Chapter Text
Taylor confidently walked into the building, cup carrier with coffee in one hand and a Subway takeout bag on the other. She was wearing the most generic, business-casual, outfit she could find with a counterfeit access badge hanging from her neck. It wasn't high quality, but it only needed to look good from afar.
The buildings lobby had a minimalist aesthetic. The whole room was filled with dull monochrome grays that felt like they were sucking your life energy from you, the only exemption being the Medhall logo, located right behind the front desk, with it's yellow and red background.
"Haven't seen you around before," One of the desk clerks commented at her.
"I just started my internship today, Immaculata High has a vocational program," She lied, speaking with false excitement. "The guys at the office told me to grab the team some coffee and sandwiches for lunch."
The clerk accepted her answer and went back to his work. Taylor walked up to the turnstiles and as she began to place her access badge, the world around her froze, everything having gotten a purple hue. She swapped out her counterfeit card with a legitimate one she'd stolen off of another worker who'd called in sick.
Time resumed.
An office worker held the elevator doors for her. A nice gesture, but one Taylor would have rather gone without. The less people she interacted with, the better. She stepped into the elevator. Swapping her badge back the moment her time-stop cooldown ended.
"9th floor. Zach asked me to grab some lunch for him and the team," She told the woman, following her rehearsed mental script. It wasn't as high up as she'd like but it was as far as she could get, with her current guise at least. There wasn't much else she could pretend to be as a fifteen year old girl after all.
She nodded, recognising the name, and entered her access badge, pressing the elevator button for her. Taylor struck up some small talk, it was grueling, but she needed to distract the worker from asking any important questions. The elevator dinged, freeing Taylor from the conversation.
She stepped out onto the floor's hallway. It was as cold and draining as the buildings lobby. The hallway, while not completely full, still had plenty of office workers and middle managers walking to and from their cubicles and offices. Taylor avoided making any eye contact, she couldn't risk anybody noticing she wasn't supposed to be there. She walked to a secluded area, one that she knew nobody would be paying attention to, one that she also knew was a camera blindspot, and most importantly, one that was close to the buildings stairwell. She arrived right on schedule.
A loud bang reverberated across the entire buildings as the whole building shook.
The world turned violet once more as Taylor broke into a sprint for the stairwell.
She dropped the cup carrier, leaving it to freeze mid-air moments after leaving her hand, before opening the takeout bag, retrieving the hockey mask and handgun stored inside. Time resumed just after she entered the stairwell, mask sitting comfortably on her face.
Sprinting up over twenty flights of stairs, alternating between frozen time and real time, should've tired Taylor out, but she wasn't even winded. This was the latest of a trend she'd begun to notice in the time since she'd taken the elixir. At first she'd assumed it had only provided her power, but it'd become increasingly clear that it also awarded her enhanced physical abilities. Enough to qualify her for a low Brute rating.
Entering the floors hallway, Taylor noticed that while it still had the minimalist and monochrome aesthetic, the executive floors opted for a far warmer, light tan, coloring. She also noticed the whole floor being completely trashed with desks flipped over, paper scattered across the floor, and several office workers and security guards heavily injured or knocked unconscious. Taylor could clearly see the source, a giant hole in the side of the building, created by something big colliding with it from the outside.
Taylor could hear an ongoing fight in the rooms around her, gunshots ringing out, scared screams of what were probably Medhall executives. She ignored it, continuing to make her way to Max Anders' office while carefully using her time-stop to avoid interacting with it in any way.
She paused after entering the office, taking in a deep breath. She hadn't gotten this far before. Not wanting to waste more time, she quickly unplugged the computer case, hefting it up under her shoulder.
Taylor glanced out the window when she exited the room, noticing two distant flying figures approaching the building.
New Wave.
Running back to the stairwell, she ran into a duo of capes dressed in costumes with matching red and black color schemes. A guy with a black suit, red mask, and red tophat with another guy standing right behind him, wearing bulky armor, and a square mask. They were each carrying two full duffel bags with them, clearly having gotten what they came her for.
