Phantom

"She's in surgery now," the nurse said. "But it isn't looking good. She isn't the only one. It looks as though Vista was blinded by her visor. If you can heal Panacea, then she can start helping with the others."

It was good to know that Panacea was valued as more than just a first aid kit, but I understood her concern.

The nurse didn't bother having me glove up or put a gown on as I walked into the operating theater; it was a sign of just how injured she thought Panacea was.

"This is Harvest," she said. "The healer."

The heart monitor had flatlined.

The doctors didn't question the nurse; they just stepped away.

It looked like something had bitten the fingers off her left hand. She'd been opened by a slash to the abdomen, and it looked like her right arm was hanging on by a thread.

I put my hand on her arm, carefully touching the blood.

"HEALING IS UPGRADED!

HOLY GRAIL!

HEALING NOW CAN HEAL DISEASES AND POISONS! HOLY GRAIL INCLUDES THE ABILITY TO DIAGNOSE AND UNDERSTAND DISEASES AND CONDITIONS BY TOUCH!

THE TIME TO APPLY HEALING AGAIN IS REDUCED TO 1 MINUTE!

+10 LEVELS!

YOU CAN NOW HEAL 160 HP PER TOUCH.

I waited until I gained the power to apply it to Amy Dallon. I could see her wounds healing over, forcing the clamps and sutures out of her body. Her arm reknit itself, and her fingers began to grow back.

The entire process took seconds.

"She's faster than Panacea," I heard one doctor mutter to another.

Amy woke with a start as the anesthetic left her system.

"Dad!" she said.

"You're going to be fine," I said. "I've got people to go save."

"My family," she said. She looked like she wanted to cry. "They told me to run, but I tried to save my family instead."

I nodded grimly.

"Find out who survived," I told one of the doctors. "She probably won't be able to get to work until she finds out."

Turning to Amy, I said, "I'm planning on eating all the people who did this to you and your family."

"Good," she said. Her eyes blazed. "Make it hurt."

I nodded.

I needed Bonesaw to help restore my father's brain. Whether I needed to find a way to make her do what I needed, or if I just needed to take her power and read every medical skillbook in three worlds, I'd decide later.

"Get me to Vista," I said.

I was quickly led down the hallway and down the stairs. Apparently, the elevators weren't working.

Entering her room, I saw that Vista's head was covered with bandages, as was the rest of her body.

Before the nurse could speak, I said, "Are her eye sockets filled with gauze?"

She nodded.

"We need to take that out, or it'll cause pain when her eyes grow back."

"Harvest?" she asked.

"It'll take just a minute," I said.

The nurse washed her hands, and a moment later she was unwrapping Vista's bandages. There was more blood than I would have thought.

I touched her arm. She had a low-grade infection in her eye sockets, but it vanished as I touched her. It was weird to see her eyes pop back into place.

She stared at me, then at the nurse. She looked for something to cover her face.

"She's seen it before," I said. "Can you get her a domino mask?"

She nodded and stepped out of the room.

"What happened?"

"Shatterbird," she said grimly. "Destroyed my visor. I don't know what happened after that."

"Were you and the others close to them?" I asked.

She shook her head.

"The PRT had reports that they were looking for you," she said. "They made a public challenge after taking over the radio station."

"I'm fifteen!" I said. "I don't listen to the radio."

I wasn't sure whether ordinary teenagers did or not. It wasn't like I'd had a lot of friends or anything before Dad died.

"Besides, I was off world fighting Nazi Vampires," I said. At her look, I said, "Don't ask."

"They want you to join them," Vista said again. "And we don't even have the Protectorate. They'd killed three of the body doubles already even before Shatterbird sang."

"I'll bring them back," I said. "After I get finished healing people."

"Don't you think that'll attract them here?" she asked.

"Sure…" I said. "But that'll just get them here faster so I can kill them."

"But the people here," she said. "The patients in the room were badly injured when the windows blew out. A quarter of the staff is dead."

"Then I'll just have to evacuate the hospital," I said. "Heal everyone and tell then to get the hell out."

"You can't…" she began.

"Just watch me," I said.

I blinked outside again. The line was getting longer again as people kept coming in.

"Once I heal you, get the hell out," I said. "The Slaughterhouse Nine may target the hospital because they're whiny assholes who don't enjoy fighting people who can fight back."

People had their cellphones out; this was going to make the net sooner rather than later, which meant I had to hurry if I was going to heal everyone.

I moved as quickly as I could, and in the next five minutes I healed five hundred people standing outside.

I then worked my way inside the hospital, where the waiting room was standing room only. It would be nice if my healing power was area of effect, but as it was, I was limited to the people I could touch.

I repeatedly told people to leave, and in another five minutes, I'd cleared the lobby.

"I need to have the hospital evacuated," I said. "They'll be coming for me and Panacea. I need office staff to start removing patients from life support equipment so that I can heal them.

It took longer than I would like to heal the fifteen hundred patients in the hospital. Many of them had a respiratory disease I didn't know anything about; I needed to start absorbing skill books so I could put a name to the things I was sensing.

