Playing with Legos





---4---





My stitches somehow held, although I hadn't done myself any favors by punching Emma. Extra gauze was applied and I was sent back to class with a fresh bandage.





When I was nine, there was a terrible man who lived down the street from our house. He owned a dog that he abused terribly. When the dog saw people coming it would cringe and make itself as small as possible.





I know how that dog felt, I think. The frequent looks of my classmates are more cautious, now, but there's intensity there, an expectation of... Something. What, I barely can guess and don't at all WANT to know.





I pick up my backpack awkwardly with one hand, the single strap feeling shaky and unreliable. I ignore the sensation as best as I can.





What I can't ignore is that I'm being followed. Two of the Bitch Trio's flunkies, I can't even remember their names. And does it matter?





I don't walk faster, although there's tension in my step. My mind thinks frantically on what I'm carrying to defend myself with; it isn't much. A couple books, some pencils, the bag itself. I could run, but if this is a plot to gain revenge for punching Emma earlier, I have no illusions about being able to outrun Sophia.





It feels like it takes forever to get to my locker. The students passing in both directions are a faceless, murmuring mob, the snippets of conversation blending together into a garbled background noise that surreally seems to loop like a sound track. Left handed and awkward, I dial my combination on my locker.





The sight of the undefiled books and notebooks, if anything, shoots my anxiety levels higher. There's no way I get off this easy. It's always something, something degrading, or humiliating, or expensive, or painful. I know the threshold of the Bitch Trio's minimum level of involvement in my personal suffering on a daily basis, and today has been far too mild, even with the whisper campaign between classes earlier today. Something else is coming. And I suspect that the lack of blood on my things is symbolic.





My eyes sweep over the locker-- the closest thing I have to a weapon are a pair of D batteries left over from a project I was working on for the science fair, a project I never got to hand in because it got covered in blood. The batteries had been salvageable but I never got around to taking them home.





One of them fits uncomfortably in my closed fist. I pocket it. I wrestle the rest of my books into my bag while the crowd around me thins.





"Hebert!" Snaps a familiar and hated voice.





My hand almost involuntarily swaps my backpack to my right shoulder, hunching it up. I turn slowly to my right while I slip my left hand into my pocket, wrapping my fingers around the still cool battery. I meet Sophia's gaze coolly. Around her, and by extension, me, the nearest students first slow then stop. With a sinking sensation in the pit of my stomach I realize that most of them are first and second circle cronies of the Bitch Trio.





Of the ones that aren't, I barely know any of them, but those I recognize are all vultures, eager to watch whatever violence or misfortune they could. I'd seen these sort from a distance when gang fights cropped up. I never dreamed they'd one day be gathering around to watch something happen to me.





I'm keenly aware of how vulnerable I am, injured and surrounded. Fight or flight? Stupid question. There's no path for escape. I take a deep breath. "What? Here to see me bleed a little more? Didn't want to get me detention so you covered for me, decided you have some place to be this afternoon that you didn't want to delay?"





My bookbag thumps painfully into my back as Sophia grabs my shirt and slams me against my locker, which bangs shut. But both of her hands are gripping my shirt and my hand with the battery is free.





It's a clumsy punch, but Sophia isn't expecting it and my arms are long enough to get around hers almost unimpeded. Despite that, she jerks her head back, and instead of taking the punch solidly in the cheek it grazes the end of her nose.





Then, she does something too fast for me to see clearly, and the battery is gone, my arm twisted up behind my back and my cheek pressed into the locker. "The fuck's gotten into you, Hebert?"





I taste copper-- I must have bitten my tongue. I snarl at her wordlessly, and try to kick her, but she just press me harder into the locker. I see a spot of red in front of me dripping slowly down the locker. But it's not the first time I've seen my own blood, or even the first time today. I try to slam my head backwards at her but she's holding her own face too far away for me to hit it.





I hear her laughing softly. "Oh, trying to do something? You might hurt yourself," she adds, pulling my arm up tighter.





Suddenly, I fell like laughing. It takes me a moment to figure out why. "Never had you go this far before... But then, I was never down to one hand before. Did what always having the crowd on your side couldn't do, I guess: made you brave."





"What the fuck did you just say?" Sophia asks incredulously.





