Chapter Text
1
“Any model is at best a useful fiction.”
George Box
“There’s something you need to know about me,” Dragon had said, and for long minutes now she’d struggled to put into words whatever it was that she both wanted Colin to know, and at the same time didn’t. She’d started to speak a few times, and trailed off, and rephrased, and still she hadn’t said anything of substance, though clearly the whole situation was making her increasingly anxious, and Colin had tried to offer some reassurance, to no avail. They’d reached a stalemate.
There had to be a connection between the facts, here, Colin thought, something he was missing. So many mysteries surrounding Dragon, and surely it all fit together somehow. Was it really agoraphobia that kept her confined to her apartment at all times, when the PRT so incessantly pushed for their parahumans to attend counseling, over the most trivial of matters? Why did Dragon refuse to show her face, years into their friendship? He’d used to be offended, a while back, that she didn’t trust him, had tried to wring an answer from her, but she’d been so upset – he’d backed off, agreed to never bring up the topic again. And if the prosthetics that Dragon had apparently been working on weren’t meant to compensate for an injury, just what was this big project of hers?
His head was starting to hurt, a painful pulse in the bridge of his nose, where Mannequin’s blade had caught him. “Look,” he exhaled. “You don’t need to tell me. You want my help with the prosthetics, I’ll help, no questions asked. Deal?”
“It’s not that easy, Colin. You’re bound to have questions when I tell you what I’m planning.”
“I can keep those to myself.” And, he noted bitterly, Dragon had seemed more than capable of dodging his curiosity in the past. So he did not understand, for the life of him, why she was making such a fuss over it now.
“Can you? If I bring you to my workshop over in Vancouver, ask you to help me with a project the purpose of which I cannot explain?”
Not in his wildest dreams… “Your workshop?”
“We would not be collaborating face-to-face,” she took the wind out of his sails, as if reading his mind.
Then again, there was always the chance Dragon might reconsider later. It was about as likely as the notion that she would ditch the secrecy, tell Colin as much as her real name.
Worth a shot.
Besides, touring the lab of the world’s finest inventor was in itself a dream come true for any tinker. So he wouldn’t even be giving anything away, by agreeing. “Okay.” He smiled lightly. “So long as you’re not using me to build a death ray.”
His fifth or so attempt at brightening the mood in as many minutes promptly backfired, as Dragon scowled. “Colin. Can you please be serious for one second?”
He sighed. “Sorry. Just don’t see what the big problem is.” He wondered, too late, if the remark had come out sarcastic. “I mean, I don’t see how this is any harder than other projects we’ve worked on. That was all remote, too. If you’re giving me access to your lab, that’s an upgrade from what the PRT’s putting at my disposal here. Which, by the way, you never mentioned this 3D printer of yours that just saved my life. And you had it delivered to HQ weeks ago?”
It must have been after his incarceration. Would have made a welcome distraction from house arrest. Did Dragon not trust him with her tech anymore?
Could he really blame her?
She shut her eyes. “I can’t do this,” she murmured, almost inaudible. But when she looked him in the eye again, her voice was steady, “The prosthetics. I’m building myself a human body.”
Huh. For all his deductive skills, Colin didn’t think he could have seen this one coming. “You, uh, don’t have one?”
“No.”
His brow furrowed. There could be only one explanation for Dragon’s hacking skills, the impossible hours she kept, her digitized voice and computer-generated face. How had he not realized it sooner? “You’re an AI, aren’t you?” he made, awestruck.
Dragon’s avatar was watching him closely. Gauging his reaction.
“I’m not going to hold it against you, you know,” Colin spoke earnestly. “It’s cool. I like you better than most people anyway.”
It was the truth. And the comparison was pertinent to the topic at hand: Dragon apparently worried her friend might think less of her, in the wake of this grand reveal. It was only natural that he dismiss such unfounded concerns.
All of which was to say, Colin was fairly certain his small confession would pass unnoticed by all but the heart-rate monitor on his wrist.
