Amy frowned.
Nothing had happened to warrant it. The nurses passing through the corridor spared her no more than polite greetings, the elderly man she’d just healed had thanked her before drifting back to sleep, and the hallway itself was quiet save for the distant beeping of monitors and the squeak of rubber soles against polished linoleum.
Even so, a chill crept down her spine, raising goosebumps along her arms.
She stopped walking and glanced over her shoulder.
Nothing.
Just another hospital corridor.
“…Weird.”
The feeling didn’t go away.
Eventually she sighed, pushing it aside as best she could. Whatever expression had briefly crossed her face disappeared, replaced by the same polite, if weary expression she’d worn throughout her shift.
The routine barely required conscious thought anymore. Smile when appropriate. Nod when spoken to. Heal. Move on. Repeat.
The only thing that had changed was the effort it took to keep the mask in place, especially this late into the evening. She was still at the hospital, long past the time she would normally have gone home.
Most evenings she would have been heading home by now, listening to Victoria chatter away about something that had happened during patrol while Carol asked the occasional question about school, questions Amy answered with the shortest responses she could get away with.
Instead, she was still here, making another lap through the hospital corridors despite having finished everything she’d intended to do hours ago. She couldn’t even explain why.
She’d tried, more than once. Every explanation she came up with fell apart the moment she examined it. She was exhausted. She wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed. Her feet ached, her back was stiff, and the coffee she’d been surviving on had long since stopped doing anything except leave a bitter taste in her mouth.
There was no reason for her to remain at the hospital.
And yet, every time she thought about grabbing her coat and walking out the front entrance, something inside her resisted. It wasn’t a premonition—she didn’t have powers like that—but a persistent feeling she couldn’t shake, an uncomfortable knot in her stomach that seemed to tighten whenever the thought of going home crossed her mind. It was irrational, impossible to justify, but no less real for it. Something told her that if she went home tonight, she’d only find herself in trouble. She just couldn’t have said why.
She suspected it had something to do with Carol. Most things did these days.
Over the past week, Amy had become something of an expert at avoiding her mother. Not intentionally, at least not at first. The first couple of days had been almost instinctive. She lingered a little longer at the hospital after her shift ended, took the long way through the house whenever she heard Carol’s voice, and waited until the shower was running before slipping into the kitchen to grab something to eat.
They’d been little things. Harmless things.
Except little things had a habit of becoming routines.
Before she’d realized it, she was planning entire evenings around the possibility of crossing paths with Carol.
Carol had noticed, too.
Amy had caught her watching more than once, a slight crease settling between her eyebrows, the sort of look that said she knew something was wrong but hadn’t yet figured out what. One evening she’d even opened her mouth, clearly about to ask.
Victoria had interrupted with some story about patrol before the words could come out.
Amy had never been so grateful for one of her sister’s tangents, but it wasn’t going to keep happening forever. Sooner or later Carol would catch her alone, and she would ask the question Amy had been dreading for days.
What’s wrong?
And then what?
What was Amy supposed to say?
Sorry, Mom. I accidentally created a parasite that was supposed to make you love me.
The thought alone made her stomach churn.
She stopped outside another patient’s room and leaned briefly against the wall, closing her eyes.
One mistake.
That was all it’d taken.
One stupid, selfish, unforgivable mistake.
She’d told herself she only wanted to know whether it was possible. That she wasn’t actually going to use it. That she’d destroy it the moment she’d proven the concept.
Looking back, she wasn’t even sure she’d believed herself.
Somewhere deep down, beneath all the excuses and rationalizations, there had been a part of her that wanted it to work. A part of her that wanted an answer to years of wondering why Carol’s affection always seemed to come more easily where Victoria was concerned. Years of telling herself she didn’t care. Years of pretending she wasn’t jealous.
She hated that part of herself.
More than that, she hated that it had been enough. Enough to make her create something that should never have existed.
She squeezed her eyes shut.
God.
She’d almost done it.
She’d almost reached out and rewritten another person’s feelings simply because she wanted to be loved.
Her stomach twisted violently.
