Chapter Text
Missy Biron woke up about thirty seconds before the alarm did the job for her, which gave her just enough time to slam a hand down on her phone before it started rumbling and screeching.
A vicious sense of satisfaction thrummed through her. Missy knew it was childish to have a one-sided rivalry with an inanimate object, but it wasn’t like anyone was watching, so she continued to let herself do it.
She sighed and rolled over. Too lazy to rearrange the blankets again, Missy stretched her power out to one downy corner, and re-covered her toes. It was unseasonably cold for May—for now, at least. By noon, the fog rolling in from the ocean would all burn off, and her early morning shivering beneath the covers for warmth would be nothing but a distant memory. She curled up tighter at the thought, and shut her eyes in the hopes that she could go back to sleep.
When the plan inevitably failed, as it always did during this section of her daily routine, Missy dragged herself out of bed. After dressing and brushing her teeth and all the usual ablutions, she shuffled down the hall. Missy had to rely on muscle memory to avoid the stray power tool and the bunched up bottoms of bed sheets draped over every item of value. Her dad had said it was to keep dust off the furniture while he completed renos, but Missy could feel the exact spots where each photo frame met the wall. Even when the sensory limits of her powers failed her, Missy could remember the pictures encased within.
Christmas Day, 2001. Her eighth birthday. That time all three of them went to the county fair, which had stopped altogether in recent years due to both financial and safety concerns. There was even a professional portrait taken of her and her mom and her dad, which Missy felt was the most revealing picture of all. They had on matching red sweaters and wide smiles, attractive enough as a family unit that Missy used to fantasize about them being moderately successful magazine advertisement models. She wasn’t so ambitious as to fashion them as Disney Channel stars or a traveling band, but figured her vision got the same idea across. The perfect family.
Missy also remembered the way her parents had screamed at each other the entire ride to the photography studio, about money and time and all the usual crap they fought over. A second after the picture was taken, they resumed their yelling, which left Missy apologizing to the poor photographer. Christmas and her birthday and the county fair had played out similarly.
There had never been a time when they were happy, but in the photos, Missy could almost pretend.
Her mom wasn’t up by the time she made it to the kitchen in the center of the house, so Missy helped herself to some cereal from her mom’s cabinet, and the milk in the fridge that was hers and hers alone. Her dad didn’t mind when she took some of his ultra-grain brand, but Missy had learned the hard way that when she ate it during her mom’s shift in the house, no amount of apologies could convince him that it wasn’t her mom who was secretly stealing his food.
Missy wasn’t young or stupid enough anymore to take it personally when they fought, but it was annoying, so she’d learned to sidestep all foreseeable conflicts before they could occur. It was a shame the skill didn’t extend to anyone beyond her own asshole parents.
Missy’s mom emerged from the left doorway just as she’d put the milk away. There was dust in her hair and plaster on her cheek, which clued Missy into how much renovating her mom had done on her side of the house since Missy was there last. Whatever. She’d get to see it in person tonight, when her mom and her dad did their court-ordered handoff and Missy switched to the guest bedroom in her mom’s wing. When her mom came back in two weeks time, Missy would move back to her dad’s side.
Much like the cereal, the arrangement was just as much for her own peace of mind as it was an attempt at being equitable. The options were usually one and the same.
“You’re up early,” her mom said. She nodded her head to the closed fridge door. “I’m surprised. I heard you come in last night sometime past one.”
“Yeah, well, it’s not like I’m going to leave someone at the mercy of the skinheads just because I have a curfew.” She rolled her eyes. “‘ So sorry about you getting hate crimed but it’s past my bedtime! But I’ll totally make sure to visit you in the hospital tomorrow after school!’”
“I remember the Youth Guard making it pretty clear that you’re supposed to get back within a set timeframe.”
“Section 80.7 allows for provisional schedules, provided the issue at hand is urgent and the Ward in question is both required for the task and voluntarily participates. Things like Endbringers, the Slaughterhouse Nine, and—”
“Last night,” her mom finished for her. “I don’t suppose I can ask what the urgent matter was?”
