser the cloud of spores are, the better I can "see."
It's not just more echoes. It's like the spores amplify each other somehow. More collisions, more vibrations, more information feeding back into me all at once.
I start pulling them together deliberately.
The drifting particles respond instantly. Loose clouds tighten, spiraling inward as millions of tiny pieces of me cluster together.
The echoes multiply.
A storefront takes shape in my mind. Not just the outer wall, but the inside too. Mostly the empty shelves, the shattered glass display case, a counter warped by time.
I push the spores farther.
More gather.
More clarity.
The streets sharpen. Buildings gain depth. The vague shapes of rooftops become detailed structures, like vents, antennas, and loose gravel scattered across tarpaper.
It works.
Finally. Something that feels like progress.
The cloud keeps thickening as I instinctively draw the spores together. What had been a loose drifting haze tightens, the particles pulling inward until the air itself feels heavier with me. Streams of spores twist around each other, branching and curling through the air like smoke caught in slow motion. I'm not really deciding what shape they should take. It's more like… letting them settle.
Letting them fall into place.
Dust becomes mist.
Mist becomes something thicker. Something heavier. A storm of tiny drifting pieces, all circling the same point.
And somewhere in the middle of it, a shape begins to form.
I'm still blind, technically. There are no eyes, no light, no color. But I know exactly where every single spore is in relation to the others. The distances between them, the way they drift and cluster, the way the currents pull them together.
So when the shape finishes settling… I can "see" it.
No, not see.
I can feel it.
It's… spider-like.
Not exactly. The proportions are wrong, the limbs too long, too thin, branching and splitting apart as the spores constantly shift and rearrange themselves. But the outline is close enough that my mind reaches for the comparison anyway.
From the central mass of spores in the air came numerous tornado-like limbs, some of which branched into several smaller appendages that were constantly dissolving and reforming my spores circulated through the structure.
Above this growing shape was something like a head. As best as I can describe the 'head', it's basically a long, tapering column of mist that rises like a plume of smoke. All in all, it was very… storm-like. Like, the spores made a cloud in the vague shape of a spider that hangs in the air above the city.
It was… Much bigger than I expected.
Nearly the size of a warehouse.
And as strange as the shape is… it feels right. Like this was the way my spores were meant to be arranged.
Whatever the case, now that I was in this 'shape' the map in my head grows clearer. It was slow work, patient and incremental, but finally, I was able to perceive the entire city around me with sound alone.
I can 'see' everything
The docks.
The Boardwalk.
Downtown towers rising above the streets.
The ruined train yard.
Every building. Every street. Every parking lot and storefront.
The whole city unfolds in my awareness at once.
All of it.
Brockton Bay, perfectly mapped in echoes and vibrations.
For a moment I just… sit there, stunned.
I'm huge.
Way bigger than I realized.
My tendrils stretch through almost every block now, threading through streets and buildings like roots beneath the city. The spores swirl above it all in the vast branching spider shape I've built for myself.
But even that isn't the strangest part.
Because when the echoes come back this time, something else comes with them.
Something… above me.
At first I think it's just interference. A distortion in the sound returning from the upper atmosphere.
But when I push the spores higher, the distortion sharpens.
There's something there.
Not clouds.
Not sky.
More… me.
The realization crawls slowly through my mind.
The spores reach upward, stretching higher than the rooftops, higher than the tallest buildings. The echoes they send upward don't come back from empty sky.
They come back from something vast.
A massive, churning expanse that stretches above the city like an endless ceiling of dark currents. Then, abruptly… there's ground again… in the sky.
And threaded through it... More tendrils.
More spores.
More of me.
I'm bigger than I thought.
A lot bigger.
At first I assumed the tendrils spreading across the city were most of me.
They aren't.
Not even close.
They're just the parts touching this place.
The rest of me is above the city's sky.
Above the storm clouds that hang over the city.
In another place.
A cold, dry, empty place.
It feels like a barren wasteland.
My senses brush against dunes and endless expanses of sand and jagged stone so brittle that it crumbles under its own weight. Vines crawl across everything in tangled knots. Clusters of rock float in the air overhead, drifting slowly through a sky that looks… burned.
Scorched.
Like the entire horizon was set on fire once and never cooled properly.
The place stretches out endlessly.
Desolate.
I don't like it.
It feels wrong.
But I can feel parts of myself there too. The same vines crawling across the stone. The same tendrils that spread through the city below.
And deeper still... Something huge.
My awareness brushes against it and the echoes coming off it are so dense they almost drown everything else out.
It's… a structure.
Maybe.
The closest comparison my brain can come up with is a tree.
Or a spider.
Both at once.
A massive trunk-like column rises from the wasteland floor, thicker than most buildings. From that trunk branch enormous limbs of twisted growth that stretch upwards towards the "sky" pointing at the city I enveloped.
And from that structure spores pour out.
Endless clouds of them. Much, much more than the few spores being produced by my tendrils.
They drift upward through the burned sky and spill down into the place below.
Into the city.
Into me.
For a moment I think that… spider-tree thing must be my body.
But the idea doesn't sit right.
It doesn't feel like my body.
It feels like…
An organ.
Something important, sure.
Vital maybe.
But not me. Or at least… not just me.
More like a heart.
Or a brain.
A piece of a larger system that happens to be mine.
Because everything else is me too.
I pull my attention away from the wasteland quickly.
That place feels… distant.
Unimportant. For now, anyway.
The city below is easier to understand.
More familiar.
My spider shaped spore-body drifts above Brockton Bay, its long smoky limbs trailing over rooftops and streets. Each movement sends fresh waves of sound through the city. Idly, I noticed that a storm formed around me. Bolts of lightning arching from my spider-like form as I moved.
Rumbling thunder gave me more feedback, making the entire city form a lot clearer in my head. So I focused back on the city, and now that I was focused on it, and not on the… whatever wasteland that was above the city, I could focus a lot more on what the hell was going on.
Thanks to the sounds produced by the constant lightning and thunder, the entire city of Brockton Bay spreads out in perfect detail. Now that I could actually focus on it, a thought came to mind.
Where the Hell was everyone?
I moved methodically.
Everything looked right.
The buildings.
The streets.
Even the damage.
But there was still nothing alive.
No footsteps.
No breathing.
No birds.
No dogs barking.
No insects.
The city is there, but the life inside it is gone.
It… it didn't make any sense.
I mean… Brockton Bay wasn't a small city; there should be millions of people within it. Even if it was evacuated after whatever the hell happened to me, the rats and bugs should still be around, and yet there wasn't a single living thing around here that wasn't… well… Me.
