Entanglement Pt 1 (Patreon)

Part One: Not in Kansas Anymore


The locker door opened abruptly; I tumbled out, writhing, still screaming in terror. I was out of my head; my wits had long since deserted me. Someone tried to restrain me; I clawed and bit and struggled, my mind still trapped within the locker.

Eventually, mercifully, someone sedated me.

I slept.

<><>​

Earth Bet

I awoke. A nurse was bending over me, smoothing my sheets down. I screamed; she leaped back in fright. My arms were already strapped to the bed, probably as a precaution against a sudden and violent awakening. What do you know? I had a sudden and violent awakening.

I thrashed and screamed, not knowing what was reality and what was false. Odd visions in my head, strange noises in my ears, added to my memory of what had gone before, and I wanted to be free, to be gone from this place. I had no idea what was happening to me, and the more I struggled, the more firmly the restraints held me down. There was a man there, whom I might have recognised as my father if I were less agitated. But I did not, and so I fought to be free.

Coolness flowed into my veins from the IV, and I slept once more.

<><>​

Earth Terra

I lay in the hospital bed. The restraints had been removed; although I was still a little shaky, I hadn't done much more than scream a few times. The nurse had been rather shaken, but Dad had apologised to her and then held my hand. I had cried, quite a bit, but he never let go.

I sniffled, then pulled a tissue from the box on the bedside table and blew my nose. “Sorry.”

“Don't worry about it,” the man in the suit told me. I think his name was Wallis. “I saw that locker. I'm surprised that you're doing as well as you are.”

“It's not the first time they've done something to me,” I admitted. “Nothing as bad as that, but … yeah. Not a total surprise.”

His brows drew down. I was surprised by the anger in his expression. “And nobody did anything to stop it?”

Dad squeezed my hand; I squeezed back. “I tried telling them. The teachers. But nothing ever happened. Emma's dad -” I stopped, wishing I could take the words back. I hadn't meant to say that, not in front of Dad.

“Emma?” His voice was strangled. He didn't want it to be true. “Please don't tell me …” His eyes searched mine, imploring.

I grimaced and looked away from him. The FBI man raised an eyebrow. “Who's Emma?”

“Her best friend,” Dad ground out. “Emma Barnes. When I see Alan, I'm going to -”

“No, Dad,” I begged. Pleaded. “There's a reason I didn't tell you. If I snitch on Emma, I'm screwed. It'll be worse than ever before.”

“More to the point, Mr Hebert,” Wallis said. “If you make a move against this girl's family, it'll muddy any case that we might be able to make. We're going to have to gather evidence, and that evidence has to be untainted.”

Dad frowned, brought back down to earth. “Tell me, exactly, why the FBI is taking an interest in this case,” he requested. “I mean, I expected the police, sure, but why you guys?”

I didn't say anything. It was something I'd been wondering about too.

“It's very simple.” Wallis turned a page on his notebook. “This goes far beyond an ordinary crime. In the case of a shooting or a stabbing or even a basic assault, such as shutting you in your locker without anything special in there, the police would be handling it. But this situation is different. Toxic waste is classed as a biohazard, and I'm here to look over the case to see if it needs to be punted up the chain."

"And if it doesn't?" asked Dad. "Does this get dropped back to the police again?"

Wallis shook his head with a reassuring smile. "No. Once you've got the FBI's attention, you keep it. No matter what, it's still a biohazard pure and simple. It probably won't get classified as a WMD, but even so, whoever did this is facing severe consequences."

“Will – will Emma be expelled?” I was hopeful.

He laughed briefly; my heart sank. But his next words buoyed me up again. “Miss Hebert, if she's found guilty, that's the least of what'll happen to her. Attempted murder, deprivation of liberty, misuse of a toxic biohazard, bringing said biohazard into a school … she'll be lucky if they don't try her as an adult. Worst case – for her, that is – is if my team decides that it's worth classifying it as a weapon of mass destruction. As I said, that outcome's highly unlikely, but if it did happen, then Homeland invokes the Patriot Act, and there's a good chance that she goes away as a terrorist.”

I blinked. Emma? A terrorist? “But … but …” I stumbled for words. “Wait. What's the Patriot Act?” I certainly didn't recall anything like that from my Social Studies class.

Both my father and Agent Wallis were looking at me oddly. “What?” I asked.

“Kiddo, you know what the Patriot Act is,” Dad said. “You did a presentation on it in seventh grade. Got an A minus for it.” He grinned, turning to Wallis. “She wanted to do a diorama of the World Trade Centre, with smoke coming out. The teacher wouldn't let her, because it would actually involve setting fire to her project. She was convinced for months that's why she didn't get the A plus.”

