Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Good morning world!

At least, I thought it was morning. Man, if it wasn't dark.

This was probably because my face was mushed all over the floor. That didn’t lend itself very well towards seeing. I could feel the sun on my back though, so I was pretty sure it was daytime at the very least. Close enough, anyway.

My head hurt. Did I fall? It felt like I’d fallen.

I felt my forehead; there was a pretty nasty bruise. Yup, I had fallen. Also, I had a splinter of wood embedded in my head. Good start, good start…

Do you know what else was embedded in my head? Ideas. Man, oh man were there ideas. I had this idea for like… this schematic of this weird spinny blade thingy, and honestly, it was pretty badass if I did say so myself. Also floating around in my head was… this gun that shot stuff. I could see it in my head. The projectiles were supposed to be… what, blue? Green? Blue-green? Was that even a color? Pfffffft.

…Do you know what was also in my head? This splinter. Of wood. It really hurt. But also felt really good, if you know what I'm saying.

You probably don't. I was a little delirious. Very delirious, actually. This splinter seriously needed to get out of me. Alright, alrighty, alright… how would one go about removing a massive splinter of wood from their forehead?

Well, probably the same way you remove a regular splinter, in that you jiggle and jostle it until it gets really irritated and starts to inflame and becomes really hot and painful and red…

On second thought, no, not doing that. Screw it, I’m gonna yank it. Yanking in three… two…

SHIT. THAT HURT.

And it no longer hurt. See? Problem solved. Yay for me! Yay for everyone! Take that, splinter in my head! Now you were just… a gaping hole in my head?

That probably isn’t good.

How was I still conscious? It just didn’t seem right. Not that I was complaining, of course. The whole situation was just a bit of a conundrum to me.

I experimentally poked my index finger into the hole in my head. My finger tapped at something squishy. Seemed intact to me. …Except for the burst of color that just flashed before my eyes, but I think that was just from the brain-poke.

No internal repairs were needed, so with an unceremonious rip of fabric, I tore a piece of cloth from my shirt and stuck it over my head hole. The slightly globby smears of blood plastering my forehead helped serve as glue, which was very convenient. I patted my shirt-bandage with satisfaction.

Ladies and gentlemen, everything has been fixed. My head has been one-hundred percent repaired and is now ready to take on the world!

Assured of my own wellbeing, I pushed myself off of the wooden floor and hopped up into a standing position. Right, I remembered this place. The patio, right? Patio of what…? It was… it was…

…

My house! Yes, I figured it out! Go me!

I'm thirsty.

Lake. A lake. That had water, right? I needed some water. I stepped down the wooden stairs of the patio to leave and go find a lake.

“Whoop!”

The world turned sideways.

CRASH.

I was feeling some major déjà vu, because I was in the exact same position I was in when I woke up. Except, you know, without the giant splinter in my head.

Clearly there was something going on here. I looked down. That was the ground. Hold on.

With a push, I peeled my face off the ground and stood up. I looked down, and there it was. On the patio, the first step of the stairwell was broken, the wooden planks rotted and caved in.

I stared at that step for an indeterminable amount of time; at that moment, everything else around me became unimportant.

When I saw that step, I saw something much more. When I looked at the rot of the wood planks, I saw the decay of society. I saw the ABB, the Empire, and the Merchants, all expressions of the slow deterioration of Brockton Bay. But even that represented something deeper. The world itself, the world that we lived in, it was all just a wooden plank. A single step in the greater scheme of things, rotting away in its little corner, ignored by anything bigger than the pathetic bugs that crawled on it.

I had to fix that step.

And I knew I could do it too. My head had so many good ideas swirling around in it. In fact, it felt like it was about to burst! So I did what came naturally. I put the ideas to use. I began fixing that step.

FUCK

I just burnt the house down.

Indeed, somewhere along the way, I had managed to turn my house from a sturdy, wooden structure into a smoldering pile of ash.

Damn. Damn. What a shame.

Well, live and let live, as I always said just now. It was all in the past anyway; water under the river or something.

Speaking of water, I was still thirsty. Thirstier now that I'd just committed arson. I needed something to drink. Stepping over the (still broken) patio step, I began setting out into the big city, which probably didn’t have any lakes. Don't know why I hadn’t realized that earlier.

It was a couple of hours later, deep in Brockton Bay, when I finally arrived at a department store somewhere along the Boardwalk. Surprisingly, I hadn't come across anyone so far. What was I there for again? Right. The water! Of course!

After successfully locating the door of the store, which took me a good second, I entered my temple of salvation. I walked around the aisles, giggling and gazing around at the shelves of products and food and generally just feeling good about life in general.

Locating my prize, I grabbed a bottle of water from a fridge, threw it back, and began chugging. It tasted amazing.

"Hey, kid! You gotta pay for that first!"

I stopped drinking and located the cashier, who was standing behind the counter with an irritated look on his face. As I observed the first person I'd seen since waking up, I felt something twist in my gut, alien and new and angry. “Oh, I just wanted a drink.”

He rolled his eyes. "You need to purchase the item before you open it."

I chuckled, smiling a bit too wide. My hands clenched together as I felt a strange urge bubble up from within. "Hey, we're good, right? I'll pay for it later with, uh, something."

A long sigh. "Look, I've had a long day, so I'll keep this short. Pay first, or get out."

My shoulders tensed like a spring. "I'm just saying I-"

"God, what is your problem?" he barked.  "Are you stupid? Deaf, maybe? I told you three times already, now do what I say or get the hell-"

Something snapped.

When I came to, I was kneeling on the floor, holding a shard of glass in my hand. I dropped it, wiping something sticky off my face. Something smelled like metal.

I lifted myself off of the thing that was below me. I didn’t remember this store selling raw meat, nor did I remember bringing it behind the cash register. I stretched my arms, letting out a satisfied groan. I was feeling better. A lot better actually, for some reason. In fact, I felt like building something…

I rushed over to the cutlery section and began putting stuff together. A quick trip to where they kept the air conditioner units supplied me with some engine parts. With some glue sticks and a bunsen burner, I stuck the sharp ends of forks and knives onto the fan blades of the AC units, wiring them all up to an engine.

Soon, I had tinkered up some kind of Blenderizer- Blenderfier? Blenderator. Yes, that sounded nice. It was a work of beauty, like a tornado made of blades, or maybe like an upside-down whipped cream swirl of cutlery. Sure, it looked like it was going to fall apart at any second, including the current second, but it was my invention, and it was perfect just the way it was. That aside, it was time to test this baby out!

With the press of a button, the engine turned on. I smiled upon hearing the stuttering, rumbling noise it made. My moment was cut short by the sudden wailing of police sirens, blinking lights flooding through the windows. I was really tempted to yell "Cheese it, it's the cops!" but there wasn't anyone else nearby to appreciate the line at the moment.

"Come out with your hands up!" shouted an officer. I peeked through a window in the front, Blenderator in hand. A van marked "PRT" was parked in front of the store. I scratched my head with a blade. Parahuman Response Team. Didn’t that mean that they dealt with parahumans? Why were they here?

Looking back out the window, I watched as officers formed a cordon around the store. Staring out at them, I almost felt like a kid in a candy store, the people outside pieces of chocolate, waiting to be unwrapped and dismembered.

I felt my breath pick up, struck by an overwhelming urge to cut. Unable to wait any longer, I cranked up the throttle on the Blenderator, which began spinning rapidly until it was a rattling whirl. Kicking open the door, I rushed at them with my instrument of doom, preparing to scream bloody murder. As promised, I screamed:

"BLOODY MURDER!"

Before I got far, a glob of something slammed into my face. I flew backward onto the pavement, skidding on concrete as I was bombarded by some kind of sticky foam. I screamed, I struggled. Then the foam expanded over my eyes, and everything turned white.

All of these events had led to the current situation, in which I was sitting in the back of a moving PRT van, encased in sticky foam, surrounded by numerous PRT officers with their rifles trained on my head. They seemed like nice people.

Now that I was confined as well as restrained, I was feeling considerably less angry. My all-consuming murderous rage had decreased to a more manageable level of slightly-consuming manslaughterous annoyance. The silence was getting a bit awkward though, so I decided to make some conversation.

"Hey guys! Weather's looking good this time of day, eh?” I tried.

The officers didn't respond. Hmph. Rude.

I was lying in a bed in the hospital, strapped to the railing by my arms, hands, legs, feet, and chest.

I wasn't really into that kind of stuff, but you had to make compromises when you were taken in by the PRT. For example, the guards in armor currently surrounding me, keeping watch just in case I tried any funny business.

At least they had patched up the hole in my head when they took me in. Turned out that I hadn’t done a very good job of it, would've gotten infected and died. Bummer.

Dad was also here, which was pretty neat. When he had first visited me, I had figured that he would've been pretty mad after finding out that I had committed both arson and assault in one day. When I told him, though, he had only seemed shocked and worried, especially after I had tried to bite his throat out.

A man in a white coat walked into the room. A doctor, probably, hadn’t seen him before. Dad looked up at the doctor and began questioning him in worried tones. "Is she ready to be released yet? Will she be getting better? How is she doing so far?"

The doctor just shook his head solemnly. I didn't know which question he was saying no to. "I'm sorry, Mr. Hebert. It's been a whole month already, and she hasn't exhibited any signs of recovery. We're afraid that her current mental condition may be a symptom of her power. Nothing short of a lobotomy would fix it."

I remembered that. They had tried to figure out how to 'fix me', whatever that meant, and had even brought over some girl in white robes. She had touched me. I had headbutted her. Everyone had been happy, especially her when she had stormed out, yelling that she didn't eat brains or something.

Dad looked upset now, the way I expected him to be when I told him about the house incident. "What do you mean ‘nothing short?’ Are you telling me you can't do anything? Can't you send her to therapy, maybe get her a psychiatrist, find someone that can help her?!"

The doctor looked apologetic. "You're on thin ice as it is. While the PRT is willing to offer leniency for recent triggers, she almost killed a man, and there's no getting around that." There were a few seconds of hesitation before he continued. "However, there is an option for parahuman flight risks such as her, though it might not be what you have in mind. While normal therapy isn't viable due to her… propensity for improvising lethal objects, there is an asylum designed specifically for dangerously unstable individuals such as her."

Dangerously unstable? That was an exaggeration, honestly!

…And if I could just get my hand free, I could break that glass of water next to me against the table in just the right way so that it produced the perfect knife...

"Would it help her?" I was snapped out of my thoughts by Dad. He looked like he was at the end of his rope. I felt bad for making him worry like this.

"We don't know for certain," the doctor said. "But it's either that or constant confinement and surveillance inside of a containment facility."

Dad pulled at his hair, gritting his teeth. I wanted to comfort him. "Fine. I'll do anything if it helps her recover… but they had better treat her right."

"Of course, Mr. Hebert."

He let out a deep sigh. After a moment, he asked, "Do I have to sign anything?"

The doctor nodded. "Would you like to get started now?"

A long pause. Finally, Dad mumbled assent, sitting down in his chair and looking very tired. The doctor left the room, probably to go and grab the necessary paperwork.

Now it was just me and Dad, with me just a bit more tied up than him at the moment. He glanced over at me and sighed. I smiled at him in response, trying to cheer him up. "Hey Dad!"

He looked away, putting his head in his hands. Must not be in a good mood. I shrugged and laid my head down on my pillow, trying to get as comfortable as one could while wrapped up like a Christmas present.

All in all, I thought it was turning out to be a pretty good day!

Chapter Text

"So, uh, how's life in general?" I asked the guard sitting next to me. They stayed quiet, kind of like a statue.

"Yeah, me too," I said. "The last month's been a bit hectic, but I'm really excited to be seeing new places, y'know?"

The guards stared ahead, hands remaining on their rifles. Hmph. They were like gargoyles holding guns, except somehow stonier.

Regardless of their current behavior, though, I was sure that I was gradually making progress with them. The guards assigned to me had only gotten more comfortable in my presence, to the point where they had stopped holding their guns toward me after a week or two. That meant that they trusted me. Even after that whole debacle with the scalpel! I felt like I was really getting through to them!

It was kind of gloomy in here though.  Maybe an icebreaker to lighten the mood?

"Hey, what do you call a sleepwalking nun?" I asked the guards with a cheery smile.

Silence.

"...A Roamin' Catholic! Eh? Eh?"

More silence.

Tough crowd, not even a blink. Apparently the cat had gotten all of their tongues.

After my tragically failed joke, the van lapsed once more into silence, save for the rumble of the van's wheels and the sound of my occasional fidgeting.

I'll admit, I sulked a little. These were probably our last moments together, yet they were still giving me the cold shoulder. I wondered what terrible thing I had done to earn this kind of treatment. Besides the scalpel.

Giving up for the time being, I decided to just kick back and relax. I had gotten used to the guards' presence, so when they were around I only felt a slightly overwhelming desire to drown them in their own blood.

Staring out the window at the afternoon horizon, I mulled over my few weeks’ stay at the hospital. It had been pretty fun in its own right, and while there had been some setbacks—most of which involved improvised weaponry—staying in a hospital had been quite the learning experience.

Plus, on the first day of my hospital stay, the Protectorate had prospected me as a potential Ward! A Ward! Armsmaster had even shown up and had talked to me!

I didn't make it in or anything, apparently I had to be ‘mentally sound’ to be in the Wards, but the sentiment was appreciated. I was cool with it.

...If not the tiniest bit disappointed...

Still, I'd make it into the Wards someday. Maybe even the Protectorate, if it took me that long. Regardless of how long it took, I'd eventually make it as one of them, I just knew it.

I had to be positive about things. It’s what Dad would want!

I thought about that for the rest of the drive.

I peered through the window beside me as we drove towards our destination.

It was a large building that had a modern vibe to it. The structure itself was shaped like a rectangle with smaller rectangles intersecting it, made of glass and marble all around. The place had an outer courtyard too, with big, fancy walls towering up like the prison from Shawshank Redemption. That was pretty cool.

A sign hung above the front of the building, embossed with the words: "PHILADELPHIA PARAHUMAN ASYLUM".

