"Les? Honey, are you okay?" Abigail's voice was soft and gentle. "What are you thinking about?"
He sighed. "A lot of things...I'm pretty sure I can get the deposit back out of the insurance, and...that'll put our bank account back where it should be...but it's going to mean the project coming to a halt. I think the lab should pull through, it's not like we don't have other projects, but...this was the big one, Abby. This was Priority One..."
She nodded. "I'm so sorry, honey..."
He shrugged. "It's...I shouldn't have gotten so invested in it, then it wouldn't matter so much. Every single thing we've tried has shown little bits of promise before fizzling out, and I kept us sinking time and effort into it anyway, because I couldn't bear to give it up..."
His wife sighed. "Les, you were doing a good thing, even if it was rough going. The problem isn't that you persisted too stubbornly, it's that you kept internalizing the failures. This isn't your fault, sweetie. None of it was. You did the best you could with every scrap of information you could get your hands on. You have nothing to be ashamed of."
Mr. Gordon frowned. Actually, he could think of at least one thing he regretted, one little lapse, even if it was ultimately harmless... But even more so... "But...it didn't work," he said. "I've kept hoping that I can help Billy by giving hi...her what she's wanted, giving her a chance to go back to normal, and now...now I can't." He choked up a bit at the end of that sentence.
She began to rub his shoulders, gently. "Not through any fault of your own, honey," she said. "That's the problem here...you keep blaming yourself for something that isn't your fault. It's not your fault she was changed, Les. You couldn't have known. It was just an accident...they happen, sometimes. You can't keep beating yourself up over this. If she has to live with it, she's going to need her dad to be strong for her, not to...to keep wallowing in something that was never his fault to begin with."
He winced at that. But...was she right? She must be; she usually was. Intellectually, he knew she was right. It was just...he couldn't feel it. He was a father...it was his job to protect his children and help them fix their problems...that was a function deeply embedded in his psyche, one that didn't want to hear any rationalizations...
"So...what happens now, then?" he asked. "I mean, that site...it doesn't say there won't be instincts for her to deal with...there already have been some manifestations. You've seen them. What if...what if it doesn't end there?"
Abigail shrugged. "Good question," she said. "What? If it's there, it's there, honey. If Lilly has to grow up as a squirrel-girl, she'll just have to get used to the things her body brings with it. And...look, even if they're completely off-base, even if she does turn out to have a heat cycle...what? She has to deal with a flood of strange new hormonal urges that could cause problems for her down the road? Isn't that basically what everybody goes through at that age? But you and I managed, didn't we?"
He sighed. "I...I guess..."
Minus-four sat on the carpet in the main room of Muriel's apartment, turning her changed forearm this way and that, clenching and unclenching the fingers, and staring curiously at the way the chitin covering reacted, at the little rifts between the individual plates where the underlying flesh almost showed through, noting the gentle, inaudible clacking sensations they sent through her fingers as they rubbed against each other. This was so strange...not even a day in this body, and already it was changed. She knew there were other changes as well, even aside from her changed legs. She'd felt something happening to her head...but she didn't really know what. She began to touch her hands to the front of it in an attempt to feel any discrepancies.
The woman eyed her curiously, then laughed. That induced an emotional reaction...happy. It made her happy. She smiled. Was there a causal relationship between those things? And then she was gone...why did she go? She didn't want her to go...why did it matter to her now whether other people came or went? She didn't understand this at all...
Muriel came back from the bathroom with a hand mirror. She wasn't much for primping, herself, but it was handy to have around on occasion. She knelt down next to the girl. "Here," she said, handing her the mirror. "Take a look."
Minus-four held the object up for a better view. Oh...it was a reflecting surface. And...that must be her face, then. Her face...she hadn't even thought about having one before. Technically she'd known that she must look like Four, but she hadn't given it any thought. But the face in the mirror was...different. Not dissimilar to Four..."Jenny?" But not identical, either. It had traces of...of "Muriel," too, but the combined result was something different than either. Something uni...que...
Her thoughts trailed off as she stared into the mirror. The face in the mirror...it moved! It changed expressions as she thought about things. This, too, was something she'd understood on a technical level, but never paid much attention to, other than to try and discern whether the creatures around her were hostile or not. But to actually watch her own face in motion...