I pushed the spores farther outward, widening the cloud just enough to not lose any details, and letting it drift deeper into the city.
The first thing I really paid attention to was the Boardwalk.
The echoes came back clean.
And it was empty.
The spores spilled over the shoreline next.
Or… where the shoreline should have been.
The bay itself was gone.
Instead of water, the ground dropped away into a vast basin of cracked mud and dry sand. Jagged ridges of dried earth stretched across it like scars.
The Boat Graveyard sat stranded in the middle of it all.
Ships that should have been half-sunk in the water instead rested on dry ground, tilted at strange angles like enormous dead animals. Rusted hulls groaned softly as the wind pushed against them.
Even the ocean had disappeared here.
I really didn't like that. I mean, it was bad enough that people and animals were gone… but the entire ocean. That was something else entirely.
I remembered coming past here with Dad.
The memory surfaced suddenly, sharp and uncomfortable.
I pushed it away.
My spores pulled back toward the city instinctively, the way a hand pulls away from something hot. The streets felt safer than the shoreline.
Or at least… familiar.
The city was easier to look at than the empty harbor. Easier than the strange wasteland hanging above the sky. Brockton Bay, even ruined and silent, was still something I recognized. The streets followed the same patterns they always had. The same intersections, the same buildings, the same familiar landmarks I'd passed a thousand times on the way to school.
My spores drifted lower, spreading through the streets in long rolling currents. The cloud thinned and thickened as I experimented, sending denser clusters into buildings while thinner wisps skimmed over rooftops. Every tiny collision fed information back into me. A storefront window rattled slightly as a cloud of spores brushed against it. Somewhere nearby a loose sign creaked faintly in the breeze.
Even the wind sounded empty.
I drifted over Downtown first.
The tall buildings stood exactly where they should be, glass broken in places but otherwise intact. The echoes came back sharp and clean, painting the insides of offices and hallways in my mind. Desks. Chairs. Filing cabinets. Half-open doors. The inside of one office still had a coffee mug sitting on the desk beside a stack of papers.
But there was no one there.
No footsteps in the halls.
No elevators moving between floors.
No quiet hum of computers or ventilation systems.
Just stillness.
The spores slid through broken windows and drifted across abandoned rooms. In one apartment building they brushed against a couch covered in a thin layer of dust. In another they rolled across the kitchen floor and tapped softly against a fallen chair.
Everywhere I looked, the echoes came back the same way.
Empty.
I pushed farther outward.
The train yard appeared next in my awareness. Long rows of rusting tracks stretched across a wide open field. Freight cars sat motionless where they had been left, their metal sides creaking quietly when the wind shifted.
A few of the cars were open, their empty interiors echoing hollowly when the spores brushed against them.
Still nothing alive.
The silence pressed in on me harder the longer I searched.
Brockton Bay wasn't just empty.
It was dead.
Even the small sounds that should exist in any abandoned place, like rats scratching in walls, pigeons nesting in broken rafters, insects crawling across surfaces, were completely gone.
The only noises anywhere in the city were the ones I made.
The grinding scrape of tendrils shifting against brick.
The small collisions of drifting spores.
The occasional crack of lightning when the storm building around my spore-body discharged itself into the air.
That was it.
Just me.
I drifted over the Boardwalk next.
The long wooden planks sounded brittle beneath the spores as they rolled across the surface. Arcades lined the street in a row of silent buildings. Their doors hung open in places, glass shattered across the floors inside.
I pushed a denser cloud of spores through one of the arcades.
The machines inside were still there.
Skee-ball lanes.
Claw machines.
Old pinball tables.
The spores brushed against them one by one, feeding the shapes back into my awareness. The echoes even told me the faint dents in the metal cabinets where people had kicked them over the years.
The place felt… frozen.
Like someone had pressed pause on the entire city.
My cloud drifted past a souvenir shop next. Racks of postcards still stood near the entrance, though most of them had fallen over. T-shirts hung from a rack near the back wall.
The spores brushed against one of them and the echoes told me the fabric was still soft.
Not rotted.
Not decayed.
Just… untouched.
The same pattern repeated everywhere I looked.
The city wasn't destroyed.
It was abandoned.
I pulled the spores higher into the air again, letting the massive spider-shaped cloud hover over the city while my tendrils continued crawling slowly through the streets below.
From up here the entire map of Brockton Bay sat inside my awareness like a three-dimensional sculpture made of echoes.
Every street.
Every building.
Every empty room.
But something tugged at my attention.
A place I hadn't checked yet.
Winslow High School.
The thought came out of nowhere, but once it appeared I couldn't ignore it.
Of course I hadn't checked Winslow yet.
Why would I want to?
The idea of going there made something inside me tighten in a way I didn't understand anymore. My human emotions felt strange now, distant and stretched thin across the massive thing I had become.
But they were still there.
And Winslow still was not a place I really wanted to check, but… I mean… I couldn't really say I had checked the whole city until I checked there to. No matter how much I didn't want to.
And I really didn't want to.
Slowly, I pushed a stream of spores in that direction.
The cloud slid over rooftops and down empty streets, flowing around corners and through broken windows as it went. The echoes mapped everything along the way automatically.
Stores.
Parking lots.
Apartment buildings.
Eventually the familiar shape of the school appeared in my awareness.
Winslow High sat exactly where it always had.
The long brick building stretched across its lot with the same ugly rectangular shape I remembered. The parking lot outside was empty. No cars sat in the spaces. The chain-link fence around the property sagged slightly in one corner where someone had bent it years ago.
My spores drifted closer.
The echoes returned from the building's walls, revealing the inside piece by piece.
Hallways.
Classrooms.
The gymnasium.
Everything looked the same.
Except there were still no people.
I pushed deeper inside.
The spores slipped through a broken window near the side of the building and spilled into the hallway beyond. The echoes inside the school sounded tighter than outside, bouncing quickly between walls and floors.
Rows of lockers stretched down the corridor in both directions.
I followed them slowly.
Something about this place made my attention narrow in a way the rest of the city hadn't. The spores moved more carefully now, sliding along walls and brushing softly against the metal locker doors. Every locker returned a slightly different sound when touched.
Different dents.
Different scratches.
Different layers of grime.
My attention wandered along the row automatically.
Locker after locker.
Until something caught my awareness.
It wasn't sound.
It wasn't one of the echoes from my spores or the scraping vibrations from my tendrils.
It was… something else.