"Turning Emma against me not enough?" I went on. It's like a dam has broken and a year and a half of resentment is pouring out uncontrollably. "Turning my best friend against me, my sister! Trying to ruin my day, my schoolwork, my life, just wasn't enough, was it?"





The grip on my arm isn't quite as tight as before, although not loose enough that I think I can pull free. "... Your sister?"





"Yeah, you ever have one of those?" I snarl. Words are the only weapon I have left and I'm going to use them. Maybe I can push her hard enough that she'll hospitalize me-- even Winslow couldn't sweep THAT under the rug. "Someone who you'd do anything for, who you thought would do anything for you, you have any sisters or brothers? You have anyone you care about or is poison the only thing you have, the only thing you are? And even then you have to wait til I'm hurt before you'll-"





She lets my arm go, and I almost fall over. I look around for the battery, but she's already walking away, the circle of students strangely quiet.





My heart is pounding in my chest as I watch her walk off. Then, she turns to me. "Figures. You just needed to actually be hurt to bring it out. See you tomorrow, Hebert."





She turns back around and starts walking again. The other students are dispersing, and right now my mind is full of 'what the fuck.' I start to move, but get pulled up short as the trailing end of my backpack strap is caught in my locker door. I feel exposed and stupid and the rush of scared is starting to hit me now but nobody seems to notice how my hand shakes as I open my locker and pull the strap out.





Nobody hassles me on the way home. I suppose I'm good for another day.





---





The house is quiet and empty when I get home. Unsurprising, since Dad is usually at work for another three hours. I'm still a bit punchdrunk from the day I've had but I can feel the tension start to drain out of me as I think of the parts waiting for me in my room.



It's only a start, of course. The generator components are only a few of the pieces I need to make the storage unit, but it's a priority, that and the constructor emitter.



Coupled with an hour of searching dumpsters for discarded burner phones-- I found one today, although I've found as many as three in a day before-- I've got enough components to start making the processing core. Or, at least a makeshift one until I can get the device up and running to create a real one.



Part of me reflects that I'm spending a ridiculous amount of time on what is essentially a tinker tech stain remover, but I've already come this far. Besides, I'll be able to do a lot more with it than remove stains.



Should I call the completed device a sonic screwdriver? Probably not. Even the refined version is liable to be bulky and heavy.



I'm still tempted.



---



By the time I hear the creaky stair I've got a bunch of burner phones pried open, and despite my injured hand I've managed to assemble the first sixteen chips from the phones into a rudimentary multi core, the closest I'm going to get to a three dimensional chip for the time being. It isn't enough, of course, to control even a simple build run but I don't have an emitter for it TO run yet. Still, it's taken me two weeks to scrounge up enough burner phones just to make this core, and I need at least a dozen more cores.



My eyes stray over to the parts from the generator. There IS a faster way. But while Winslow is a shithole and the Bitches deserve it, stealing a bunch of phones from a store would be messed up. A lot of people could lose money they desperately need if I did that.



And yet...



On the other hand, how many Winslow students have cell phones anyhow? And the ones that do aren't the sort it's safe to mess with.



"Taylor?" Dad calls.



"Be right there!" I call back.



As the words leave my mouth, I cringe. Right. The talk. And I just walked right into that, didn't I?



Much of my good cheer dissipated, I slide the box with the multi core under my bed and leave my room to face the piper.



Playing with Legos



---5---



Dinner is quiet. Dad brought home chicken-- grocery store fried chicken rather than something like Kentucky Fried Chicken, but it's not bad. The silence sort of hangs between us like a curtain. It's not that we talk a lot, really. We hardly ever talk anymore. Despite this I feel uncomfortable, like there's something I should be saying right now, specifically. Like the talk I was afraid we'd be having.



"... Pass the biscuits?" Dad says after a bite of chicken.



Wordlessly I pick up the cardboard box, careful to hold it so the flimsy carton doesn't dump them all over the table, and I pass it to him.



"Thanks," he says, taking a biscuit out, breaking it in half, then dousing both halves with packet margarine and honey sauce.



Part of me wants him to ask. Part of me wants him to know I'm making things, that I'm a cape, that I'm able to make weapons and giant machines, even gates for instantaneous movement of massive numbers from one place to another.



... And I'm using them to create a machine that requires massive amounts of power and computation that will likely fill up most of my bedroom-- to remove stains



I try not to sink into myself any further than I already am.



