Chapter Text
At seventeen I started to starve myself
I thought that love was a kind of emptiness
And at least I understood then the hunger I felt
And I didn't have to call it loneliness
Hunger , Florence + the Machine
Greg Veder was nervous. That wasn’t unusual for him - experience had taught him both that most things he did led to problems, and that he didn’t know how to deal with most of those problems. It was why he spent most of his time at home on his computer and why he kept to himself at school. When he talked to people, he tended to babble - his mom called it word-salad - as a way of papering over that nervousness, which only made things come out worse.
Today, though, he was nervous for a very specific reason.
He hadn’t really noticed Taylor Hebert at first, not in his first year of high school at least. She’d just kinda been there, hanging around with Emma Barnes and, if he was honest, Emma took up most of his attention. He’d never shot his shot with the gorgeous redhead - she was way out of his league, and in his first year at Winslow he’d been more busy with just keeping afloat dealing with homework and school life itself. In a place like Winslow, staying away from the gangs was a full-time concern.
It was only when Taylor had broken away from Emma’s shadow and Emma had started her campaign of relentless bullying in retaliation, that he’d really paid attention. It sounded bad when he said it like that, but it’d brought Taylor to the centre of attention and made everyone notice her really - at least, everyone who wasn’t in one of the gangs. Time and again he’d tried to convince himself to stand up for her, but he’d always stopped himself short. He was one guy on the fringes of school society, it wouldn’t change anything, he’d told himself. It’d just put him in Emma’s line of sight as well, to say nothing of the athletic Sophia and Madison, school darling.There were plenty of boyfriends, or would-be boyfriends who’d be happy to show an awkward nerd and social outcast like him a thing or two. So he kept quiet. He never stepped in and he hated himself for that, for doing nothing.
Greg admired her, honestly. He’d just felt sorry for her at first, but every day, she just seemed to get back up and carry on when they knocked her down, no matter how many times that was. He didn’t know how she did it, but somehow she found the strength. But now, things had started to change. He’d noticed it before the Christmas holidays, Taylor had started seeming more sure of herself, more purposeful. She’d endured before, but she’d seemed a little more broken every day, the constant siege wearing on even her formidable resolve. Since the beginning of their senior year, though, she seemed to have regained something. When Emma and her posse weren’t looking, she stood taller and stronger, and she never seemed to flag in her determination. He was fairly sure the bullying trio hadn’t noticed it, but Taylor had fortified herself in some way they couldn’t touch. It was inspiring to watch.
And, Greg had to privately admit, she’d filled out very nicely. Taylor was already tall, but she’d gotten even taller and leggier. Even with her baggy clothes he’d noticed her bust getting bigger too. It was shallow, sure, but he couldn’t help what he liked! Besides, if that was all that was driving him, he wouldn’t have taken this step.
He was going to ask Taylor out.
He’d spent the Christmas holidays thinking it over. It would definitely put him in Emma’s black books and paint a target on his back for every jock and gang prospect in the school, but if he could make it work, he’d both have a girlfriend, and he’d be able to help her. He’d been a coward for too long. Greg Veder was going to do the right thing!
The first day of school was always a slog, but today lessons seemed to creep by like molasses. Greg had planned to talk to Taylor in study hall, but he couldn’t find her anywhere that morning. Lunch was out as well, because Emma and her gang were stalking the halls, and he didn’t want to risk them walking in.
Greg’s anxiety grew as the day wore on, and by the time school let out he’d almost talked himself out of trying at all, when he saw Taylor’s dark, curly hair emerge from a side door. He glanced over at the bus to see Emma’s gang climbing on. When he looked back, Taylor had turned away, walking off down the road. This was the best chance he was going to get.
For a moment he almost faltered and gave up, his nerve tested to breaking point. Then he firmed his resolve and jogged after her. He’d made his choice and was going to follow through. He was a little out of breath before he reached her, but not too bad. Those long legs were good for more than just looks. As he approached he called. “Hey, Taylor!”
The girl turned back towards him, immediately tense. For a moment she looked like she was about to run, or possibly sock him in the face. Then she recognised him and relaxed. “Oh. Hey Greg,” she said. “What is it?”
