Taylor had spent the better part of a week preparing to fight Leviathan, but the problem wasn’t confidence. Well, it was, a little. Still, the problem was finding him.
Endbringers didn’t exactly post schedules online.
Every three and a half months or so, one appeared somewhere in the world and proceeded to turn an entire city into a disaster zone. The exact location varied, the exact timing varied, and sometimes the Endbringer itself varied.
The only reason cities got any warning at all was because of Armsmaster’s prediction software. Which, in hindsight, was actually pretty impressive. For Earth technology, that was.
Unfortunately, Taylor had recently gained access to a perspective that made phrases like ‘state of the art’ somewhat relative.
“You’re making that face again.”
Taylor glanced up from the computer.
Kid Win sat across the table in the PRT workshop, looking exhausted. “What face?”
“The one that means you’re about to do something that makes my entire power feel pointless.”
Taylor frowned. “I don’t have a face for that.”
“You absolutely do.”
“I don’t.”
“You really do.”
Armsmaster didn’t bother looking up from his workstation. “She does.”
Taylor pointed accusingly. “See? This is bullying.”
“It is not,” Armsmaster replied.
Kid Win nodded solemnly. “It definitely is.”
Neither of them sounded remotely sympathetic.
Taylor sighed and looked back at the monitor.
The Endbringer prediction program occupied most of the screen.
To her, it might as well have been written in another language.
That would change in about thirty seconds.
One of the aliens stored in the watch was a Galvan, a small grey frog-looking species that possessed an intellect so far beyond her own that it was difficult to properly describe. During testing, she’d discovered that transforming into one didn’t just make her smarter. It fundamentally changed how she understood problems.
As a human, the program might as well have been another language. As a Galvan, it read like a children’s puzzle. As if every flaw, assumption, shortcut, and compromise were laid bare to her.
She could practically see the decisions that had gone into the code, which was honestly a little horrifying. She wasn’t entirely sure she liked becoming someone smarter than herself, especially since the realization that intelligence could vary that much felt vaguely offensive.
“Interesting.”
Kid Win visibly flinched, and Armsmaster slowly looked up.
Taylor ignored both reactions. A second later she climbed onto her chair, slapped the watch, and was engulfed in green light.
The transformation compressed her downward, limbs shortening and perspective dropping. Within moments, a small grey-skinned Galvan stood where Taylor Hebert had been.
Silence filled the workshop.
The silence wasn’t because the transformation was unusual anymore—everyone had gotten used to that—but silence was because Galvan-Taylor immediately grabbed a keyboard, then another keyboard, and a third keyboard.
Kid Win blinked. “…Why are there three keyboards?”
“Insufficient input efficiency.”
Armsmaster watched with narrowed eyes. “Miss Hebert.”
Taylor didn’t answer.
Her fingers blurred, code flooding across six monitors simultaneously.
Kid Win stared mouth agape, but Armsmaster moved from his workstation without saying a word.
Halfway across the room he paused, clearly catching something in the code mid-stream.
A moment later he was standing directly behind her chair. His visor glowed rapidly as he zoomed into one section, then another, tracking her changes in real time. For a few seconds his head moved in minute shifts, as if trying to map the structure of what she was doing.
Then he stopped moving entirely, and it wasn't because he was done watching. He was visibly confused, and from what she could tell, the gap between their understanding was widening.
As a human, programming was something other people did. As a Galvan, it felt like arranging blocks. Simple and obvious. A puzzle so straightforward she wasn’t entirely convinced it qualified as one.
The original prediction software remained on one monitor, but everything else changed around it. New sensors were integrated, along with atmospheric monitoring, seismic, and deep-ocean pressure analysis. There was even satellite tracking, exotic energy detection, and a modified pattern recognition system. Half the things she was implementing didn’t even exist yet, but that proved surprisingly easy to solve.
Kid Win made a strangled noise, which in hindsight, was probably a reasonable reaction. And even Armsmaster, after scanning the intended schematic, had locked his jaw. After all, Taylor had started redesigning the hardware halfway through the software update. But he was largely ignored.
Minutes passed, then hours. At some point somebody brought food.
Taylor ignored it.
At some point somebody brought coffee.
Armsmaster accepted it without looking away from the monitors. His own projects sat forgotten on a nearby workstation. At one point he reached toward them out of habit, then stopped halfway and returned his hand to the schematic stack instead.
Eventually though, Taylor stopped. The workshop remained completely silent as she slowly leaned back.
The new system occupied every screen, thousands of variables flowing through predictive models, and probability estimates updating in real time. All of which converged into one data stream.
Taylor blinked as she looked over the results. Then, she ran another check. Then another, just to be safe. The answer remained the same.
Huh.
That was easier than expected.
She hopped down from the workstation, the green flash returning. A moment later, Taylor stood there once more, human-sized, and suddenly very aware that everybody was staring at her.
“…What?”
Nobody answered immediately.
Finally, Armsmaster spoke. His voice sounded oddly strained.
“What does it do?”
Taylor pointed at the machine. “The Endbringer Detection System.”
Kid Win stared.
“The what?”
“The EDS.”
Armsmaster’s eyes narrowed. “What does it do?”
Taylor blinked, then realized what he was asking. “Oh.”
She pointed at the display. “It identifies which Endbringer is going to attack.”
Silence.
“Where they’ll attack.” More silence. “And the exact time they’ll appear.”
The workshop became so quiet Taylor could hear the ventilation system. One of the technicians actually dropped a clipboard.
Taylor looked between them.
“…What?”
Armsmaster stared at the screen, then at her, then back at the screen. His expression had gone completely blank. Same with Kid Win, who looked like he had swallowed a lemon.
Taylor glanced at the machine, then at the predictions scrolling across the monitor, and finally back at the heroes. Honestly, she understood why they were shocked. She knew exactly how important this was, how many lives it could save, how many cities it could protect, and how much it could change.
But standing there atop the machine housing the system, surrounded by gobsmacked heroes and technicians alike, Taylor found herself thinking about something else entirely. Something much simpler, and considerably more satisfying. For the first time since getting the watch, Leviathan wasn’t an abstract future threat.
He was a target.
And soon, Taylor Hebert was going to find out exactly what it felt like to beat an Endbringer.