End Game:

"Music?" Lisa momentarily looked very concerned. She looked at Brian.

"Outside. In front of the door. An iPod, maybe. There's a guy, listening to music. Maybe he doesn't have the headphones on or the buds in his ears. Or they aren't plugged in to the iPod itself. Sounds like orchestra, or pop. It's Latin? Or English? Both? That last bit sounded Japanese. Or Chinese. Is it racist that I can't tell the difference?"

"You're babbling, Taylor," Brian said, not unkindly.

Lisa briefly disappeared from my field of vision, "But she's right. There's a guy on the steps out front, listening to music. How did you know?"

"Moth on the door. I was so busy listening, I forgot to make her go. I'm sorry. I'll… I'll-"

A sister!? Like us but not?

"Who said that?"

"Said what?"

Can you hear us? We thought we were alone. We are so happy to have been wrong.

"Shh. Relax. It's fine. Just send the bugs away, and you can go back to sleep. We're handling everything, okay?"

We'll be here when you wake.

It was okay. I drifted off.

My dreams that night were lurid. A lone asteroid spinning slowly in space, visible only because the star clusters and galaxies swirling in the distance vanished as it traveled through the void, obstructed the view. The jostle of landing as the ship touched down and anchored itself to the rock. Two hands griped the stock of a rifle, while a third clipped on to the airlock and the fourth played out line. The disintegrator hummed against my carapace as I carved long tunnels out of stone, branching in seemingly unplanned ways that made total sense. The tunnels were both strangely uncomfortable in height and yet familiar in a way that I was unable to pinpoint. I worked my way deeper into core of the asteroid, stone crumbling as I advanced…

I was jostled from a dream. The room continued to swim. My ears were ringing.

I shook my head, but that caused me to vomit over the side of the bed.

My dreams continued to be incredibly lurid and detailed to the point that I felt like I was still feeling phantom sensations while awake.

Then there was the voice.

I wasn't sure if it was the concussion or the painkillers. The voice was eager to chat.

I wanted to ignore it. I wanted to believe it was a figment of my imagination. I wanted it to go away. But at the same time, a week is a long time to be sitting in bed with nothing to do. I still had a hard time concentrating and my eyes refused to focus properly, so reading was out. Lisa and Brian were good about coming over when they could, but there was a limit of how much time they could spend with me. Bakuda's bombing campaign was only picking up steam now that Lung was free, and it wasn't safe to travel frequently, as she had a habit of targeting public infrastructure.

In those hours alone and with nothing to keep her occupied, she chatted.

Hello, Sister. How goes your recovery?

Umm… Hello?

"No, seriously, Taylor. What the hell is this?" Lisa looked at the schematic and back at me. "Did you have some sort of second trigger event that turned you into a tinker?" Lisa examined me closely. If she couldn't figure it out, it must have been because there just weren't enough clues in a piece of paper.

"No," I said. "I'm not a tinker. I can't build it. But," I tapped my head, "I've got ideas and schematics up here for lots of tech. Not tinker tech, either."

"The voice." It wasn't a question.

I nodded. "Exactly." I pulled a sheet of paper out of the portfolio I was building, and passed it to Lisa. "This is called an ansible. It allows faster than light communication through quantum entanglement."

Lisa grunted. "Nifty thing if we're colonizing planets, but relatively… Oh. I get it. Secure, instantaneous communication, probably not subject to Grue's darkness. Nifty." She turned the diagram around a few times. "Bulky, though. This thing's a bit too big to carry easily."

"I know. It isn't for us." I took a breath. "I want to patent it."

Lisa's eyes widened at that statement. "Why would you… this does more than just communication, doesn't it? It… acts like a relay and… control device? When you patent it…" She grinned. "Devious. The PRT will put this in absolutely everything. I like it."

"By the time Dragon or anyone else figures out that I can use it that way, it will be too late." I said. "Armsmaster will also figure out a way to miniaturize it, which you'll need to steal. I'll need it smaller version and the money from that device to build a facility that can manufacture these." I pulled out a couple more pieces of paper.

Lisa frowned. "Sorry, getting nothing."

"Matter Disruption Device." I poked the page. "This thing right here? This thing can kill Endbringers."