“I, uh,” Greg began, fumbling with his words before smacking his cheeks and taking a deep breath. “I was wondering, um, if you’d want to go on a date with me? It’s just, I really admire you, and I dunno if you’ve got anyone else you hang out with - o-or even if you have a boyfriend outside of school! - so don’t take this the wrong way, but I’d really love to be your boyfriend. Or just one date, t-to get to know each other! That kinda thing? And also you’re uhm, really cute, so-” He cut himself off, cheeks burning. He’d practised this! He’d told himself he’d need to be careful of his word-salad, and then the moment it came to the real thing, he just blew it. He looked up from his feet at Taylor, and a little swell of hope burst in his chest as he saw a faint blush on her cheeks. She looked surprised, but not angry. Maybe he had a chance?
Taylor took a moment to collect herself. “I… I’m sorry, Greg,” she said, and his heart plummeted. “I… just don’t really know you that well. And I’ve got a whole bunch of stuff going on at the moment anyway. I don’t think I really have time to be a girlfriend.”
“W-well, if you don’t know me that well, maybe a date would help?” Greg rallied, despite his disappointment.
Taylor shook her head. “I’m sorry, but, no. Not at the moment, anyway.” She paused, catching his devastated look and chewed her lip for a moment, apparently thinking over something. “It’s not that… I don’t dislike you, okay? But… I do have something I need help with. If you give me a hand with that, that’d be a chance for us to get to know each other, right?”
Greg nodded. It wasn’t a date, but it was a chance! And he owed Taylor for how he’d failed her, anyway. “What is it?”
“I’ll show you,” Taylor said. “I was on my way there now. Do you need to get home?”
Greg shook his head. “Nah; my mom’s working up in Boston for the week, so I’m taking care of the house.”
“Perfect,” nodded Taylor. “Follow me.” There was a strange sense of steel in her eyes, the same purpose he’d noticed and been drawn to in school. Greg gulped, his stomach performing a somersault as he followed after her.
It took almost half an hour to reach the seafront, first walking to a different bus stop - “There’s one here that goes by my place, but the rest of Winslow don’t use it,” Taylor had said - then riding the bus northeast towards the Trainyard, getting off and walking down towards the Lord Street Market, empty of stalls, though he could see Fugly’ Bob’s off in a corner. Rather than head towards one of the shops however, Taylor led him down through the market, then suddenly to the right, down a narrow road, and then around the back of an ancient apartment block, its windows blank with boarding.
“Here we are,” she said as she squatted by a tarpaulin, pulling it aside to reveal a storm drain, its grate lying across the black hole beneath. Greg looked from her to the drain, and back again.
“Uh, what?”
“Take my hand,” said Taylor, standing and offering hers to him.
“What?” Greg replied, but his hand had moved automatically, and he didn’t pull it away when he felt hers clasp it. Her grip was firm and warm, her skin soft, but his focus quickly snapped back to her face as she looked him steadily in the eyes.
“Greg, I’m a cape.”
Greg’s eyes widened as his mind came to a halt. Taylor… was a cape? The connections began to form. “...Back last autumn. That was when you triggered, right?” He’d seen plenty of discussions on the Parahumans Online forum. Capes themselves didn’t like to talk about it, but apparently they almost universally got their power at the absolute lowest part of their lives, a so-called ‘Trigger Event’.
A black look flitted across Taylor’s face for a moment and then was gone. “Yeah. I’d… rather not talk about it.”
Greg felt heat rise in his cheeks. “Oh, I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m dumb, I know, I just think stuff and it comes out-”
Taylor gave a short laugh. “I know. Believe me, I know. But, yeah. I’m a cape, and I want to introduce you to my secret base.”
Greg cast a glance at the storm drain. “Down there?” She wasn’t a villain; she couldn’t be. But he’d be lying if he wasn’t a little nervous. A cape, taking you to a mysterious base in the storm drains?
She nodded. “Kinda.”
“Okay, but… why me? Why’d you tell me about being a cape? Aren’t you meant to, you know, have a secret identity and all that?”
“I wasn’t lying when I said I wanted help. It’s nothing bad, just… Okay, I’m a tinker. That means I-”
“You make stuff, right? What’s your specialisation? Do you know what it is yet? Oh, I came up with a bunch of tests you could use to work that out!” Greg’s enthusiasm was building. Taylor was a cape-! A tinker at that, which were honestly the coolest kind! And she wanted his help? This was even better than a date!