Well hello, Philadelphia! Philly was in… Pennsylvania? That sounded about right. It was a nice looking place, lots of trees, lots of grass. I had always wanted to get out of town, see what it was like outside of Brockton. Now I had the chance! This experience was already turning out to be a good one!

The van entered the asylum through an entrance that was some kind of hybrid between a garage and an airlock. A garage-lock? Or maybe a g-air-age. Heh.

I listened on as the driver of the van rattled off a string of codewords into a radio. The door behind us closed as the door in front opened up, with the van entering the building shortly after.

The van stopped, and the back door opened. One of the guards got up, grabbed my handcuffs, and began leading me out the back of the van. I went along giddily, excited to check out the new place.

...Though the guy didn't have to pull me so roughly, jeez.

I was escorted through a pristine, white hallway, the inside of which reminded me a lot of a hotel. There were rows of doors, barred windows, containment foam nozzles… Okay, maybe not that much like a hotel.

Still, it wouldn't hurt to treat it like one! I was going to love it here, I just knew it. I was gonna get to meet new people, talk about my feelings, and take the opportunity to do things I'd never done before. Like being put in solitary confinement!

...If that was a thing. I was pretty sure that was a thing. I’d find out.

As I walked through the asylum corridors, flanked by guards, I passed through a mess hall of some sort. There were multiple circular tables surrounded by chairs, all set on a tiled floor. A hatch was set into one wall, about wide enough to fit a bomb, where food seemed to be dispensed. People of all kinds filled the room, sitting on the chairs and dining away at their respective meals. I cracked a smile at the sight.

So many new friends to meet!

One of them looked me directly in the eye. I stopped in my tracks.

Several more turned toward me. I felt nauseous.

So… many… people…

Blood rushed to my head. I stared at the people staring back at me.

…So… many…

My eye twitched.

I threw myself forward, screaming bloody murder. I was only faintly aware of the guards pinning my arms, trying to hold me down as I thrashed about and howled incoherently.

Almost everyone was staring at me. I'd drawn a crowd. Some of them looked concerned, others looked bored. Both made me feel so very angry. They should've been happy to see me!

Accompanying that thought was a flood of ideas. I could go old-school and just shiv them all to death one by one. Or maybe a fragmentation bomb, set it off in the middle of the room for maximum damage. Or I could construct a cannon that could obliterate them all entirely, reducing the whole room to dust. Or something more personal, individual, something-

Someone seized my head, and I felt a sharp prick on my neck. The ideas halted, the burning rage abruptly subsided, and my shouting became slurred and confused.

The world around me became blurry, a woozy feeling spreading through my body. Whew… I felt… I felt tired…

As my vision began to fade, I slumped back into someone else's arms.

At least I made a memorable first impression.

Darkness.

I came back to consciousness in a bed with an ache in my neck — a familiar situation. I spent a while admiring the smooth, white ceiling… before I realized that I wasn't strapped down this time. Victory! I pushed off the sheets covering me and got out of bed.

Brr! Cold feet. I'd have to ask for slippers. Also a sweater, as apparently, during my snooze session, they had dressed me in a hospital gown, which draped loosely over my thin frame. Not necessarily my style, but at least it was comfortable. I made anything I wore look good anyway.

While inspecting myself, I noticed a flash of color near my arm. I looked down to see a yellow band wrapped around my wrist. Everyone else back in the mess hall had mostly been wearing green and grey bands. Mine was yellow. I liked that, it made me feel unique. I wondered what the colors meant?

After coming up with and dismissing several theories (maybe I was a special guest?) I decided to take a look around what was presumably my new room. It looked pretty cozy with its white, padded walls and concrete floor. I even had a desk and a restroom all to myself. Fancy!

I shuffled over to the shiny metal desk. I tried lifting it from the floor, but it didn't budge. I pulled harder, eliciting a jingle, but a sudden wave of dizziness discouraged me from trying anything more. I guess whatever they had put in my neck hadn’t fully worn off yet.

Giving up on the table itself, I looked to what was on the table itself. Lying on top of the table was a ream of notebook paper and a pen for writing. I picked up the pen to discover that it was chained down, preventing me from weaponizing it. Sad.

With nothing else to do, and struck by a sudden urge to draw, I used the pen to start doodling on the scratch paper. I drew stick figures of me and Emma. Dad too. I drew swirls for my own hair and a few lines to show dad’s hair. Emma’s hair was harder; I didn’t have anything red, unless…

A sharp prick from the tip of the pen, and Emma finally had appropriately red hair. I looked closely at the red blotch on the paper. Slowly but surely, I started getting ideas. Pushing the current drawing aside, I pressed pen to paper and began scribbling feverishly, practically pouring the schematics from my brain into the canvas before me. As I reached the edge of the page, I realized that the size of the blueprint was larger than the paper could fit, so I drew between multiple pages and began jigsawing the sheets together on the floor.

Yes… that looks nice... Ooh, yeah, I can add that... This will do something, I think… Put that around there... That goes together with this thing to… do… that… and… Done!

I proudly looked over my handiwork. The entire floor was covered with convoluted curves and spirals of paper, the scrawlings of ink outlining a matter-disintegration device I had been thinking of in the van.

All theoretical, of course. I wasn't even sure whether it worked, but just thinking about using it made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

I was done now, yet there was still paper remaining. And looking at the nonexistent clock, I had a whole lot of time on my hands. I tried the door, but nope, it was locked. I walked back over to my desk. Bereft of any other ideas at the moment, I just started folding the paper, one edge over the other. Over. And over. And over.

I had been folding for what seemed like forever when a knock came from the door. The click of a lock was followed by the squeak of the door sliding open. Someone had come to visit me!

Someone here. In my room.

I heard footsteps behind me. "Hello. Taylor, is it?"

"Yes," I said carefully, deliberately not looking up from the paper in front of me. The paper I had managed to fold into one, very sharp point.

As I saw the shadow of her figure approaching, I tensed. “It’s nice to meet you, Taylor-”

I jumped out of my chair and rushed at them, plunging down the shiv of paper with all of my strength.

It stabbed into what looked like a hazmat suit before it crumpled into a useless lump.

Slowly, I looked up through the faceplate of the suit. It was a woman: tall, Asian, kinda pretty.

The woman gave me a smile from within the suit. I smiled back, before I realized my failed knife prototype was still mushed against her neck area. My smile turned embarrassed as I pulled my arm away, tossing the ball onto the floor behind me.

Unfazed, the woman walked the rest of the way into the room, carefully stepping over the pages scattered all over the floor. "I see that you've already made use of the notebook paper we've provided for you. I’m glad it’s served you well." Her voice was smooth, very calming.

I shuffled my feet, feeling a little nervous. "Yup. It’s good stuff. Good paper. …Not a very good knife, though."

“Do you mind if I sit?” I shook my head. With a slight grunt, she sat down on the desk chair. "My name is Doctor Yamada. I’m one of the therapists working here.”

Therapists? Clearly, they were getting something mixed up here. I pursed my lips. “Yeah, about that… I feel fine, so I don’t think I really need therapy. I don’t really know why I’m here, I think all of this has just been a bit of a misunderstanding.”

That seemed to give Doctor Yamada pause. “Is that so? I’m sure we’ll get that sorted out, then.” She eyed one of my designs on the desk, which included a graphic illustration of its intended function. “Well, whether you need my services or not, I'm here for much more than just that. For instance, we could kick things off with a normal conversation."

I perked up at that. "Really? Great! No one's been talking to me for days now and it's really been creeping me out. Erhm, where do I start…? Well, I've been having a really weird month, a lot of things have been happening. I've been meeting a bunch of interesting new people, like this one cashier that I tried to kill, and those guards I tried to kill, and there's also these ideas that pop into my head and-"

I trailed off as I realized what I was doing. At some point, my hands had wrapped around the neck portion of Doctor Yamada's suit. I disengaged my fingers and backed away from the Doctor, lightly apologizing. She smiled at me and asked me to continue.

I gave an awkward chuckle and sprawled myself across my bed. I resumed speaking. "Again, sorry about that… Uh, right! The ideas. So, I was thinking about making this thing that's based on something that I've made — well, the only thing that I've made before I was sent here — but basically, it’s an improvement off of the previous design. I call it… The Insides Blenderator! Basically, you stick it inside of someone's chest and it blends their insides…"

The conversation continued along that vein for the rest of the session: me rambling away, Doctor Yamada nodding and interjecting every now and then. It was refreshing. It was nice. Life was good.

Upon the start of the next day, I was greeted by a couple of orderlies who laid out some pills alongside my breakfast onto the metal desk. After only trying to strangle them with my hair twice, I sat myself down in front of my desk. I gave the medication a sour look.

Honestly, though I was willing to try a lot of things, I could easily say that I didn't like the pills. Taking them back in the hospital caused everything to be all dull, and generally they just made the world a darker place. Thus, when the time came to take them, I only pretended to swallow them, keeping them under my tongue to spit out later.

I needed some fresh air, so I asked the orderlies if I could leave my room. They had said yes, though not before pulling an oversized straitjacket around my arms and torso. I was a bit annoyed with that, but I understood why they had to do it. Didn't stop me from biting into one of their arms, but I understood.

I was walked through the hallways by the orderly with the unbitten arm. I viewed the various paintings on the walls along the way, appreciating the landscapes which were the closest things to outdoor windows that I had seen here yet. I wasn’t allowed to interact with the other asylum patients yet, so I was barred from the mess hall, the recreation room, and basically anywhere that wasn't my room. However, I could still roam the halls as I pleased as long as I had an escort.

I passed by a girl who was being pushed along in a wheelchair. She looked as if she was out of this world. Really, if I were to ever see someone's face while they gazed into outer space, that's the expression I would expect to see.

The girl just sort of lolled her head back as she sat in the wheelchair. The orderlies pushing the girl along were muttering to each other about "Shifting her schedule," and "Limiting the spread." Really weird stuff. I decided to speak up.

"Hi there!" I chirped to the girl with a small wiggle of my arms, not a wave as both my hands were bound together. She didn't respond, inspecting something in the middle of the air that was invisible to my human eyes. I gave her a once over. Platinum-blonde hair, thin, comparatively small. Her wheelchair would help make up for her size when I threw her into a lake.

I tamped down the urge. "Not much of a talker, are you?" I called out to her as she was wheeled away. "Well, I'll see you later then!"

I didn't know whether I'd actually see her later, but it was always nice to give people something to look forward to. Like the lake.

I utilized the rest of the trip out of my room to explore the various sections of the asylum, including the Grey Ward, the Green Ward, and the Yellow Ward, which is where I was rooming. The Red Ward was off-limits, a real shame if you asked me.

There was a lot of interesting stuff to be seen regardless. The Grey rooms were mostly unremarkable, but the Green rooms turned out to be more interesting. In one of the rooms, I saw a scrawny man arguing with a flickering clone of himself. A quick glance into another room revealed a girl rapping away at her forehead, pacing back and forth as she muttered to herself inaudibly.

I journeyed further into the ward. A heavyset man sat in the middle of a room, mouth frozen in a yelling configuration. A woman fractaled into herself, the images fracturing and splitting mesmerizingly. A teenage boy threw himself at a wall repeatedly with supernatural speed. There was an old woman who looked in her seventies, with fingers that branched out and scrabbled at the window.

Finally, we stopped in front of a room that was a mess of paper, scribbles, and ink, all splayed haphazardly across the floor in random directions. The handwriting was frantic, all jagged lines and corners. It looked like one of those stereotypical insane-person cells from Hollywood. Unoccupied. I wondered who was kept there?

"Alright, back into your room," the orderly ordered.

Huh.

We were back in the Yellow Ward.

Shrugging to myself, I let the orderly remove my straitjacket and allowed myself to be gently shoved forward into the same room I was looking into. The door shut behind me.

I stretched the kinks out of my arms and legs. Did you know that doing that was called pandiculation? I read it in this article once.

Anyway, it was time to retire for the night. I tossed myself onto my bed and got nice and comfortable. Who knew that touring an entire building for a day could be so tiring? I didn't. Important information to consider for another time.

I mentally reviewed my asylum experience so far. I met a lot of people, had a nice conversation, and promised to throw someone into a lake! I had even gotten the lay of the land and had made a great first impression on the residents, not to toot my own horn.

If it was going to be like this all the time here, then maybe this asylum wouldn’t be all that bad. Maybe I’d go around the place, make some friends, and then… who knew?

Maybe being here wouldn't be so bad.

Chapter Text

"...And it'd basically shake the person really hard. I mean really hard. Earthquake levels. You know how they say don't shake babies? Well, the same thing goes, but for anyone when you're shaking them at Mach speed. So, in essence, the shaking would turn the person's insides into one big bruised clump of mush, also mix them up a little…"

Snuggled into the sheets of my bed, I let anything that came to mind. Talking with Doctor Yamada was always a relief. Aside from writing down my ideas, it was the only other way I could let out all the tension in my head.

While the asylum rotated therapists now and then, they only really sent Doctor Yamada to my room, as she was the one I tried to kill the least. I also liked Doctor Jeffery, but that was only because he had a nice voice. He didn't seem to appreciate me going for his eyes so much anyway.

"...But the problem is that there's a bunch of connective tissue in the way. So in order to mix well before drinking, you gotta hit them with some radiation to soften up their insides, kinda like a microwave. Of course, that gets to the problem of not rupturing the outside layer, because in that case everything just comes spilling out. Actually, scratch that, that's not a problem anyway-"

"Taylor?"

I paused. Doctor Yamada never interrupted me unless it was important. "Yeah?"

Doctor Yamada folded her hands as best as she could with a protective suit on. "I was thinking… How do you feel about the other patients in the asylum?"

I adjusted my view of Doctor Yamada so that it was diagonal. In other words, I tilted my head. "I feel fine about them, though I haven't really met any of them yet. Why?"

"I'm considering giving you leave to interact with other patients in the asylum soon. While your first reaction upon seeing other patients was quite… violent, I feel as if you've improved considerably over these past few weeks."

I stared at her for a moment before the corners of my mouth rose up in a wide smile. “Really? You’d do that for me?”