The sensation was faint, buried somewhere inside the enormous sense of self I had now. I ignored it at first, assuming it was just another piece of me shifting somewhere in the city.
For a moment I couldn't place it. It was another piece of me, I could tell that much. But it felt… different.
It felt… familiar.
The best way I can describe it is it's like how you notice your foot is asleep after sitting too long or the way you suddenly realize your hand is resting somewhere you didn't consciously put it.
Something like that…ish.
Curious, on it.
It was small compared to the rest of me. It barely registered against the vast network of tendrils and spores and the distant presence of that massive tree-spider thing.
But it was still there.
A piece of me.
It had been there the whole time and I hadn't noticed.
And it was shaped like a person.
A strange flicker of excitement bubbled up in my thoughts.
Finally.
Something that actually felt human shaped.
Or close to it, anyway.
Compared to the miles of vines creeping across the city and the massive storm-cloud body of drifting spores, this felt very welcome and familiar.
It felt like having hands again.
Tentatively, I tried to move it. The body unfolded upward, I felt every movement it made as clearly as if it were my own hand.
Because it was my hand. Kind of anyway.
Just… detached.
It moved a lot weirder than I expected. So much so that for a moment I froze in surprise, and the thing returned to its crouched-over state.
I pushed it aside and I tried again.
The body moved.
Slowly at first.
Then all at once.
The legs extended with a sharp, insect-like motion, joints snapping straight one after the other. The spine uncoiled in a long, unnatural stretch until the body reached its full height. The movement made a faint cracking noise that echoed through the hallway.
It sounded like bones shifting into place.
The echoes coming back to me painted the shape clearly.
And the relief I felt at finding something humanoid vanished just as quickly.
The proportions were wrong.
The body was thin. Painfully thin. Like something that had been starved for months. The limbs were too long and the joints bent at strange angles.
The legs weren't like a person's; the heels lifted off the ground like an animal's. Standing on the toes.
Its arms hung low enough that the claws at the end nearly scraped the floor.
Claws.
My attention sharpened further at this… not-human thing.
The head was smooth.
No eyes.
No nose.
No face at all.
Just a long, smooth skull.
Every movement this humanoid portion of me makes sends new waves of sound rolling through the empty city and the echoes come back stronger than ever.
This body hears a lot better than the rest of me. And now that I can focus on it, it also can smell things around it a hell of a lt better than I could, even as a human.
I tilt its head. In doing so I notice something.
There was no face.
But there was a mouth.
Kinda anyway.
That was…. interesting.
Curious, I open it.
The jaw splits apart.
Petals unfold outward like a flower blooming.
Each petal lined with rows of teeth.
I slam it shut immediately.
Okay.
Nope.
That's…
Nope.
I raise one arm instead. The fingers are long and hooked into claws. I flex each one individually. It's a lot more familiar than the spores or the tendrils. Probably because it's at the very least shaped like a human, if only just.
Then, something miraculous happened.
I froze.
The spores stilled in the air as my attention snapped toward a very very different sound.
Footsteps.
Faint.
Very faint.
But unmistakable.
I shifted the humanoid portion of me into motion. My legs moved first, slow and awkward, but the spores followed behind in a cloud, drifting along the floor and brushing the walls as I went.
I ran.
At first, it felt clumsy. My strides were too long, my joints bending in ways my brain didn't quite understand. I could feel the echoes of my own movements bouncing off the walls, overlapping with the faint sound I was chasing. The footsteps were ahead, a thread of presence pulling me forward.
Then, mid-stride, something clicked. I dropped to all fours. My palms hit the ground, fingers scraping concrete, claws flexing. My weight shifted naturally onto all of my limbs. Instantly, it was faster. Smoother. I could feel the rhythm of my own body syncing with the echoes beneath me, the hallways unfolding with perfect clarity. The spores rolled in behind the humanoid portion, brushing over lockers, under doors, snaking through cracks in the floor. Every pulse told me more about the space ahead.
The footsteps grew sharper as I ran towards it.
Then… I slowed as I approached a row of lockers.
A very familiar row of lockers.
And the sound was coming from inside one specific locker.
I froze in front of it.
I remembered this locker. Every tiny detail. The way the lock jiggled when I fumbled with it in the mornings, the scrape of books sliding against the sides, the faint smell of dust and old paper that had always lingered inside.
And now, I hesitated.
Because it was my locker.
My humanoid things claws hovered inches from the surface. A flash of my old self tore through my memories. Trapped. Suffocating. The filth, the panic, the helplessness. The last moments before I had… changed. Memories I had tried to bury clawed at me, prickling along my awareness like static.
I let my claws drift against the metal first, brushing lightly, testing. They were massive compared to the locker, and the faintest pressure sent the sound of scraping reverberating through my head like rolling thunder. Each joint flexed deliberately. Each claw traced the dents, the rust, the faint weaknesses in the steel. My mind stretched along the surface, mapping every groove, every imperfection, in a clarity that no human eye could ever achieve.
The hesitation lingered for a heartbeat longer. Then, with a deliberate motion, I sank my claws in deeper, hooked them into the edges. The locker shivered, metal groaning in protest, hinges bending. And then I ripped.
The door tore free in a loud, satisfying screech, spinning outward. The echoes rolled through the empty hall, bouncing from walls and lockers, vibrating through my entire awareness as I tossed the scrap aside.
At first glance, it looked empty. Clean, even, in that stale, abandoned way everything in Brockton Bay seemed to have been left. I leaned closer, claws brushing the edges. The faint echoes of movement didn't make sense. They were still there, faint, almost imperceptible, but coming from inside a damn empty locker. My awareness stretched along the steel walls, across the floor of the locker, reaching into every corner. That's when I noticed it: a patch of corrosion, dull, uneven, pitted with tiny cavities.
At first, I thought it was just more rust. The city was old, and everything corroded eventually. But this… this felt different. My claws traced the surface carefully, flexing slowly along the uneven metal. The corrosion gave way under the pressure of my claws in a way that suggested something was behind it. A sense of… anticipation, maybe even fear, prickled along my nerves.
Whatever sound I'd been tracking wasn't coming from the locker itself.
It was coming through that hole at the back of it.
My spores shifted instinctively, leaning toward it, drifting closer, brushing the interior walls and sliding through the tiniest crack of the metal. They danced over the edges of the pinprick and immediately I felt it. Vibrations, texture, a faint pulse of life. Not dead. Not empty. Alive.
I froze, the rest of my massive body hovering silently over the school as I focused entirely on that one spot. The hole was small, barely bigger than a needle's point, but the sounds beyond it were clear now. My spores threaded through it, a tiny stream of awareness slipping through the metal, and the space on the other side opened up to me.