Dad notices anyway. "Taylor? You okay?"



Say something. Say that I'm here for him, say that I need him here for me. Suggest moving away from Brockton Bay. Suggest I want to transfer to Arcadia. Suggest that I want a G.E.D. or an early graduation or a private study or correspondance course or- "Yeah, Dad. I'm fine."



God, I'm hopeless.



---



February 4, 2011



Friday. A day I look forward to and dread alike. A day that's usually a little bit worse, a sort of event intended to ruin my weekend, to ensure that I don't look forward to the weekend too much, that I don't anticipate the two day escape from the Bitch Trio's shit.



There are no words, today, as I walk through the hallway to my first class. No whispers, no looks, it's like I'm a perfectly normal person. I feel like I'm going to crawl out of my skin.



After the violence of yesterday, I can't even predict what today will bring.



Out of nowhere, I catch sight of Sophia. She has her back to me, and for a moment I want to take the heavy metal lump in my pocket, a piece of rebar cut on each end last night with my cleaning tool, wrap my fist around it, and try to drive my fist through the back of her head. I'm not certain what stops me, except this time I can't argue self defense-- not that anyone in authority will take my side over hers. I've long since given up on that.



I need a way to track her. A way to record the things she does so the next time she pulls a stunt I can give them iron clad proof, something they can't dismiss, something they have no choice but to see what she does.



Then she catches sight of me. "Hebert."



No mockery. No smirk. No sarcasm. I have no idea how to react so I settle for reciprocating. "Hess."



I walk past her. People are paying attention to us now but I refuse to look over my shoulder at her as I pass even though my left hand is gripping the rebar hard enough I can feel my tendons tensing in my wrists.



"Wait up." Now, I do look over my shoulder. Sophia is following me.



"You don't have any puppies to kick?" I ask as scathingly as I can manage. "Maybe you should find some flies to pull the wings off of."



"Chill the fuck out, Hebert. That shit's over with," she answers. "Although you could have saved yourself a lot of grief if you'd just stood up for yourself. I should have figured it was Emma holding you back, though."



"Holding me back?" I blink at her, still not getting it.



"From proving you were willing to fight back." She pulls out a pack of Bubble Yum, removing and unwrapping a small block that she popsin her mouth. "Too many people are a fucking waste of air and space who won't fight back. I'll admit I was wrong about you, though. Went about it all the wrong way."



I stop walking and turn to stare at her incredulously. "You mean you put me through..." I stop to do a mental count. "... eighteen months of bull shit... As a test?"



She shrugs, blowing a bubble in her gum. "Eh, to be honest, it was more out of habit than anything else. I was ready to give up after a couple months, but Emma was convinced it would only take 'a little more' every time I brought it up."



I feel a white hot ball of rage in the pit of my stomach. "And if I never went and punched her?"



Sophia pops her gum. "Sink or swim, Hebert. The world isn't gonna turn into a gentle place just because you can't hang. The strong survive, the weak get eaten." She shrugs again. "See you at lunch."



I watch her walk to class. I'm starting to regret not punching her in the back of the head.



---



By lunch, the bizzaro nature of the day is becoming overwhelming. Nobody has bothered me all day. Julie even let me share her book in Gladly's class.



I can't tell if I'm crazy or just shell shocked. For the first time in months I walk into the cafeteria, lunch box in hand. Why, I don't even know. Like Sophia's "see you at lunch" was some kind of invitation or something. But her suddenly changed attitude toward me prods at me, my mind both angry at her yet in a detached way enjoying her face heel turn in regards to me. And a burning need to understand what the hell is going on in her head, and in Emma's head.



The rebar is still in my pocket. My hand twitches toward it briefly, but the lunch box in that hand hits the front of my thigh. Inside, I feel more than hear a soggy thump of my sandwich bumping into something else.



Okay. If I'm going to be in this rabbit hole, then I'm damn well going to have tea with the white and red queens. And, I think to myself as I catch sight of Sophia at a table by Emma and Lauren, the jabberwock.



Without a hurry or showing myself to second guess the idea, I walk over to their table and sit down across from Emma and Sophia.



Sophia and Emma smile. They're not pleasant smiles, not even a little. "Told you so," Emma says.