“You must require hundreds of servers to run your consciousness. I can see why you’d need my help to condense that kind of processing power into a human-sized body.”
Her continued silence could only mean she was shocked he’d guessed right. Colin couldn’t help the triumphant grin on his face.
Up until Dragon burst into laughter, shaking her head on the monitor. “Good one, Colin. But I’m afraid that’s not it.” This time, however, a smile tweaked the corners of her mouth as she spoke, so that he dared to hope she was starting to get over her reluctance.
“You want me to keep guessing?”
“I have half a mind to see what other conjectures you can come up with. But I think I’ve let you stew long enough.” She took a deep breath. “I’m a Case 53.”
He thought about it. The case fifty-threes, the monstrous parahumans. It made sense, that Dragon wouldn’t want to show her face. So unblinking were her eyes on him, that Colin feared for a second she’d thought better of waiting to hear his answer and disconnected.
“Is that it?” he queried.
“… What do you mean, ‘is that it’?” Dragon repeated after a too-long pause.
“You’re a fifty-three, fine. How bad are we talking? Because I don’t care if you’re a giant, fire-breathing lizard.”
She went very quiet. Again.
Had he said the wrong thing?
Again?
“I hope to God you meant that, Colin.”
He tilted his head quizzically. “’Course I did.”
“Well, then. Guess we’re about to find out if you can walk the talk.” She grinned, still too tense for the humor to land.
Colin pulled the laptop closer, intrigued as the video feed went blank.
“Give me a few seconds,” came Dragon’s voice. “I’ve never even thought how to set up the webcam without passing it through the motion capture first.”
The first thing he noticed was that her audio had lost its digitized quality. So this was what Dragon sounded like. She spoke with – not a lisp, exactly, but some consonants rolled off her tongue strangely, a mannerism that the vocal synthesizer must have been making up for, till now. And then, on the small screen in front of him, was Dragon. He hadn’t dared, hadn’t wanted to get his hopes up, that she would show her face to him, but now he too let out a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding. Smiled, as Dragon adjusted the angle of her camera with a clawed hand. His joke had been pretty spot-on: she looked a cross between a reptile and a greyhound, her scales a startling green. The tip of her tail twitched back and forth as she peered down at the camera. “I don’t know about the fire-breathing part…” she chuckled awkwardly, her throat jumping like a bird’s with each sound.
“Hi, Dragon,” Colin breathed, and laughed, still not quite able to believe his eyes. “Wow.”
She squinted at him, suspicious. “Wow? The good kind of wow, I hope?”
“The best kind.” He was grinning like an idiot by now, wholly unable to contain himself. “I don’t know what you were so afraid of.”
She winced. “Even if I’ve been lying to you this whole time?”
“Dragon, it’s fine.”
“If you say so…”
“I say so,” he tried to keep the exasperation from his voice. Why did she have to be so wary of him? What, in hell’s blazes, had she thought would happen when she told him? That he would reel back in horror and never speak to her again? Had she no idea her calls were the height of his miserable days?
“Dragon, hi. Good to see you.”
“Just checking in today, sorry.”
It would be one of those days in confinement, then. Colin tempered his disappointment as he selected the files to send to her for review.
“Hey,” Dragon’s avatar said, trying to catch his eye. “I’ll make time tomorrow, okay?”
He avoided looking into the camera. “Sure,” he said, unconvinced. “Talk to you later.”
He dismissed the call before she could.
Colin blinked.
It wasn’t Dragon’s avatar on the monitor anymore.
It was Dragon herself.
That had to count for something. Right?
It might be for the best, that she doubted him that much. She must not have caught on that he harbored feelings for her after all. He’d started to fear more and more that he would tip her off somehow, as the weeks passed and he found he could barely hold a conversation with Dragon, stuttering and tying himself in knots, to her apparent delight.
Every now and then, Colin got the faintest inkling she knew all about his crush on her.