And on the other side… was an exact copy of the locker, still filled with filth. And behind the door… a whole world.
Unlike the dead stillness of the Brockton Bay I had been exploring, this place past the lockers door was an entire city that hummed with life. Faint echoes of movement: lockers opening and closing, footsteps on tile, soft shuffling of a presence moving deliberately but unaware of me.
Each movement painted a picture in my mind of the shapes of things. I could perceive outlines first. The flat planes of walls. The long rows of lockers. The polished floor tiles stretching down the hallway.
Then the people came into focus.
It started with a few blurry forms. Someone walking past the end of the hall. Another person leaning against a locker, shifting their weight from one foot to the other.
Their bodies sounded… soft.
Not weak, exactly. Just dense in a way the empty city wasn't. The echoes sank into them before bouncing back, rippling through layers of muscle and bone before returning to me.
I could hear their skeletons.
The hollow chambers of their lungs.
The faint thud of their hearts.
A locker slammed shut somewhere down the hall. The metal clang rang through the corridor and bounced off every surface. The returning echoes sharpened the image in my mind instantly.
Rows of students stood along the lockers now, their shapes filling the corridor. Some were taller, some shorter. Some hunched slightly as they dug through backpacks or twisted the dials on their lockers.
One girl tossed her hair back as she laughed at something her friend said. I could hear the soft swish of it brushing against her jacket.
Another student dragged their shoes slightly when they walked, the rubber soles squeaking faintly on the tile floor.
The hallway expanded in my awareness.
More footsteps approached from around the corner. Three people, walking together. Their voices overlapped in conversation, the words blending into a background murmur that still somehow separated cleanly in my mind.
"…test today…"
"...no way, Mr. Gladly said…"
"...you didn't even study…"
I stopped listening, or rather I stopped consciously listening.
It hit me slowly, the realization sinking in.
Wherever I was, it wasn't Brockton Bay. Not really.
This place… this copy. Everything I had been crawling across, sending spores through, mapping for hours… it wasn't the real city. It was a reflection. An exact copy, yes, but… dead. Empty. Lifeless. My own presence alone animated it, made it exist in some semblance of life.
The real Brockton Bay… it existed somewhere else. Somewhere… below, maybe? Or parallel. I could feel the topology of it slowly forming in my awareness, and with it, the structure of this copy, this… Upside Down, hovering in the middle, suspended between the real city and the wasteland above where the massive spider-tree rested. The "sky" of this place wasn't sky at all, it was more like a void that framed it.
I flexed the fingers on the flower-mouthed thing I controlled as I lightly scratched at the metal at the back of the locker, pressing a talon into the hole. The cut opened just enough for me to slide in a full hand. I retracted it slowly. The hole healed immediately, metal sealing itself as if it had never been there.
I focused on the faint noises again. They were almost gone, but if I concentrated, I could still hear it.
I floated there for a long moment, hovering outside the copy of my school, staring. The humanoid body flexed, claws scraping softly. Every instinct told me to push further, explore.
But to do that… I would have to actually crawl into the Locker. And… the memory of being human… trapped, helpless… it tightened around me.
I hesitated.
The spores drifted lazily around me, little weather systems I kept half-aware of, rolling and folding like clouds. My humanoid portion stayed crouched over the locker, claws resting against the steel rim, the faint echo of movement from the locker-world still whispering through my awareness. The city around me stretched vast and empty, Brockton Bay draped beneath me like a corpse.
I didn't know what to do next.
It felt like I should do something. There was a thousand little impulses spinning through me. Curiosity, dread, hatred for the memory of being shoved into that exact metal box, a weird, aching nostalgia for skin and smell and mundane things.
And that was just my more human impulses. Echoes from when I was still Taylor… still human.
The spores wanted to explore. The tendrils wanted to grow, to anchor, to dig, to claim. The humanoid body wanted to step through the doorway and meet whoever was on the other side. My head, that large, tapering plume of spores that felt like the closest thing to a face, kept turning the problem over like a loose screw.
What if probing the real Brockton Bay wasn't harmless? What if exploring meant leaving threads behind that would grow, that would spread? I could send spores through, but each one that slipped past the threshold was a potential seed, a little anchor of myself rooting in the real city. If I let it go too far, even by accident, Brockton Bay could start to twist, reshape, maybe even become like this place.
So… what do I do? Do I push through and risk not only the real Brockton Bay, but have to deal with whatever the people in the real world would do to me, or leave it alone and keep living in a perfect, empty imitation?
I took a shaky breath, or at least the closest thing I had to one. I tried to map the consequences in my mind.
And yet, even in the midst of all that uncertainty, something stirred. Not an idea, not a plan, not a thought. Something… physical. A signal I hadn't felt in a long time, buried beneath all the tendrils and spores, beneath the enormity of myself.
It was strange, almost embarrassing to notice. A subtle awareness threading through my mind, tiny and insistent. The humanoid portion, the part shaped like the me I used to be, shifted slightly, claws curling around nothing in particular. I realized I hadn't felt this sensation in a while.
I paused, letting the spores float around, listening to the mirrored city's faint rhythms, and suddenly it clicked.
I think… I'm hungry.Last edited: Mar 15, 2026463Beastrider9Mar 15, 2026NewView discussionThreadmarks Breach 1.01 New View contentBeastrider9AKA Sketchelf CthulhusonMar 16, 2026#21Breach 1.01
January 6th, 2011
Sophia Hess didn't think about Taylor Hebert very often.
That might have sounded strange considering how much time she spent making the girl miserable, but it was true. Taylor wasn't important enough to occupy space in her head outside of the moments when she was directly in front of her.
Taylor just existed.
Something weak that wandered into the wrong place.
So it said a lot that currently, Hebert took up a lot of her mind for the past few hours.
Sophia leaned casually against the lockers, half-listening to the muffled chatter around her, half-listening to the quiet chaos as students went through the motions. Lunch hour hadn't even officially started, but the hall smelled already.
The locker plan hadn't even been Sophia's idea originally.
The whole thing had started as Emma's crusade years ago. Sophia just… helped keep things moving.
Emma had suggested the break. That part had been deliberate. No pranks, no pushing, no tripping Taylor in the hallways. No whispers following her around the classrooms. Nothing. For weeks they'd backed off entirely.
It had been almost funny watching the change happen, but Sophia hadn't really cared one way or another.
Taylor had started off suspicious, flinching whenever someone walked behind her, watching corners like she expected someone to jump out at any moment. But after a while the tension had bled out of her.