What kind of person even thought like that?
The answer came far too quickly.
You.
Amy pushed herself away from the wall before she could dwell on it any longer.
She’d spent the better part of a week trying to keep her mind occupied.
It hadn’t helped.
The thoughts always found their way back eventually. They surfaced when she was lying awake at night, while she was in the middle of healing a patient, or halfway through conversations that had nothing to do with any of it. They would disappear for an hour or two if she kept herself busy enough, only to creep back in the moment she had time to breathe.
She should tell someone.
She knew that.
Victoria. Dean. Even Dad.
Anyone.
She couldn’t keep carrying this by herself.
Yet every time she imagined saying the words aloud, she froze. She could picture Victoria’s expression too clearly: the confusion as she tried to make sense of what Amy was saying, followed by the slow realization of what she’d actually done.
Dean would probably reach for her hand. He’d tell her people made mistakes, that they could figure things out together, that she wasn’t beyond saving.
Amy wanted to believe him.
She just didn’t know how anyone could say that after hearing the truth.
This wasn’t a thoughtless comment she’d regret later or a bad decision made in the heat of the moment. She had sat down, planned it out, and used her power to create a living organism whose entire purpose was to alter another person’s emotions.
If Victoria knew, if Dean knew, they would never look at her the same way again. Amy couldn’t even blame them for it. The person they’d thought they knew wasn’t someone who would create something like that.
Heroes weren’t supposed to think that way.
Good people weren’t either.
Amy wrapped her arms around herself as she continued down the hallway.
She’d never felt like the kind of hero people imagined when they looked at Panacea.
Other people did, because they saw her healing the sick, saving lives, and walking away without asking for anything in return. That was the part of her power they knew, the comforting part that made headlines and inspired hope.
They never saw the rest of it.
They never saw the diseases she could create as easily as she could cure them, or how effortlessly she could rearrange organs, alter bodies, and rewrite biology until a person was no longer the person they’d been moments before.
And minds…
Amy swallowed hard.
She’d always known how terrifying her power really was. Healing people didn’t change that. It only meant she chose to use it in the least frightening way she could.
Amy stopped in the middle of the hallway.
No.
She wasn’t going down that road again.
Drawing in a slow, steadying breath, she forced herself to keep walking. There was still work to do, and as long as she had another patient to see or another room to visit, she could keep her mind occupied. It wasn’t a perfect distraction, but it was enough to quiet the thoughts for a little while.
A nurse passed by carrying a clipboard.
“Panacea?”
Amy looked up.
“There’s another emergency coming in.”
She nodded automatically. “What happened?”
The nurse grimaced. “Kids.”
Amy felt something sink inside her. “…How bad?”
“Severe lacerations.” The nurse glanced down at the clipboard. “A couple are even missing limbs.”
Amy stared. “What?”
“They were apparently found inside a dumpster.”
For a moment Amy wasn’t sure she’d heard correctly. “Dumpster?”
The nurse nodded. “Nobody noticed them until one of the survivors regained consciousness and started groaning.”
Amy was already walking.
The nurse fell into step beside her, saying, “They think they’ve been there for a while.”
“Who did it?”
“No idea.”
Amy frowned.
Her first thought was gang violence, but that didn’t sit right. Even in ABB territory, this sounded unusually brutal. The Empire crossed her mind next, only for her to dismiss it just as quickly. It wasn’t their style.
The Merchants were harder to rule out.
Or maybe it wasn’t a gang at all.
The possibility surfaced almost on its own.
A new cape.
Someone willing to leave children mutilated and discarded in a dumpster without a second thought.
Brockton Bay already had more than its fair share of monsters, but it seemed there was room for one more.
Amy pushed the thought aside as the doors to the emergency department slid open ahead of her.
Whoever was responsible would still be out there when this was over, and she was certain the PRT would find them. Right now, there were children who needed her, and that had to come first.
She pushed the guilt down with the rest of the thoughts she’d spent the past week trying not to dwell on. There would be time for them later. There always was.
Squaring her shoulders, Amy stepped through the doors.