Doctor Yamada nodded, a cautiously pleased expression on her face. "If you continue to show improvements, I think we just might."

I shot out of my bed and embraced Doctor Yamada in a hug. Then I headbutted the faceplate of her suit. Then I thanked her repeatedly.

“...Thank you thank you thank you!” I couldn’t express enough how grateful I was to her, headbutt included.

"Just… promise me one thing.” I looked up from my embrace. Doctor Yamada’s smile had faded somewhat. “Promise me that you won't get yourself into more trouble, don't break anything or hurt anyone, alright?"

I bobbed my head up and down vigorously. “I promise.”

As promised, after about a week of good behavior, paired with Doctor Yamada’s approval, I was finally allowed to interact with the other residents of the asylum.

This was dependent on a number of compromises. One, I was to be wearing a straitjacket at all times. Two, I was to be monitored by the asylum orderlies at all times. Three… I forgot three. Didn't matter.

Even on those terms, I might not have been allowed out, according to what I had overheard from the orderlies. However, since today was one of my “good days,” the asylum people had decided that it was safe to let me go. I personally thought that the concept was silly; I didn't have any “days,” every day was a good day for me!

Anyways, the point was that I was now able to talk to the others and make new friends for the first time since my little mess hall freakout. I was so excited!

So here I was in the recreation room, trailed by an orderly who watched me closely. The room looked fairly typical: couches, chairs, televisions, board games, the normal recreation stuff. Stuff to entertain yourself with, stabby implements not included.

Seeing the people hanging around in the room only made me feel slightly murderous, which was a pleasant surprise. Plunking down on a seat near the biggest group of patients I could find, I made my introduction.

"Hi guys! My name is Taylor, I'm really glad to be meeting you guys!" I beamed at them.

Conversations stopped. All the people nearby turned and eyed the yellow stripe on my sleeve warily before looking at me. Eventually, a boy wearing a green wristband spoke up. "Aren't you the loony they brought in last week?"

A tall woman with empty black eyes slapped him on the back of the head. "Shush! Everyone's here for different reasons, there's no need to bring it up. The fact that she's here means that she's gotten better."

“That’s right!” I said proudly. “Reformed and ready to mingle!”

The rest of the group seemed to relax fractionally, though they still eyed me warily. Drama queens, the lot of them! Loudly promise the death of an entire room once and you can never live it down.

...If that woman’s eye sockets were truly empty, I could easily shove something sharp in there-

A wiry-looking girl wearing a grey wristband jogged up to me and held out her hand. “Well, that’s good enough for me! Hi Taylor, the name’s Alicia!”

Alicia stared at her outstretched hand for a second before she realized her mistake, grabbed one of the sleeves of my straightjacket, and shook that instead.

"Ah-lee-see-ah,” I enunciated. “Cool name!" She looked pleased.

Alicia breaking the ice gave the others time to regain their nerve. They moved to greet me as well.

“Samuel. Nice to meet you.” That was the boy from earlier.

“I’m Stephine. A pleasure.” That was the pretty eyeless woman.

“Randal.” That was the flickering clone-man I had seen back in the Green Ward.

“Randal.” That was also the flickering clone-man.

The rest of the room made their introductions, each with their individual deformations and minor quirks. Afterward, they largely went back to what they were doing. Only Alicia, Samuel, Stephine, and Randal had stayed. The other Randal had wandered off.

"So what were you guys doing here?" I asked the group.

"Television," Samuel answered, leaning back onto the couch. My eyes drifted over to the object in question.

...I could take that apart, I just had to get my hands free…

I pushed at the straitjacket to no avail. Oh well, it was worth a try. "Neat. What are you watching?"

He made a vague gesture towards the screen, which was currently showing a rom-com of sorts. Eh, I preferred cartoons. Everyone watching seemed to like it though, so I sat down for the ride.

Alicia was sprawled out across the couch, not particularly paying attention. Randal stood stock-still like a guard. Stephine seemed invested in the characters, watching the television intently. I wondered how she was viewing the program; she didn't have any eyes that I could see.

“Hey, by the way…" I said to Samuel as the movie passed the first-hour mark. I pointedly glanced at my right sleeve. "What’s with the whole color coding thing? I mean, I think it’s pretty cool, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t really know what it all means."

Samuel looked up from the television, giving me a strange look before explaining. “Well, there are four colors here. Grey, Green, Yellow, and Red. The patients with the grey wristbands are just here temporarily, either because of accidents involving powers or the powers themselves. They typically stay around a month or two before transferring out."

"The green patients…" He gestured to the occupants of the room. "...That's most of us, are usually more long-term patients. Typically, greens aren't too much of a danger to anyone but themselves, and they're just here because they can't control themselves. Yellow patients…"

He glanced at me meaningfully. "Yellow patients are an active danger to others as well, which is why we don't see them very often in the common rooms."

So I was an exception! I'd always wanted to be exceptional! Yet there was one fact that still eluded me. "What about the red patients?"

Samuel shuddered. "The red patients are something else. Whether they mean it or not, those guys are just really dangerous. That's why they're kept under lock and key. I remember seeing this one red patient while the asylum was trying to get them under control. Was like a huge mass of tentacles and organs, crushed everything it touched. Scary stuff."

"Sounds like a good time!" I remarked. Samuel frowned at me.

"...Right," he said slowly. "Anyway, that's pretty much it. Any other questions?"

In fact, I did have another question. "Yeah, uh, who's the one sitting in the back seat over there?" I turned and looked accordingly. "He didn't introduce himself to me when I came into the room. I think I'm gonna go over and say hi."

Samuel followed the direction of my gaze and made a noise of understanding. "Oh, we don't mess with him. We call him Brainy, don't know his real name. He's not violent or anything, but… you'll know."

Getting up from the couch, I waved dismissively as best as I could while in a straightjacket. "I'm sure he's not that bad."

"My brain! I can feel my brain! Someone please fix it oh GOD my brain I can feel the air on my brain-"

I sat next to Brainy, facing him and trying to look as casual as I could. Brainy thrashed his head around, clawing at a gaping hole in his head and overall looking very stressed out. I tried humming Frère Jacques to calm him down. It didn't seem to work, but he eventually tired out.

"Hey there!" I greeted Brainy after he had settled down, though I was tragically unable to wave. "You seem a little wound up there, is it because you're feeling a brain wave? Eh? Like an air wave? Because it's exposed?"

He stared at me for a moment, processing my amazing joke. Finally, he began laughing hysterically, clawing at his head twice as hard as before. I laughed along with him. What a fun guy!

"You know, I had a wound just like the one you have there!" I eventually managed between chuckles. "It's pretty cool, right? Poke a finger right through and you can touch your brain-meats all you want! Could even scoop some out, if you wanna do that for some reason…"

Brainy didn't respond to my friendly banter, opting to rhythmically sway in place instead. Falling silent, I took to idly pulling at my straitjacket.

I blew a strand of hair out of my face, though it wasn’t very long. The orderlies had cut it up to my shoulders ever since I had tried to use my hair as a garotte for the umpteenth time. It wasn’t my fault that it was curly and was really good at hooking onto people’s necks.

“By the by… what’s your power?” I asked casually.

Brainy seemed to snap out of his trance and looked at me, seeming on the verge of a breakdown. "R-Regeneration. I can’t take it anymore! It doesn’t heal me, it pulls me back to my previous state! That's all it does! Do you know what my previous state was like?! IT'S LIKE THIS!” Brainy clawed at his perpetually mutilated scalp one more time before going limp.

I whistled. “That's rough. Makes me feel glad for my power. I just make stuff that does stuff, with no other setbacks. Pretty cool, huh?”

Brainy just whimpered and hugged his knees, pawing at his head every now and then.

We sat there, un-awkwardly of course. No silence was awkward with me in it! It wasn’t true silence, anyhow, because Brainy’s whimperings were pretty loud, and steadily getting louder. And angrier. And closer. Huh.

I was hoisted into the air as Brainy abruptly jerked to his feet and grabbed me. I wasn’t that large of a kid and was also bound in a straitjacket, so I just kind of got picked up like a sack of potatoes. He began shaking me back and forth.

“HELP ME!” Brainy yelled. I didn’t… really know how? He was shaking me really hard. Was this what it was like being in that machine I was talking about with Doctor Yamada?

I couldn’t see too much while my vision was quaking back and forth, but I was aware that orderlies were shouting and rushing over to where we were. The rest of the room had backed away, giving us both a very wide berth. Very considerate of them!

The assisting orderlies grabbed Brainy and tried to pull him away from me. He desperately grabbed onto the sleeves of my straitjacket, still screaming for me to help him. Sorry, no can do! Finally, he lost his grip and was dragged back. He shouted and struggled as the orderlies began restraining him.

Meanwhile, I had gotten up from where I had fallen. I was shaken up a little, but none the worse for wear. The important thing, though, was that my arms had gotten much looser when Brainy had pulled on my sleeves. With a little elbow grease, I wriggled out of the already loose-fitting straitjacket. I guess it wasn’t designed for people my age.

Some of the people in the room gasped and pointed as they saw me out of my restraints. I ignored them, making a beeline straight for the TV, already having ideas.

I smiled so wide it felt like my face might tear off.

Well, that was one question answered. The asylum did have solitary confinement.

Honestly, a bit of a letdown. It was more or less exactly like my room, except it didn't have a desk. Other than that, it had the padded walls and everything. Though the fact that there was no paper to write on was a little annoying.

Not that I could write at the moment. I was bound to a bed similar to when I was in the hospital. Also, I had a metal cage locked around my mouth. I guess they needed to keep my tongue from escaping? Weird.

It was pretty neat to look at though. Made me look like one of those punk rock singers. Except even those guys couldn’t pull off a straitjacket like I did. I think they complemented my appearance pretty well. I should join a metal band.

Come to think of it, they probably put the cage around my mouth because of all the people I bit while they were taking me in. Still unnecessary! It wasn’t like I liked biting people. Human flesh tasted pretty bad. It tasted even worse than the medication that I hid under my tongue in the mornings, and that was saying something. Blood tasted all metallic, salty, sour, and bitter, and it just was not an experience I’d recommend to anyone.

A burst of static echoed from the front corner of the room. Huh, they had a TV screen in here? How did I not notice that? The static-filled image on the screen cleared up to show… Doctor Yamada.

Oh man. This was awkward. Didn’t she tell me to…

“Taylor.”

If I wasn’t bound to my bed, I’d sink further into it. One word and I already felt like I was being scolded for stealing cookies from the cookie jar. That is if the cookie jar was a TV and the cookies were a makeshift railgun. There was also the ammo for the railgun in the form of watches, silverware, and other metal objects, but that didn’t fit well into the whole cookie metaphor I had going on.

“Taylor, are you listening?” Doctor Yamada sounded sad. I thought she’d be… angry? Disappointed? I didn’t know what I was expecting. I let out a mhhm in response.

On the screen, Doctor Yamada visibly sighed. “I’m sorry.”

...Eh?

“Why?” I asked.

She looked into my eyes through the screen, seeming ashamed. “I let you out too early. I should’ve known a pattern over two months wasn’t good enough to indicate overall improvement. I was eager to allow you some leeway, to let you socialize like any other person in the outside world. In my overzealousness, I made a mistake. For that, I’m sorry.”

“Uh… that’s alright Doctor Yamada. I don’t blame you!” The cage made it hard to smile, but I tried my best.

Doctor Yamada made another conflicted expression. “It’s not only that. As of today, I will no longer be one of your primary therapists. Another therapist will be assigned to you, and you’ll be kept in confinement for another week or so.”

My face fell. “That’s… uh. That’s news to me, Doctor Yamada. I- er…” That didn't feel good. I felt like building something. Then building some more. Then building even more. “I… but…”

“Again, I’m sorry Taylor. I wanted to stay with you, but the asylum staff feels that I'm too biased to maintain proper judgment." A grimace. "I truly do wish I could continue to work with you, but the higher-ups have the last say in these matters. Just... try to continue working on the exercises we practiced.”

Doctor Yamada gave me a reassuring smile. “And don’t worry, I’m sure the next therapist will be a great conversationalist.” Her smile took on a teasing edge. "Never as good as me, of course."

I chuckled as best as I could before letting out a breath. “...And what about the ideas?”

She knew exactly what I was talking about. “I’ll try to get some more sketching paper sent to your room soon after you’ve been released from confinement. It’s the least I can do for you.”

"...Will I be able to see you again?" I asked after a short pause.

"Maybe. Hopefully we can meet again, in better circumstances," Doctor Yamada told me.

Indistinct voices could be heard in the background of the TV speakers. Doctor Yamada glanced backward before looking back towards the screen. “I’m… I’m afraid this is going to have to be goodbye. It’s been a pleasure working with you, Taylor. I hope you know that. Bye Taylor.”

I didn't want her to leave. She was going to leave me.

...

"...Bye mom."

The TV screen blipped off, Doctor Yamada’s face flashed out of existence. The screen stayed black.

The room was silent again. Everything felt like it was frozen in place.

I stared at the blank screen.

I stared at it some more.

My eyes remained fixated on the screen for a long while.

The sketching paper had arrived eventually, and a lot of it too.

I had managed to cheer back up some since the railgun incident. It was nice, both to be back in my room (Hello desk!) and to be able to transcribe my ideas once more. The restraints had been tight, though; I had been rubbing red marks out of my skin for a while after I had been released.

The new therapist — though I hated to call them that because I didn’t need therapy — wasn’t very conversational. Well, they talked, but they didn’t talk in that Yamada sort of way that I was used to. They talked about mental headspace and self-control and all that weird stuff, and they gave me odd looks whenever I talked about my latest idea.

Nevertheless, I was still trying to stay positive! My little drawing projects were now being finished at record speeds! I went through the lined paper (I think it was called College-ruled?) in mere minutes now.

The only downside was that the sketches were cluttering up my room a little bit. I’d tried to slow it down, with some limited success, but the temptation usually took over after a bit...

Right now I was sitting on the edge of my bed, swinging my legs and humming a little tune to myself.