Missy shoveled cereal into her mouth. Her mom’s cereal brand was good and sugary, but her dad’s was more filling. She knew her mom only bought this type because there were a handful of studies out there on the correlation between processed sugars and increased rates of cancer. She was sure her dad knew it too.
“Nope.”
Her mom hummed in dissatisfaction. It wasn’t like she actually cared much about what had happened, or her daughter’s safety—they both knew full well that Missy would be graduating from the Wards in a year’s time, which meant no more childcare stipend for her mom. Years of divorce proceedings and court rulings had honed her litigious instincts. If she thought there was even the slightest chance that the government body handling Missy’s after school heroism could be exposed for exploitation, then she would pounce.
Missy finished off her cereal quickly.
“Happy birthday,” her mom said, once she was sure she had Missy’s undivided attention again.
“Thanks.”
“Did you think about what you wanted to do? We could go out to dinner, or order in. Or take the day off, and go to the beach?”
“It’s fucking freezing outside right now.”
“It should warm up later.”
“I’ve got a bio test today, and a presentation in Spanish. Then a shift from three to eight, and Dad will pick me up from there.”
No doubt her dad would have some stupid, big celebration planned that Missy had specifically asked him not to do. Her mom knew it too, and it was killing her inside.
Her mom brushed her bangs aside, kissing her on the forehead. Missy tried not to sag into the touch.
“If you change your mind, I’m just one call away.” She smiled softly. In a certain slant of light, it almost looked sincere. “It’s not every day my baby girl turns seventeen.”
And wasn’t that the exact problem? Seventeen was a shitty, all-around useless age to turn. Not old enough to drink, not old enough to vote, and stuck in high school for another agonizing year. Even the most milquetoast kid had exhausted the fun of being a teenager by the time the big one-seven rolled around. Missy had lived more in the past five years than people did in their entire lifetimes. What was even left for her now? Surely she could do better than a stray lyric from an ABBA song.
As Missy crossed back through the house to grab her backpack and a change of clothes for work, she took note of every minor addition, every change and renovation her father had made since the divorce to claim the space as his own. Her mother was no better. Missy resolved to be out of the place—and out of Brockton Bay—by this time next year. They were already halfway to creating their own little Winchester House. If Missy let herself be trapped in the tide of new divorce proceedings and patrol schedules, she’d never end up leaving. And when the next birthday came, or a highly improbable one eighty years after that, Missy would be little more than a ghost, doomed to haunt these half-painted halls.
Seven-fucking-teen.
The bio test went badly, and the Spanish presentation went even worse.
It didn’t bother her. Missy had long since stopped caring about school and all its minute humiliations. The few friends she’d maintained from childhood had moved away after Leviathan, and while the Bay was better off than it had been all those years ago, the generational wound left behind would never be more than a fresh scab, one sharp move away from cracking back open and leaking pus all over the damn place. Everyone who was still around had dismissed high school as a lost cause; better to just wait until college for a fresh start.
Missy hadn’t even gotten that far. She was only at school to check off the attendance boxes, and earn the passing grades required for participation in the Wards. There were Wards-to-college pipelines, of course, provided you were willing to let a few admissions officers and faculty at select university programs know your secret identity, but everyone knew that club and intramural superheroes were almost as much of a joke as corporate capes—an unsurprising evaluation, considering that one activity often lead to the other.
Missy, as one of the longest serving and top ranked Wards in the entire damn country, was going to skip all that and go right into the Protectorate. She could get a transfer to somewhere far away and photogenic. She could get an apartment and maybe a fish or cat—if she could find someone to watch it while she was away—and then she’d work her ass off until she got promoted. Maybe she’d get transferred around a few more times, save some lives, and scratch the itch that never stopped wriggling beneath her skin, before eventually dying in some heroic endeavor. Maybe she’d get to retire instead, seeing as parahuman mortality rates had gone way down with the disappearance of the Endbringers. Or maybe the Endbringers would reappear, and the once-great Vista would triumphantly emerge from retirement, only to be killed the second she set foot on the battlefield.