"Colin, are you there?"

Armsmaster grunted at his workbench, rechecking his code for efficiency and bugs. Had it been anyone else, he would have ignored it. But Dragon wasn't the type to interrupt unless it was something truly important.

"What's up, Dragon?"

"This just got sent to the patent office." The schematic appeared on his screen, noting there was no working model. He read the description for the Philotic Parallax Instantaneous Communicator. The fact that it went to the patent office meant it probably wasn't tinker tech, but every once in a while a new tinker was discovered when some who didn't realized he or she had triggered submitted a patent application for some new tech.

Armsmaster read the notes and Dragon's annotations. "Is this thing for real?" He noted a number of inefficiencies just based off what he was seeing.

Dragon's avatar nodded. "I've already made two of them. They work."

"Amazing. Superluminal communication… How much did you buy this for?"

"250 million U.S.," Dragon said.

"So, basically free," Armsmaster muttered. "How soon before you can have production ramped up?"

"I've already retooled one factory and expect production to be in full swing in 36 hours. However, if you can take a look and figure out how we can make these units smaller, we could make them personal units for…"

"… the next Endbringer." Armsmaster immediately began typing in his own notes, making adjustments to the schematic to reduce the weight and size.

I shifted nervously as Legend wrapped up his speech.

"You are doing a good thing. The greatest thing. This is why we are tolerated, why society allows and accounts for the capes that walk the streets and fight in its towns. Because we are needed for situations like this. With your assistance, we can forestall the inevitable. Your efforts and, if you choose to make them, your sacrifices, will be remembered."

Legend finished speaking about Leviathan, and then looked to Armsmaster.

Armsmaster spoke, authoritative, less impassioned, but confident, "The Wards are handing out armbands. These are new design that Dragon and I came up with. These are adjustable to slide over your arm and should be tightened around your wrist. We think these armbands may be the first step in finally beating these things, as we'll be able to coordinate and gather data like never before. Thinkers, you should take one and go to the command center. These new bands will allow you to contribute directly to the fight without placing yourself in jeopardy."

Armsmaster went on, detailing the mechanics of the new bands. But I could feel them. As each one activated, I could feel a zone of control around each. Each zone was just a fraction of my total area, but cumulatively, it nearly doubled the area I had to work with. I couldn't afford to tip my hand about that yet, though.

Stay strong, Sister.

Soon, Sister. We shall see each other soon.

We'd secured an abandoned warehouse for us to try this. It was, as Tattletale said, an educated guess. If we were lucky, today we'd be punching a hole in reality.

In the middle of the warehouse, Labyrinth was making a mock-up of sketch I had given to Faultline. She was whispering in the girl's ear, telling her about the tunnels and features she wanted. Scrub was standing off to one side, scratching at his arm, clearly itching for a fix. Labyrinth's creation wasn't much to look at, as it was little more than a hole in a ground. But the complexity stretched under the surface, where a network of tunnels was being formed, all leading to a central chamber.

Faultline nodded at us.

Faultline didn't return the smile. "You're aware that I'm going to track you down, beat you to a pulp and leave you tied up for the authorities to collect if we don't get our payment?"

"You'll get your payment the minute I have access to a computer Shatterbird hasn't toasted," Tattletale said. "No sweat."

"How does this work? Faultline asked.

""Really simple," Tattletale said. "We should get Labyrinth clear, though. Then I'll show you." She rushed over to Scrub. "Get closer," she instructed. "Everyone else should back off."

One of Scrub's explosions ripped through the air, then another. One intersected the stone wall of the cavern, and like a gas in the air that had been ignited, the entire thing went up in a heartbeat.

In an instant, it was a white void, as undefinable as Grue's darkness, perceivable by the edges, but with zero depth or dimension. He'd shunted out the entire structure, as well as everything that had altered on the ground, but nothing had come back.

There was no gapping rush of air, no void into space. There was a gentle breeze, though. The hole blurred, colors consolidating into forms. I could see Faultline standing by Labyrinth, arms folded.

"It's deep," Labyrinth said. Her voice was faint, as if from far away. "There's so much there. Worlds that I didn't make."