"Yeah," Sophia replies with a nod. "You did. Tougher than she looks, for damn sure."



Lauren sniffs disdainfully. "Maybe when she's backed up against a wall. Right now she looks a little more like someone out of her depth who desperately is trying to pretend she can breathe water.



I look at Lauren. I'm starting to get this. They're probing for weakness. I remember watching a nature show a while ago about wolf packs doing this exact thing. Testing. If I show weakness, then it's back to business as usual. And while I'm only starting to get a clear picture of what's going on, if it goes back to business as usual them I'm never going to get the full story.



"Nothing to say, Hebert?" Lauren prompts after a few seconds.



I mentally flounder, starting her dead in the eye, before I finally think of something to say. I turn my head back to Sophia and Emma. "So, is she like... A pet, or something? Like one of those purse dogs rich people sometimes have?"



"What did you say, you bitch?" Demands Lauren, half standing up.



"Like a chihuahua," I add, gaining momentum. I can run with this.



"Lots of people own dogs," Sophia comments with a smirk, before taking her milk carton and drinking from it. I notice she quite deliberately doesn't debunk the 'pet' comment.



"Chihuahuas aren't dogs, they're rats with delusions of grandeur," I declare. I ignore Lauren's seething as I pull my sandwich out of my lunchbox.



Lauren rallies, and begins smirking at me. "You still haven't responded to me. You're out of your league, Taylor. You don't belong here. Or anywhere."



"You're a one trick pony, Lauren," I answer. "It's a nasty trick, dirty and small minded, so I suppose it fits you perfectly, but you've pretty much worn it out. Although I'm morbidly curious as to where you got all the blood."



"My dad is a butcher," she says. As quickly as her challenge started, it's suddenly over. "And it was more about the pressure than any originality. A ton of sand is just a lot of grains of sand, all of them interchangeable. It still weighs a ton, though."



I'm going to wreck them. I'm going to ruin all three of them. It's a startling revelation, to me, but I genuinely hate them. And I WILL be avenged.



"I think I'm going to enjoy this," I say. I'm smiling as I take a bite of my tuba salad sandwich.



Playing with Legos



---6---



On the way home from school, I make my usual rounds, searching for discarded prepaid phones on the outskirts of the Boardwalk. One of the Enforcers notices me, and starts moving closer. "Hey, kid! No dumpster diving on the Boardwalk. Take it somewhere else."



I look up at him. "What? Oh-- sorry. Just looking for old burner phones."



"You some kinda tinker?" He replies.



"No, I just try to salvage anything useful. I have a cousin that sells electronic parts to... An unnamed buyer. He gives me a commission." The lie rolls off my tongue smoothly, practiced. It's easy, now. Just another teen hunting for bits to make a little extra cash.



The Enforcer grunts. "Take it off the Boardwalk. And you might want to reconsider your line of work. Those two idiots are gonna get caught one of these days, either by the Protectorate or by someone whose toes they stepped on."



I shrug. "Til then, the money spends."



He waves me off. I reflect for a moment on how... Easy lying has become. It concerns me. But only a little, and only for a little while.



Not wishing to provoke the Enforcers, I leave the Boardwalk.



The ocean roars to my right. In the afternoon sun, the Boat Graveyard is clearly visible in the distance, hills of rusting, painted metal rising from the breakers of the North Atlantic shoreline. There's a lot of metals of many different types, but mostly steel. Steel and engines too massive for me to move. I know, I tried. Of course, even if I could move them, I'd have literally no place at all to put them. The abandoned Ferry looks like a beetle on the water next to the wrecked cargo ships.



I have a choice. I can go home empty handed, or else I can stay out late. Staying out late is risky, of course. I'm too gangly, and if I'm honest with myself, too plain, to be press ganged into ABB or Merchant prostitution rings, but prostitution is not the worst thing they do to white girls after dark. No, I can't stay out too late. But neither can I go home empty handed.



Decision made, then. I'll spend an hour or so in the business district scrounging, avoid Merchant and ABB territory, then go home.



---



At four in the afternoon, there aren't a lot of pedestrians yet. Rush hour traffic has yet to hit the streets, so I don't worry too much about jaywalking. After checking both ways, I start across St Michaels street. In almost to the median divider when a white van screeches to a T stop inches from my knees. Where the hell did THAT come from?



