A nauseating odour is slowly starting to fill the room.
She's not sure if the boy notices. He's excited, energetic. The lady in the screen is mostly gone, just reappearing to let her know when she can attack, and so it's up to the boy to find packages for her.
"Hey, this one looks cool. What do you think? Okay, I'll take that as a yes. Says here... just press down on the little lever for three seconds."
Back and forth.
"Welcome back, you okay? You were gone for... a while. Uh, anyways. What about this one? Might as well give it a shot."
She doesn't get tired, but this is draining in an entirely different sense.
"Okay, I think we're running out of the ones that look cool. But, um, speaking of looking cool, you don't really look so hot. Everything all right? You can stop whenever, and we'll go meet up with Faultline."
She can't stop.
"...I don't think this is good, hey? How about this: One last one, and we'll leave. I don't even know if you can speak right now, and you've done a lot. Let's just... call it a wrap."
He looks around the room, then back at her, sitting on the floor. An inch of water, covering the entire floor, is quickly soaking through her jeans. "For the last one, let's make it something good. Go out with a bang, am I right? ...yeah, okay, not funny. Dragon told me - you know, the tinker helping us out - that we weren't supposed to use these ones. Too much chance of, uh, friendly fire."
Peering at her, for a second. Then back to gesturing. "I guess, if we're doing one last one, she'll probably be fine with whatever. This one looks epic. What do you think it does?"
He's holding a device with several buttons dotting its surface. It looks almost out of a movie - a dark, metal core covered by switches and buttons and multicoloured wires.
"Wonder if it does several things, maybe. Like a multi-tool, except the settings are boom, kaboom, and... Okay, that's too complicated for you, I imagine. Let's go for something a little simpler. How does this one look?"
No exposed wires. Just a single button, nearly flush with the white surface. Aesthetically pleasing, and completely different from the majority of the others. So much so, she wonders if it was perhaps made by someone else.
"Dragon, you there?"
It's a minute before the response. She doesn't even bother to show herself on the screen, speaking through a disembodied voice: "That's acceptable. It will detonate quickly; be careful. Go in two minutes, I will make sure it's safe."
"Okay. Hey, you hear that? T-minus two minutes." The boy pulls a phone out of his pocket. "I'll keep track. You, uh, prepare? Look, I'm going to leave as soon as you're gone. Get to higher ground, if you get what I mean. Don't come back here. Find me, okay?"
She doesn't respond.
"All right. I'll just, let you know when it's been two minutes, then." He stares down at the phone, not looking around the room. She takes the chance to breathe.
The stench is overpowering.
Her head hurts.
She thinks of a woman she met, once. A businesswoman of some sort, or perhaps a lawyer. A role model. What would she say, if she saw all of this?
This...
This monster.
It stares at her, and she stares back, frozen. She can still smell that disgusting taste of death, lingering in her nose and sticking to the back of her throat. It fits this picture better than the last one.
Time seems to pause as she takes it in. The beast emanates danger. Just a moment ago, she could understand that danger; now she only has fading impressions. But she remembers, remembers looking for the damage. Dozens of bombs, each more powerful than the last...
Nothing but superficial damage. Small spots where oily black blood oozes like molasses, and that's it.
It swipes a claw at her, and she wonders if the cape a few feet behind her has escaped. In the last moment, she presses down her thumb.
The Leviathan is stuck.
She can view its plight from every angle, see the water gushing down its back, inspect its flip-flopping fins. But what's important is its right hand - frozen in place, unmoving. It yanks its body back, to no avail.
The heroes charge.
This much motion is disorienting. She can view a large amount of information, but it's usually more static, like a montage. Two dozen superhumans levelling every ability they can bring to bear is enough for her to lose track of what exactly is happening.
The fight is over within a minute.
It's clear that the attackers aren't the cream of the crop. A few of them seem tougher than others, but a swipe from the Leviathan's free hand is enough to send most of them flying backwards. For a moment, it's not clear which ones are still manoeuvring under their own control - then some right themselves, flying away, and others don't. A distantly horrific scene. She finds it hard to feel emotional.
Three sharp pulls, one after the other, seem to be enough to convince the beast that his hand won't be moving. It turns its attention back to the attackers, who seem to be rallying for another offence. Then a wave crashes down upon them, and they're scattered again.
The water does not impair her vision, in this state. It's not like using her eyes when human. It's different: distant, yet intimate; detailed, but vague. A huge amount of information, pressed into a single dimension of imagination. Something is lost in the translation, data compression writ large.
She looks somewhere else while they drown. There's nothing she can do to help.
Back in the laboratory, Newter is long gone. The people that she had assumed to be scientists have disappeared as well; the room is completely void of life. All that remains are desks covered in various Tinker debris. The water isn't rising fast, but she still wonders if the flooding might cause issues, for a stockpile of explosive weaponry like this. She supposes it's not really her problem.
She searches for Newter. He's pacing, long tail swishing back and forth, already outside of Brockton Bay. For a long moment, she watches him. He looks one way - towards the city where the rest of Faultline's crew has taken refuge. Then back to Brockton Bay again, forlorn.
No right decision, so he's stuck in limbo, a more metaphorical one than hers.
She's made up her mind. One breath, deep, taking in the otherworldly air of this distant place.
The beast is charging a defender when she appears, almost in front of it. Screaming, it hears her. Distracted, momentarily, before a gigantic wave slams into her body.
This time, she has enough time to take in the stump at the end of its arm, where its hand used to be. A success for her, however small it might be in a wider perspective. But more impact than she makes now, appearing for a moment between its other set of claws and an armoured parahuman.
The cape she tried to save doesn't make it. She waits for another opportunity, patient.
Her power wasn't made to be used like this, she doesn't think, not as an expendable distraction. Sarah had extolled its versatility outside of combat - sneaking into buildings, distracting enemies, getting into normally inaccessible areas.
Not throwing yourself at the same impossible enemy, over and over again.
But she has something the other defenders don't. Every time the Leviathan hits her, she comes back. It doesn't matter if he personally attacks her, or if a rogue wave does it. She lives, again and again and again, and her body blunts his blows, if only slightly.
And it hurts more, and more, and more.
She appears again. Cushioning the body of a cape with her own. He groans. She doesn't make a sound.
The Leviathan takes notice of her. Not that time, not the next time. At one point, however, it inevitably happens. It meets her eyes, or she thinks it does, and she stares back. Time seems to freeze, water roiling slowly in the streets.
Something whimpers behind her in the sudden silence - a person?
Then it all comes crashing down, the beast surging forward. It's upon her in a moment, claw forward, stretched down to be level with her head.
Collision.
Eighty miles away, a boy with greenish red skin stares at a nearby city. He's sporting a slick black wristband, and it's the only part of his appearance that seems halfway fashionable. Sounds come from it, a monotonic voice. Crackling, like a radio with poor reception. He's listening for something, head cocked, attentive.
He stands there for a long time. It isn't until the sun sets, golden light illuminating broken buildings, that he turns away.