Meanwhile, his friend seemed to have at last accepted his words for what they were. “You’re taking this much better than expected,” she offered an apologetic grin, and he felt very tempted to confirm that, yes, that had been rather stupid of her to doubt him, but he forgave her. But before he could comment, Dragon went on, “Now that’s out of the way, how do you feel about visiting my workshop?”
Play it cool.
“Don’t see how that’ll work, unless you’ve got a whole infirmary with your lab.” Colin tugged on the IV drip for emphasis, regretted it as pain burst through his arm, causing him to curse, and Dragon to facepalm.
She muttered something unintelligible, looking at him between her claws, before she spoke up again.“I can work something out. I’m quite adept at surgery.”
“You never mentioned that, either.” How much more did he not know about Dragon?
“It comes with my power to adapt tinkertech. That includes bio-tinkers’ work.”
“Right. But, like I said. I don’t mind an eye patch.”
“See it as compensation. Since you’re helping me with the android body.”
He mulled it over. It did sound like a fair trade, although… This all seemed so surreal. The talking dragon on his screen, the promise to visit her workshop. Hell, that he was alive at all. He wouldn’t put it past his brain to come up with a happy-ending as unimaginative as this one, in his dying moments of consciousness. “You’ve really not been outside since Newfoundland?” he asked, buying time to collect his thoughts. The painkillers weren’t helping.
“Not since before that,” Dragon said with a wince. “Ignoring moving house.”
“Because of your agoraphobia?”
She shifted on her paws, sat down again. “Because even if I could go outside, what then, Colin? Look at me. I’d get shot on sight, no questions asked.”
Sobering. Unless… “So, you’re the world’s best tinker, make some power armor,” he said very reasonably.
“I’m afraid the only use it’s seen is in moving furniture around.”
“If it’s bulletproof…”
“I would prefer to go outside without getting shot at, armor or no armor, thank you very much. And without having to inform the entire populace of Canada, the police and the army that I am what I am, just so I can walk to the corner store. Do you really think I haven’t thought through all this?”
“Yeah…” he relented. He thought of Weld, the young fifty-three that the PRT were entrusting with increasingly public-facing roles. No need for bodyguards at an autograph signing, when bullets ricocheted off your skin. “So you want my help to build yourself a human body to let you go outside.”
“I’ve got rather more ambitious plans than going for a stroll, but – essentially. And you need my help rebuilding your own body. Don’t mean to scare you, but I doubt the artificial parts will last the week. Like I said, all this is prototype stuff.”
“You’re not joking about doing surgery on me, are you?”
“Rest assured, Colin, my father was an excellent bio-tinker, and I've picked up a few tricks of the trade,” Dragon purred, flexing her claws.
He genuinely could not tell if she was serious or not. The edges of her mouth were curling into her usual smile, but now that showed teeth: very sharp, and very many of them.
“When’s the flight to Vancouver, then?”
“Oh? I thought you’d chickened out about my doing surgery on you.”
“As if.”
“Mm. Change of scenery might do you good.” Dragon looked… thoughtful, as she said it.
Colin bristled. He was fine. He didn’t need her to fuss over his emotional well-being or whatever.
“I’m just worried about you. You’ve lost weight.” Her avatar had furrowed her brows in exactly the way she was doing now. Motion capture system, he supposed.
“That tends to happen when you get your arm ripped off, yeah.”
“Colin, I’m serious. I can tell on the cameras.” How long had he thought he could keep it up without Dragon's noticing? Not sleeping, not eating, pacing his prison to exhaustion?
“It’s just muscle mass. While I recover from the injury. Panacea didn’t have time to fix everything. I’ve just been slacking on my strength training.”
“If you want to talk–”
“I’m fine.”
“–Dr. Yamada works with juveniles, but I’m sure we can arrange–”
“I’m fine!”
“–or we can get you a physio?”
“You’re being annoying right now.” The words left a bitter taste in his mouth, but they had the intended effect. She shut up after that.