My heart starts pounding as the side door opens, and three men in body armor and visors, are pointing guns at me. "Get in."



When a man with a gun tells you to get in, you follow orders. My heart hammers like it's trying to escape through my ribcage and I feel light headed. I watch myself get into the van almost detached, like a movie. The seats are some kind of hard, uncomfortable plastic, something slick and non porous, the floors a similar material. Something easy to wash blood off of. I hear myself as though from a distance, asking, "Where are you taking me?"



"Don't talk."



I obey. I look around a little, and strange details stand out to me-- the white-painted metal caging mesh between me and the driver, the fading chemical smell, the rocking of the van that some corner of my mind identifies as impending damage to the front left shocks. My eyes move markedly from feature to feature, the seat belts, the hard plastic seats, the three men unmoving, all surrounding me, all holding their guns on me.



It was stupid of me, in retrospect, assuming that just because I was trying to stick to safe parts of town at safe times, that I was actually safe. These guys don't look like druggies, too well equipped. They don't sound like ABB, either. I don't know enough about gang politics in the Bay to make guesses about anyone else. I've never heard of the Empire kidnapping white girls before, but I'm running out of guesses.



It's at this point I realize I'm hyperventilating. But before I can think of what to do about it, my vision is already narrowing to a point. There's a buzzing in my ears and the world goes away for a while.



Then, there's a horrible smell. I cough, waving at the thing in my face-- or rather, I try to, only to be brought up short by something shackled to my wrist. I open my eyes.



I'm in a room, a dark one. A shadowy figure stands over me, putting a lid on something in his hand. The light in the room comes from behind him, and I can't make out any details of his face. He sets the bottle down on a table outside of my line of sight.



Panic rising, I look around. The room looks almost clinical, and for an uneasy moment I get a sense of deja by of the doctor's office where my hand was stitched. That's aching a bit too, but thinking about my hand draws my attention to that arm, and a small pain in the back of that hand almost opposite my stitches. I lean my head up a bit, and can barely see my hand. A long, clear tube is running from the back of it up to behind me, where by cramming my neck I can see a metal stand with a clear plastic bag hanging from a hook-- an I.V. drip.



"Where am I?" I blurt out. I can't hide the fear in my voice, not that I tried.



"The 'where' is unimportant," answers a voice coming from what has to be a speaker. "Miss Hebert, your body will be found in three weeks washed ashore to the North, a victim of a rather violent and horrific series of crimes prior to your execution style head wound. The perpetrator will never be found. However, you do have a choice."



The voice pauses. I don't say anything, until it occurs to me that the voice wants me to respond. I'm not thinking clearly, as my mind is filling in all manner of possibilities both violent and horrific. "Wh-what kind of choice?"



"Whether or not it is actually you that they find. I have access to the services of an expensive specialist in the art of cloning. He assures me that it will take him a week to create a perfect body double of you, right down to the fillings in your number thirty one molar. The one on your lower right, if you prefer layman's terms.



"You have two weeks to convince me that it's worth the expense of creating the body double. If it is, I will retain your services and you gain your new name. You will build things for me. You will eat when you are told, sleep when you are told, bathe when you are told, and visit the toilet when you are told. The rest of your time, you will work.



"If I am not convinced, the last week that would have been needed to create your clone will instead be used to inflict the aforementioned crimes on your real body. Make your choice.



"Mister Pitter, administer the sedative."



"Wait!" I say, quickly. "Wait. I'll do it. Just- just let me prove it." My mind is whirling. And as it does, the pervasive terror I've been feeling til now is giving way to anger. White hot, burning anger.



I didn't survive the Bitch Trio for this. I'm already framing ideas in my head. Designs I didn't want to look at, before. I'd wanted to make a cleaning tool, something neat. Something harmless.



But there are a lot of things I can build that are anything but harmless. Cloaking hover bots nine feet tall, armed with phasic autoguns would be the fastest and easiest.



"... I am listening," the voice says. "Tell me how you can prove it."



"I... I never had the power, or the materials. To make the things I need. To make the tools I need. They're... Expensive. And big. I need, I need room. Space to build."



"We'll see. Mister Pitter?"



The shadowy figure reaches for the tube coming out of the back of my hand. Then, I feel a strange cool-warm sensation in my stomach and the room starts to spin.



My eyes shut.