"Trickster, Ballistic" Taylor greeted them, lifting her handgun in a sign of surrender. She'd done some research on them after their last encounter. They were apart of a team called the travelers, though she hadn't encountered the other members, Sundancer and Genesis, yet.
"Do we know you?" Trickster asked, causing Taylor to flinch at her mistake. This was the Travelers first appearance in Brockton Bay. It was peculiar Taylor instantly recognized them.
"No," She half-lied before changing the subject, "Look, I'm not here to stop you. You can continue doing whatever it is you came here to do. I saw New Wave coming towards to building earlier, I'll stay out of your way if you stay out of mine."
Trickster paused for a moment then nodded, gesturing to Ballistic to follow him as he moved towards the hole in the wall.
Grabbing one of the unconscious guards' badge, she inserted it into the access control system and sent herself to the ground floor.
Taylor pressed her back to the elevator, decided to take a quick breather while she waited. After so much time and effort, she was almost there.
It had taken a week of doing nothing but following Empire capes around to find out their identities. If Taylor's lucky, all the evidence she needs is right under her shoulder. She knew it'd take some time to crack it's encryption, but if there's one thing Taylor had a lot of, it's time.
The elevator dinged, doors opening revealing a seven foot tall athletic man, wearing a yellow and white costume with a lightning bolt motif, alongside a shorter teen, wearing a blue and white costume with a shield motif.
Manpower and Shielder.
"God damn it," Taylor muttered under her breath as she froze time once more. Pushing herself off the elevator wall, she broke into a full sprint.
Time resumed just as Taylor burst out the front doors, Manpower and Shielder turning at the sound.
Shielder broke into a full speed flight, chasing her down the streets of the bay. While he was able to somewhat keep up with Taylor, he wasn't able to catch her due to her strategic use of time-stop.
Taylor could only freeze time for a maximum of ten seconds, with a cooldown equal to the length of time spent in frozen time. Use it for 6 seconds? Can't use it for 6 more.
Shielder may have been the slowest flier of New Wave, but he was still faster than anyone without a mover rating. With Taylor freezing time every time he was about to catch up however, making hard turns whenever she did so, she was able to keep a fair distance away from him.
A shadow passed Taylor overhead. Looking up the next time she used her time-stop, Taylor saw a white caped blonde girl in a one piece white dress ending in a thigh-high skirt frozen in flight overhead, clearly attempting to cut off her escape.
Taylor's hand tightened around the handgun in her hand, ducking into a nearby alley as time resumed. She wasn't going to shoot a hero, not that it would do anything against Glory Girl and Shielder's force-fields, but it was the principle of the matter.
Taylor was stopped in her tracks by a dead end, Glory Girl and Shielder blocking the way she came from. Her cooldown was still ongoing, and even if it wasn't she couldn't move faster than their flight.
She was cornered.
Taylor lifted her handgun to her chin before either of them could get a word in, pulling the trigger as their eyes widened in shock.
It was April 10th, 2011 for the 35th time and Taylor was beginning to get frustrated.
She was back at the homeless shelter again, blending into the buildings residents. The building wasn't in the best shape, as was typical for Brockton Bay, but it did at least provide decent enough shelter. The shelter's room was filled with beds, most taken by tired Brocktonites who, similarly to Taylor, probably didn't have anywhere else to stay.
The only TV was on the same news story as every other time she experienced this moment, Hookwolf's attack on the DWA. Even though it'd been months from Taylor's perspective, the memory was still too painful. She could only wish she knew how the loops worked back then, but that past is set, unable to be changed again.
She'd tried to go home, in a few of the earlier loops, but both the Protectorate and Empire were watching the building. The former waiting to give a recruitment offer, one that she wouldn't accept from an organization that considered Sophia a hero, and the latter waiting to kill her. It wasn't worth the trouble. It wasn't like there was anyone waiting for her there anymore.
Taylor pulled herself together once more, getting up to leave the building. She had a schedule to keep to.