Muriel smiled, watching the girl stare at herself and her changing expressions. What must the world look like, through those eyes? She had seemed so off-putting at first, first disconnected from and disinterested in the world around her during the fight, then distraught and depressive when she had been cut off and abandoned. And she was still very withdrawn, but it was encouraging to see her taking interesting in little things like this. It made her feel like...like maybe there was hope for her yet. Maybe she didn't have to go through life as a stunted ex-living weapon.
She was interrupted from that line of thought by a scratching on the window. She looked up to see Tetra standing on the outside sill, and she went over and opened the window. "Where did you get off to?" she asked.
The cat-girl sighed. "Damage control...I wanted to try and explain things to Jenny's friend."
Muriel nodded. "Good." There was a knock at the door, and she went to get it. Standing outside were the shadow-man she'd met when Jenny had her fight in the mall, plus a newcomer, a robot-woman; unlike most of them, though, she was very clearly artificial, a creature of plastic and chrome, not synthetic skin and human-like eyes. It was a bit off-putting at first, but as Muriel looked her over she could kind of begin to appreciate the look. Anyway, she wasn't one to be making any critiques of people with unusual appearances - not with this mask of bug exoskeleton covering half of her face.
"Thanks for coming," she said. "Hope I wasn't interrupting anything."
Hawkins shook his head. "Nothing important...at least, not by comparison." He looked over Muriel's shoulder at the girl on the living room floor. "I assume she's what you wanted to talk to us about?"
Muriel nodded. "I'm sure you guessed when I called that she's connected to this...thing that Jenny's involved in. Come on in, have a seat."
They followed her in, and Muriel related the story as best she could, Tetra filling in the bits she'd missed.
"Whew," Cecilia said, when they'd finished. "Poor thing. So, now...she was disappearing? And just...adding blood fixed that? Is that why she...um...?"
"She looks kind of like me, yeah," Muriel said. "Tetra said it had something to do with the part of her physical makeup donated by this 'enemy' coming apart. It was pretty awful to watch, I can only imagine how she must have felt. Anyway, I guess somehow or other I provided a replacement for the missing bits. Don't ask me how that works, biology confused me enough before magic was involved."
Hawkins raised an eyebrow. "Interesting. Have you noticed...is she acting any differently, now that she no longer has the 'enemy' as part of her physical body?"
Muriel shrugged. "She's been acting differently now that she isn't in the process of dying, but she was acting differently before that, too, when Jenny had talked her out of suicide-bombing. I don't know whether any of that has to do with some kind of physical 'corruption,' or whether it's just her mental state."
She sighed. "Really, I don't know if I understand any of this. At first she was like a..." She glanced at Cecilia, then rethought her choice of words. "Uh, like a zombie, or something...it didn't seem like she was thinking of anything but doing her job. Except...she was crying. I think she might have already been catching on about what that would imply, maybe. Jenny might not have done much more than provide a tipping point, force her to stop and think about whether she really wanted to do it."
She glanced over at the girl, who was staring at the newcomers from behind a chair. Muriel picked her up and took her back over to the couch, holding her on her lap. Minus-four didn't know what these people intended, but she felt a little better when Muriel held her like this...
Muriel sighed as the girl laid her head on her shoulder. "I'm not really sure what to do," she said. "My first instinct is to take her in, but...I don't know if my judgement is sound right now. I'm still...still pretty shook-up over the whole thing..." She took a deep breath. "I can think of reasons for it," she said. "Ordinary foster families wouldn't understand what she's been through. She has virtually no experience relating to anything like 'people' as we understand them, from the little Tetra can tell me about the 'enemy' - to say nothing of more complex social norms. Jenny and I are two of the only people she even knows."
Muriel sighed. "But...I dunno, I'm not certain I'm not just telling myself these things to rationalize my own feelings. I can think of some issues, too. Like, what do I do with her? I can't just stick her in school during the day, and I certainly can't have her tagging along while I'm out on patrol. I know you're probably going to suggest further assistance, but I don't want to just be a glorified welfare mom, I'm a police officer! Or I could ask my parents to take care of her, but I don't want to impose on them, and then I'd be dragging them into this...I just don't know."
"Hmm." Hawkins's face, as usual, was difficult to read. "I suppose that's understandable...though I would point out that, even if you were to take a leave from your day job, you'd still be doing a major service to your country and the world in general by providing a stable environment for Jenny - I don't think you have to worry about being any kind of a 'leech' on society. In any case, if support is needed, we'd be happy to provide it."