“Yes, I know what my specialty is,” Taylor interrupted him. “Basically, I just need someone to help me carry stuff around, put stuff in place - that kinda thing.”
“Why me, though?” Greg asked.
Taylor shrugged. “Honestly? I’ve been trying to think of someone who could help me with this kinda stuff for a while. I can’t tell my dad, because he’d try to throw me in the Wards, and I… don’t really know many other people. You, uh, presented yourself.” She smiled, her teeth white. Greg loved that smile.
He chuckled, rubbing the back of his head awkwardly. “I guess I did, huh. So, are you a hero? I haven’t seen anything on PHO about a new cape in the Bay.”
“I haven’t really gone out yet,” Taylor said. “It took me a long idea to get anything but really basic stuff. And I didn’t want to go out without some serious tools, because… well, I’ve seen the stats when it comes to tinkers.” Her tone turned sour.
Greg nodded. “Uh, so, I’m super stoked to help you out but… what happens if I say no? You’ve already told me you’re a cape.”
Suddenly, he felt something sharp at his wrist; not breaking the skin, but enough to make him feel like he’d just dropped into cold water. “I knock you out and give you a compound to prevent the last hour or so from making it into your long-term memory, then get you home” Taylor said, that same hard look in her big, expressive eyes again. “There’s no side-effects, so you’ll just wake up at home, and assume you had a nap.”
She meant it too. Her hands didn’t shake, her voice was calm and even. Greg realised then that he’d under-estimated her the whole time. Taylor wasn’t just tough; she was terrifyingly strong. “O-okay, that’s kinda terrifying,” he gulped. “But I’m in.” Was he a masochist? Because honestly, seeing Taylor act like that was pretty damn hot.
“Great!” she said, a genuine smile on her face. She released his hand, leaned over and pulled aside the heavy drain cover with remarkable ease. “Down here, then.”
Peering inside, Greg saw that metal rungs were set into the side of the drain, leading down into darkness. “You built your lair in the storm drains? Doesn’t it get flooded?”
“It’s protected,” Taylor explained, sniffing. “And it’s a base, not a lair! I’m a hero. Villains have lairs.”
Greg laughed. “I guess,” he replied, lowering himself into the hole and beginning to climb down the ladder. Before long, his feet found the tunnel floor and just as Taylor said, despite the mildly unpleasant smell, it was bone dry. He looked up to see Taylor’s silhouette moving the grating back into place and climbing down after him. A moment later, he jerked his head away, realising he was staring. In his defence, she’s started to fill out her jeans as well as her top. She joined him a moment later, dropping the last couple of steps and fishing a flashlight out of her bag. She didn’t hand it to him, just turning it on and starting down the tunnels. “This way,” she said. Greg hurried after her, but her fast pace didn't stop him from talking.
“I still can’t believe I didn’t realise you were a cape this whole time. How did you hide making a lair- Oops, sorry, a base down here? I guess you’ve been stuck in the ‘make the tools to make the tools to make the things you actually want’ phase for a while, huh? I mean, obviously I don’t have any personal experience, but like, I’ve spent plenty of time on PHO reading through stuff. Honestly, it’s kinda fucked up that if you don’t want to go to the Protectorate, your best chance for any kind of guidance on this stuff is a bunch of random strangers on the internet, don’t you think? Oh god, remember Mr. Gladly’s class where he was all what would you do if you got super-powers? What a tool, right? Like anyone’s gonna know that, or be honest about it! God though, you get to actually live it-! What kind of tinker even are you? I mean we’ve got plenty in the Bay already, between Armsmaster, Squealer, Kid Win and Leet.”
Greg knew he was tossing another word salad at Taylor, but by the time his brain caught up, he was already mid-chatter and was speaking to fill the silence, a mixture of nerves and excitement spurring him on.
“You said your, uh, mind-wipe thing was a compound, right? Are you a chemical tinker? That’d be amazing! There’s so much you could do with that! I mean, bombs are the obvious thing, but you don’t wanna blow people up. Have you made, uh, goo bombs? Like what the PRT does with containment foam?”
