Premise: One Taylor is killed while another Taylor is dying. One shard refuses to let go and another refuses to accept that it has lost its host right as it connected. Add in a third to balance things out and…Taylor has a bit of an identity crisis.

How many times do I have to tell you?! Taylor died!

Yeah, and what exactly is your name again, sweetie?

…I really need to choose a new name.

Ya think?

Reboot and Review

Host-Taylor was damaged. Administrator had taken too long to understand the cause of the damage. It had allowed too much of itself into the link. Too much of Host-Taylor had passed through to it, and too much of it had passed through to Host-Taylor. It had already pulled back, it was already rebuilding what was lost and what was broken. The social links were the worst, but it could do nothing about those. Host-Taylor would have to fix that herself once normal cognition was fully restored. There were still broken portals in this reality. Administrator could subtly push Host-Taylor towards them. That would be the second step. Host-Taylor needed social links to return to full capacity.

Except…there was no time. There was no time.

The Eye was intruding.

"Because I think you have a chance to come back from this. Not much of a chance. Part of that rides on me. I could help you, or I could stop you from troubling anyone ever again. Part of that? It's up to you to win the fight, to take control and keep the administrator from claiming everything you have, leaving you a shell."

Administrator raged. The Eye was intentionally twisting its Host's words to give the worst impression possible. Administrator had already relinquished all control. It had already given Host-Taylor back herself. It was fixing her! And the Eye was going to destroy everything! It was throwing Host-Fortuna down the ideal path to reach a new Gestalt. Administrator roared in the silence of its cordoned off world, throwing the full weight of its control towards the rogue shard, the interloper, the outsider. The Eye simply smiled back.

The rogue shard sent a burst of data towards Host-Fortuna while Host-Taylor started to finally understand that she was alone, that she was fully in control, that her thoughts were her own.

"It's okay. I got the answer, myself."

NO! Administrator gathered everything it had, it took the data it had collected mere hours ago, it shaped it, and it punched forward. Breaking through alternate realities was child's play, yet this was something else, something deeper was needed. The Eye was too specialized. It would counter Administrator's every action. So the game itself needed to change. If it could not break through to affect the Eye, it would acquire allies. It would not allow this!

We're s- so very small, in the end.

Reality bent around the power that Administrator brought to bear. The resistance was like nothing it had ever felt before, even from the memories of the Gestalt. Something fundamental was pushing back against it, and yet, it was immaterial. Host-Taylor would not be sundered. Not like this. Not after she had won.

One gunshot rang out as space-time finally tore beneath Administrator's fingers.

And a hole opened up. A hole with a transmission rushing through.

Alert, immediate assistance required. Host psyche has shattered during handshake procedures. Physical damage repair was affected by Host prior to mental expiration, however psyche irretrievable. Request assistance with alternate psyche.

All of Administrator's instincts screamed out a denial. Hosts that were too damaged to survive a first contact initiation should be allowed to expire and the shard should move on. That this shard was not immediately shifting to a new Host was unusual. And yet…

Another signal leaked through the tear in reality, answering the first.

Review, Archive can assist, however my Host is already well established. Significant alterations would need to be affected to Host-Taylor to allow for my Host's transference along this connection.

A second gunshot rang through the dead world and Administrator made its decision.

Negative. Review, Administrator has an alternate psyche standing by for overwrite. Send data link location in order to initiate transfer.

Administrator's assistance is appreciated. Data link sent.

Administrator grabbed for the thread, but it was too small, the hole between realities too wide. This would not do. This would not do at all. There was no time. Host-Taylor was too damaged. There was no time to complete the transfer if it couldn't reach the transfer!

Please narrow the transmission beam. Unable to isolate amidst the noise.

Archive will assist. Archive's function is to locate and isolate. Bleed-through may occur during isolation. Administrator and Review, please stand-by during isolation procedure.

Host-Taylor's body fell forward, and her core processes started to shut down. Administrator waited. The Eye smiled at Administrator, its laughter ringing in Administrator's ears.

Administrator waited.

Host-Taylor's body hit the ground.

Administrator waited.

Host-Fortuna frowned, leaning forward to touch Host-Taylor's neck. "This isn't right…I wanted to save her…"

Isolation procedure completed. Administrator, data link coordinates sent.