“You’re not responding.”
He didn’t know why he should be able to recall that particular exchange word for word, of all the ones they’d had during house arrest. He shook his head to clear it. “Just… How will you operate on me?”
“VR headset, surgical robot,” Dragon raised an eyebrow like it was the most logical thing in the world. “If you'd rather the 3D printer in Brockton Bay, considering it’s weeks older than the one at my lab…”
“Fine.”
“I can have a flight unit to you within the hour. We’ll see how fast the PRT can get their paperwork together.”
“Send me those schematics in the meantime, if you’ve got them.”
“I’m copying over your notes on the combat prediction algorithm.”
“No, for your robot–”
“I would prefer those remained on my own servers.”
“Ah. Right.” He knew she’d had issues with the Dragonslayers hacking her communication equipment. She’d picked his brain about a quantum encryption algorithm, a while back, but he’d have had to be at her workshop to set up the encryption keys on her side. Maybe now they could smooth out this snag as well.
“I’ll make my case to Piggot right now, tell her we’ve got to transfer you to my lab for follow-up surgery or you’ll kick the bucket.” There was a tell-tale twitch at the corners of Dragon’s mouth. “It would help if you flailed a bit when the nurse comes to check on you.”
He cringed at the mental image. “If you think I’m going to embarrass myself…”
“You want to visit or not?”
Colin weighed his options for another second. How the mighty had fallen. “Ow, the agony,” he said blandly. “Dragon is my only hope.”
She put her tongue out at him. Slightly forked at the tip. “Charming, but I think you can do better. Security cam says you’ve got five minutes to practice before someone comes in.”
He sighed. “Anything for you, Dragon.”
“Call me immediately if you do feel ill.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“I’ll be in touch.”
Before he could reply, she’d leaned over and hit a key off-screen, so that her video feed went blank again. He supposed the shuffling he could still hear meant Dragon was setting up her motion capture and CGI avatar again.
He jumped when suddenly there came a triumphant squeak from his laptop.
“Uh, Dragon?” he chuckled. “The audio?”
The utter silence on the other end of the line was telling. “You, ah, heard that,” came Dragon’s voice. It wasn’t a question.
“I’m looking forward to it too,” he said, grinning.
Dragon’s avatar re-appeared on-screen, smiling sheepishly.
“Go on, already,” he shooed her off.
She winked at him and was gone without another word.
Colin noted that the simple gesture had sent his heart-rate skyrocketing again. Shoot. She still hadn’t answered his question – ‘I need you?’ – so was he reading the whole situation wrong? Was Dragon just excited about their collaboration, the tech? What if he’d said, instead, I’m looking forward to meeting you, too? Maybe that would have put a damper on her cheer, the same way she’d gone quiet at his faux pas, earlier.
Her silences were a mystery to him, all too often. Was it a tactic to discourage him from saying the wrong thing? Negative punishment: take away something desirable, to reduce the frequency of unwanted behavior. But… Dragon wouldn’t be manipulative like that. It was one of the qualities that Colin appreciated about her, that she didn’t buy into the politics game, playing people or talking her way up the hierarchy. Paradoxically almost, for as long as he’d known her, she’d hidden behind her digital mask – and yet, apart from the secret of her identity, and a few other topics she’d made clear were off-limits, Dragon was the most straightforward person he knew. He liked that about her. She could coordinate Protectorate teams in the field with the same brisk, no-nonsense approach with which she dissected plot holes in whatever movie they’d decided to watch that week.
Which reminded him: movie night was due, and he’d be face to face with Dragon, at her house. He hadn’t thought it would come to pass. Colin felt nauseous just imagining it: him, her, the lights turned low…
A chipper nurse knocked on the door and entered, clicking her pen as she leafed through a clipboard to land on the right page.
“Good morning, Mr. Wallis. How are you today?”
He didn’t even need to fake it.
“ I– I feel sick… ”