Based on past experience, all three options sounded achievable to Missy.
Sixth period, which was technically branded as a free time slot for all students not in athletics or electives, meant a commute to the PHQ. Vista waited out back behind the school, offhandedly wishing she’d taken up smoking to pass the time despite her hatred of cigarettes. Toggle came jogging out a few minutes later, followed by the new thinker recruit, Scatterbrain.
Vista surveyed her team with a practiced apathy, wondering how the hell she’d fallen from fighting alongside the Triumvirate to this. By the time Crucible had graduated, leaving her the well-deserved role of Captain, world-ending events had all but stopped. The frequency of trigger events had dwindled to a stop, leaving Vista with a lackluster team and no threats to guide them against. She figured Scatterbrain would be snatched up by Vegas or Watchdog once he graduated, because thinkers and tinkers were always in high demand. Toggle would probably go to college. She didn’t strike Vista as the kind of person with a future in superheroing.
Toggle yawned, exhausted from the night before. Scatterbrain kept on shooting nervous glances at Vista, like he thought she couldn’t see him staring through his bulky tinted visor.
Officer Kerns pulled up in the parking lot, beeping his horn, smiling, and waving. He rolled down his window. “Hey, kids! Have a good day at school? Break any rules without getting caught?”
Vista knew his twin eleven-year-old daughters loved the routine, from the few times they’d carpooled with them. She climbed into the passenger seat while Toggle and Scatterbrain slid into the back. The seating arrangement was technically against regulation, but Officer Kerns was a big softie when it came to kids. Sometimes, he even let Vista drive for a bit, before switching back over as they approached the newly-renovated PHQ. Protocol had loosened up a lot in the past few years. Vista hoped that Director Piggot was rolling in the sand at whatever tropical oasis she’d fucked off to.
“I forgot to turn in my unit project in Mrs. Sakamoto’s class,” Scatterbrain said. Vista could see him frowning in the rearview mirror. “I think she’s mad at me. That’s the third one I’ve missed.”
“You should talk to her about it,” Officer Kerns replied. “She knows you care. I promise you she’ll be more than willing to make accommodations, as long as you communicate with her.”
Scatterbrain nodded to himself. Vista tried not to feel bad for the kid. Life would get much easier once he figured out that school wasn’t the be all, end all of life, but it was clear he’d once taken pride in being a good student. The powers that rearranged his brain probably made that level of academic performance impossible now.
“Geez,” Kerns continued, “It’s like the third act of a Philip Glass opera in here. Do I need to stop to get you guys a pick-me-up? Ice cream? Starbucks? I hear the kids love that.”
“My parents say that coffee stunts your growth,” Toggle said.
“It’s not like it matters. You won’t hit five-four,” Scatterbrain blurted out.
Toggle glared at him.
“Sorry.”
Vista sighed, readjusting her shoulder straps.
“Just take us to PHQ, please,” she said. “There’s Danish cookies and a Keurig in the common room.”
Triumph and Vista were halfway out the door when Director Renick emerged from his office. Her shoulders sagged the moment she heard the hinges creak.
“Vista,” he said. “My office. Now.”
Triumph and the two flanking PRT officers didn’t even blink. From his spot by the console, Scatterbrain wrung his hands together.
Vista took her time crossing the room, not stretching the actual space out, but slowing her pace enough that everyone knew she was dissatisfied. Renick wasn’t a yeller, but she could see him growing more displeased by the second.
She sat down across from his desk, in the office he shared with Miss Militia. Miss Militia was off attending some bigwig meeting with Chevalier in D.C. The next week, it’d be New York, and the week after that, London, because no shit the highest parahuman authority in Brockton Bay was busy with more important matters than breaking up fights between Merchant rejects on public transportation. For as much reform as they’d promised within the Protectorate, things hadn’t changed. Certainly not in day-to-day affairs. Vista had resigned herself to it.