“I haven’t, but that’s not a bad idea,” Taylor said. “I’m not a chemical tinker, though. Not directly, at least. You want me to just tell you, or let you keep guessing?” There was a playful lilt to her voice, and Greg could see that small smile in the flashlight’s beam. He felt his cheeks heat again.
“I, uh, can I guess? It’s kinda fun.”
“Sure.” Taylor shrugged, turning down a side-passage. This tunnel was smaller, with a curved base rather than squared-off concrete, and a little claustrophobic.
“So, when you, uh, threatened me, you had something pointy. I don’t think that’s your nails, so… is your specialty hidden tech? Like, spy-gear type stuff; hidden gadgets, secret- Oh! Is that how you made a secret lair? Your specialty’s sneaky tech?”
Taylor chuckled, but shook her head. “Nope, sorry. You were closer with the first one.”
Greg thought back to what he’d said the first time. “Chemical tinker… Mind-affecting stuff… Is that your specialty? Tinkertech that messes with minds? Like, some kind of drug-tinker or something? Oof - I can see why you’d want to keep that under wraps.”
Taylor shook her head again. “Wrong again. That’s strike three and you’re out of time.” She turned suddenly aside and shone the flashlight on what Greg had thought at first was just a slightly off-colour patch of concrete in the wall. Now that he could see it clearly, he could make out weird, flowing patterns in it. Taylor reached out a hand to press against a particular section, and with an odd sound like a sigh the seemingly-solid wall split apart and opened outwards like a stone flower, revealing a smooth-sided tunnel within, lit by a bluish phosphorescence.
“...You’re a biotinker,” breathed Greg. Horror stories flashed through his mind; Bonesaw’s atrocities; Nilbog turning all of Elisburg into a nightmare kingdom; Blasto’s bizzare creations down in Boston. He shook himself. That wasn’t Taylor. She wouldn’t be like that…
Right?
Even with his reassurances, just knowing what she was put him a little more on edge. “You’re not gonna turn me into a flying monkey or something, are you?” he said, trying to lighten the mood a little. The hard look Taylor shot him told him she didn’t appreciate it, and he backpedalled quickly. “Sorry! I’m just joking! I just… I was really surprised. Wet tinkers are super rare! You made all these things, right?” he asked, gesturing towards the door and the vine-like growths which spread around the inside of the tunnel, glowing faintly.
Taylor nodded, her expression softening a little. “Yeah. The roots took a while to make, but they’re relatively simple, technically speaking; they spread downwards from here, and I just had to guide them in the direction I wanted them to grow. They dissolved the rock away and sealed it to make the solid tunnel. Then I just grafted on the bioluminescent symbiotes and voila. Secret tunnel. Just, uh, watch your step. The vines kinda make stairs on the floor, but it’s still a bit slippery.”
So saying, she stepped inside and began to make her way into the tunnel, flicking the torch off. Greg followed behind, stepping into the tunnel gingerly, before the door closed behind him. He took a breath. “No going back now,” he muttered to himself, and began to climb up behind his crush. To be fair, there was no going back from the moment she took his hand, but the door had a certain feeling of finality to it.
The tunnel climbed up at a steep angle for a short while, then down again, curving slowly around towards the right. Taylor explained as they went that its shape was meant to prevent flooding, in case the door was broken, and that the door itself had been grown from a modified kind of coral. “I bought the original stock from a pet store,” she said. “They sell it to put in fish tanks and stuff. But it’s pretty different now. I’ve got a lot of use out of the stuff.”
“It can’t, uh, get out, right?” Geg asked. “I’ve heard online that the PRT are really tough on any tinkers who can make self-replicating stuff. There’s guys on PHO that say Blasto has a kill order pre-signed if he ever makes anything that can breed. Or, well, probably seed? ‘Cause it’s Blasto; he does this weird plant-animal hybrid thing. Have you taken a look at some of his stuff? I read that tinkers can get a lot from studying other tinkers’ work; it’s part of what makes them so cool! Or, uh, you so cool, I guess. You can, like, evolve your tech to deal with new situations, where other powers just have one thing, you know?”
Taylor’s silhouette nodded ahead of him, outlined in the blue glow. “I haven’t studied any of his stuff personally, but I’ve read about it,” she said. “I don’t really know how useful it’d be to me. My tech… He does a lot of creatures and stuff, right? My tech is more focused on symbiosis, bioaugmentation, that kind of thing. I’m bad at anything independent. Which honestly is a blessing in disguise, I guess.”