London Bridge is falling down… falling down… falling down...

London Bridge is falling down…

My… fair…

…

I got up off the bed. The ideas were getting a bit annoying again. Perhaps I'd draw some more…?

Chapter Text

They had installed a TV screen in my room, just like in the solitary confinement room.

Normally, this would be pretty cool — who didn't want to watch TV in bed? — but, tragically, the TV didn't play movies or programs.

Instead, it played the therapy show.

“Taylor, are you there?”

The new doctor was… Doctor Panama? Padma? Panda? I didn't know, I hadn't been paying attention. Pretty sure it started with a P.

I was too busy thinking about this cool new design for the Blenderator to care. This one was going to have even more blades and move by itself and...

“Taylor?” She sounded a bit worried now, so I looked up.

“Mhh?” I asked.

Doctor P let out a relieved breath. “Oh thank god, I thought you were in one of your fugues again. Did you hear what I was asking you?”

Uh.

“No, sorry.”

“It’s okay. I was asking whether you’d like to talk to me about anything. Doctor Yamada told me that conversation is something that you enjoy. Maybe about one of your potential inventions?”

I frowned slightly at the reminder of Yamada. "I mean… I was having this idea…" I mumbled out.

"Really? And what was that?"

I didn't respond, my attention having drifted away when another idea popped into my head. I heard a slight sigh, cut off before it could truly begin.

"Taylor, the others and I are beginning to become worried about you. You've slowly been dissociating from the world around you, and there's not much we can do about it. We need you to work with us."

"Mh. Sorry, sorry…" I really was, too. It was just that it was so much easier to be brainstorming new ideas than to do… whatever it was that we were doing.

After it became clear that I wasn't going to say anything else, Doctor P let out a full-blown sigh. "Alright, well, I suppose we can wrap up for today… I'd like you to know that we really do care, Taylor. Perhaps we can talk some more on one of your good days, alright?”

I heard an electronic beep as the screen turned off. I fidgeted with my hands, aching to get my hands around the screen's inner workings.

It wasn’t possible. The TV screen was too high up and was covered with some kind of reinforced plastic, preventing any disassembly.

Why did the doctors start speaking behind screens now? Doctor Yamada used to come into my room to talk. It confused me. Were they scared of me? I wasn’t that bad, right?

I was safe to be around, wasn't I?

I didn't get out much these days.

This was due to multiple reasons. After the whole thing with the rail gun, the orderlies had gotten much less comfortable with just letting me out of my room, much less into the public rooms. A particularly enterprising orderly had tried putting a blindfold over my eyes, seeing if that would let me go outside without incident, but without sight, I had just bitten the first person that I heard nearby.

Another reason I didn't leave much was that I tended to space out a bunch nowadays, or at least that's what Doctor P told me. I did admit, clarity had been coming harder for me recently, though the exact why of it wasn't apparent to me. I just fell into my ideas much easier, and everything else took second priority.

It had leaked into most of the things I did. The doctors were getting more and more worried about my space-outs, to the point where they had even tried giving me some materials to build with to see what happened. That was nice. I had fun. They hadn't tried it again.

Right now, I was lying in my bed. Lucidity came difficult to me some days, to the point where I'd wake up in the middle of scrawling a design onto a piece of paper, standing dead on my feet with my blankets dragged out behind me. I didn't mind waking up like that, it was actually pretty interesting to see what I'd wake up to next. The doctors had been really upset when they found out about it, though.

The bed felt nice, I cozied into the sheets as I stared up at the ceiling. My thoughts drifted off aimlessly.

...Would an armless person be better or worse at unarmed combat? What if I ate myself alive? Would there be a point where I passed out from shock or would I be able to keep going until I get to the organs? Would I eventually get to the point where I reached my own stomach and ate my own digestive tract over and over again in a sort of feedback loop...

...I miss Dad...

The thought came out of left-field. I felt a lot less happy after that.

Hopefully, I would get to see him soon. Maybe I'd get to leave sometime, who knew? They couldn't leave me in here forever, could they? I was getting better, right?

...

That's about when I started having ideas again.

I dragged the pen across the scratch paper. The ink didn't come out fast enough. I pressed harder. I wrote faster. I slid the sheet across the table over and over as I filled the margins and corners of the paper with the endless stream of ideas. 

The pen's movement halted as the chain attached to it pulled taut. I pursed my lips, moved the pen back, and continued scratching away with the tip.

My head hurt.

I reached the edge of the page and didn't stop, staining the desk with ink before I caught myself and stopped. I snatched the sheet up and tossed it onto the ground. Grabbing another page, I resumed my frantic scribbling.

It was well past curfew. My little drawing sessions had begun to bleed over into my sleeping time. One thing was becoming increasingly clear.

Paper was not doing it anymore.

I was scribbling and scribbling like my life depended on it, yet it no longer helped stem the flow of ideas that crowded uncomfortably in my head, threatening to burst outwards, hurting in a way that was worse than the splinter ever was.

The picture that I was piecing together on paper right now was large. Very large. Too large for me to sketch out on a single page. It was hinges and hinges and hinges that attached together into one big mess of metal, like a spider overlapped on itself repeatedly. The machine seemed to glare at me from the pages laid out on the floor, begging me to build it, pressuring me, imploring me.

...Maybe I could focus harder on the individual parts of the device. Would that help? It was worth a try.

I trawled through the pile of paper on the floor. Ok… This part here would pin the person down and incapacitate them. This part here would saw the limbs off and cut open the torso. This part helped disconnect the internal organs from the body. This part here was legs. Those were just legs. Legs! Did it have to move? I didn’t know! Why hadn’t I thought of this earlier? I just… gah!

Pressing down on my head. Had to build something. Had to. I threw down the pen and stared at my fingers. Hands, my hands would do. I took the undersides of my nails and began filing them against the edge of the metal desk. Back and forth. Back and forth.

An hour later and my nails had been sharpened to a fine edge. Clenching my fists drew blood. Claws were pretty cool, right? They could be for a bunch of stuff like peeling oranges and ripping out throats. Very useful. Very handy.

Pushing. Urging. I needed to do more. Were nails all that I could think of?

...Well, I could take some enamel strengthening toothpaste and mix it with some of the pills that I had saved and the cleaning agents in the restroom to create a paste that reinforces keratin…

Two and a half hours later and I had sharp, hard fingernails that didn't break. Amazing! Super! I was happy now. I was satisfied.

I lurched to the side and raked my nails against the walls, tearing the padding and driving claw marks deep into it. I slammed my nails against the desk, clanging loudly and sending waves of pain through my hand. Not good enough. Not good enough!

My head hurt. I had a headache. Had to get out. Had to leave. Had to build. Ideas. Too many ideas.

I hummed a little tune. I tapped out a rhythm. I paced back and forth. Paper crinkled under my feet. There were so many- too many designs. Still, the ideas came forth. I stalked up to the desk and wrote.

The paper ran out. I went to the walls instead, using my nails to etch designs over the gashes I had clawed into the padding. It didn't matter whether it was legible, only that it was transcribed, expelled out of my head in some form. Words, numbers, images, all of it inscribed into the walls of my room as I ripped and tore and tore.

The rest of the night was a bit of a blur. I don't remember when I stopped scratching, only that when I did, the ideas flowed slightly slower and my head hurt slightly less.

Stumbling over a particularly large pile of ink-stained paper, I managed to make it into bed. I could sleep. I could hopefully, finally sleep. That'd be nice. I felt tired. Really tired.

...Goodnight.

Another week passed. The ideas didn't get any less intense. I wrote more on the walls and floor, that helped a little. The doctors talked, I kind of listened. They had been upset when they had seen the state of my room, but they never sent anyone in to fix it.

It was on one of my ‘good days,’ while I was scratching out the finishing touches to my latest idea, when the TV screen flashed on, revealing a familiar face. Faces, actually.

My heart leapt. Dad. Some other girl. I racked my brain for her name. Em… Emma. Emma! I remembered now! They had finally come to visit me!

I grinned up at the television screen, waving at them. "Hey Dad, hey Ems! How's high school going for you? Emma, I mean, not you Dad."

I felt like the question was relevant. Enough time had passed that we both would've moved to high school by now. That is, if I weren't here. A true shame, that.

Dad gave me a weak smile. Emma gave… I didn't understand that facial expression.

"Hey Taylor," Dad said, scratching his neck. He chuckled awkwardly, "Heh, you would not believe how hard it was to get this appointment set up…"

He trailed off as both he and Emma studied something behind me through the screen.

“What is it, guys?” I asked. I glanced back towards where they were looking. I only saw my usual schematics, carpeting the floor, scratched onto the walls, and engraved into the floor. Nothing out of the ordinary.

My face lit up. “Oh! That reminds me, I was just sketching a little when you guys came along! Wanna take a look?”

“We can… see it pretty clearly, kiddo,” Dad said. He was smiling oddly, as if his smile could immediately turn the other way at any moment. “You… sure do draw a lot, don’t you?”

I smiled and nodded, leaning back onto my bed. “Yup! I like drawing. It helps get the ideas out of my head.”

Dad's smile flipped upside down. “The ideas?” he asked.

Oh, right. Dad and Emma probably didn’t know about the ideas like how the asylum people did. “The ideas,” I explained, “It’s like- I get these little notions that pop up in my head, and they just kinda… whisper to me? No, wrong word...”

I thought for a moment. “Alright. Think of it like alarm clocks. You know that feeling when you’re woken up in the morning by that really annoying beeping noise that the alarm clock makes, and you have to sit up and lean all the way over to turn it off?”

Dad gave a slow nod.

“Well imagine that, but over time the alarms multiply. First, there's one of them, then there's two. Then four, eight, sixteen, so on so forth you get the idea."

While I was talking, I had left the bed and had begun pacing around the room. "There becomes more and more of the alarms until eventually, they're unmanageable. You can’t turn them all off anymore. They’re insistent. ‘Wake up! Wake up!’ they say. I mean, one way or another it gets to the point where you’re gonna wake up, right?”

I stopped and spread my arms behind me, “That’s what all this is! Me turning off the alarm clocks, making them less loud. It helps pass the time and it stops the ideas too!" I made a face. "...At least for the most part. Also, the doctors don’t like it when I write on the walls…”

Emma was being weirdly silent. Dad made a muted noise that I couldn’t decipher. He changed the subject. “How are they treating you here?”

“Oh, they treat me great!” I answered easily. “Nice room, nice people, and nice food!"

I stuck out my tongue. "...Though some of the food here could use a little more salt, particularly the spaghetti. Bleh. Tastes weird. I can’t even use forks because I’m ‘not allowed to’ and stuff and-”

“Why aren't you getting better?!” Emma blurted out, cutting me off. I looked up at the screen, surprised. She looked on the verge of tears. Dang. Uh…

“...I’m fine though?” I answered, perplexed. Was she worried that she wouldn't see me again? “Don’t worry Ems, I’m just staying here for a little while, then I’ll be out in no time! Kind of like a hotel, if you know what I mean!”

Emma shook her head furiously and clenched her fists, “No, no. You don’t get to say that! You’ve been in here for months already! When are they going to let you out? In six months? A year? Two years? Five years? You can’t wait that long! I can’t wait that long!”

She was openly crying now. Dad looked uncomfortable.

“Ah… there, there?” I tried giving Emma a comforting smile. I couldn’t rub her on the back, so that was the best I could do. “It’ll be fine Emsie. I promise you that I’ll come over and visit sometime!”

Emma exhaled sharply. “How can you promise that Taylor?! How? Just… how…?” She placed her face in her hands. “We were going to start high school together, you know that? We were going to be freshmen together. Why’d you have to go and get yourself put here, of all places?!”

Sniffling and wiping at her eyes, Emma continued on in a croaky voice. “...Going to school doesn’t feel the same, Taylor. Nothing feels the same without you, knowing that you’re trapped here in this… in this prison!”

Dad put an arm around Emma, who buried her head in his chest. I wished that I could comfort her, but I was behind a screen. I shuffled around awkwardly instead.

Finally, Emma mumbled out from within Dad’s chest. “Do you really mean it? Promise that you'll come back?”

I smiled at her. “Hey, c’mon… When have I ever lied to you?”

A buzzer went off in the distance. Dad momentarily scowled at the noise before he looked into my eyes across the screen. “That’s our cue. The doctors didn’t want us to talk to you for too long, they said that prolonged human contact tends to cause 'regression' in your behavior. I don’t buy it, but we’re already on thin ice as it is.”

Dad closed his eyes and sighed before opening them again. He gave me a sad smile. “We all miss you, Taylor.”

“I miss you all too,” I told him. “I’ll see you guys soon!”

Emma clutched Dad tighter at that. The screen shut off, just like last time.

I blinked at the empty screen for a moment. Then I looked back down to the floor at the markings I had scratched in. I continued drawing.

A few days later, I had been putting the finishing touches on the floor mosaic when I saw a flash of movement outside of my room. I immediately rushed over to the window, eager to see whether someone was visiting me in person.

I saw… an orange lizard person? He was peering in through the reinforced glass. I waved at him, he waved back. I waved with two hands. He waved with two hands back. This was fun!

Lizard Guy suddenly doubled over as a woman in a welding mask slapped him roughly on the back. She glanced at me for a moment before she made a 'get-a-move-on' gesture at Lizard Guy and walked out of view. Lizard Guy shrugged apologetically at me and left, following the woman.

Aww. So they weren't visiting me. Still, it was nice to see another face in person after so long. Were they staying here too? Why weren't there any orderlies with them? Hm.

Well, there was no way of knowing. They were gone now. Walked away. Leaving me. Here.

…

Without anything else to do, I started thinking about the metal spider-thing some more. I think I would name it… Blenderator the Second. I sunk into a daze of ideas and designs, speculating about the things that I could build.

Time passed. I was jolted out of my reverie by the mechanical blare of an alarm coming from the hallways. There was a click as my door deadbolted itself and metal shutters rattled down over the windows.

What was going on now?

Walking up to the shuttered windows, I tried to get a peek outside. Nothing revealed itself, as the shutters were not as easily bendable as they looked. Drat.