Most of that time wasn't actually spent healing; it was spent pulling people off ventilators.

"It's going to take ten minutes," the doctor was telling me. "There's nothing we can do about it."

I'd already leveled my eyeball up twice watching everywhere to see the Slaughterhouse coming. Presumably they wanted to attack me on ground of their own choosing.

Well, I could hardly wait around the hospital forever.

"If the Slaughterhouse shows up, tell them I'll be right back."

Vista had taken to following me as I made my rounds.

"You can't…" she began.

"There's twenty people left here, except for you two," I said. "You should be able to protect everyone until I get back," I said.

I put my hand on her shoulder and she visibly stood up straighter.

It was a good thing that my lie skill was getting better. She'd be totally boned if the Slaughterhouse showed up.

"Planewalk," I said.

I was able to combine planewalk and blink since my powerup; I appeared in front of the house the Protectorate was staying in. It had only been a few hours, so I didn't see any changes, although I smelled the scents of cooking.

Velocity stuck his head out.

"What's going on?" he asked.

"Get everybody out here," I said.

They were all out in less than a minute. Apparently, they had just finished dinner.

"The Slaughterhouse Nine has attacked Brockton Bay," I said. "And I need some meat shields to protect the city since I'm not able to be in more than one place at a time…yet."

Before they could respond, I grabbed Armsmaster and Miss Militia and inventoried them. I grabbed Triumph and Dauntless, and blinked back to the hospital. I'd been gone a minute and a half.

"Any changes?" I asked Vista as I released the heroes.

She shook her head.

I vanished again, to grab the rest of them.

I hesitated before picking up Piggott.

"You really aren't going to be helpful," I said. "I should leave you here."

"And when I get eaten by cannibals?"

"You're fat enough that they won't eat you all at once," I said.

She grimaced.

Apparently, she'd seen enough of this world to know that I wasn't even joking. The cannibals here really did try to keep their victims alive as long as possible, stretching their protein sources."

"But I assume Vista will bitch about it," I said. "So, come on."

I grabbed her before she could respond, and a moment later we were back in the hospital.

It was chaos. I could hear Miss Militia firing what sounded like a rocket launcher out the window, and Armsmaster was shooting lighting from his lance.

I dropped the heroes and Piggot off and headed for the window.

"Harvest!" Jack said. He grinned as he easily dodged Miss Militia's missiles. "Come out and play."

I blinked next to him, and I said in his ear, "Don't mind if I do."

A moment later we were in the sky over Brockton Bay.

"It was nice of you to spare me the trouble of hunting you down," I said. "I need all the powers I can get."

He was staring at me.

"You're flat," he said.

"I'm fifteen, you ass!" I said. I ripped his arm off.

He didn't scream, and he barely acknowledged that I'd hurt him at all. It likely had something to do with the implants I could see inside his arm.

It was already clotting over, although I suspected it had more to do with the technology than with his own powers. That's why my biology sense was telling me.

I could sense what was going on in his body, but the implants were dark to me. It was easy to tell where they were due to the lack of sensation.

"Parahumans have souls," he said. "Nobody else does. You're like the commoners… soulless."

"I just met a guy who could eat souls," I said. "He seemed to think everybody had them."

Jack seemed to regain his composure.

"You'd be perfect to join," he said. "You're already a killer, and you don't care about the rules. There's already a kill order against you."

"You think they'd honor it if you tried to collect?" I asked. I grinned. "I'll bet they'd honor yours if I was the one to collect."

"What's a few million between friends?" Jack asked. He smiled. "You need friends, don't you? Someone to watch your back when the Protectorate sends its goons to try to kill you."

"What doesn't kill me makes me stronger," I said. "They're doing me a favor, really. I don't like hurting heroes, but self defense is a different story. Villains coming after me just means I don't have to keep hunting them down."

"I can have Bonesaw resurrect your father," he said. "Don't you want that?"

"I'm sure she'll be happy to help me with the right kind of persuasion," I said.

Jack looked down.

The Siberian was staring up at us with an inscrutable expression, but she wasn't coming any closer. She was a half mile off the ground, and we were twelve hundred feet higher.

Shatterbird was trying to fly up to us, but it was going to be too little, too late.

I shoved my hand into his chest cavity, avoiding the reinforced bones in his ribcage.

I grabbed his heart and the wires and other equipment surrounding it, and I yanked it out of his chest.

"I'm glad we had this heart to heart Jack," I said. "But I've got people to kill and things to do."

Teleporting straight up another 100 miles, I found myself in deep space.

-10 HP COLD DAMAGE

CONDITION: BREATHLESS.

NEW POWER CREATED:

VACUUM RESISTANCE!

-10% TO DAMAGE FROM BEING IN THE VACCUM OF SPACE OR OTHER SIMILAR CONDITIONS. AT 100% YOU WILL BE ABLE TO REMAIN IN SPACE INDEFINATELY.

LEVEL ONE

Maybe I'd be able to visit Sphere's only moon base; I wondered if I'd be able to take anyone else there, or if it even had an atmosphere inside.