"All parts of a whole," Tattletale mused. "Okay, Labyrinth. The world we're looking for isn't very…"

Before Lisa could continue, I interrupted her. "Listen. The world we're looking for is going to be a stretch. In fact, we're not looking for an Earth, but a planet far, far way. It will feel very alien. The biology will be strange. When you push into that world, it'll feel hard. So hard, that you'll want to give up. But you need to open that path, because we need help from there."

Labyrinth frowned. She stayed silent for nearly a minute, then said, "Like this?" A landscape appeared before us, matching the alien towers in my mind.

"Yes! Exactly!" I said.

"It's so far…" the shaker 12 muttered. "So weird." She shook her head. "No people. Just…"

We come!

At that moment, the beings from my mind marched through the portal. Bipedal with four arms, they resembled ants covered in fine hair. Each was carrying a weapon and shouldering a backpack.

And they responded to my control. Each felt like my own insects, but useful in a way my own creatures could never be.

I feel them, Sister! I sent.

I will send more. Bring the peace you seek.

I watched impassively though the ansible as Behemoth crumbled to dust as the Formics trained their smaller version of the MDD on the hulk. The weapon ignored his defenses and unmade him at a molecular level. I was able to watch as capes watching the scene shifted nervously. The joy I had expected was not present; we'd finally beaten an Endbringer with absolutely no cape casualties.

They only had to sacrifice their liberty to do so.

All around the globe the Formics… no, my Formics were stationed, keeping peace. It had been fairly easy to take over, all things considered. The Formic technology was so superior to even most tinker tech that one formic could easily hold off handfuls of capes in a pitched battle.

Between the Hive Queen and I, we were perfectly coordinated. If my time as a villain had taught me anything, it was that sometimes, force was necessary. The Slaughter House 9 had died with little more than a whimper, though I had kept Bonesaw. She was safely secluded, working on products for me. Sleeper was now sleeping eternally, and the Ash Beast was little more than his namesake. The CIU had collapsed quickly when I sent a platoon of Formics on an unstoppable march to the Imperial Palace. It was interesting to watch as the capes realized just how unable they were to resist the marching warriors. After the collapse of the CIU, I stationed the Formics in government centers to provide stability, so the overall death toll was very low, comparatively.

If you can call a million deaths a small number. People were already calling it the Scouring of China, and the Formics were "buggers".

That was okay. It was worth it.

It was no longer safe for me to stay on Earth. There had been too many attempts on my life. Instead, I was on an exoplanet far away, and my sister, the Hive Queen, was on another. Dragon tried to go off line when she discovered the backdoor the ansible gave to her systems. By then, it was too late – too much of her tech already had systems incorporated, so it was child's play for me to seize her equipment and manufacturing capabilities.

She had been the biggest threat. However, now that I'd seized control and changed the laws worldwide to recognize the Formic nation as the supreme authority, she was no longer fighting me. We even agreed to work on the restrictions left in place by her father, Andrew Richter.

Having Panacea and Bonesaw figure out how to make a nanobot ansible that was transmissible took some time. However, incidences of violence dropped to zero in populations inoculated with the nanobot. The benefits had been immediately apparent, however. The technological and social revolution that comes from being able to share thoughts across a species was irreversible. Even if the peace was enforced by the sword, it was still peace. The symmetry between humanity and the Formics was just a bonus. Even though humanity despised me, I had made them better.

I had a battle to prepare for. I turned to Contessa. "Now, regarding Zion…"

Historians make the mistake of saying the Hive Queen saved humanity. Without doubt, the Hive Queen was instrumental to the preservation of the human species. But, who subjugated us? Who brought peace? Who made us face ourselves and learn, for the first time in our history, how to truly cooperate? Who taught us how to build, and not destroy? Who gave us a connection to each other that runs deeper than any familial bond? Who sacrificed her own humanity to save ours?

That was done by a human. In a last act of spite before we were changed from homo sapiens to homo conexus, humanity's servant, the AI known as Dragon, excised her name from official record. We named her Khepri. Her real name was Taylor, and it is for her I speak.

- excerpt from from Speaker Wiggin's speaking for Taylor Herbert year 247 AC.

END.

AN:

This one stands alone. After reflection, I realized that fleshing it out more doesn't actually add to the power of the story.