Muriel raised an eyebrow; it was invisible under her half-mask, but the corresponding antennae did perk itself up a bit. "Not that I'd be against that, but how would you justify that? She's not one of the 'Numbers,' she's not even a negative number anymore."
"She's still magical though, isn't she?" Cecilia asked. "I mean, only the part that was the 'enemy' is gone, the rest is Jenny?"
Tetra shrugged. "That's the theory. She hasn't manifested anything like that so far, but it's only been a few hours. It seems like a reasonable conclusion."
Hawkins nodded. "And being that that's a possibility, it's possible that she may still have a part to play in all this. Even if she doesn't, it's still in everyone's best interest that she has a stable upbringing with someone who can teach her how to use power responsibly. Q.E.D., really."
Muriel smiled slightly. "Yeah, I guess so. But...look, I don't want her dragged back into this, just because she might be magical. Jenny is one thing, she's handling this well, but after what this poor girl was through today..."
"Oh, of course not," Hawkins said. "This would be a strictly no-strings-attached thing, as with Jenny. I didn't mean to imply that you should be preparing her for that...just that it might wind up being a possibility."
Muriel sighed. She didn't like the idea at all...but he was right, it might be something that just happened anyway. It wasn't as if Jenny had volunteered for this, as well as she seemed to be handling it...according to Tetra it was just "in her nature" or something. "I suppose so," she said. "But...we'll deal with that if and when it becomes an issue, I think. Right now, I don't think she needs any of that."
"Of course," Hawkins said. "I imagine she's still only just starting to get her bearings."
There was a short pause. "Uh, so..." she said, "what have you been up to? Haven't heard from you since that encounter in the mall."
Cecilia chuckled; Muriel was a little surprised by how her voice sounded synthetic, but not at all unnatural; most robots that she'd encountered seemed to have some kind of deeply-modeled human-like speech output to match their human-like appearance, but this woman seemed to be designed more with an eye towards making a clearly synthetic lifeform that was nonetheless convincingly humanoid. Huh.
"Not a lot," Cecilia said, "unless you count the whole being-abducted-to-another-world thing."
Muriel gave a low whistle. "You were in Hedgeton? Wow."
Hawkins nodded. "It was a little alarming at points. Since then we've mostly been doing some post-crisis investigation into that incident and checking on a few other unusual..." He frowned. "Say, do you have any idea around when this girl showed up?"
Muriel frowned. "Uh, Tetra? That thing earlier, where you were all freaked out before you went to get Jenny? That was...what, eleven o'clock?"
Tetra nodded. "Yeah, that was probably it. All of a sudden there was a big blip on my radar...there was nothing before, it wasn't like she came from somewhere else. So she arrived in this world then, somewhere in the area...I don't know where, though."
"I think I might," Hawkins said. "There's a research lab on the other side of town, doing a lot of biological experiments with the sunlight in a controlled environment. They had some kind of industrial accident this morning, around eleven, with their main equipment..."
Cecilia slammed a fist into her palm, making a clank that made Minus-four jump. "I knew that couldn't have been an accident!" she said. "It was all wrong, it was like the technician completely forgot what he was doing! Everything was set way higher than it should've been..."
"It was," Hawkins said. "Multiple people in the lab commented on it. And apparently several eyewitnesses in the area saw a girl not too different from her, running around naked...they said black hair, though, and of course without the things she's inherited from you..."
"Being a ginger is one of the things she inherited from me," Muriel said. "She had black hair before." She frowned. "Wait," she said. "Is this...the lab director, he's not a Mr. Gordon? Les, I think?"
Hawkins nodded. "You know him?"
"His daughter's a friend of Jenny's," she said. "I went over there on Sunday to give them a sample, because he thought I showed unusual resistance, or something..."
"Did they get one from Jenny?"
Muriel shook her head. "No, it was just me...unless he...oh, he didn't..."
"Hmm," Hawkins said. "If he did take a sample from her without your permission, you'd have fair grounds for legal action, if it's something you felt strongly about."
She sighed. "I...I don't want to do that. He doesn't seem like a bad guy...if he even did that, it must've been a mix-up or something. I'm sure he wasn't trying to clone Jenny or anything...he doesn't even know about her powers. I'll...I'll just talk to him."