NEW POWER

COLD RESISTANCE 1% PER LEVEL.

LEVEL 1

I'd have to go to Antarctica to level that up.

The moment his body switched to corpse, I inventoried him. I was going to need these for the bounties, after all.

What power had Jack given me? A stronger Far Strike maybe?

EMPATHY HAS LEVELED UP!

YOU NOW HAVE INTUITIVE EMPATHY!

AGAINST SHARD BEARERS YOU WILL BE ABLE TO UNDERSTAND MOTIVATIONS AND DESIRES.

YOU ALSO RECEIVE AN EFFECTIVE +10 AGILITY TO DODGE ATTACKS FROM SHARD BEARERS WITHIN RANGE AS YOU UNDERSTAND WHERE THEY WILL AIM.

PEOPLE WITH POWERS FROM OTHER SOURCES AND ORDINARY PEOPLE ARE ONLY SUBJECTED TO ORDINARY EMPATHY.

+3 LEVELS

640 FOOT RADIUS.

LEVEL 7

That was…wow.

It explained why Jack had thought I was flat; apparently Gamer's mind protected me from his senses, leaving him scrambling for something to say. Although he hadn't shown any pain, having his arm ripped off had probably distracted him enough that he couldn't use his skills of thirty years to find a way to manipulate me anyway.

He probably appealed to emotions; Gamer's mind would have protected me against that anyway.

If this was the caliber of power I was going to get from the Nine, I should have gone after them a long time ago.

I blinked back to the ground.

The Siberian was slashing away at Armsmaster; he was dodging her, but just barely. He probably had some kind of battle program in his helmet to help predict her movements.

What did the Siberian want?

I detected nothing.

I could feel the other members of the Nine. Crawler wanted to get stronger; Bonesaw wanted to be seen as a good girl, the burning girl, whatever her name was, was pushed by her power to burn things.

The weird thing was that I could detect another parahuman a block away that wanted to see the world burn.

Was the Siberian simply immune to the power the same way I was? That didn't feel right. Jack Slash had probably depended on his power to keep him safe. Would he have really let someone immune to it join the team?

The person I felt in the distance had an unusual amount of malevolence, even compared to the others I could feel.

Something drew me toward them; if I could feel them then it was likely that they had a power I could use, and I'd probably need more power to fight the Siberian anyway, considering that it had defeated everyone it had ever come up against.

I blinked in that direction, and the Siberian was suddenly bounding toward me.

She was faster than I would have thought, but I blinked toward the van.

The Siberian blinked out of existence, and a moment later was beside the van. She swung at me, and with an insight as to where she was going to attack, I was able to almost dodge out of the way.

The tip of her claw barely caught me in the cheek.

-150 HIT POINTS!

ATTACK NEGATES ALL DAMAGE RESISTANCE!

Right. I'd forgotten about that.

I blinked upwards, three quarters of a mile. The Siberian hadn't attacked even to save Jack Slash from this distance; presumably she couldn't jump through the air this high.

I stared down at her and she stared back up at me balefully.

I'd had a sense of when she was going to attack, even though I didn't know what she was feeling. The sensation had come from within the van, which meant the Siberian was being mastered by the person in the van.

The van started moving, wheels showing visible smoke as it peeled out.

How the driver thought they were going to be able to outdrive me, I didn't know.

The Siberian was riding on the top of the van, almost as though she was daring me to attack.

Switching into my wolf form, I decided to oblige her.

If I could gain the master's power, or at least a version of it, I could control the Siberian. If that happened, then not even Alexandria would be able to stand in my way as I did what needed to be done.

I had a +10 to effective dexterity from reading the master, and +12 as a wolf. There was no reason to bother with armored skin as it would just slow me down, and it wouldn't help.

Appearing in front of the van, I lunged for it as it slid to a stop in front of me. The Siberian leapt lithely forward, lunging for me.

Now, though, I was too fast for her. She slashed at me, and I bit at her. She couldn't reach me, because not only did I know where her attacks were going to be, but I was physically able to move fast enough to dodge.

I bit at her, but even in this form, my bite seemed to slide off of her.

Four eyes appeared on the ground under the van. The Siberian didn't seem to notice, and neither did the driver.

Lifting them up through the undercarriage, I continued to fight. The eyes seemed to come with some sort of multitasking, as I was able to dodge.

When I saw the old man inside the van, I grinned wolfishly.

"FAR STRIKE!"

The old man in the van's head exploded, and the Siberian look stricken. A moment later, she vanished.

Huh.

The Siberian was a projection?

I lunged forward, turning human. I pushed my fist through the window of the van and I inventoried the man inside.

NEW POWER CREATED:

PHANTOM WEAPONS!

YOU CAN NOW CREATE WEAPONS TO CHANNEL YOUR POWERS THROUGH!

THESE REDUCE DAMAGE RESISTANCE BY ONE DECIMAL POINT PER LEVEL. THE TYPE OF WEAPON IS DETERMINED BY THE POWER USED, BUT THE APPEARANCE IS MODIFIABLE BY THE USER!

LEVEL ONE!

Holy crap.