I glared fiercely at the shutters that were giving me so much trouble, trying to melt through them with my eyes to no avail. Miffed, I stomped back to my bed with my arms crossed and sat down on it, sullenly staring at the walls of my room.

Then things got trippy.

The room around me twisted and turned, falling apart before my eyes. The padded walls melted into concrete. My comfortable bed transformed into a hard, lumpy cot. The bathroom turned into a virtual sewer, emanating a terrible stench from its doorway. Right before my eyes, rust started to grow and spread on the various metal surfaces of the room: on the desk, on the shutters, and on the door. Dubious stains colored dark crimson dripped from the upper corners of the room, coming down the wall like stalactites.

Really cool, if you asked me.

I took a moment to appreciate the horror movie aesthetic that was being superimposed over my room, but my appreciation was interrupted by the slam of something metal. I startled to my feet out of my now-ruined bed. My gaze snapped to the source of the sound.

The door to my room was lying flat on the floor, rust coating its broken hinges. Huh. I hesitantly inched towards the newly opened doorway and stuck my hand through the frame. Nope, not hallucinating.

I stood up straight as I realized what that meant. I grabbed a fistful of sketches from the massive pile of paper on the floor and scrambled out of my room into the dark hallways of the asylum. All along the hall, the doors were rusting similarly to the way mine had. The other patients would be escaping too. I didn’t care, I only had one thing in mind.

My bare feet slapped against the linoleum floor of the hallway as I ran through the asylum, not caring in particular where I went. I turned a corner. I turned another. I eventually reached the back of a hallway, which ended with a hole in the wall surrounded by rubble. I climbed through.

An office room, cubicles filled with computers, air conditioner units, printers, and metal. So much metal. I stared at the banquet of supplies laid out before me.

My hands shook, my heart raced. I grinned. I smiled. I laughed.

I was going to make so many things!

Chapter Text

“Damnit!” Faultline cursed under her breath as she turned another corner, ignoring the shouted voices coming from the hallway behind them.

Newter ran ahead of her while Gregor lagged behind, spraying a stream of slime onto the floor to delay their pursuers. Faultline brushed the wall beside her with her fingers, causing it to collapse into a barrier of rubble that would hopefully give them a few seconds of reprieve.

This was supposed to be an in-and-out operation.

She, Gregor and Newter had been tasked with retrieving sensitive information regarding the Dragonslayers from one of the patients interned in the Philadelphia Parahuman Asylum. The informant, according to the client, had managed to take refuge in the asylum after garnering a considerable amount of heat from the Dragonslayers and PRT alike.

Upon arriving at the specified room, Faultline and the others had found it to be unoccupied. Doubtlessly, the Dragonslayers had already gotten to the patient by ‘transferring’ them out of the asylum into their clutches.

Normally this would have been acceptable, even if it was a huge letdown. Faultline would call the mission off as a bust, leave the asylum, and recompense the client who had ordered the job. However, right as they were about to leave, a certain someone decided that they had felt sorry for one of the patients in the asylum, and had liberated them from their room.

Now they were fleeing through the hallways of the asylum. Rows upon rows of reinforced doors passed them by as they picked up their pace. Alarms blared from the ceiling, with a mechanical voice rattling off emergency codes meant to alert the employees.

In front of Faultline, Newter shifted his arms. He still maintained his speed despite the frail-looking girl being carried in his gloved hands.

Fucking Newter.

Despite the fact that he had mucked up the whole operation, Faultline couldn’t muster any proper anger towards him. The hazy-eyed girl sagging in Newter's arms, muttering ‘thank you’ to them over and over again with a faint smile, made that almost impossible.

Her yellow wristband read ‘Labyrinth’, which was presumably her PRT-assigned name. When they had passed by her cell, Labyrinth had pressed up to the window and begged for them to take her with them. She'd been contained in the asylum for almost a year, and was miserable there, trapped day and night in a single building, with nothing else at all to look forward to in her life.

The girl’s predicament had struck a chord with Newter and probably Gregor too. Upon Newter’s furious insistence and Gregor's lack of protest, Faultline had reluctantly disintegrated the door to Labyrinth’s cell and had let him retrieve her after knocking out the guards assigned to the room.

Faultline had expected this to attract the attention of a few asylum guards, maybe armed with containment foam sprayers and small arms.

She had not expected this to trigger a total facility lockdown and bring down members of the Boston Protectorate upon them, who had apparently been stationed in the asylum for situations just like these.

Presently, the heroes were closing in on them, which meant that they had to escape fast. They were on the second floor, so there were no obvious exits. Windows were impractical with Labyrinth in Newter's arms, and the elevators were locked and would’ve been a bad idea regardless.

“We need to take the stairs!” Faultline yelled. The three of them stopped momentarily to look for any signs of a stairwell. Gregor nudged Faultline and pointed towards a door with a sign labeled “Emergency Stairs”.

Before they could reach the door, they came face to face with the Boston capes, who'd been running through the hallway perpendicular to the stairs. A man suited in blue and white armor stood at the front, flanked by a heavy-looking Brute in red, a woman that was difficult to get a good look at, and an orange-clad man with freakishly long arms.

“Surrender!” was all the one in the front said before deploying what appeared to be floating shield projectors that moved to contain Faultline and the others. Knowing when they were outmatched, four-to-three, they ran off in the other direction, deeper into the asylum.

Labyrinth had begun panicking and squirming in Newter’s arms upon seeing the Protectorate capes. Newter shifted his hold as she sluggishly kicked her legs out.

"N-No… I can't… they… they'll put… me back… I-I… can't…" Labyrinth slurred out, sounding distressed. It was the most animated she had been since she had pleaded with them to be broken out. Newter whispered as soothingly as he could to calm her. The heroes were getting closer and closer.

Newter almost tripped as he was forced to come to a complete stop. A glowing, blue barrier had intercepted him, blocking off any further progress into the asylum. Faultline and Gregor skidded to a halt behind him, turning around to face the oncoming heroes.

Gregor sprayed a sizzling red liquid. Newter spat out a high-speed glob of saliva towards the one in front. Both projectiles stopped short as they were consumed by the tinker shield, which had expanded to cover the entire width of the hallway. No words were wasted as the heroes moved to apprehend them.

Faultline was about to collapse the entire hall as a last resort when the world shimmered around them. In Newter’s arms, Labyrinth had gone completely limp. He yelped as the floor underneath his bare feet began turning into rough concrete, interspersed with broken glass and metal spikes. The transformation spread out from an epicenter around Labyrinth, rapidly consuming the surrounding area and altering it into a desolate caricature.

The hero armored in blue and white cursed. Crusty, orange-red splotches were forming on the metal portions of the tinkertech shield projectors, causing them to short out. The blue shields flickered, disappearing completely. Gregor took the opportunity to spray the red liquid once more, causing the heroes to back away immediately. The floor sizzled as the liquid impacted it.

“Run!” Faultline ordered to the others. Newter obliged, and Gregor stopped spraying the red acid to follow as well. Behind them, the heroes continued to pursue the moment the acid on the ground stopped sizzling.

Newter's eyes widened. Faultline looked over at him, still running.

"Uh… Faultline, we got a problem,” he said, jerking his head towards the walls.

Faultline glanced over and hissed as she noticed that Labyrinth’s transformation was spreading further, creeping onto the walls and — more importantly — under the doors leading into the patient rooms. One of the doors began to make a painful groaning noise, flakes of rust cascading downwards from the top.

That's not good. As they ran, Faultline observed the doors all around them corroding and crumbling, accelerating forward in time. One by one, doors slammed downwards onto the ground at random, their hinges thoroughly eaten through by rust and age.

They had caused a breakout.

Patients of all kinds began swarming through the open doorways, all of them dressed in hospital gowns and adorned with yellow bracelets. In front of Faultline, a man stumbled out of his room, giggling hysterically to himself as his limbs and body parts fell apart from each other like a collapsing doll. The collection of body parts floated up in the air and dissolved into a raging whirlwind.

“Shit! The patients are escaping!” one of the heroes shouted. The rest of the Protectorate capes let out cries of dismay and panic as they noticed the patients leaving their rooms. The heroes gave up the chase and turned their attention towards containing the superpowered patients that were now out and about.

Faultline saw an opportunity when one presented itself to her. Though they could no longer navigate the hallways, they didn’t have to do so. Faultline pressed her hand to the wall to her right and carved a tunnel-sized hole in it, somehow finding an entirely different hallway on her very first attempt.

Faultline didn't question this violation of Euclidean space, instead motioning for Newter and Gregor to go through. Faultline went on through herself, collapsing the foundation behind her.

Faultline and the others were standing in what looked to be the asylum lobby, warped by Labyrinth’s power to look more like a torture chamber. The counters had turned to rusty iron surgical tables, the windows had been boarded up, the walls were covered with blood and barbed wire, and all the lights had shut off save for one measly lightbulb.

"What do you mean that's not the way out?!" Newter asked, an edge of panic in his voice. Faultline was holding up the floor plans to the asylum, facing a wall that was very much not an exit. Faultline had cracked the wall open, but there had only been more asylum rooms waiting behind it.

"It seems that Labyrinth's episode has changed the entire layout of the building," Gregor said. "We are going to have to find another exit."

Faultline palmed her mask and grunted her agreement, shaking her head slightly before deciding to move onwards. Before she could give the command, a distant crackling noise echoed down the hallway to their left, followed by the shattering of glass.

"ELLE! WHERE ARE YOU?"

The voice reverberated through the asylum, accompanied by further sounds of property damage and fire.

Faultline cursed under her breath. She could smell smoke, something was burning, which meant that this was probably the girl that Labyrinth had been warning them about.

Burnscar.

“We need to move quickly. Now!” Faultline commanded. Newter and Gregor nodded, having come to the same conclusion as Faultline on their own. They started moving in the opposite direction of Burnscar's voice.

"ELLE! WHERE ARE YOU?"

Even so, the sound of crackling flames and displaced air drew closer. Faultline and the others moved with heightened urgency. Faint screams could be heard in the distance. Newter audibly gulped.

A flame blossomed into existence right in front of them.

"ELLE! WHERE-"

The voice cut off. Burnscar had appeared in the midst of the flames, facing Faultline and the others. Her eyes turned towards Labyrinth's limp form before locking onto Newter with a dead expression.

"You motherfuckers. What have you done with Elle?!" Burnscar's voice was a strange thing. Like a mix between an emotionless drone and a really bad stage yell.

Faultline didn't bother to explain, managing to shout out "Run!" before the three of them shot off down the hallway. Streams of fire hurtled past. Gregor held both his palms out behind him, one shooting a fire-retardant foam and the other shooting adhesive slime in order to slow Burnscar's advance.

A plume of flame lit up in front of the group's path. Burnscar materialized with an apoplectic scream. Fire spiraled around her fingers, which were curled into claws. The flames wreathing her form spiked off in random, uncontrolled bursts. Her mouth was drawn between a grimace of rage and a full-on maniacal grin.

Faultline hadn’t wanted to do this, but there seemed to be no other choice. Newter was holding Labyrinth and couldn’t get close enough to knock out the burning girl, and Gregor couldn’t deploy any useful forms of his slime while they were all in such close proximity. Faultline pressed her hands to the wall and fractured the ceiling. Burnscar shrieked as collapsing rubble cascaded over her head.

They fled. Looking behind revealed that Burnscar had managed to throw a fireball past the debris before it could completely bury her. Faultline grit her teeth. “Gregor! Block her off!” she barked out.

Gregor nodded and took a deep breath, a swirl of color forming within his transparent body. He held both of his hands together and let out a jet of deep green foam. The foam built upon itself, rapidly growing taller and wider. Burnscar's desperate shouts of fury were quickly blocked out as the entire hallway was sealed.

None of them took the chance to recuperate, instead choosing to run as far away from Burnscar's previous location as they could.

Faultline finally began to slow down as they reached the boundaries of Labyrinth’s influence. Rust and broken glass still expanded from around Newter and Labyrinth like growing moss, but it was slower, with a shorter range to it.

Faultline looked around. They were in what appeared to be an office section of the asylum, where the employees probably worked from day to day. The red emergency lights colored the otherwise dark room with a crimson hue.

The place looked as if it were abandoned in a hurry, office supplies and personal possessions left behind on the tables and the floor in a hurry. Come to think of it, the office looked more than abandoned, it looked completely trashed...

“Hey, look over here!” Newter exclaimed. Gregor and Faultline looked towards where Newter was standing. He motioned with his tail. "Check out that computer. It's been totally gutted."

Faultline's mouth drew taut as she saw the empty computer case and the mechanical carnage in its proximity. Along a path, computer monitors, air conditioners, and other electrical appliances had been messily dismantled, leaving torn wires and metal parts splayed out on the floor. It was almost as if someone was gathering materials...

"We'll need to be cautious. It seems that a tinker has escaped from containment," Faultline said grimly. "They don't normally build this fast, but be on the lookout anyway. We may have inadvertently released someone extremely dangerous."

Newter's eyebrows rose. "Even more dangerous than fire bitch back there?"

Faultline ignored Newter’s use of the term ‘fire bitch’. "Burnscar was a singular threat. Tinkers are unpredictable. If the PRT saw fit to contain a tinker in a high-security facility, and they're now out and about... then we'll need to tread carefully."

Just as she said that, Faultline heard a clattering sound. Whirling around towards the source, she saw… a patient. A man with a green bracelet around his wrist, staggering around, clutching his head and muttering to himself. He stopped muttering and looked up, having spotted Faultline and the others. He let out a guttural growl and advanced toward them.

Faultline held up her hands and spoke in her most placating voice. "Hold on, let's calm down now. How about we take a step back and ease off a little? You're clearly not in your right mind at the moment…"

The man paused, staring at her. "Right mind? Right mind?!"

With both fingers, he pointed at his own head, part of which seemed to have completely sloughed off, revealing pale bone and partially exposed grey matter.

"Do I look like I have a left mind to you?! I'm in my right mind! I'm completely in my right mind! I don't have anything but a right mind!"