“Last night?” she asked.
“Last night,” Renick agreed.
“I don’t know what to say.”
He folded his hands across his desk, staring down at Vista through his glasses.
“There’s nothing to say. It was a routine mission—”
“—or so you claimed.”
“—and you broke protocol by going off on your own.”
“—which I wouldn’t have done if I’d been properly briefed! I’m not the one who let some no-name capes break into the PRT armory!”
“Which I accept full responsibility for,” Renick said. “But that doesn’t change the fact that your actions lead to hundreds of thousands of dollars in property damage, fourteen injured—including members of your own team—and one civilian death.”
Vista remained silent.
“There will need to be a disciplinary hearing for the events of last night, probably followed by demotion from Ward Captain.”
“And who’s going to take my spot?” Vista fired back. “Toggle? Our team’s already a fucking joke!”
“Maybe even a shift to probationary status,” Renick continued. “And your placement within any future Protectorate teams will be contingent on good behavior over the course of the next year.” He looked up from her file, which he had been rapidly sifting through. “Happy birthday, by the way.”
Vista stood up, and walked out the door.
“Where are you going?”
She didn’t bother to respond. As Director Renick attempted to reach out and follow her, Vista expanded the space between them. She pushed herself away from the nearby officers and capes too, for good measure. They were all staring in surprise.
Good little Vista, a consummate professional amongst minors and adults alike. Seventeen was too old for tantrums, but everyone here still saw her as the chubby-cheeked ten-year-old from her early promotional materials. By tomorrow, they’d forgive her for the outburst. But the actions of last night? Not so much.
No one else tried to stop her as she left. She didn’t let anyone try.
Her mom didn’t ask questions when she got home a few hours earlier than expected. Missy suspected she’d get a long phone call and a few emails by this time tomorrow, and that would only be the beginning. Her dad would too. They’d blame each other before they ever blamed Missy, and the back-and-forth would be ten thousand times more agonizing than them grounding her like normal, competent parents would.
Her mom had just brought the ice cream cake out of the freezer—strawberry flavor, she’d proudly explained, like Missy was still a child—when the doorbell rang.
Her father was standing there on the front stoop with a strawberry ice cream cake of his own, and balloons in his right hand. Her mother didn’t like that one bit, so the two of them started yelling, right out in the open in the front yard. The neighbors were used to it by now, and wouldn’t call the cops unless it lasted longer than an hour.
Missy stretched the walkway out between them so that the arguing was little more than background noise to her ears, and crawled into her bed on her mom’s side of the house. Her dad would be the one who came inside, once both the cakes had melted and they’d exhausted all their usual insults.
All in all, it wasn’t the worst birthday Missy Biron had ever had.
Missy Biron woke up about thirty seconds before the alarm did the job for her, which gave her just enough time to slam a hand down on her phone before it started rumbling and screeching.
She sighed and rolled over. It was unseasonably cold for May—for now, at least. By noon, the fog rolling in from the ocean would all burn off, and her early morning shivering beneath the covers for warmth would be nothing but a distant memory.
When sleep inevitably failed her, she dragged herself off to the kitchen. It was time to face the music.
Missy helped herself to her dad’s ultra-grain, health-nut cereal, which she promptly choked on as her mother emerged from the same hallway as Missy did.
“You’re up early.”
“Mom?” She hacked out a piece of now-soggy rice. “What are you doing here?”
“It’s Tuesday. Your father and I aren’t switching out until tonight, remember? So you get to see us both for your birthday.”
“No,” Missy said. She set her spoon down, and pushed away from the table. She had the intention of getting up, but her legs were shaking against her volition. She looked at the date on her phone’s home screen, and the paper on the table, and the calendar clipped to the fridge, all claiming it was Tuesday, May 15th.