“Augmentation?” Greg echoed, as the tunnel began to slowly level out. “You mean you can, like, upgrade people? Is that a kind of ‘replace your arm with tentacles’ thing or what? Have you done anything like that already?” Wait, her needle-memory-wipe thing was probably that, just hidden under her sweater. Stupid question, Greg.
Taylor stopped, and Greg was worried for a moment that he’d said something wrong. Then after a moment of hesitation, she set down her bag and to his surprise, reached down to pull her baggy sweatshirt up over her head. Underneath, she wore a long-sleeved t-shirt, and Greg’s eyes fell half-unwillingly to her chest, noting that he’d been entirely correct and she filled out the fabric very nicely and not just there! Beneath the shapeless sweatshirt, the body she’d revealed was sculpted . His eyes traced up to her muscular shoulders and took in the telltale swell of her biceps in the sleeves, before circling around to a tight tummy that he imagined had to have abs. Finally, he pulled his eyes up to her face, and was met with a hesitant little smile.
“I did some, yeah,” Taylor said. “I mean, I could do the… tentacle thing, but why? Evolution kinda fucked the human spine, but thumbs are great. I guess you could call it a tune-up: Enhanced healing speed, fixing some nutritional issues, denser muscle fibres, that kind of thing.”
Greg blinked. “Wow, that’s, uh, that’s really impressive,” he said. “You look like you could bench press me! How long did that take? Was it all tinker stuff or was it, like, working out as well?”
Taylor visibly preened. “I started running almost as soon as I got my powers - if I’m going to be a superhero I’ve got to be fit, right? I worked out a retrovirus for the, uh, ‘tune-up’ and there were some compounds I had to make to facilitate some parts, but to get all that to work… well, my dad thinks I’ve become a bit of an exercise nut.” Greg realised like a bolt of lightning that she wanted some validation. He was probably the first person she’d told about this.
Well, he was only too happy to oblige.
“It really shows!” he said. “You look seriously incredible. It’s like someone crossed an athlete and a supermodel! Like, you’ve got the abs and the arms, but also the-” he stopped himself before saying ‘boobs and butt’, though both of those were godlike too. “A-and everything else as well! And, you said you had denser muscle fibres, so you can probably do better than an athlete anyway. Seriously, I heard Emma’s like a junior model or something, but you, uh, you really blow her out of the water, Taylor. I bet she’d be jealous as hell if she knew you looked like this under all that stuff you wear normally. Plus, she got all that by just lucky genetics, right? You worked for it! You made yourself this hot!”
“Th-thanks,” Taylor said. It was difficult to tell in the blue-green light of the tunnel, but Greg was pretty sure she was blushing. “You can uh- You can stop now! That... It that means a lot. Thank you. A-anyway, let’s get to the base.” She picked up her bag again to sling it over her shoulder, but she kept her sweatshirt off as she began to walk again, Greg trailing behind. Had he gone too far? Taylor seemed to be walking a little taller, though, so he didn’t think she’d hated it.
Before long, they reached another one of the coral doors, and again Taylor pressed her hand against it. “These have microscopic polyps in certain sections, which can sample your biometric signature,” she explained. “If this works out, I’ll key you in as well. Though I, uh, I don’t usually come down this way anymore.”
Greg was about to ask what she meant when the door opened, and he saw what was on the other side.
From the cramped confines of the tunnel, the stone spread out to either side into a wide room, its walls covered in the same glowing vines as the tunnel, separating strange, bubble-shaped tanks that looked like they were made of glass or perspex. Some were only as large as his hand, raised up on plinths or tables of coiling vines, while others stretched from floor to ceiling, big enough to contain a person. Although a handful were empty, most were full, either with water, or strange substances he couldn’t begin to guess at. In a few, there was the shadow of something solid inside. One looked almost humanoid.
Beyond the inner chamber, though, was what had really caught Greg’s attention. The artificial cavern opened out into what could only be the murky waters of the Bay, but instead of something sane like an airlock, instead what seemed to be holding back the water was a tall dome like an enormous bubble, criss-crossed with ribs of a similar material to the doors. More of the tanks were dotted around the space, but it didn’t seem to have been entirely colonised yet.
