Months. It had literally taken me months. After waking up in the locker, I hadn't been able to move anything below my waist. It had been difficult enough dealing with the small trauma. A month of therapy, and years more ahead of me, and that was just the psychological. Retrograde amnesia, they said. The physical therapy was almost worse. A lot of work to produce less than stellar results. They had assured me it was necessary. And I believed them. Or at least, thought that THEY thought it. In my case, though, it was a waste of time. I KNEW it. Since I'd awakened, I'd had a single image in my mind. A diagram that was clear as day.

A small grey cube with a red button, a little bigger than a shoebox. It only did one thing. I wasn't entirely sure what the ultimate purpose was, but I was convinced that it would fix everything for me. It hadn't been easy to make. I was quickly tired, physically weak, and my thoughts were sluggish. Still, Danny, nice man that he was had made sure I'd had whatever I needed to stay busy. If he was curious as to what I was working on, he held his peace. Apparently, he was Taylor's father. Still, for his assistance with this, I vowed to repay him. I didn't remember the Taylor she was supposed to be, and couldn't return the girl he knew. Still, I knew I could make him proud of this new thing I had become. I just had to fix the shattered wreck of m body first.

So, with a deep breath, I pressed the button. Smoke wafted up from the little box, followed by a loud screeching sound. The table trembled, sparks spewing from the poorly connected sides. The desk it sat upon blackened where it touched, and an awful green light seeped from the corners. With a sharp banging sound, the front of the little box fired off, leaving behind a tiny round sphere no larger than a marble sitting in the guts of the box.

Not surprisingly, I heard a loud thumping sound as, downstairs, Danny came pounding up them. Time was limited, then. If he saw me with it, he'd try to stop what I was about to do next, and I couldn't have that. So with a fatalistic shrug, I fumbled the gray marble into my mouth, swallowed painfully, and lay back. I had just enough time to see Danny's panicked expression before I lost consciousness. My last thought before everything went dark was to consider that I just may have handled that poorly.

***

I was beginning to despise waking up in the hospital. This was only the second time, and already the profusion of nurses and the occasional doctor making their way in and out of the room at all hours of the day was wearing thin. Test after test served only to tell me what I already knew: I was okay. The wooden-faced Protectorate leader... Armsmaster, I think his name was, had interrogated me for the better part of an hour before warning me the of the dangers of untested 'tinker tech,' followed by a heavy-handed attempt to get me to join his team of young parahumans. Another feather in his cap, I suspect.

Regardless, his appeals failed to add up to anything, and soon enough he was chased off by the hospital staff and, I suspect, by that interesting throbbing vein in Danny's forehead. I cared very little for any of it, anyway. After listening to waffle between nearly sobbing and berating me for the better part of an hour, I lost patience and closed my eyes to begin messing with the interface of my 'invention'. Eventually, Danny assumed I had fallen asleep, and I chose not to disabuse him of the notion as it allowed me the peace to figure this out.

… Nano-colony distributed. Finished.
… Diagnostic. Complete.
… Initialize VirtuOS? Y/N

I had tried a myriad of things, twitching my eyebrows, mouthing the letters, moving my fingers, even crossing my eyes, and thinking 'YES' and 'Y' as hard as I can. None of that particularly WORKED. Eventually, though, through trial and error, I managed to figure out the stupidly simple method of activating my device. I mentally visualized clicking on the 'Y' and my world faded until I was surrounded by nothing more than a soft blue light, and scrolling words and numbers. Eventually, it all came to a stop, words scrolling across my vision once more.

WARNING! MULTIPLE DEFICIENCIES DETECTED!
REPAIR OF NERVOUS AND MUSCULOSKELETAL SYSTEMS ADVISED.
Proceed? Y/N

It took me almost no time at all to click 'Y,' and then I laid back to close my eyes, as the blue light faded, and a burning sensation covered my flesh. My eyes rolled up in my head, a screech ripped from my lips, and then consciousness faded. I had just enough time to wonder, idly, if the Taylor-that-was would've been so impulsive. I suspected, though, she would've resigned herself to the hand fate had handed her meekly. Allowed herself to be swept up in events passively until they grew beyond her hand.