None of the three had anything to respond to that with. They never got the chance as a painful metal screeching sound came from behind the wall to their left.

The man began laughing uncontrollably. "Listen to that! It's coming! It's coming it's coming it's coming it's coming-"

The wall broke. Faultline had only seconds to lunge out of the way as an abomination of pincers, blades, and metallic limbs came careening through the asylum wall, blasting sections of wall every which way. It extended upwards to the ceiling and over three adjacent office cubicles.

“Shit!” Newter yelled, scrambling away from the thing, carrying Labyrinth with him. Faultline and Gregor backed off, preparing themselves for a fight.

The machine began whirling and spinning as its blades jerked around at high speeds. The man let out an ear-piercing scream and charged at the machine, punching it repeatedly. The punches did absolutely nothing, only splattering bits of blood and grist everywhere as his hands, arms and torso were shredded to bits over and over.

The man appeared to have some kind of regeneration factor, which helped him absolutely none as the machine seized him with a mechanical limb and began slicing him apart over and over and over. His screams were periodically cut off as his throat was slit and then reconstituted repeatedly.

After what seemed to be an eternity, the machine seemed to give up, raising the man into the air and punting him through the floor with a deafening crash.

Faultline and the others had not been idle during this time. Newter had retreated to the corner of the room with Labyrinth, holding a folding chair with his tail. Gregor had been generating additional chemicals within his body, which colored his body with multiple different shades. Faultline had backed off, putting as many objects between the machine and her as she could.

The shifting mass of metal looked back and forth, despite its apparent lack of eyes, before fixating on Faultline. Before she could react, it made a horrendous grinding noise and charged towards her, rotary blades spinning. Tables and office appliances in the machine's path were consumed and shredded, not hindering its progress at all.

Suddenly, the amalgamation of metal stopped in its tracks as a deep purple foam was blasted over its joints by Gregor. Newter whipped out his tail, lodging the chair directly into the machine's inner workings. Its squeaking joints began to creak even harder as it struggled to move further towards Faultline.

Faultline moved to touch the machine in order to destroy it with her power. Before she could do so, however, she was interrupted by a dull thrumming sound.

It was the machine. Its blades slowly but surely jerked into motion, spinning up despite the chair and the foam clogging its mechanisms. Limbs and hinges seemed to reconfigure themselves, reattaching at odd angles and swiveling into different positions. The patchwork of steel and joints then transformed into a metallic blur, violently spinning and inverting, breaking up and expelling Gregor's adhesive as well as annihilating the fold-up chair. Faultline retreated, not willing to touch the contraption now that it was moving at full-speed once more.

The machine roiled and raged like a storm of blades and saws, stalking toward Gregor. Gregor backed away and fired spray after spray of chemicals. A frothing blue liquid caused the machine to corrode where it made contact. A yellow-white foam hit its mark and expanded much like the containment foam it was based on.

None of it helped. The machine surged onwards, grabbing all four of Gregor's limbs with eight separate pincers. Sawblades, drills and other sharp implements emerged and fanned out from within the mass of metal, moving to dismantle Gregor limb from limb. Gregor struggled to break free as a blade moved straight for his head.

The whirring stopped. The screeching grew silent.

Faultline had managed to touch one of the machine's limbs. After a moment, the entire machine began falling apart in cascades, crumbling in waves from where Faultline had touched it. There was a cacophony of metallic clattering from where the bits and pieces of the machine impacted the floor before all was silent once more.

The three of them took a moment to catch their breath. Gregor, in particular, took a deep gulp of air, looking quite shaken from the experience.

Newter jumped down from the wall he was perched on, holding Labyrinth in a bridal carry. Labyrinth had been too insensate to run on her own, and so Newter had held her, largely staying out of the fight.

"Jesus -fucking- Christ, what kind of messed up tinker made that?" Newter eventually asked after a period of silence.

Faultline patted herself down. "One that's kept in an asylum, no doubt," she replied dryly. "Gregor, are you alright?"

"Yes, the machine did not manage to puncture my skin. Thank you for that," Gregor said.

Faultline gave a sharp nod. "You're welcome. Let's get a move on, I don't want to find out whether there are more of these death machines out in this godforsaken asylum."

She sighed. This operation really had gone to shit, hadn't it?

Chapter Text

I staggered across the room. Not because I was in pain or anything. No, I was feeling good. Really good. I hadn't realized just how grey everything had been until I had started building. And building. And building some more.

Now it was like I could appreciate things for what they were. Everything just seemed so more vibrant at the moment. For example, that light up there, flashing with its beaming lights going round and round. It was so red, I wanted to touch it. I walked towards the alarm, fixated on its vivid coloration.

I bumped into a table before I could reach the light, causing me to stumble straight into a wall. The suddenness of the impact sent me into peals of uncontrollable giggling. My legs turned to jello, giving out as I slumped against the floor. My position on the floor gave me a nice view of the room I was in. It wasn’t the office area that I had started building in, but it looked similar enough in that it had paperwork and stuff strewn about the area.

It occurred to me that the room was the perfect setting for an office sitcom. I pictured it in my head. The thought of the orderlies swaggering around, spouting off one-liners as canned laughter played in the background amused me to no end, causing me to redouble in my laughter.

I quite literally tried to get a grip, scrabbling at the floor for leverage as I gasped for air. I pushed down my hiccuping laughs enough to place a hand on the tiled floor. It was about a minute before I finally regained enough control of myself to push myself back to a standing position.

I glanced about the office again, a grin still lingering on my face. Now that I got a better look, I could see the destruction inflicted upon the area. Several portions of the walls to my left and right were completely pulverized. Tables were overturned and tossed around, cubicles were plowed into rubble. The place looked completely trashed. It was as if a metal blender had come in and torn the whole area to shreds.

…

Oh, right.

Reminded of one of my previous inventions, I set about salvaging what I could from the area. Though the sight of so much raw metal tempted me, the urge to build didn’t hit me as strong now that I had gotten most of the ideas out of my head. Wait… that's right! I slapped a hand to my forehead and set off looking for the things that I had already made.

Rummaging through the wreckage of the office to my left eventually revealed what I was looking for. A few of my creations, some halfway through assembly and others completed yet discarded in the pursuit of additional projects. I stowed them away into my hospital gown, which unfortunately had a tragic lack of pocket space.

While rifling through a particularly dense pile of scrap and machinery, I produced a device that looked suspiciously like a glue gun. Just like a glue gun, it was covered with all kinds of congealed, blue-green crap that felt really weird to touch. Yeugh.

I turned it over in my hands. There was only really one thing to do when confronted with a gun with an unknown purpose. It was practically asking to be shot. I gunned the trigger, holding the handle away from myself like it was a loaded gun, mostly because it was.

BOOM

I flew backward, landing flat on my back and sliding a couple more feet upon impacting the ground. I was sprawled out onto the floor once again, wheezing my lungs out and giggling like a madwoman. That thing had some serious kick to it. I flopped around onto my belly like a turtle righting itself, getting a better look at the destruction my creation had wrought.

There was a hazy trail of color in the direction I had fired. At the end of the trail, a considerable section of wall was splattered with what appeared to be the same blue-green glue that was on my glue gun. The glue on the wall, however, seemed to be activated in some way, bubbling slightly and glowing a much brighter hue than the glue on the gun handle. I was glad for that, because I instinctively knew that the ‘glue’ did not like human flesh.

I think I would call it… the Eat Gun. Not only did it describe its consumptive properties, but it also aligned perfectly with my current desire, which was to get something to eat. I was incredibly hungry.

Stuffing the Eat Gun into my gown for later use, I set about scavenging the area. First things first, I needed food. I actually needed a lot of things, such as a stable job, true love and children, but I wasn’t exactly old enough for any of those, so just getting a bite to eat was the current priority.

Man, I was hungry. I suppose building Blenderator the Second had taken quite a lot out of me. I wondered where he was? Probably getting himself into trouble, the little rascal that he was. It's what I'd be doing. I wished him luck in whatever he did.

Deep in thought, I was so out of it that I almost stepped on a rusty nail. I immediately stopped in my tracks, almost falling over. Glaring at the object that had almost punctured my foot, I pointedly moved my bare feet around the nail instead of onto it. I would have to watch my step.

I made my way across the room. Navigating through the maze of metallic debris actually turned out to be pretty fun. It was like doing that thing you did where the floor had black and white tiles and you tried to avoid stepping on the white. In this case, the black was normal floor and the white was horrible rusty implements of tetanus-bringing destruction.

Also glass, couldn’t forget about the glass.

Eventually, I made it over to what appeared to be an employee lounge. That is if you covered an employee lounge in blood and left it to dry for about a century. Gross. I explored around the room, looking for anything resembling food.

Nope, that was a coffee machine. I disassembled it and placed the parts into the pocket of my gown. I put no resources to waste, after all.

I turned around, intending to search the other side of the room. I instead encountered what was probably a plumber’s worst nightmare. The back of the room had been completely demolished, revealing metal support beams and pipework, which spurted water in multiple directions. The water pooled onto the floor, creating a lake taking up about half the room. I even saw a box of cereal floating around in there somewhere. I decided to leave it be; soggy cereal tasted terrible.

Leaving behind what was no doubt Blenderator the Second’s handiwork, I moved on to newer and better pastures. No food to find back there anyway. I trudged onwards, occasionally sidestepping the pointy objects lying on the floor.

I had a destination in mind, that destination being no particular place at all. Wherever fate directed me was the way I went. I took a left there and a right here. I took another right to avoid the monotony of going left and right over and over. Then I walked in a straight line along a hallway for an indeterminable length of time.

Finally, I encountered something different. In the middle of the hallway, there was a girl. I stopped to get a better look.

Slightly messy brown hair, circular black marks along the sides of her cheeks. A yellow wristband just like mine. She was sitting on her knees, staring blankly at a huge barrier that looked like dried gelatin. The girl was completely still, unmoving like the guard gargoyles in the van, except even more lifeless.

I walked up behind her and waved a hand in front of her face. After receiving no response, I stooped over her head and peeked my head down from above. “Hellooo?” I inquired, trying to keep myself from falling over onto her.

The girl’s eyes shifted almost imperceptibly. “What do you want," she intoned flatly.

Cold. Maybe she was in a bad mood?

“Hi! I was just wondering whether you needed some cheering up!” I told her. I tried giving her a thumbs up, but my position upside down meant that it was more of a thumbs down in the girl's perspective. I stood upright and circled around in front of her.

“I don’t need it.” The girl stared through me. Her voice was completely monotone. She almost sounded like a robot. Heh.

...I could make her shut down like a robot too. It'd be pretty easy. I could install a kill switch in her spine and model it like an on-off button…

I shook my head slightly, dispelling the idea. Crisscrossing my legs, I plopped down onto the floor in front of her. The girl didn't react.

“What’s the problem?” I asked, leaning forward. I would’ve made a great shrink.

She looked up at me. "L. Gone."

I blinked in confusion. I didn't really know a good way to respond to that. I decided to wing it.

"Don't worry!" I reassured her, patting her on the shoulder. "You still have the other twenty-five letters of the alphabet!"

The girl didn't respond, staring ahead. She must've taken her vocabulary really seriously. I exhaled, tapping my fingers against my thigh.

She was looking more down than ever after mentioning the loss of L. It occurred to me that I should change the subject. "Hey." I nudged her with my shoulder. "I'm gonna go grab a bite to eat. Wanna join me?"

No response.

“Here.” I stood up, took hold of her wrist and pulled her to her feet. She didn’t put up any resistance. "C'mon, up you go! You're coming with me. We're gonna eat great food and you're going to love it. I just know it!"

I charged on ahead, dragging her down the hallway. The feat was a lot harder than it sounded due to her being a full head taller than me. It was a good thing that she was being so cooperative, I didn't think I would've been able to do it otherwise.

Curious, I experimentally let go of the girl's wrist. She stopped. I grabbed her wrist again and pulled. She started walking again. I resolved to just keep hold of her arm at all times.

Turning a corner revealed an entirely different-looking sector of the building. I glanced behind at the girl. "Hey, do you know where we're going? Because I don't."

She made an absent grunting noise. I didn't understand, because I didn't speak grunt.

"Alright. Good talk!" I responded, walking onwards.

The rest of the walk was spent in silence.

"So… do you have a name?" I asked after it was clear that the girl wouldn't be saying anything.

"Mimi."

I hmmed before pronouncing out the word. "Mimi. Huh. That's a nice-sounding name!" Mimi stared at me expressionlessly before staring off into who-knows-where.

Currently, I was face to face with Mimi, sitting across from her at a table in the mess hall of the asylum. I was sitting on a stool with my legs propped up, while Mimi was slumped in a chair. Aside from me and her, the eating area was empty of any other people. It was almost like a restaurant reservation.

A makeshift tablecloth made up of a shower curtain covered the table between us. The room's lighting was completely shot, with only red alarms illuminating the area, so I had set up a candle made out of the weird glue substance on my Eat Gun. Our respective meals — a granola bar for me and a single banana for her — sat on flat shards of glass in front of us. There hadn't been any plates.

I figured that a one-to-one meal session would lighten the mood. Dinner dates cheered people up, right? That's what I had heard, anyway. Besides, Mimi already seemed better. Now she looked at me like I was a solid object rather than a pane of glass.

Mimi was currently fixated on the candlelight, staring at it with a single-minded focus. I had thought that she was ignoring me at first, but she was actually much more animated like this, so I had let it slide.

"Hey," Mimi eventually said, "Taylor, right?"

I nodded. "Yup!"

She shuffled around slightly in her seat. "Right. I'm Mimi." She paused, "I just told you that. Sorry, didn't remember. I get a little flat sometimes."

Mimi gestured to herself. "I still am, slightly," she confessed.

I nodded again, munching away at the granola. Mimi didn't touch her fruit.

"Sorry about the food," I said with an apologetic smile. "Not exactly gourmet eating as I promised. There wasn’t much to find around here, and I’m not the best at cooking anyway. Heh, I probably get that from my dad."

"Dad?" Mimi asked. There was a muted look of curiosity on her face.