Wallis nodded judiciously. “It would've been a safety issue. Not to mention being a little insensitive. This close to New York, there's almost certainly someone who lost friends in the attack living here.”

“Yeah, I know a few -” began Dad, then looked at me as I shook my head. “What?”

“No, Dad, I don't know anything about the Patriot Act,” I insisted. “I did a presentation, yeah, but it was about the PRT, and I did a diorama of the Protectorate base. But I made the force field out of cellophane and it collapsed on the base, and I still think they docked me points because of that. Not the World Trade Centre.”

“Hmm.” Wallis peered at the IV bag. “Okay, I think we're done here.”

“What?” I sat up a little. “I'm not sleepy. We can keep going. Emma wasn't the only one.”

Wallis shook his head slightly. “Miss Hebert, you're not tracking well, and it sounds like you're describing a scene from a comic book.” He closed his notebook and stood up.

“No,” I insisted. “That happened.”

Dad sighed. “I'm sorry, kiddo. But it didn't.” He took my hand. “The doctors say you've had a terrible shock, and you're also on drugs that have probably made you not quite sure of what's real and what's not. Mr Wallis will be coming back later once we're sure you're lucid, okay?”

“But I am lucid,” I insisted. “Ask me anything.”

Wallis sighed. “All right. What happened on September the eleventh, two thousand and one?”

“Um.” I tried to think back. Too late for Leviathan, too early for Simurgh. “That's a little unfair. I was only six years old. How am I supposed to remember what happened on a particular day when I was six?”

“Trust me, Miss Hebert, everyone remembers what happened on that day.” His voice was gentle, but his gaze never left mine.

“Oh, right!” I grinned triumphantly. Something big had happened in two thousand one. I'd thought it had happened earlier in the year, but right now I wasn't going to try to trust in my memory. “Ellisburg. Nilbog took over Ellisburg.”

Right away, from the looks on their faces, I knew it was the wrong answer. “Um … didn't he?”

Agent Wallis shook his head again, and there was regret on his face. “No, Miss Hebert,” he said sadly.

I tried again, wildly. “It's not when Leviathan sank Kyushu, is it?”

If anything, the look of regret deepened. “I have no idea what you're talking about.”

He opened the door; Dad stepped out in the corridor with him. At first, I only caught snatches of conversation, but their voices gradually rose.

“ - not going to drop the investigation -” That was Dad.

“ - course not. But if her trauma is so bad -” Wallis's voice was soft and understanding.

“ - once she's off the drugs - “

“ - psychiatric testing -”

“She's not crazy.” That was Dad's voice, coming through clearly.

“Mr Hebert, I never said she was. But you heard her. Speaking about things and events which she may well have made up on the spot. Possibly because of the trauma. I'm trained in picking up lies and evasion, and all indications are that she believes what she's saying. I can't risk having her fantasy world spill over into our investigation. So we have to be certain that her head is clear and that she's not suffering from any delusions when I get the next statement from her.”

There was a long silence. “God damn it,” Dad muttered.

“Hang in there, Mr Hebert,” Agent Wallis told him. “This is just a minor setback. We'll get there.”

Dad came back into the room and shut the door behind him. “Sorry,” I mumbled. “Didn't mean to sound crazy.”

He shook his head as he chuckled sadly. “That's okay. You probably couldn't help it. I remember when I had my appendix out and had a bad reaction to a sedative. The nurses later told me I'd been throwing my pillow at the wall, to kill the psychedelic spiders.”

“But I'm not making stuff up, and I'm not remembering it wrong,” I insisted. “I get good marks in World Affairs, at least when they're not stealing my homework.”

The look that came over his face then was a mix of compassion and worry. “Taylor, what if I could prove that what you're saying is wrong?”

I wasn't quite sure where he was going with this. “Well, you can't, but sure, go ahead,” I agreed.

Pulling up a chair, he sat down next to me. “All right then. You say you don't know anything about the Patriot Act, or nine-eleven?”

My head tilted as I thought about this. “They're linked, aren't they? Nine-eleven … you're not talking about nine-one-one, are you?” I paused, and he shook his head. “Okay … wait, that date Mr Wallis quoted. September the eleventh. Nine, eleven. So something big happened on the eleventh of September in two thousand and one, that caused something called the Patriot Act to be created …?” I trailed off.

The lines on Dad's face etched themselves a little deeper. “You really don't know any more than that, do you?”

I spread my hands in confusion. “It's what I've been trying to tell you.”

He closed his eyes for a moment, and sighed. “Okay,” he said, opening them again. “Let's start with what you were talking about. The, uh, PTR? The Protectorate?”

“PRT, Dad,” I corrected him automatically. A suspicion was beginning to creep across my mind. What if there's a Master who's made everyone in the city forget that the PRT and the Protectorate even existed? And that I'm immune because of what I've just been through?