“Wow,” Greg breathed. “You made all this single-handed?”
Taylor nodded as she crossed the room to a bench-like protrusion of stone which projected out of the wall. She set down her bag and turned back to him, shrugging like it was no big deal. “Yeah. I was working out of my basement for a while, but there’s only so much you can do in a place like that. For most of that, I was trying to find a new place, but I ended up deciding to make one, rather than just set up in a warehouse or something. Seemed too easy to find.”
“That makes sense,” Greg said, though internally he was wondering how long it had taken her to get this far. “So, where do I start?”
“What?”
“Well, you wanted me to help with something, right?” asked Greg, wandering over to one of the medium-size tanks, about the size of his head. Condensation fogged the surface, but he wiped it away with his hand. The murky liquid inside was filled with what looked like long, stringy algae.
“Oh, yeah,” said Taylor, leaning down under the bench, and giving Greg an amazing view of her ass in the process as it pushed out her jeans. He was tempted to stare, but looked away. Potentially offending a tinker didn’t seem like a good idea, even if she’d been showing off a bit earlier. “There’s a few things, really. First is, a bunch of my projects need a lot of monitoring, or just extra hands and stuff. I can only do so much at a time, you know? And the great thing about my biotech is after I set it up it kinda maintains itself, so long as you give it the right nutrients - so I was thinking you could help me with that and it’d mean I’d be able to get more stuff out. It’s simple stuff, just insert the right things at the right times, like pet-sitting a goldfish.”
She straightened up, having retrieved a strange object which looked like a cross between a lobster and a multimeter, and crossed the room towards the tank with the humanoid shape inside. “Second, I’m a tinker. I don’t have to keep all my stuff to myself and, apart from that monitoring I was talking about and some adjustments and grafting along the way, my tech only really needs me to seed it. So it’s easier for me to make stuff for more people than it is for, say, Armsmaster. You don’t have to if you don’t want to, but I can make two people as good as one. My tune-up would work as well for you, once I’ve made some adjustments for your XY chromosome pair and your individual genetics and I’m working on some designs for heavier biosuits. Think like power armour, but… well, biological. As long as I’ve got the right nutrients and elements, I can make more than one pretty easily.”
She stabbed the tool into the side of the tank, where the bubble met the stone, as Greg absorbed what she’d just said. “So, you want me to be, like, your sidekick?” he asked, unable to keep the eagerness from his voice. Getting to basically be a cape, alongside a tinker who not only had amazing tech, but was willing to give it to him and make him what sounded like a minor superhuman himself. And who was, he had to admit, both hot as hell and had at least seemed open about the idea of maybe possibly dating eventually. He wanted to pinch himself to make sure he wasn’t dreaming.
“Pretty much yeah,” said Taylor, as the murky liquid in the tank began to drain out into a set of nearby, empty bubbles. As it drained, it revealed what looked almost like a strange wetsuit bonded to the wall, except that the torso and head sections had opened forwards like a flower, leaving a space inside. “And third…” Her tone became more morose. “I think my power’s changed something about me. It’s not that bad but I probably shouldn’t be as okay with all this as I am. And with a power like this I need someone keeping an eye on me. Checking my ideas.”
Greg frowned. “I’ve heard some powers can have mental effects,” he said. “Uh, tinker fugues are the most common but there’s also capes like-” The first which came to mind was Burnscar, but it was probably a really bad idea to compare Taylor to one of the nation’s more infamous villains. He cast around for another example. “Uh, Pennybank, down in New York. Her power gave her this urge to hoard things - she came out about it on TV for, uh, solidarity with other capes whose powers gave them problems. But, I can be your eight year old! You’ll have to teach me some of the stuff to do with the monitoring and stuff. And, uh, I guess I need to get in shape if I’m gonna be a sidekick.”
“...Eight year old?” Taylor asked, looking over at him like he was crazy.
“Yeah! You know, from the Evil Overlord List?” Greg said. He was met with a blank look.
“I’m not an evil overlord,” said Taylor. “And I’m not going to be.”
“I know, it’s just a joke thing? It was like this list that got made online ages ago, like a checklist for villains in movies and stuff, so they don’t make all those dumb mistakes. Like ‘all hay must be carried in bales so heroes can’t hide in it’ and stuff. One of the rules was something like ‘I will keep an eight year old child on my council. If he points out problems in a plan, the plan gets redrawn.’”