I smiled. "Yeah, my dad! Taught me everything I know! Except for the things he didn't teach me. He’s actually waiting for me when I eventually come home. What about you?"

"Killed him," she stated.

...

"Okaaaay. Cool... cool..." I trailed off. Kinda killed the mood there.

We continued sitting there in silence. Mimi’s eyes focused and unfocused on the candle, unglazing ever so slightly with every cycle. Was it just me, or were her eyes flickering?

"I-" Mimi abruptly cut off. "...Is there something I’m supposed to be doing here?"

I gave a noncommittal shrug. "Nah. I'm just glad that you're here. It's nice being here with someone."

Mimi seemed taken aback at that. She shifted uncomfortably, which in itself was a big improvement, given that she hadn’t been showing any body language prior to this. She resumed staring at the candle.

I took the opportunity to savor the granola bar. It was mixed with raisins and chocolate, which sounded really weird if you said it out loud, but tasted really good in practice.

Mimi broke her gaze from the candle to look around herself. She had a slight frown as if she were suspicious of something. "What are we doing here?"

I gave her a funny look. "Well whaddya think, silly? We're eating!" My eyes slid meaningfully towards her untouched 'plate'. "Well, I'm eating."

Mimi seemed to notice the food before her for the very first time. She mumbled something vaguely apologetic and started peeling her banana. From the bottom. Wow.

"Well, now I know why you're here," I joked, watching her eat with a grin.

Mimi seemed surprised. "Here? What do you mean?”

"Well, I'm pretty sure we're in an asylum, right?"

She dropped the banana onto the table. The flame of the candle between us seemed to jump, flaring up to twice its height. I viewed the smoldering candle with interest. A chemical reaction?

Mimi's eyes finished unglazing, she looked up from the candle. "We're still in the asylum?" she asked urgently.

I nodded. "Yeah?"

Mimi shot out of her chair, looking panicked. "Shit. Listen, you. Taylor. We need to leave. Now."

I raised my eyebrows. "But we're still eating- eep!"

Mimi grabbed my hand — the one still holding the granola bar — pulling me out of my chair. I stumbled a little before regaining my balance. Mimi shot off into a sprint, dragging me behind her. I was feeling a strong sense of déjà vu. Tables turning and all that.

"Where are we going?" I asked. We had left the mess hall and were now running through a reception area. My arm felt like it was being pulled out of its socket.

"Out. Anywhere. Doesn't matter," she responded, which answered precisely nothing.

We continued rushing towards wherever 'Out' was. I tried to strike up some small talk, but my efforts fell flat as Mimi ignored each attempt.

Shouting in front of us. A commotion. Mimi went rigid beside me.

On our twelve o'clock, a squad of armored officers stood, holding the same devices they had used to cover me in that white foam. Upon spotting us, they advanced around us, pointing the launchers at us and barking out orders.

"Sanguine! Burnscar! Stand down or we will open fire!"

Chapter Text

“Hey guys! Long time no see!”

Giving my brightest smile, I stepped towards the guards. For some reason, they backed away as I approached them.

“Do not come closer! Stand down before we shoot! This is your final warning!”

Hey, they were actually talking to me this time! Though I had no idea whether these were the guards from before, but they looked similar enough. Complying with their demands, I stopped where I stood.

“Alright, now what?” I called out.

“Get down on your knees with your hands behind your head!”

“Got it.” I shifted my feet to get onto my knees and started moving my hands from my sides, causing the officers to tense up. Jeez. I felt like I was playing a game of Simon Says, except there was no Simon and everything I did was wrong.

As I moved to put my hands behind my head, my head tilted at an angle that gave me a great view down my gown’s pocket. Stuffed inside was a variety of devices, spherical and oblong, as well as assorted mechanical parts and bits of electronics. I felt a small bit of temptation to touch one of them, but that would go against what they had just told me to do, wouldn’t it?

I looked up.

Then down.

Then up.

Then down.

A little peek never hurt anyone, did it? I was just going to check my stuff out a little, see what it did.

...And arm one.

Shouts of alarm. They had realized what I was doing a bit too late as I clutched the trigger of the spherical device in my hands and lobbed it onto the floor in front of me. The officers scrambled backward to get away from it.

BOOM

The resultant explosion flung me flat onto the floor, knocking the air out of my lungs and causing my ears to ring. Distantly, I could hear someone cackling loudly. I opened my eyes to see Mimi looming above me. She wasn’t laughing.

“Get up. Get up!”

Mimi yanked me to my feet and began dragging me away from the steaming and sizzling crater that the blast had created. I recognized it as my smokescreen bomb, which was one of my weaker creations. As I stumbled to follow Mimi, I noticed a bit of movement behind me in the white cloud of fog. I waved at them as a friendly gesture before I was forcibly pulled away by Mimi.

We weaved through hallways and doorways, mostly at random if I was correctly incorrect about where we were. I asked Mimi whether we should wait for the officers we left behind, but she never responded. We turned a corner and down a hallway, encountering a giant metal shutter that covered the entire wall in front of us. A sign with the words “EXIT” in glowing neon red hung from the ceiling in front of it. Weird. I guess exits worked differently around these parts.

"No no no no no…" Next to me, Mimi muttered under her breath, getting louder with every ‘no’. She pounded on the metal wall once, then twice.

Voices echoed down the hallway nearest to us. I cast a glance to the right. I could see long shadows move across the walls, rapidly growing taller. The officers were advancing on us, getting closer.

“No no no no…” Mimi had noticed their approach as well. She clenched her fists, which were now smoldering. “No. No! NO!”

As one of the officers turned the corner, Mimi flung her arm forward, loosing a fireball from her hand. I could feel the heat from the backdraft wash over me. The glob of flame sailed through the air, arcing in a curve until it slammed into one of the officers’ chests, knocking them to the ground and igniting their uniform. I briefly watched as the other officers frantically tried to put out the fire before I had to follow Mimi, who had turned another corner and fled.

I stumbled a little in my rush to catch up. Mimi could go really fast when she wanted to. When I found her again, she was standing still, leaning her head against the wall. As I caught up to her, I got a look at her face.

Despite her amazing shot earlier, Mimi didn't look very pleased. In fact, she was breathing really hard and clenching her fingers. I tried patting her on the back and congratulating her on her marksmanship, but she just ignored me in favor of staring at the wall.

Abruptly, Mimi stood up straight and continued rushing down the hallway, presumably to go and look for more metal walls marked “Exit”. Her gaze never wavered from the hallway in front of her. I followed along dutifully.

After successfully discovering several more exit walls, we decided to stop and recuperate in what looked to be a therapist's room. Motivational propaganda and comfortable furniture were positioned throughout the room. I found myself silently mouthing the words to a "You can do it!" poster, illustrated with a cat giving a double thumbs up. It was actually kind of creepy; the cat had realistic human thumbs instead of paws, and had an eerie ear-to-ear grin. Maybe it was just the lighting, though.

I had taken a seat in a large, cushy beanbag chair while Mimi paced back and forth at the front of the room, nervously eyeing the door and hugging her arms to herself. “I can't go back, I can't go back…” she repeated to herself over and over under her breath, like a mantra or a ritualistic chant.

She was moving with a restlessness that confused me slightly. I decided to ask what was going on. “Why don't you wanna go back?”

Mimi stopped pacing to give me an incredulous look. “What do you mean why don’t I want to go back?”

“I mean… why don't you like it here?” I clarified.

She stared at me. “I hate it here. Everyone hates it here. There’s nothing good about this place.”

Mimi clutched a bundle of hair and twisted. It didn't change the look of her hair all that much. “All the doctors do is talk useless words at you and try to get into your head. The food is terrible and I can barely taste it! The orderlies are always stabbing you with needles and shoving pills down your throat and then it makes you get all tired and empty inside and I hate it, I hate it so much!”

By the end of her rant, she was shouting. I let her calm down for a few seconds before I pitched in. “I don’t think it’s all that bad here. Sure, most of the people here don’t really talk much, and yeah, sometimes they give you shots in your neck and tie you down to beds, but I’m pretty sure that’s… like, a regional thing.”

Mimi’s look of incredulity quickly transformed into one of outrage. “I've walked by your room before. You live in a padded room. All the time! How can you like that? When's the last time you've seen the sun? Are you telling me you can handle being in there for the rest of your life?”

I pursed my lips slightly. “They’ll let us out eventually…”

“Really? Eventually? That’s rich. That’s great. Do you really think that? That we can just walk out the front door after some guy in a lab coat gives a thumbs up? It doesn't work like that. Once you end up in here, you stay in here.”

“That can't be true!” I said with a frown. Wouldn’t that make this some kind of prison?

“It is true!” Mimi snapped. She had started yelling again at some point. “I've been here for five years! Face it, they don't care about us! No one does! That's why they put us here, keeping us in this goddamn asylum, locked up in these goddamn rooms, wrapped up nicely in these goddamn fucking gowns!”

“…You're saying goddamn a lot,” I remarked hesitantly.

“You're goddamn right I am! Tell me. Tell me right now. In your entire time staying here, have they fixed you one bit?”

I frowned, thinking about it. “Uh…”

“No! They haven't! They're not fixing us! The orderlies aren't fixing us! The doctors aren't fixing us! They're containing us!” Mimi was right up in my face now, gripping both of my shoulders. Her eyes were smoldering in both senses of the word.

I… uh…?

Upon seeing my confused expression, her hold grew uncomfortably tight. “Goddammit. Damn it all. Are you stupid? Deaf? If you can’t even get this simple fact into your head, then why am I even bringing you along? I don't even know you! How about I just leave you in one of these cells to rot and die!”

She fell silent at that, panting from anger and exertion. Mimi glared at me for what seemed to be an eternity until her expression suddenly faltered. She disengaged herself from me and staggered back, looking away towards the ground while hugging her arms to herself.

“I’m sorry I’m sorry I shouldn’t have gotten mad I’m just feeling so scared and angry and I just…” 

She continued apologizing until her words dissolved into incoherent rambling. I didn't respond, thinking hard to myself.

Didn't they care about me? I knew Doctor Yamada did, and the other patients had seemed nice, but… I didn't see any of them anymore.

Weren't they going to let me out? I… didn't want to stay here forever. But surely she had been exaggerating! They couldn't hold me here for that long!

Emma did say…

Three months wasn't that long!

But they haven't let me out yet.

I… I was getting better…

They'll never be satisfied with the way I am.

Stop. Stop. These weren't thoughts of the happy variety. I didn't like it. I needed to think happier. Think positively.

Positively sure they won't let me out.

Gah! Bad thoughts! Those were bad thoughts! I should kill Mimi for making me think like this! 

…

I…

I needed to get out. I wanted to go home. I missed Dad. I missed Emma. I missed Mom. I couldn't stay here, not any longer. I wanted to leave. I wanted to go home.

And that's when…

A faint smile crossed my face. I tipped myself out of the beanbag chair and onto the floor before getting up. My thoughts had begun picking up once more. I turned towards Mimi. “I think I might have an idea…”

Chapter Text

I didn't actually have a plan. I just thought that saying "I have a plan" in an action movie voice sounded cool.

I was beginning to regret it, though. Mimi was looking at me expectantly and I didn't have anything to follow up with. I scrambled for any ideas and came up empty.

"Uh," I started. "I… uh…" I finished.

"You don't have a plan," Mimi stated. She hadn't even given me the benefit of the doubt!

"I do!" I countered. "It's in my other gown though."

"Oh my fucking god," Mimi groaned. "We're going to die here, aren’t we?”

“Don’t panic!” I rummaged through my gown for writing material, trying not to cut myself on the numerous sharp implements stored within. “It’s no problem, I’ll make one now.”

Mimi answered that with an exasperated groan. She stomped over to a desk, setting it ablaze with a wave of her hand before throwing herself down onto the swivel chair behind it.

I awkwardly stared after her. “Um, I need some stuff from that.”

She didn’t look up, hypnotically spinning in her chair. “What is it.”

“The pen, and-” I was cut off by the clatter of a pen landing on the floor in front of me. I leaned down to pick it up, then quickly jumped away to not pick it up because jeez that was hot.

Deciding I didn’t want to ask for the rest of the desk’s contents, I reached into the front pocket of my gown again, managing to pull out a rolled up piece of paper this time. Unrolling it, I inspected it. The words “PLAN TO ESCAPE” were written in big, wide letters on the top, just in case I forgot (I had). It was a bit incomplete though, since I had only written those three words.

I grabbed the now-cooled pen from the floor and jotted down a bullet point. Then I scratched out the bullet points, since numbered lists were much cooler and made me feel like I was a chef writing a recipe. A recipe for success! Hah! Hm.

I got to writing.

Everything was fine.

Everything was fine.

If she kept saying that to herself, it would eventually become true. That’s how it worked, right?

Mimi sat in the middle of a raging bonfire of flames. "This is fine," she proclaimed.

And everything was indeed fine. She felt fine, therefore she was fine.

The fire around Mimi began to wane and peter out. The desk she had been using as fuel crumbled in on itself, already reduced to a charred, black lump. Mimi felt the vestiges of something creeping up on her, making her feel things like anxiety, sadness, pain, fear- they were going to die here, weren’t they? It’d be any second now, she’d die alone and afraid and everything was-

Not fine.

Mimi abruptly stood up, lobbing a ball of fire at a wooden chair in the middle of the room. The chair crumbled under the force of the impact.

A burst of flame, a woosh of smoke, and Mimi was sitting in the middle of the new fire. She felt better. She didn't feel good, but feeling nothing was better than feeling bad. Her heart was still racing, but it was more of a dull, physical feeling than anything as visceral as before. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Everything… was fine.

Of course, that's when the girl decided to start making a racket. 

"Keep it down," Mimi called out, a slight hint of irritation in her voice.

On the other side of the room, the girl was doing something. Mimi didn't know what and she didn't care. She didn't care about an awful lot of things at the moment.