“I know that things haven’t been easy, Missy, but that’s a cruel thing to say. We both love you. You know that.”
“No,” Missy continued. “It can’t be my birthday, because my birthday was yesterday.”
Her mother crossed the room quickly, brushing Missy’s bangs aside to check the temperature of her forehead.
“What time did you get back last night?” her mom asked. Her voice was sharp with concern. “Did you hit your head? Did they check you over at PHQ before sending you home?”
Something in her mother’s voice snapped Missy from her stupor. She could see it playing out in her head already—her mom marching her over to Director Renick’s to find out what happened, only to find out about the robbery and the bombs and the woman. Her dad would find out too, and the two of them would fight over it all through the demotion, the disciplinary meetings, and her probation period.
If yesterday was a dream, it was a damn prophetic one.
Missy gently pried her mother’s hand off her face, giving it a firm squeeze.
“Sorry about that,” she said, forcing out a smile. “Early morning grogginess, I guess.”
“Do you want to take the day off? We could go to the beach. Go out for dinner, or order in?”
“I really just need to get to school. I’ve got a bio test today, and a presentation in Spanish. Then a shift from three to eight, and Dad will pick me up from there.”
Her mom kissed her on the forehead. Missy tried not to sag into the touch.
“Well, if you change your mind, I’m just one call away.” She smiled softly. In a certain slant of light, it almost looked sincere. “It’s not every day my baby girl turns seventeen.”
School was the same, but that could be said for the other four days of the week. Her Spanish presentation sucked. Her bio test was awful too, an experience compounded by Missy’s certainty that she’d seen the same questions the day before. She still didn’t know the damn answers.
The morning fog had completely dissipated by sixth period. Officer Kerns drove them to the PHQ with all his usual good humor and dumb dad jokes. Scatterbrain watched Vista nervously through the rearview mirror.
At the PHQ, Director Renick gave her the exact speech she’d dreamed up the night before. It hurt more to hear it in person, but deep down, Vista knew he was right. She was somewhat ashamed as she stormed off.
At home, her mom and dad fought over strawberry ice cream birthday cakes, and Missy crawled into bed on her mom’s side of the house. For the first time Missy could recall, the bedroom switching felt disorienting. She wondered if this was how Sarah Winchester had felt, wandering the corkscrew halls of her home.
Missy Biron had spent her seventeenth birthday in a haze. When she finally succumbed to sleep, all she could feel was relief.
Missy Biron woke up about thirty seconds before the alarm did the job for her, which gave her just enough time to slam a hand down on her phone before it started rumbling and screeching.
She sighed and rolled over. It was unseasonably cold for May—for now, at least. By noon, the fog rolling in from the ocean would all burn off, and her early morning shivering beneath the covers for warmth would be nothing but a distant memory.
A quick check on her phone revealed it to be Tuesday, May 15th, 2015.
Her seventeenth birthday.
When Missy was done throwing up in the toilet, she dragged herself down her father’s hallway and into the kitchen. She went for her mother’s sugary cereal this morning, just for a bit of variety from the day prior. The sensation of barley and rice wedging in her throat was still fresh in her mind.
“You’re up early,” said her mother from the left doorway.
Her mom leaned down to kiss her forehead, and Missy trembled at the touch.
“I think I’m caught in a loop,” she told Director Renick. Vista glanced quickly at the shut door to his office, and the console beyond, where capes and PRT officers alike were keeping track of activity on the mainland. Scatterbrain had spent the whole ride over shooting Vista nervous glances—not because he knew what was up, as Vista had initially suspected, but because of the night before.
“Hundreds of thousands of dollars in property damage,” Vista continued, before Renick could reply, “Fourteen injured—including members of my own team—and one civilian death. That’s what you’re going to tell me. And I know, because I’ve lived this same day two times already.”
Renick sat back. He was studying Vista closely, but she couldn’t tell what he was thinking. His glasses obscured his eyes.