Taylor gave a short snort of laughter. “I guess,” she said. The liquid in the tank had drained out completely now, and she fiddled with the tool again, causing the front to detach with a sucking noise and open to one side. “But yeah, you starting some running and working out would be a good base. I’ll get your stats later and draw up an exercise plan while I work on your retrovirus. Assuming you’re in, of course.” She glanced back, searching his face for doubts. “This is probably the last chance to back out completely. My memory-serum doesn’t work for much more than an hour or two past. You can still quit, I won’t stop you, but I’ll have to keep an eye on you. My identity is… pretty important.”
Greg nodded as she reached in and began to do something around the back of the suit - he guessed - where it was attached to the wall. “I won’t tell, either way,” he said, uncharacteristically sincere. “But, I really wanna help you out with this, Taylor! This is honestly just so fucking awesome! Even if it’s dangerous, I’m a massive cape fan and getting to, you know, do stuff with that - and with a tinker - is amazing. Plus, I… I meant what I said before when I said I really admired you. I couldn’t live with myself just backing out now. So I guess what I’m saying is, I’m in.”
Taylor turned to give him a smile, and he could see the same faint blush on her cheeks as before as she toed off her shoes. “Thanks, Greg,” she said, then, as she pulled off her socks, “Hey, would you mind getting my bag?”
“Uh, sure.” Greg moved from where he’d been standing by the wall and crossed to the bench. Picking up the bag, he was surprised by its weight, but when he turned around he came up short.
Taylor had pulled her shirt off, giving Greg a full-frontal view of her softly-sculpted abs and the swell of her sizable breasts inside a black sports bra. “Uh, Taylor?”
She looked up at him from where she’d been leaning down, working at the fly of her jeans. “What is it?”
“You, uh,” Greg’s words caught in his throat as the tinker shimmied her hips a little, working the jeans down. His eyes followed the fabric as it went, revealing first her plain black underwear, then the smooth skin of her long, long legs. He made a valiant effort, pulling his eyes up to her face. “Uh, Taylor!”
“What?” she looked up at him with a glare.
“Wh-why are you s-stripping?” asked Greg, stuttering in his shock.
“The biosuit links to my nervous system,” Taylor explained matter-of-factly, stepping out of her jeans. “It’s got its own nervous system as well, so I can feel what it feels, but if there’s something in between me and it I get this weird ‘fuzz’. Sensory dissonance. Plus, if I wear anything in there, it’ll just get damp.”
“Okay, d-do you want me to l-look away?” Greg said. He looked away to the side, but he could still make her out from the corner of his eye.
“I want you to bring me my bag,” said Taylor, a note of annoyance in her voice.
“Okay, okay,” Greg said. He made his way over towards her, keeping his gaze to the side as he deposited the bag at what he thought was her feet. He heard the sound of fabric being stuffed in and moved away. He couldn’t stop himself glancing back at Taylor, though, and was treated to the sight of her reaching behind herself to unhook her bra. He looked away again, resolutely fixing his eyes on the grey-green murk of the bay outside the dome. A small shoal of dark silver fishes shimmered through the water. There was a shuffling sound, followed by something soft and damp. He kept his eyes trained forwards for another few seconds, before curiosity overwhelmed him, and he looked back.
Taylor had stepped into the suit connected to the wall, and as he watched its fronds closed around her like the petals of a grey-purple flower, closing around her upper legs and over her crotch. The sections folded together and sealed at the edges over her belly and chest. He had a moment’s glimpse of two smooth, firm-looking breasts the size of grapefruits before the fronds covered over them, tracing their outline. A few seconds later, and the suit was complete. It all looked like one piece, with an appearance a bit like a skin-tight wetsuit. It covered Taylor’s body up to her neck, with a mane of remaining fronds hanging down the back as she stepped away from the wall. Greg guessed those might form a head-covering of some kind, but he was suddenly very aware of the tent in his pants and couldn’t entirely keep his eyes from lingering on the way the suit clung to her contours. With an effort, he pulled his gaze upwards. “W-what was that?” he asked.
Taylor blinked. “I… suited up,” she replied.
