Chapter Text
"The fundamental issue facing these 'cities of the future', as well as projects like the Continental Teleportation Hub here in New York, is that the science behind them is unsound."
"Unsound? I'd say if it works it's sound enough."
The white noise of the morning news filled the house. Today it looked like a panel of experts was talking about the proposed new cities in the south Sahara. Having something to listen to while I was working helped me concentrate, and sometimes I even learned something new. After all, the geopolitics of this world were incredibly fascinating.
What did I mean by "this world"? A bit less than three decades ago, I reincarnated into a comic book universe. For the most part things were the same as my old universe. The United States still got founded in 1776 and manifest destiny'd its way over most of North America, technology was about the same as what I grew up with last time, and so on. Getting to be a cis girl this time was a nice change of pace though. Once I got over the differences in modern history I breezed through school and ended up with my own house and a well-paid job debugging code for this universe's version of Microsoft. Sometimes I'd even forget that superheroes were a thing until people started pointing up at Graviton flying by while I was out grocery shopping.
Graviton was the hero that protected my home of San Francisco against villains like Oracle and Titanic. I didn't remember any of them from my old world's media, but I had never delved too deep into the DC or Marvel ecosystems. In my mind this was either the world of some spin-off comic line I had never heard about, or this world never became a work of fiction back on my old Earth. It didn't really matter much to me either way. I just focused on my normal life and enjoyed the occasional clip of a superhero putting out a fire with their ice powers or flying the passengers of a sinking ship to safety.
"That's the thing though," the panelist continued, "the technology works, but we don't know how it works. Sure, ask Mr. Jones about his brainchild and he'll spout off about harmonics and spatial manifolds and all kinds of science-y words that make you tune out and trust him. But give any engineer his blueprints, and they'll end up with a non-functional wreck. And when the system breaks down, like it did twice this past January, he's the only one who knows how to fix it! The project relies entirely on a single man. If he ever dies or goes on strike, the whole thing falls apart. The Socialist Republics of Africa aren't revealing the minds behind their new cities—their own Mr. Joneses—but the fundamental problem doesn't change. Some poor man will have a stroke one day and the next thing you know a city is falling from the sky!"
One of the other panelists was rebutting him, something about idiots besmirching Mr. Jones's genius, but I was too distracted to listen.
Technology that could teleport people or levitate cities or do other crazy sci-fi stuff. Technology that couldn't be understood or repaired by anyone except the person who made it. It sounded familiar, but where had I… oh. Oh no.
I tabbed over to my browser and began frantically searching every term I could think of.
Trigger event. Passenger, shard, agent. Tinker, tinker-tech. Triumvirate, Eidolon, Legend, Hero, Alexandria, Rebecca Costa-Brown. PRT, Protectorate. Skitter, Weaver, Taylor Hebert. Slaughterhouse 9, Jack Slash, Siberian, Bonesaw. Endbringers, Behemoth, Leviathan, Simurgh, Khonsu, Tohu, Bohu. Scion, golden man, gold morning. Brockton Bay.
I tore through the internet, all kinds of clues coming together to form a horrifying picture.
A trivia webpage mentioned that the first verified use of a superpower was in 1986. A census showed that superpowers were statistically more likely to appear in minorities and oppressed communities. A meta-analysis proved that powers were not genetic in origin or genetically transmissible. A well hidden webpage aimed at people who recently developed superpowers emphasized the importance of finding a good therapist "after everything you've gone through to get them".
Oh god, I was in Worm.
But for every hit, there were a dozen misses. Alexandria was a common girls' name and a lighthouse, not a world-famous heroine. The Simurgh was a mythological Persian bird, not a mind-controlling angel. Searching for Slaughterhouse 9 redirected to a Kurt Vonnegut novel. And I was pretty sure if the Europe of Earth Bet was a fascist hellhole locked in perpetual war with socialist sub-Saharan Africa, Wildbow would have mentioned it.
I was in Worm, and I wasn't even in the same dimension as canon.
My breath froze as a new detail popped into mind and my eyes flicked to the date in the corner of my screen. Five years. Assuming calendars synced up between dimensions, I had five years until Scion snapped and golden lasers obliterated everything I'd ever known. My house, my parents, San Francisco, every person I'd ever met would be gone in an instant. Only five years until portals opened up to steal away Graviton and Oracle and Titanic and Mr. fucking Jones and they came back traumatized or not at all.
My breathing grew faster and shallower. The rapid beat of my heart drowned out the TV. All the calming exercises I had memorized flew out of my mind in the face of sheer panic.
I alone knew what was coming, and I could do nothing about it.
[Destination]
[Trajectory]
[Agreement]
When I came to, my room was completely shadowless, every inch of it illuminated by a bright golden glow that came from somewhere behind me. No, the glow was coming from inside me. I raised a hand in front of my face and saw only a vaguely hand-shaped maelstrom of light. New instincts settled into place, and I knew that I could fire off part or all of myself as a laser and reform where it hit.
Instead of doing that, I let the glow fade and had my meat body reappear. It tumbled to the ground and almost fell over. I had been floating in midair and hadn't even noticed.
My hyperventilation switched over to hysterical laughter. Powers in Worm were notorious for not fixing the problems that caused them, but damn. What was a bit of light supposed to do against a god? I couldn't fight, since even my strongest laser would barely scratch Scion. I couldn't escape, since even my fastest teleportation paled in comparison to what Scion and Khepri would be able to do. All getting powers did was put a larger target on my back.
I took a deep breath and let it out. I needed to think things through. I had five years to prepare for the apocalypse. My only resources for that task were my savings and my new superpowers. If I failed, I'd die horribly. If I succeeded, I'd get to live the rest of my life in a post-apocalyptic multiverse beset by endless dangers. I couldn't push the responsibility onto the existing heroes because if I told anyone about the coming danger they'd think I was crazy. Everyone in this world was going to suffer and die, and everything would be my fault for not getting a more useful superpower from the trauma lottery.
No. Don't catastrophize. The apocalypse would come no matter what I did. All I could do was respond as best I could. I had five years, an entire planet's worth of parahumans, and in-depth knowledge about the nature of the coming dangers. There had to be some technology or combination of powers that could protect everyone. Even if my own powers weren't the solution, I could still do it. I could save the world.
Now I just needed to make myself believe it.