That was until this morning.
Sophia inhaled slowly through her nose, then immediately regretted it.
God, that was foul.
She remembered the morning clearly enough.
Taylor arriving at the locker.
Taylor opening it.
The moment of hesitation before the smell hit.
Then the vomiting.
Sophia hadn't waited long after that.
She could still remember grabbing Taylor by the hair. The girl had been half doubled over already, gagging into the locker's contents. It had taken almost no effort to shove her forward the rest of the way.
Emma had slammed the door.
Madison had laughed nervously.
Sophia had spun the dial.
That had been that.
The whole thing had taken maybe ten seconds.
Sophia had checked the locker again between classes.
By the time the first period ended, Hebert was still struggling in the locker that they had left her in. Sophia just walked down the hallway between classes like anyone else, drifting past the row of metal doors with Emma and Madison nearby. There had been movement inside.
Soft thumping.
Scraping.
The dull rattling sound of someone trying to shove the door open from the inside.
Sophia had felt a little flicker of satisfaction at that.
Taylor wasn't screaming anymore. She'd done that earlier when they first shoved her in. The girl had panicked, clawing at the door. There was a kind of thrill in it, a perverse amusement at the helplessness of someone who had made herself a target.
By second period, though, the sounds had quieted. Almost completely. This time Sophia slowed a little more when she passed the hallway, frowning slightly as she walked past.
There was no movement.
No thumping against the metal door.
Just silence.
It wasn't unusual for people to stop fighting eventually. Exhaustion set in. Panic burned itself out.
Still…
Sophia considered opening the locker for half a second. Just to make sure the girl hadn't passed out or something.
The smell however made her think better of it.
Instead, Sophia just wrinkled her nose and kept walking. If Taylor had passed out, someone would find her eventually.
By the time the third period bell rang, she found herself pacing. The smell had spread through the hallway and classrooms. It was impossible to ignore. Students started complaining about it as they passed through the hall.
That's when the first staff started reacting, and it became a big enough problem that someone had actually called a janitor. Someone else had called a teacher.
Sophia happened to be in the hallway when it happened.
She wasn't the only one.
Emma and Madison were at Sophia's shoulder when the janitor finally crouched in front of the locker, rubber gloves squeaking as he flexed his hands and worked the combination lock.
Sophia watched the janitor with a sort of clinical attention, the same way she watched a building before she climbed it. The man's shoulders, the way his jaw set when he smelled it, the tired slump beneath his eyes. She was actually kind of impressed that he was willing to get so close to it, considering the smell.
Real working class hero.
Once he finished spinning the combination lock, the door swung open on its hinges with a high pitched squeal. What came out was the filth they had packed in weeks ago. Rotten pads and tampons, darkened with decay, the remnants of vomit, pieces of crumpled clothing, all spilled across the tile. It made a wet, slapping sound as it hit the floor, smearing in slick trails that caught the light from the fluorescent bulbs overhead. The smell hit Sophia all at once, thick and sour, and it made her stomach twist. It was worse than she remembered, worse than she thought possible.
At first, it seemed like everything was just as it should be. This was what they had set up. This was the plan. But then Sophia froze. Her eyes jerked to the locker and she realized something was missing.
Taylor wasn't there.
Sophia's stomach sank further when when she noticed the familiar pieces in the mess. The clothes, glasses, and sneakers lay scattered through the muck, partially submerged, coated in filth. It was the same clothes Taylor had worn that morning, the ones Sophia and the others had shoved in with her. And yet… no person attached.
Sophia's throat went dry and her pulse spiked. She took a small step forward, then stopped. Her eyes roamed the mess again, as if looking harder would somehow reveal the missing piece. Nothing moved. The wet pile of filth didn't twitch, didn't shift, didn't breathe. It was just there, spreading across the floor.
No Taylor.
"What the fuck," Sophia said quietly, her voice barely audible over the low hum of the hallway and the soft squelch of the mess under the janitor's gloves.
"She's… she's not in there," Madison said, voice low and uncertain.
"Yeah," Sophia said automatically, without really even thinking.
The janitor crouched over the mess, rubber gloves squeaking as he pushed and lifted the soggy pile with slow, deliberate motions. He muttered to himself, a low sound Sophia didn't catch, and occasionally he would stop to examine something more closely, tilting his head.
Emma leaned closer to Sophia, whispering, "Do you… do you think she crawled out?"
"I doubt it," Sophia said.
Madison blinked. "Why not? I mean, maybe she drug herself out, right? Got out, found a bathroom, changed into something clean, ditched the clothes, and left."
Sophia considered that for a second, but it didn't line up.
"The clothes she had on this morning are in there. Her glasses, her shoes. Everything. If she'd crawled out, she'd be standing in that garbage. Naked, probably, and covered in it. And if she'd managed to get out and change… why would she willingly go back to the locker just to put her clothes back in that shit? That doesn't make sense. Either option's fucked."
Emma leaned in closer, whispering so the janitor wouldn't hear. "Yeah, but… maybe she was just… I don't know, careful?"
Sophia shook her head again. "Careful doesn't explain the spill. If she left the locker, the rest of the garbage would have come out with her."
Madison's eyes went wide, and she glanced at the janitor, who was still crouched low, inspecting the soggy pile more closely. There was a look on his face, brow furrowed like he'd seen something that took him off guard.
"Do you… do you think something happened to her?" Emma asked quietly, almost in a breath.
Sophia didn't answer right away. Her mind raced, trying to reconcile what she knew about the situation, which unfortunately, wasn't much.
"I don't know," she admitted at last, voice low.
Before anyone could say anything else, the janitor froze completely. Sophia noticed the change instantly. The man's breath caught, sharp and shallow, and he straightened almost too quickly, his gloves squeaking as he pulled them away from the locker. For a second, he just stood there, rigid, staring down at the floor.
"Everyone out. All of you. Now," he said, voice low and firm but carrying a weight that demanded obedience.
Sophia's head snapped toward him. "Wait, what? What's going on?" Her voice was tight, brittle, carrying a note of panic that she didn't fully understand yet.
"Out!" he barked, gloves squeaking as he pushed against the crowd of students. His movements were sharp now, urgent. Sophia watched him, confused and unnerved as people started to take steps away from him.
Emma and Madison hesitated, looking at Sophia, their uncertainty mirrored in her own face. Sophia opened her mouth to argue, but she couldn't even think of what to say. Every inch of the Janitor screamed that whatever it was he saw, it rattled him. Even without knowing why, Sophia felt compelled to move.