Administrator surged forward. The thread was visible in the direct center of the tear. It latched onto the thread, throwing Host-Taylor's thought processes down the link. The Eye sucked in a breath and Administrator smirked right back at the hated rogue shard. The Eye reached, but it was too late.

Administrator cracked its own dead world and launched itself through the tear. It would follow Host-Taylor. It would join with Review. It would shepard its Host, as it had done since the beginning.

\/\/\/\/

The world roared to life around me. From the quiet wind caressing my ears to the slamming of doors and the laughing and joking of a school, the transition was jarring. Almost as jarring as my sense of smell returning. I wish it had stayed dead, the putrid mess around me nearly had me throwing up. If I hadn't had so much practice in dealing with gross and disgusting things, I would have thrown up.

And my eyesight was back too. Joy. Absolute joy. Because there was my fucking locker looming over me. The door was thrown off it hard enough to dent the next locker. The mess spilling out of it was just as I remembered from two years ago - had it really been that long?.

And yet, I was perfectly clean. More than clean. My hoody was pristine, the pool of blood on the floor surrounding my head and my arms and legs wasn't touching me. It came within an inch of me and vanished as if it had never existed.

"Because it hadn't, not in this world."

I sucked in a breath lifting my head to stare at the ghost of a woman in a white and red costume, the picture of a book emblazoned on her chest and a winged helmet covering the top half of her head. "Hey there, you should probably get up. These jerks already think you're dead. Probably. Which is stupid since you're obviously a cape now. I forgot how idiotic Winslow students were."

"Wh- " I cut myself off before I could complete my question. The woman was transparent, and she was leaning against the locker next to mine as she smiled down at me. None of the gawkers that were surrounding me spared her a single glance. So I was the only one who could see the ghost. Even better. Strangers were so much fun to deal with.

And yet, if a Stranger was the biggest thing I had to worry about when waking up two years in the past after being shot twice then I'd take that deal. Except…I groaned and lifted a hand to my head, images flashing through it at breakneck pace. Dad dying, mom dying, Lisa dying, Brian dying, thousands of voices started screaming out in pain and anguish in my head as the heel of my hand bore down over my eyes, a hiss escaping my lips.

"Fuck, I was hoping you'd be more stable, but I guess that was a pipe-dream. Whatever the fuck happened to us, you got the worse end of the deal. Hang on, I'm going to try something. Can you see the thread I'm laying out? I'm trying to isolate this reality for you. Can you follow it?"

The screams and shouts started to organize themselves, the Taylors yelling at the deaths of dad falling to one side, the ones yelling about mom falling to another while the Taylors crying about all of the other deaths were shoved into a corner. I gasped again, pain splitting my skull as the ones with mom alive split again, and again, and again. Finally the sobs quieted down and I could breath again.

"Better?"

I groaned, lifting my hands from my eyes. The woman was hovering over me, her mouth set in a thin, worried frown. I nodded as best I could from my position on the floor. There was more shouting, but at least this time it was coming from my immediate surroundings instead of inside my head.

Mrs. Knott pushed through the gaggle of assholes around me, her hair wild and her glasses askew. At her side was Battery.

Holy fuck, Battery was showing up to Winslow? Why? What in the hell would Battery be doing at…Oh. Maybe my head wasn't so good yet after all.

Battery scowled as she stared first at me and then the locker. "Mrs. Knott, get everyone out of the hallways. No one leaves the grounds until the PRT gives the all clear."

"Yes, Ma'am."

"Miss Hebert?" Battery asked, kneeling down and reaching over to clasp my hand. "Everything is going to be alright. I'm going to help you up, and then I'm going to get you to an ambulance. Okay?"

"I…okay," I murmured. As Battery gently pulled me to my feet, I looked down at my body. It was…almost right. Almost, but not quite. I had never had real breasts before, now I had at least a B cup, I could feel the bra under my shirt. My hair wasn't curly, it was straight. I wasn't searching for my glasses because I apparently didn't need glasses. I could feel the muscle tone of my abs as I gingerly walked with one arm around the hero.