“Okay, PRT,” he agreed in good humour. “So what's it stand for?”

My suspicion grew. “Parahuman Response Teams, Dad. You know this one.”

“No. I don't. And what are 'parahumans'?”

This was really, really weird. But maybe if I explained it carefully enough, he'd remember. “Superhumans, Dad. Capes. Heroes, like Alexandria. Villains like, uh, Kaiser. Parahumans. You know.”

“Superheroes?” He was looking more and more confused. “You're talking about superheroes?”

“Well, yes.” Finally, he gets it.

He shook his head yet again. “But … superheroes are fictional. They don't exist.”

“But they do exist!” I was starting to get frustrated. “The PRT has a base right here in Brockton Bay! The Protectorate has a base here! How can you say they don't exist?”

“What's the Protectorate?” he asked blankly.

“Only the nationwide government super-team,” I told him, trying not to sound too sarcastic. “Like I said, they've got a base right here in the city.”

“Oh, really?” he asked, coming right back at me. “I'm guessing it's a secret underground base that only you know about?”

“Uh, duh, no,” I retorted. “It's the big thing on the oil rig in the middle of the bay, with the glowy force-field around it. I can show you if you want. It's not exactly inconspicuous.”

“Okay, so show me,” he invited, pulling back the curtains. Brockton Bay General was situated on a hill, and has a good view of the bay. “Where is it?”

“It's right …” I scanned the bay, then looked again more carefully. Come on, where is it? “It's right …” I began again, my eyes quartering each section of the bay. “Um …”

Eventually, I had to admit defeat. “I can't see it,” I admitted in a small voice.

“Because it's not there.” To his credit, Dad's voice wasn't triumphant. He sounded more sad than anything.

“No, it's there, I know it is,” I insisted. “They must've turned it invisible or something.” I didn't know for a fact that they could do that, but with Armsmaster I wouldn't rule anything out.

“Taylor.” Dad's voice was patient. “It's the year two thousand eleven, not twenty-two eleven. We don't have super-heroes, or force fields, or invisibility. Now, I don't know what comic books you've been reading, or TV shows you've been watching, but you have to understand that all of this you're talking about isn't real. And the longer you insist that it is, the harder it will be for Agent Wallis to make his case about you being fit to give evidence about what happened to you.”

Finally, his words began to register on me. He really meant it. Doubts began to assail me. Was everything I thought I knew just some huge dreamworld overlaid on what was real?

“Uh, okay,” I mumbled. “Um, can I ask one more thing?”

“Anything,” he said at once.

“Can you go to the nurses' station and ask for their oldest, most worn-out phone book? The one that's always stuck at the back of the cupboard?”

He frowned. “Can I ask why?”

“Um, I'd rather just check on something before I say anything,” I hedged.

“Okay then.” He left the room, but not without another odd look. I lay back in bed, trying not to fidget. My thoughts collided with one another, and I could make neither head nor tail of them.

Dad doesn't know anything about the PRT, the Protectorate or capes.

The Protectorate base isn't there.

Nobody else seems to remember anything at all about them.

Is the PRT building even there?

Have I been out longer than I thought, and there's been some event, and everyone's repressing the memory of there ever having been capes?

That idea chilled me, especially when my mind circled back to the idea of there being a Master forcing everyone to forget the very existence of capes. My fingers twisted against each other.

The door opened and Dad came in again. “Okay, got it. So what did you want to check?”

I didn't answer him; taking the book, I checked the date on it. Two thousand three to two thousand four. That should do it. Opening it, I began to check the P's. Dad watched, his brow furrowing. I went through the P section twice, in both the yellow and white pages, before acknowledging that there was no listing for 'Parahuman Response Teams' or even 'PRT'. Then I leafed over to where it listed government organisations. If the PRT was anywhere, it would be there.

It wasn't. I stared at the page for the longest time.

What does it mean?

Closing the book again, I ran my thumb over the worn corners. This was an old book. When it was printed, I'd been in middle school. But the PRT had been a thing, then. It should have had a listing.

But it didn't.

Again I asked myself the question. What does it mean? I was starting to get the horrible feeling that I knew the answer.

“Taylor?”

I looked up at Dad and handed the phone book back to him.

“Did you find what you were looking for?” He knew I hadn't.

I shook my head. “No.”

“Is there anything you want to talk about?”

Again, I shook my head. “Can I … be alone for a bit? Please?”

“Okay. I'll be outside.”

Standing up, he took the book with him. The door closed behind him.

I lay there in the bed, in the sterile hospital room, and tried to think.

What's going on? Where am I? How did I get here? Because I'm sure as hell not on Earth Bet any more.

I had never felt so alone in my life.

Part 2