Slowly, almost reluctantly, the three of them began backing away. Sophia kept her eyes on the janitor. The smell of the locker was cloying now, thick and suffocating. The wet splatter on the floor glistened under the fluorescent lights. She tried to see if she could maybe get a hint at what it was he saw, but she didn't see anything new.
The janitor meanwhile just began ushering other students back as well, his hands outstretched, a commanding presence that brooked no resistance.
"Get out. All of you. Leave the hall. Now."
Sophia, Emma, and Madison moved with the crowd, her thoughts a tangled mess of confusion and dread. Something had happened, something serious. The panic in her chest grew with every step away from the locker. She couldn't see it, didn't know exactly what had triggered the janitor's reaction, but the weight of the situation pressed down on her like a heavy stone.
She glanced over her shoulder once more. The janitor had returned briefly to the locker, face pale as he talked to another member of staff and then he turned sharply, moving with deliberate speed toward the principal's office.
By the time the three of them reached the main hallway, staff had begun moving students away in organized lines, directing them toward exits. Sophia felt herself swept along with the flow, her feet moving, her body reacting, but her mind still caught on the locker.
Minutes passed in a tense blur until finally, the intercom clicked, and the principal's voice came over, crisp, formal, and unsettlingly calm. "Attention all students and staff. Please evacuate the building immediately. This is not a drill. Follow your designated evacuation routes and await further instructions."
The hall emptied quickly, students filing past, whispering to one another but keeping their distance. Sophia moved with them, her pace slow as she tried to let her mind catch up with what was happening. The intercom's announcement still echoed in her ears.
Emma stayed close, glancing over her shoulder repeatedly. Her face was pale, eyes wide with a mixture of fear and disbelief. "Sophia… what do you think… what happened?" she asked, sounding genuinely curious.
Sophia shook her head. "I don't know," she said again.
The lights above them flickered once, twice, catching the edges of her vision. Sophia glanced up, just a brief flick of her eyes. Old building, electrical wiring probably loose. Nothing she lingered on.
Emma stayed close, her steps hurried, glancing sideways as if she expected something to appear behind them. Madison followed more slowly, shoulders tense, shifting from foot to foot as they walked. Sophia didn't say anything.
The three of them reached the front doors and pushed outside. The sunlight was harsh after the dim hallways, and for a second Sophia blinked against it, trying to adjust. Students spilled into the courtyard, herded by staff, voices overlapping, low murmurs of panic and confusion.
Sophia's eyes landed on the edge of the parking lot. A row of police cars was already pulling up, lights flashing, engines idling. The red and blue reflected across the pavement and on the faces of the students moving past. Sophia froze for a second, taking in the sight.
She cursed under her breath.
"Holy shit," Emma whispered behind her.
"Sophia… do you think…?" asked asked Madison before Sophia cut her off.
"Shh," Sophia said. Her voice came out lower than she intended.
Emma's hands were twisting together in front of her, fingers laced so tight her knuckles shone white. "This… this is bad," she said.
"Yeah," Sophia said. Her throat felt dry.
Her eyes kept drifting to the cop cars, the people in uniforms, specifically their quiet, tense movements. Two more officers stepped out and moved towards the school entrance.
Sophia didn't like it.
If someone had just passed out in a locker or thrown up too much, the school would have handled it themselves. Maybe an ambulance if things were serious. Police did not show up like this unless something bigger had happened.
Her eyes drifted toward the school building again. Several teachers were now standing near the entrance, talking to one of the officers who had just come out. The officer kept glancing back inside the building as they spoke. One of the teachers pointed down the hallway behind the doors, gesturing sharply.
Emma shifted closer to her.
"You think someone called the cops because of the smell?" Emma asked.
Sophia let out a quiet breath through her nose.
"No," she said.
Emma blinked.
"No?"
Sophia didn't elaborate. Emma exhaled slowly beside her.
"What if she… you know," Emma said.
Sophia glanced at her.
Emma didn't finish the sentence.
She didn't need to.
Sophia already knew what she meant.
Dead.
Sophia had thought about it already, turning it over and examining it from every angle. It almost made sense, almost. Taylor had died. The janitor had found her body, and his reaction made sense in that light. It explained why he wasn't just calmly cleaning up. It explained the alarm. It even explained the command to evacuate the building.
But that didn't make sense either. Not really. The pile of filth in the locker wasn't nearly enough to hide a body without Sophia or anyone else noticing, and if Taylor was still in the locker, leaning against the interior at an angle that they couldn't see from where they stood, the Janitor would have noticed her the moment he opened the door and would pull her out.
It just didn't fit.
Not cleanly anyway.
"I didn't see a corpse fall out that locker," said Sophia. "If she died… we would have seen her."
No one said anything in response to that, so Sophia just looked around, but then Madison spoke again.
"What if she crawled out and passed out somewhere else? Like a bathroom or a classroom or something."
Emma seized onto that idea immediately.
"Yeah. That makes sense."
Madison nodded quickly, though she still looked pale.
"Yeah, they'd call the police if they couldn't find her. Like if she disappeared inside the school. Maybe that's it."
Sophia considered that.
It was possible.
But something about the janitor's reaction still stuck with her.
The man hadn't looked confused.
He'd looked… disturbed.
Sophia shifted her weight slightly. She decided not to contribute in baseless speculation.
Instead she watched.
Students clustered in loose groups across the pavement and patches of grass, the usual lunch-hour social circles reforming automatically even as everyone kept glancing back at the school. Half the crowd whispering nervously, the other half acting like this was an unexpected free period.
Sophia tuned most of it out.
Her attention stayed on the building.
Two of the officers who had gone inside earlier came back out through the front doors. They moved with quiet urgency, speaking briefly with the officer stationed outside before one of them lifted a hand to his radio again.
"That's… more cops," Emma said quietly.
Sophia followed Emma's gaze.
Another vehicle rolled slowly into the parking lot. Not a patrol car this time, it was plain white, with city markings on the side and a rotating light mounted on top. It stopped beside the cruisers.
Madison swallowed.
"What's that one?"
Sophia squinted slightly.
"City services," she said after a moment. "Or maintenance."
She wasn't entirely sure.
The doors of the vehicle opened and two men stepped out wearing dark jackets with reflective stripes. They spoke briefly with one of the officers before heading toward the building entrance.
Emma rubbed her arms.
"It's getting worse," she muttered.
Sophia didn't like how tightly Emma's voice was wound. Panic spread quickly when someone let it slip like that.