“Please,” she said. “Just believe me. I don’t know what it is that’s causing this. Gray Boy, or some tinkertech, or a passive stranger effect. I have no reason to think it’s a second trigger, but there are plenty of other possible explanations. Khonsu’s back, maybe, or the Simurgh is fucking with me specifically. But I need your help, because I don’t know if I can get out of this on my own.”
Vista waited nervously as Renick considered her for a moment longer. Then, he reached across his desk, and squeezed her hands with his own. For once, Vista didn’t mind the breach in personal space. She and Director Renick had known each other for years now, more like coworkers than an adult and a child, or a boss and an employee. He’d outlasted all the other PRT Directors, not because he was steelier or smarter or stronger than the rest, but because he wasn’t the kind of man who made enemies. The remaining local villains handled him with something of a soft touch, just as he did the same for them. Heroes followed a similar pattern.
“What happened last night?” he asked her. “Did you hit your head?”
She told him exactly what had happened—the robbery and the bombs and the woman. She couldn’t remember anything past that, though she must have made it home safely, since she kept on waking up there on Tuesday, May 15th.
After that, Director Renick called the rest of the team in to ask them the same questions, and to Vista’s growing frustration, they could remember their evenings perfectly. But no one had seen Vista that night after she separated from the group. Not until yesterday. Today. Tuesday.
Renick was frustrated too, if the deepening trenches of his forehead wrinkles were anything to go by. He never yelled, but he certainly wasn’t pleased when he demanded to know why no one had reported Vista missing. They didn’t have any answers for that, either.
Her parents showed up not long afterwards, and managed to put aside their differences long enough to hold Vista’s hands through the physical and psychological testing. Second triggers were quickly ruled out, as was interference from any known stranger within the city. Everyone ignored Vista as she attempted to point out how much of an oxymoron that statement was, and on and on the diagnostics went, until mercifully—or agonizingly, depending on who you were and what you understood of the situation at hand—it all stopped.
Sitting alone in the medical examination room, it was impossible for Vista to ignore the guards posted outside her door. She could hear her parents’ voices rising down the corridor, and had to stop herself from pushing them further away, lest the guards take it as a threat. Her arms swam in the hospital gown they’d forced her into, and she felt stupid with her ass hanging from the open back. She wouldn’t have been surprised if someone told her it was just a subtle way to discourage the flight risks, but nobody did, so she just sat there feeling embarrassed and pissed off.
Missy Biron was seventeen years old today—and yesterday, and the day before that—but it was the smallest she’d felt since she first triggered.
As the night wore on, everyone agreed it would be best to keep her here under observation for a few days, and hopefully they’d find out what was going on before then. Vista wasn’t nearly as optimistic. They’d chalk her uncharacteristic actions from the night up to an ongoing psychotic break, and the punishments would be lessened accordingly, as would her opportunities to go out in the field. Her record, still half-open on Director Renick’s desk, painted a picture of a child put under long-term, high-stress conditions beyond what even most functional adults could handle. And if word of her predicament got out—and it would, now that the Youth Guard had been called in—all treatment of Wards would be changed going forward. The worldwide decline of child soldiers was objectively a good thing, save for the fact that until this time next year, Vista was one of said child soldiers. The instant her Youth Guard supervisor arrived on site, Vista’s job was as good as toast.
Vista couldn’t even bring herself to care about all of this, when it meant she would finally be free from the loop.
She nodded off sometime before midnight, uncomfortable but exhausted in the fold-up cot the doctor had provided.
Missy Biron woke up about thirty seconds before the alarm did the job for her, which gave her just enough time to slam a hand down on her phone before it started rumbling and screeching.
She sighed and rolled over. It was unseasonably cold for May—for now, at least. By noon, the fog rolling in from the ocean would all burn off, and her early morning shivering beneath the covers for warmth would be nothing but a distant memory.
Missy checked her phone.
Tuesday. May 15th, 2015.
Seven-fucking-teen.