Chapter Text
“Would you do it all over again? Knowing what you know now? Knowing that you end up here, at gunpoint?“
I had said no, but apparently that counted for nothing as I had found over the past couple of hours since I had regained consciousness. My first awareness had been an expanding area of bugs under my control that spread to about half my peak range, which put me around 4 blocks. That on it's own filled me with relief like regaining a lost limb, but as the finer details of my situation came to me I realized things were not as simple or easy as someone managing to restore my passenger and I to our previous state. It appeared I now lacked a human body, and in a sense that was true, but as I spread my senses across the cold night I found that there was in fact a sleeping human body at the center of my range.
There were two major problems with the body lying at the center of my range. The first was that I was unable to actually control the body in any capacity. The second was that the body was not mine, but Panacea's. I lacked knowledge of the finer details of what had happened between her and her sister, but the things I did know told me that this girl had some serious issues I was in no capacity equipped to deal with. I knew she had warped Glory Girl into some kind of twisted flesh cocoon after putting her body back together with the biomass from cats, dogs, and various bugs I supplied her with. Amy had somehow found her way to the Birdcage after that, and I remembered that the state of Victoria's body during the fight with Scion had not spoken well of her actions.
As I investigated with my limited range I found that the area was jarringly familiar and unfamiliar at the same time, like happening upon a place you used to frequent but hadn't been to in years. I couldn't exactly use my bugs to read a newspaper, but I could use them for a different form of discerning my location, gang signs. The Empire and ABB tags I found as well as those of some smaller more irrelevant players told me that this must be Brockton Bay, while the absence of any Merchant tags told me they weren't around yet. Those combined with the wintry chill in the air formed an idea that timeline wise it was possible that this was shortly after I had triggered and was still in the psych ward.
I spared a moment to wonder about past Taylor, and if there was anything I could currently do to help her. Would she still have the same powers? If our ranges overlapped would they cancel out or would I simply be robbed entirely of my only form of agency in this bizarre second chance at life? What if she simply never woke up, left in a coma forever as my own arrival had shattered her beyond repair? What if the same happened to Amy as well?
I tore myself away from those thoughts and grasped control of myself. If this was a second chance, even one I hadn't asked for, I could not afford to waste it. Worst case scenario I was both permanently chained to Amy and she would never wake up. If that happened I would need to find some way of moving her around with bugs so that I could at least affect things at range. As for communicating with people, I should be able to manage it through my swarm senses and voice, even if it would freak a lot of people out. Maybe if I used swarm clones it would help people see me as more of a person? I was a bit worried people would blame me for Amy's condition, which might even actually be the case.
At any rate my musing was interrupted when my power started extending in another direction through a quarter sized hole in reality near the edge of my range. I gained awareness of a stark white room with four people arranged within. I recognized them, one I heard of their demise, another I saw killed before me, the third I myself murdered, while the last was my own executioner. There were just enough bugs in the room for me to get a good grasp of who was located where, and to be able to speak and listen. Cauldron had found me.