"Relax," Sophia said quietly.
Emma shot her a look.
"How are you relaxed right now?"
Sophia shrugged.
"Because freaking out doesn't help anyone."
Emma looked like she wanted to argue but didn't have anything concrete to throw back. Madison stayed silent, staring at the school. Sophia had noticed the way Madison's eyes kept drifting to the front doors every few seconds, like she expected someone to come rushing out with an answer.
No one did.
Minutes dragged by.
The longer they stood there, the more the tension built.
Students started noticing the police vehicles in greater numbers now. Conversations around the courtyard shifted, whispers growing louder as rumors spread in widening circles. Across the courtyard, the front doors opened once more.
Principal Blackwell stepped outside.
That alone made several teachers nearby straighten immediately.
Sophia noticed something else though.
Blackwell wasn't alone.
Two officers stood just behind her, and another teacher hovered awkwardly to the side. Blackwell spoke briefly with one of the officers before stepping forward toward the gathered students.
A ripple of attention moved through the courtyard.
People began quieting down as they realized the principal was about to speak.
Emma stiffened beside Sophia.
Madison's fingers tightened in the sleeves of her jacket.
Blackwell raised her voice just enough to carry.
"Students."
The word cut cleanly through the noise.
Conversations died off across the courtyard.
Sophia watched the woman carefully.
On the outside, Blackwell looked composed, but the strain showed around the edges of her face. Her smile was thin, and more than a little forced.
"Thank you for your cooperation during the evacuation," she continued. "At this time, we will be cancelling the remainder of the school day."
The reaction from the students was immediate.
A wave of murmurs and scattered cheers spread through the crowd. Most of the kids actually looked relieved at what was basically an unexpected day off was still a day off to them.
Sophia didn't join in.
Neither did Emma.
Madison's face had gone even paler.
Blackwell continued speaking over the noise.
"Students are to leave campus and return home as soon as possible. Bus transportation will proceed on normal dismissal schedules. Staff members will remain available for anyone who needs assistance contacting parents or guardians."
She paused briefly.
Then added, more firmly:
"Please clear the school grounds in an orderly manner."
That was it.
No explanation.
No details.
Just dismissal.
Around them, students began drifting toward the exits of the campus in loose streams. Some were laughing, already pulling out their phones to call rides or brag about the unexpected free afternoon.
But plenty of others looked nervous.
The police presence had killed most of the excitement.
"I'm going to head home," Sophia said, casual as she could make it, pushing her hands into her pockets and shifting her weight as the crowd funneled toward the buses. "Got stuff to do."
Emma's face registered something for half a beat. It was in the way her mouth tightened and her eyes flicked toward the police clustered by the entrance, then slid to the route that led off campus toward the main road. Madison looked relieved and a little anxious at the same time, nodding as if release from school would smooth out the morning's jagged edges.
"Okay," Madison said. "You sure? What if…"
"If the cops come around, don't say anything," Sophia interrupted softly, but with a heavy tone, the kind she used when she wanted to be obeyed. She kept her voice low so only the two of them would hear. "Pretend you didn't see anything past the morning. Say you saw her once this morning, then nothing after that. Say you left for class."
Madison hesitated. "And what about the other students? They saw too, right?"
"They know better than to talk," Sophia said, tone sharp. "If anyone asks, you say you were at your next class. That is it."
Emma watched Madison's mouth work as she absorbed the instructions. Before she nodded.
Madison swallowed and nodded, still pale. "Okay. Okay. We shouldn't say anything."
Sophia nodded.
"Good."
She turned away from them, walking toward the edge of the parking lot. In her head, she ran through the simplest way to handle it. The best course was to act normal. Keep her face blank, her tone neutral. If questions came later, she would deal with them then. Maybe even practice a few lines in her head for what to say, if anyone pressed. The rest of it she could manage.
Her footsteps echoed across the asphalt as she passed the last clusters of students. The PRT building was only a few blocks away, and the thought of slipping into it, donning her gear, and moving on with the evening patrol steadied her mind. She kept her head down, keeping her pace even, ignoring the distant murmurs of kids being released early, the flashing police lights fading behind her.
When she arrived at the PRT, she entered as she always did. The automatic doors slid open without ceremony, the lobby quiet except for the faint hum of computers and distant voices from the briefing rooms. She nodded at the receptionist without stopping. Nothing to say. No one to explain.
Sophia made her way to the locker room, where she started changing into her uniform, the familiar weight of the suit settling over her body. Each strap, each piece of reinforced material clicked into place, and with it came an odd sort of calm that made the tension from school ease up, if only just a little. Her hands adjusted her gloves, her boots snug, the mask on.
A soft knock at the door broke her focus. Sophia froze, hand resting lightly on her belt.
"Shadow Stalker?"
Sophia's head tilted slightly, mask off now, eyes narrowing as she glanced up at the door.
"Yes," she said, voice steady.
"Director Piggot wants to see you."
"Now?" she asked.
"Now."
Sophia nodded once and pulled the mask fully on, sliding it into place with a faint snap. "Alright," she said, keeping her tone neutral.
At the same moment, the fluorescent light above her flickered, a brief stutter that sent a thin pulse of irritation through her. She paused, tilting her head back slightly to watch the bulb blink unevenly before resuming its glow.
She stared at it for a second longer, before heading for the door, meeting with the officer on the outside. Sophia followed the officer down the hallway, the hum of the PRT building around her grounding her thoughts.
Sophia reached the office door and knocked once before pushing it open.
Director Piggot sat behind her desk with a thick manila folder spread open in front of her. The older woman didn't immediately look up. She finished scanning whatever page she was reading, closed the folder with deliberate care, and only then lifted her eyes.
The first thing Sophia noticed was that Piggot didn't look angry. Her expression was neutral, the hard lines of her face set in their usual stern arrangement, but there was none of the irritation Sophia had come to expect when she got called in like this.
That alone told her quite a bit.
That meant this was probably routine. Or at the very least she wasn't going to be chastised or disciplined.
"Miss Hess," Piggot said, voice even and professional. "Have a seat."
Sophia lowered herself into the chair across from the desk. Piggot didn't move, didn't shift her expression. She simply waited.
"Are you familiar with a Miss Taylor Hebert?"
Sophia froze for the briefest instant. Her mind clicked into careful observation, measuring her own reactions, noting Piggot's neutral demeanor. There was no outright accusation here; Piggot wasn't looking at her as if she were a suspect. But the mention of Taylor instantly sharpened her focus.
"Yes," she said finally, voice measured. "I know who she is."