“I don't get it. You blushed like a tomato when I said how sexy you are, but you're fine getting naked in front of me? Like, I’m really, really not complaining, but that’s not normal, Taylor.”
The blush came back in full force this time. “I was putting on my suit! This and that are two entirely different things! I need my suit to connect properly to my nervous system so I can use it to interface with the geneline modifier. You don’t need to make a big thing about it; it’s not like I’d go strip off while I’m on patrol. But I’m in my base, and you’ll see me like that sooner or later, so what’s it matter? It’s just my body.”
“Okay, putting aside me seeing more later, you could have just told me to look away. It’s not really normal to just strip off in front of a guy you don’t really know.”
“I know,” Taylor frowned in exasperation. “I just… Didn’t think it was a big deal, I guess? That… That is weird.”
“Look, just, take my word on this,” Greg said. “We can do stuff how you like, and I’m not gonna complain, but this is definitely your power doing stuff with your mind. You wanted me to watch you for that, right?”
Taylor nodded. “Yeah, I get it - it’s weird that I don’t find it weird. Do you want me to tell you to look away when I change, or do it in a separate room or something?”
“I don’t mind,” said Greg, quickly. “As long as you’re okay with it. But, we just wanna keep an eye on this, yeah? And if it’s powers stuff messing with your brain, it feels weird to look at you like that. Like you’re, I dunno, drugged or drunk or something.”
“I mean, I don’t really care one way or the other, but I can work something out if it makes you uncomfortable,” Taylor said.
“Okay,” said Greg, nodding. “Uh, moving past that, what did you actually want my help with?”
“Oh, sure. Over here.”
Greg sighed as he closed the door behind him and leaned up against it. It was almost ten at night; he’d been down in Taylor’s base for nearly six hours. They eaten a gross-looking paste made in one of her bubbles for dinner - she said it was full of all the nutrients an enhanced body needed, and more than enough for a normal one, but it still tasted like wet cardboard - but had kept on working. She’d spent the first couple hours coaching him on a trio of mid-sized bubbles he was meant to babysit, while she took a swab of his DNA to start working on his ‘tune-up’, as she kept calling it. She’d also taken the time to reveal the needle she’d threatened him with wasn’t built into her body, but a flesh-colored ‘patch’ like that blended almost seamlessly with her skin tone, under her wrist. The fact that it was external was weirdly comforting to him.
Now he was back in his own, familiar home, it all felt like a dream. It was so unreal that only maybe half an hour before he’d been in the underground, underwater base of a biotinker who wanted his help, and now he was back staring at the same old clock on the wall.
Greg pushed himself up off the wall and scooped up his bag again. Normally, when he got home from school it was a pretty set routine. Get home, do homework, check PHO and do other stuff. In that order, because otherwise the homework would never get done - it’d taken years for his mom to get that through his head. He still didn’t really like it, but it was true. And he still had his homework to do from Winslow; there was five hundred words left for a World Studies assignment, and the end of a science report.
Okay Greg, he told himself. Just get it done. Then you can check PHO. And not say anything about what happened today. At all. Even a little.
He almost laughed as he realised that today might have been the longest he’d stayed away from the website in months.
As he grabbed a snack from the kitchen and made his way towards his room, though, the idea of sitting down to type out the description of an ‘experiment’ in the spread of yeast across an agar culture seemed more and more absurd. He munched his chips as he threaded his way across his room, the floor strewn with books, comics, the occasional shirt and, lurking in a corner, a set of weights he’d used twice and never again. As his computer whirred into life, he stared at them, then pulled his chair over in that direction and began to unearth the exercise equipment from beneath its stack of debris. If what Taylor had told him was true, he’d probably want them soon.
Finally his desktop came on and he reluctantly opened up the document for the report. It was half-done already; he’d been putting off the end all holiday, but it was due tomorrow. As he scrolled down to the bottom, though, he decided to put it off again, closed the document and opened up his browser instead. He’d do the homework later. There was more important stuff to do - more than arguments on PHO or one of his games. They all seemed weirdly pointless, in the face of all that’d happened.
Greg Veder had more important stuff to do.
Though he made a note for future-Greg as well. Next time, bring food. He wasn’t going to have that nutrient-paste again if he could help it.
Plus, the thought of sharing a meal with Taylor was nice.