Orb Weaver: Wrath of God, 2

Armsmaster met me at the hospital. I’d noticed a few PRT vans driving alongside the bus I took and once I detected Velocity, zipping around me. I’d called the PRT and mentioned that Orb Weaver had asked me to check out the case of Sheila Cho.

And the Protectorate was taking this seriously.

But it presented a problem. I couldn’t displace my emotional tells into my swarm, not fully. Armsmaster may not be the best with people, but one thing I’d noticed over his career was that if you gave him a thread to tug on, he would follow it to the end.

Every time I was tempted to assume the Protectorate and PRT were bad at their job, all I had to do was look at the list of would-be masterminds who were in prison or dead.

“Investigator,” he said. “I’ve secured permission for us to visit Ms. Cho, based on the fact that there is parahuman involvement in her case.”

“Thank you. Orb Weaver was not forthcoming on what he was concerned about in this case.”

“Yes.” Armsmaster paused. “If you wish, I could investigate alone. This is… likely to be very unpleasant.”

“Many things in the Bay are.”

“No,” His voice was harder. “This will be unpleasant for the Bay. If you desire to leave… it is no sign of weakness.”

“I—thank you.” Huh, hadn’t expected that. We walked into the hospital, the typical Bay crowd taking pictures of us. 

That stopped as we entered the working parts of the hospital. I wasn’t going to trust to it, but  in general photography was forbidden in the working part of the hospital.

The scent was antiseptic, doctors and nurses consulting. One met us.

He’s nervous. Why? 

“Ah, Armsmaster, Investigator, why are you here?”

“We are here for Ms. Cho, on behalf of Orb Weaver.” I looked at him. He actually stepped back at Orb Weaver’s name. “I assume you are here to assist us?”

“Yes, ah, it’s a normal stroke, sadly these things are more common than most people assume, but she’s not… capable of being interviewed.”

“We’ll be the judge of that,” Armsmaster said.

“Uh, yes. I have a few other cases, so Nurse Collins will take you there.”

Nurse Collins was an older woman, who frowned at the doctor as he left.

She notices it as well.

Then she led us to the room.

“She came yesterday, but…”

“Yes?”  Armsmaster asked.

“We ran an MRI and other tests, and there was no sign of clots. The doctor thinks they may have broken up, but the symptoms…”

“You think he made a misdiagnosis.”

“I didn’t think of it then, I mean, it looked like a stroke with some differences, but when she woke up… And then we got the call that it might be parahuman related…”

“Mmm….”

She opened the door for us. “I’m not comfortable with this, but she has no close family…”

“This is going to be kept completely confidential,” Armsmaster said.

Then we walked in, and suddenly I realized what Armsmaster had been warning me about. There was death in that room.

Shiela was lying in bed, her hands bound.

“Uh…nuh…awaa?”  The syllables were nonsense syllables, no sense of even an attempt at communication.

“Ms. Cho? I am Armsmaster.”

“Nuh! Nuh!”

Her eyes were moving, but not tracking, not focusing on anything.

I had seen interviews with her, had watched as Orb Weaver, hidden cameras showing how she met the gaze of my creations…

Now it was like a baby.

“Is she violent?”  I asked. I heard a tremble in my voice.

“It’s… her resistance to pain… her sensitivity to any kind of touch is through the roof. She was scratching her skin, so we had to secure her hands as well as provide a topical relief cream.”

“Whah! Nuh!” Evidently disturbed by the noise, Sheila started to cry. But not like a person, not like a child…

More like a newborn, and there was something deeply horrifying about it.

Deep under the hospital bugs started to tear themselves apart. It might be a bad idea, but I had to put my emotions somewhere else. Had to hold them away. Not just the horror, but the coiling sense of rage.

“We’re… we’d better go into the hallway. She can be disturbed by people.”

“Yes.” Even Armsmaster sounded disturbed. He held out a box and ran it over her, waiting several moments before he nodded. “Let’s go.”

“Awa! Awah!” More random gibberish followed. This wasn’t…

Outside. I looked around the hospital. Took a deep breath and…

“This is not a normal stroke,” Armsmaster said. “The vast majority of strokes do not take all speech abilities—or at least you can tell the person is attempting to communicate. And for something this severe… There should be obvious signs of damage. She showed no signs of diminished capabilities on either side of her body, no drooping of one side of her face…” He turned his hand over, and there was an image of brain. “And there was absolutely no sign of damage from a conventional stroke, at least not what we would expect.”

“You have studied this?” I asked.

“When I got the call, I took the time to briefly go over the relevant material.”

Well. Let nobody ever say Armsmaster was dumb. Another reminder to not underestimate him.

“I think we need to call in Panacea.”

“She doesn’t work on brain damage.”

I nodded. “No, but she might be able to tell us what caused it—and if it can be explained by any natural outcome.”

Armsmaster hesitated then nodded. “Very well.” He called Carol and a few minutes later got off the phone. “Panacea will be arriving in fifteen minutes.”

“Good. The doctor?”

“You noticed it as well?” 

I nodded. “You said you quickly went over the material. May I assume that you are not equal to a doctor?”

“No. And yes, this should have been immediately flagged as something unusual.”

“A doctor would be very useful to… criminal groups.”

“Yes.”

But why so obv—No. It wasn’t. If you didn’t know that Orb Weaver had a connection with Sheila… She’d just be another normal. And why would the Protectorate, Orb Weaver, or The Investigator care about a normal person?

If there was one thing that was especially common among parahumans, most especially villains, it was a tendency to underestimate non-parahumans.

“Of course,” I said, “we can’t prove that.”

“No. Not yet.”

But it would explain why he was nervous. But I’ll wait on that.  We needed to wait until we had some kind of proof. After all, it could just be that Sheila had some very strange symptoms.

But I didn’t believe it.

And if I was right... someone was going to pay.