Piggot's gaze held hers, steady, unblinking. "And what is your relationship with her?"
Sophia knew exactly how dangerous this conversation could become if she handled this wrong. She wasn't stupid. She had been there. She had been part of the group that had shoved Taylor into that locker. But she didn't know what was expected of her here, how much, if anything, she should admit.
"Nothing, really," Sophia replied, shrugging subtly. "We go to the same school. I don't share classes with her, but I've seen her around. That's about it really."
Inside, her thoughts spun, but her expression stayed calm and neutral. Why would Piggot bring up Taylor specifically? The PRT normally would not involve itself in a case unless a cape was involved. Technically that could include Sophia, but the way Piggot was holding the conversation, not pressing harder or treating her like a suspect, suggested that for now they did not believe she had anything to do with it.
So why bring up Taylor to her specifically?
The only explanation that made sense, at least to Sophia, was that some other cape must be involved. There were no other parahumans at Winslow she knew of, and none of the people who might have caused trouble had powers. That left her with a chilling thought.
Taylor herself could have triggered…which was a wild and deeply unsettling thought, by itself, but at least that would make some sense of the situation at Winslow, strange as it was.
Before she could think on it further, Piggot spoke.
"She has been reported missing," Piggot said, flipping a few pages in the folder, eyes scanning numbers and notes that Sophia couldn't read from here.
Sophia's frown deepened slightly. "I thought missing people usually required a twenty-four-hour wait before police involvement."
"A common misconception," Piggot said smoothly. "The sooner you act in these situations, the better the chances of locating the person, especially for a minor. Now, this isn't usually within our jurisdiction, but there are factors that have made it a matter of interest. Did you see Miss Hebert at any point today?"
Sophia paused, weighing her words. Technically, she hadn't. Not beyond the morning. She had heard movement, shuffling, muffled struggles. That much was true, and it was enough for this conversation.
"I saw her that morning, just before school started," she said finally. "Not after that."
"Very well. And to your knowledge, Is Miss Hebert involved with any of the local gangs? Has she ever been seen associating with people who might cause trouble?"
Sophia shook her head, keeping her expression neutral. "No. Not that I've ever seen. Taylor doesn't… she doesn't really talk to anyone. She mostly keeps to herself, goes to her classes, and doesn't hang out with anyone after school either."
Piggot nodded slowly, jotting something down on a pad. "Any known animosity toward her? Bullies, disputes, anything like that?"
Sophia hesitated for only a moment, then answered evenly. "There's the usual stuff. Kids making fun of her, a little gossip here and there. Nothing major. No one's actively targeting her outside of… you know, normal school stuff." She kept her tone careful, careful to remain factual but not overly specific.
And friends?" Piggot asked next, voice low but probing.
"Friends?" Sophia's lips pressed together for a moment. "Not really. She doesn't have any. Like I said, people don't talk to her much."
Piggot made a small note, then set her pen down. "And behavior? Anything unusual, aggressive, or otherwise noteworthy that you've observed?"
Sophia shook her head. "No. She's quiet. Keeps to herself mostly. She's not the type to… I don't know… act out or even fight back."
Piggot gave a subtle nod, almost imperceptible. "Very well. That will do for now."
Sophia blinked, forcing a casual tone.
"Wait, that's it? I mean, the PRT normally doesn't get involved in missing-person reports unless a cape's involved. Was Hebert kidnapped by Hookwolf or something? Did someone see her shoot lasers from her face?"
"That is none of your concern," Piggot replied evenly. "You may leave Miss Hess."
Sophia crossed her arms. "It is if it happened at my school. Should I be keeping an eye on things?"
Piggot studied her for a long moment. Then, ever so slightly, the tension in her posture softened. "Fair enough. Given your presence at Winslow, perhaps it is worth informing you of certain developments. After Miss Hebert was reported missing, the BBPD seized footage from several surrounding buildings with outdoor security cameras that had captured footage of Miss Hebert entering the school, but none showed her ever leaving. During the investigation the BBPD discovered certain… anomalies at her locker."
Sophia's brow furrowed. She kept her face blank, but internally a sharp spike of panic ran through her.
"Anomalies?"
Piggot nodded.
"What was inside is what drew our attention." She paused, as if internally deciding how much to say, before continuing. "It contained biological waste, and… partial human remains."
Sophia's stomach dropped, a cold knot forming at the base of her throat. Her mind flicked to the locker. The smell. The janitor's stunned face. That… that explained his reaction.
She forced herself to blink, keeping her expression neutral, her voice steady despite the churn inside. "Partial… remains?"
Piggot just nodded.
"They were in an advanced state of decomposition." She paused, letting the words sink in. "Fragments of human bones. Two femurs, several teeth, a skull cap, a pelvis, among others. At this stage, identity cannot be confirmed. However, the size and structure of the bones are consistent with a teenage female of her approximate height and build, though we are awaiting confirmation. Though the degree of decomposition is not consistent with someone who went missing only hours ago. If these are Miss Hebert's remains, they should not have reached this state so quickly. That is what drew our attention and led to PRT involvement."
Sophia forced a steady inhale, letting the words sink in while her mind raced.
"Shit," Sophia breathed.
Piggot nodded once.
"You can understand why the situation now falls under our jurisdiction."
Sophia sat there in silence. Her brain kept circling the same thought.
Liquefied human remains.
That locker had been full of garbage and rotten tampons.
But bones?
She had been in there when the janitor opened it.
Had she just not noticed?
Had someone else been involved, someone with a power capable of accelerating decomposition in minutes or even seconds?
And if so, why would anyone direct that kind of power at Taylor?
"We will continue investigating the matter," she said. "At the moment we are treating it as a possible homicide."
Homicide.
The word landed like a hammer.
Sophia suddenly became very aware of how this must look from the outside.
Taylor Hebert enters the school.
Taylor Hebert never leaves.
Taylor Hebert's bones are found in her locker.
And if anyone started asking around…
People might talk.
Students had seen Emma.
Madison.
Sophia herself standing near that locker earlier.
Her mind began running through possibilities.
How many people had noticed them shove Taylor inside?
Piggot watched her carefully before she gestured toward the door.
"That will be all for now, Miss Hess. You are dismissed."
Sophia stood automatically. Numbly, she nodded. She turned on her heel and left, the weight of it pressing down like a physical force. The image of the locker, the smell, everything replayed in her mind over and over.
And somewhere deep in the back of her head, Sophia couldn't help but wonder if she… they had just made a mistake. A really, really big one.
Above her, a light bulb flickered.