What she did care about was getting some peace and quiet, or at least as quiet as things could get with alarms ringing through the building. She opened her eyes to observe what Taylor was doing. The gown-clad girl was rushing around at a blistering pace, darting in and out of the room, carrying what seemed to be absurd amounts of metal scrap and household items. Mimi considered interrupting her, but when she looked closer, she saw that the girl's eyes were glazed over, focused only on her craft. Probably wasn’t a good idea, then.

She stared for a while longer, having nothing better to do. After gathering all the materials, Taylor got to work. She swayed this way and that like a girl possessed, twisting metal and disassembling appliances, stitching them together with crude tools, occasionally just using her impossibly sharp fingernails, digging and carving until the material bent to her will.

What even was her power? It was a tinker power, she was pretty sure, but Mimi hadn’t seen any particular theme to her creations aside from the fact that they were all very destructive. She couldn't see any rhyme or reason to the tinker's building process, nor any coherence in the things she made. It was confusing.

Mimi's own power was simple enough. Imagine a fire. Mimi kept feeding that fire. Then the fire was shot from her hands to burn people alive. There was no analogy there. That was just what happened.

So straightforward, yet so insidious. Her power was addictive, and such simple usage meant she easily fell into the same routines. It became a vicious cycle of burning and killing, a self-fueling flame, until she was knee-deep in death and guilt, with no way to end the former and only one way to end the latter.

It was how she'd ended up here in the asylum. She had snapped, badly, after getting her powers, had been captured and sent to this sanitized prison. Here she had wasted away over the years, the life that she could've had passing by before her eyes. Now here she was, leaving her escape in the hands of a psychotic little girl she'd met in a random hallway. Even if she did come through, find some way for them both to escape…

What was she going to do after this? What life did Mimi have outside these walls?

She was jolted out of her thoughts as she felt a huge burst of fire materialize within her senses.

Aww yes! It worked!

In front of me was a glowing hole the size of a boulder, sizzling and crackling at the edges. There was a glowing afterimage in the air that flickered with lingering, blue flame. Following it led back to the device I was holding, which kind of looked like a big vacuum cleaner with electronics attached to it. Probably because it was a big vacuum cleaner with electronics attached to it. Where did I get a vacuum cleaner again?

"What the hell is this?" grit out Mimi, who I turned to greet. She'd left her little bonfire to storm up to me and the newly christened Hole in the Wall.

"It's a hole," I explained helpfully. "Don't go through it though, or anywhere near there. I think those fumes rot your lungs."

"No! What is this?" Mimi gestured to the hodgepodge of wires and dust filters in my hands.

I let out an 'ah' of acknowledgment, then an 'ah!' of excitement. "Right! This is our ticket out of here! I call it the Holemaker, because it makes holes in stuff. It shoots out fire, but like, really hot fire that doesn't actually spread, just burns what it touches. And the best part is that it only needs air! It uses a state-of-the-art, patented air filtration system that takes in air for maximum operating efficiency!"

Mimi blinked at that last part. "What? That sounds stupid."

I frowned, then squinted at the label on the device again. "Wait, nevermind, you're right. Those are just the vacuuming instructions. Yeah I have no idea how this thing's fueled."

Mimi didn't respond to that, merely staring at the Holemaker with an expression that seemed mixed between awe and disgust. "You said this thing shoots fire?"

I nodded. "Really hot fire, but yeah. Why? Don't you like fire?"

"What makes you think that?" Mimi snapped.

I took a step back, nonplussed at her reaction. "Well, I mean, I like fire. Everyone does, I think. It's so bright and pretty and it consumes everything it touches! And weren't you just chilling out in some fire a while ago?"

Mimi blinked rapidly, shaking her head as if clearing it. She looked toward my device, then frowned and looked away, allowing me to see the exposed, vulnerable veins in her neck. She started rubbing her arms. "I… don't like fire. I need fire."

…

So she loved fire?

The older girl seemed to gather herself, standing up with a huff. "Look, it doesn't matter. I don't like your stupid thing, but we need to use it to get out before we both get killed."

“Kill?” I perked up, then perked down as I processed the rest of Mimi’s sentence. I looked down at my Holemaker forlornly. “You don’t like it?”

A sigh. "…No, I don't," she said. "But it looks like it'll work, and anything that'll help us escape is something I can live with." She paused, deliberating on something. “As much as I hate to ask, do you have anything like that for me? I have my own power, but one of your devices could probably come in handy.”

I beamed at her. “Thought you’d never ask! Here, I think you’d like this one.” From one of my worktables, I picked out an oblong, sphere-looking object with several protrusions jutting off, then walked over and presented it to her. Mimi stared at it for a moment.

“Are you sure this thing won’t blow up in my face?”

"Don't worry, it's inflammable," I said with surety.

Mimi gingerly picked up the device, locating what I assumed was the barrel. Stepping back to keep distance, she pointed it at the far end of the room, then pulled what looked like the trigger.

A single spark fizzled out of the barrel. Mimi stared at it incredulously before yelping as the device began whirring and beeping dangerously in her hands. The mechanical beeping got louder, vibrating faster and faster. Thinking fast, Mimi hurled it away. It hit the wall, then detonated with a deafening-

THOOM!

Breathing heavily, Mimi stared at the crater in the wall, now accompanying the other more intentional Hole in the Wall. Then, Mimi whirled around, shaking my shoulders. "What the fuck?! I asked you whether it'd blow up or not!"

I frowned. "Well I told you it was inflammable."

Jaw tightening, Mimi jerked away, pacing around some more before returning. "You're crazy. You're actually goddamn crazy. I guess I should've expected that by now, but-" She stopped, taking a deep breath. "Y'know what?" she sighed. "I don't have time for this. Fine, I don't need one of your death traps. As long as this one works, we'll be fine."

"Alright! Let's get a move on, then." I rushed out of the room through the Hole in the Wall, briefly entering a coughing fit as I inhaled the fumes. Perhaps more sensibly, Mimi went through the second crater in the wall.

After it became apparent that I didn't know which way to go, Mimi led the way. Following behind, Holemaker in tow, we made our way to one of the exit signs, which as expected led to a hallway blockaded by a metal shutter. This time, however, I had a very special key.

Hefting the Holemaker upward, I aimed the nozzle, then fired. The air thrummed with a resonant woosh, and I felt a rush of heat as a searing blue light filled the air, eliciting a metallic wail as the wall melted away. As the fire did its magic, I threw my head in the air and cackled maniacally, like one of those supervillains that yelled ‘It’s working, it’s working!’. Never got old.

Mimi looked a bit dazed when I was done. I looked back at the wall to see no such wall. Not anymore. The shuttered doorway had been obliterated, the giant hole in it glowing at the edges, revealing another hallway behind it. The neon exit sign above was charred, hanging by a thread. With a clatter, it fell down to the floor.

I'd learned my lesson this time. Taking a deep breath to keep out the fumes, I walked through the hole, Mimi following suit.

Here we go…

It was beginning to get tiring, now, how many gated doors were in this place.

We'd busted through twelve of them at this point, and once encountered several guards that quickly fled after I so kindly demonstrated my Holemaker's holemaking potential.

I wouldn't have minded too much, given how enjoyable blasting holes in things was, but my Holemaker was also quite heavy, and my skinny arms weren't exactly equipped to hold it for long periods of time. I was getting tired.

Making my decision, I handed off the Holemaker to Mimi, who stared at the weapon like it'd try to bite her face off at any second. Would be silly, anyway. That was one of my other ideas.

Mimi was considerably less enthusiastic about using the thing. Still, she eventually got into a rhythm with it, and by the third one, I think she started enjoying the catharsis of torching through the walls of the asylum.

After a total of seven more shuttered doors (and one particularly stubborn regular door), we finally reached somewhere different, where the room seemed to open up. Unlike the relatively pristine albeit disheveled hallways from before, this one was ravaged with scorch marks, dents, cracks, and various other types of power-created damage.

There was another exit door here, but it was much larger, more like the door of a loading bay. Also unlike the previous ones, this one was already damaged, torn through and forced open. Had people already been here?

"The patients," Mimi said. I lit up at the prospect. "Friends?" I asked.

"No, not friends," she snapped. I deflated a bit at that.

Cautiously, Mimi scouted ahead through the hole, then paused as she saw something on the other side. "Shit."

I climbed through as well, curious as to what had gotten Mimi all up and bothered. As I looked around, I recognized the area as the g-air-age I had entered the asylum through on my first day here. It looked completely different, with gray, metal shielding lowered over the exit door, battered and dented with scorch marks, acid marks, and various other unidentifiable marks. Guarding the exit were four costumed figures facing off against a rioting mass of hospital gowns and wristbands.

There was a man in blue and white armor, surrounded by shimmering, transparent shielding that protected the other three capes. On the left was a heavy-set man in red, and on the right a long-armed man. The final cape was behind the others, a woman who I couldn't get a good look at.

“The guy in blue is Bastion,” Mimi mumbled. “I remember him. Leader of the Boston Protectorate or something. I don’t know who the others are.”

At the head, Bastion was yelling at the patients to get back, with the prone forms of several patients lying around their fortifications to prove that they weren't bluffing. They seemed to be at a standstill, Bastion's shields proving to be too sturdy even for the myriad powers of the asylum population. Still, this didn't stop them from trying. One particularly enterprising patient loped forward from the crowd, moving up to Bastion's barrier. As he ran, his body visibly melted, hands deteriorating into a fleshy goop, and he proceeded to try shoving himself beneath the gaps of the barrier, which seemed to rile up the other patients further.

I decided this was the time to interject.

"Hey!" I yelled to be heard over the commotion. For a moment, the room went silent, everyone turning toward me. I felt a smile creep upward as I stared out at the crowd, their arms and legs beginning to look an awful lot like kindling.

"BURN!"

Cranking a dial on the Holemaker, I aimed and braced myself for the blast. I clenched the trigger with all my might, and a roar filled the room. Panic prevailed as both patients and heroes dove out of the way, ghostly blue flames hurtling down the middle of the room, pluming outward and causing the air to ripple with heat.

When the air cleared, I saw the swathe of destruction that cleaved the room in half. People too close to the blast zone were marred with blisters and burns, coughing and retching from the fumes. A blackened trench stretched across the ground, shooting past Bastion's ruined shield, right into the new and improved hole that now adorned the wall. Most important of all, however, was what was beyond the hole: grass.

The outside.

"Go!" Mimi yelled. It seemed to galvanize the gathered patients, and soon the g-air-age erupted into chaos as they made a mad rush for the exit. The heroes, now shieldless and quite outnumbered, fled.

Of course, Mimi and I ran as well. Mimi had to help me, as I was too dizzy from the backlash of fumes to properly sprint. Probably should've gotten some kind of gas mask, or maybe a really long breathing straw, like scuba divers had. I giggled at the thought.

Maybe I should've been taking this more seriously, but I felt delirious with giddiness in the face of such epic destruction, the likes of which I'd never wreaked before. Unfortunately, this meant I wasn't really looking where I was going, and my foot caught on a melted dent in the ground.

"Wh-" Mimi managed before I faceplanted into the ground, tangling her up and dragging her down as well. I heard her land with a breathless "Oof!"

I spent a moment gathering my wits before I started getting up, disentangling myself from Mimi. As I lifted my head, I noticed some of the contents of my gown haphazardly spilled out in front of me. Metallic junk, parts and pieces, spheres and shapes, devices that I'd been storing for later.

Devices that were now buzzing and shaking violently.

Whoops.

Mimi followed my gaze. "Oh no. Oh fuck. Oh no fuck fuck fuck-" Still cursing, she scrambled to her feet, scooped me up in her arms, then ran.

She managed to make it past the exit, then all hell broke loose. The initial blast knocked us down with the sheer force of it. The very ground began vibrating with mind-numbing magnitude, rattling me down to my bones. Then the air turned hot, then cold, then thick, then oily, and then we were hit by such a mixed assortment of skin-twisting effects that I couldn't possibly describe them all.

Finally, a deafening CRACK split the air, heaving the earth beneath us, and a blinding flash of light briefly turned night to day. Then, all was silent.

Miraculously, we were unharmed, save for a few scratches and conspicuous scorch marks here and there. For a while, we just lay there, Mimi and I, puffing and panting. Then, almost in unison, we looked back at the blast zone.

The smoking ruins of what was once the g-air-age were displayed plain as day, exposed to the cool night air. The hole in the wall that I’d made previously had been promoted to a much more generous gaping chasm, and within the interior, there was nothing left. The floor had been blasted into a pit, the walls buffeted with force until they were akin to rocky cliffsides. A coat of multicolored soot was plastered everywhere, like a giant had been imprisoned in the room for life and had taken up fingerpainting as a hobby.

I marveled at the scene for a while, watching the remaining patients run by as they made their escape. Looking beside me, it looked as if Mimi was marveling too. Our gazes met, and I saw an expression that seemed foreign to her face: smiling. It was a small chuckle at first, then full-on laughter, then further beyond into cackling, a mad sort of giggling that you could only devolve into after blowing up a section of the asylum you’ve just escaped from.

I giggled with her, feeling the fresh air blow through my hair and on my skin. I’d never felt anything so refreshing, outside for the first time in what seemed like forever. I relished the feeling of the grass on my bare feet, laughing like there was no tomorrow, throwing my arms out like I was the ruler of the world.

"So… what now?" I asked after we had both settled down somewhat.

Mimi's laugh and smile slowly faded, morphing into her all-too-familiar frown. "What do you mean 'what now?' You're the one with the plan."

"Well I, uh…"

I rummaged in my gown pocket, which thankfully still had what I needed. I produced the crumpled sheet of paper I had written on earlier, then straightened it out.

PLAN TO ESCAPE

1. RUN 
2. BUILD MACHINE (SWITCH WITH 1 I FORGOT ABOUT THIS)
3. SHOOT SOMETHING
4. ???
5. WE ARE OUT OF HERE!

I heard a deep intake of breath from behind me. Mimi was looking over my shoulder.

"Goddamnit."

Looking back at her, I saw that Mimi was pinching the bridge of her nose with her eyes closed, evidently trying to pretend the rest of the world didn’t exist. She took deep breaths, trying to calm herself.

Perhaps now wasn’t the best time to inform her of what was approaching behind us, then.