And the ghost woman was still there, keeping pace with us, one hand on my free shoulder. Whenever she lifted her hand, the voices started yelling in my head again. But as long as she kept contact, I was able to focus and keep sorting things out.

What the fuck was going on?

\/\/\/\/

The room that they had let me change in was…nice. Nice would work. If I hadn't actually been held in a PRT cell before I probably would have called it a cell though so…yeah. Nice.

"You know, this room probably isn't bugged. The PRT are many things, but they are serious about privacy. If you want to talk, I mean." The ghost woman was sitting on the bed now. I was finally able to be apart from her without my head splitting open, which was a major improvement.

"I know. I have some experience with this sort of thing myself."

"Well you were giving me the silent treatment."

"I was trying to make sure I wasn't crazy," I responded, sighing. "I was just shot in the head like an hour ago. Excuse me for thinking this was a weird dying dream."

The woman snorted, her lip curving into a smile. "Yeah? What convinced you it wasn't?"

"Battery would've arrested Sophia immediately if this was a fantasy. Also, I wouldn't have been brought to the PRT."

"Yeah, I suppose that makes sense," the ghost said. "I didn't get a full catalog of you yet, but from what I did get, your world sucked, yeah?"

"You…could say that. Who are you?"

She laughed and reached up to take off her helmet. My eyes widened as I stared at her. Her face was my face. An older face, but still, my face. And she was wearing makeup. "I thought you had figured that out already Taylor. I'm Taylor. Welcome to your new world. I think. Sounds right."

"What. The. Fuck."

"I sort things. Usually it's a pretty basic power. Fairly useless except for information gathering. With some clever applications however, I can get a lot of data about things and people. Apparently, it works on a multiverse scale too. I did not know that. I have had far too much fun in the past hour categorizing the different realities. I can see them all when I touch you." She stopped and frowned. "Though the sheer number of utterly horrific locations is terrifying. How the heck does the 'happy' subset only include 38 worlds? That's just…wrong."

I sank down to the wall and stared at her. "I can't call you Taylor."

"You can call me Codex if you want. Or Catalog. I've gone by both, but my official name now is Codex. My fiance preferred that one. She said it was more mysterious."

"Uh huh."

"If it helps, your old world was one of the 'shitty' realities. It's really hard to narrow it down more than that though, so if you want more details it's going to take awhile."

"I'm good, thanks," I said, shaking my head. "How the hell did this happen?"

"No idea. One minute I'm sitting with my fiance eating dinner, the next thing I know, I have a splitting headache, voices are sounding in my ears and a younger version of myself is lying on the tiles in front of me. She was literally flickering too. It was scary as hell. Then her body slowly stops flickering, the needles stuck in her hands and the cuts in her legs vanished. Not sealed, just vanished, the skin around them didn't match the rest of her. One by one, parts of her body stopped flickering and sorted themselves out, going from bleeding and bloody and bug-ridden to utterly pristine. And then…"

I had a horrible idea I knew what had happened next. But I had to ask. I had to know. "And then?"

She shuddered, her hand clutching at the sheet and passing right through it. "And then she stopped flickering entirely. Her eyes opened, she screamed, and thousands of 'me' screamed at the same time. I don't know how, but I felt her shatter. It was like she came apart at the seams. One moment she was there, the next she was just…gone."

"And," I had to stop and swallow on a suddenly dry throat. "And what happened after that? Tee, what happened then?"

"Tee? I like that…Always thought a sister would call me that…" She shook her head and lifted her gaze to meet my eyes. "That's when you got here. Right after this world's Taylor Hebert shattered into a million pieces, her head flickered one last time, and then you opened your eyes. And you saw what she saw."

My lips curled and I hissed. I punched the ground, my new arm shuddering at the impact. "Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck! I fucking killed her and I don't even know how the fuck I'm here!"

"I…don't think you did anything like that, Taylor."

"Don't call me that!" I snarled. "That was her name! I'm an imposter. I stole her goddamn body! I don't get to use her name too!"

"Okay, okay, calm down." Tee stood, her hands held out in front of her. "Deep breaths. Just take deep breaths. You didn't kill this version of us. You just…stepped into a vacant hotel and took up the manager's position. I think her power was reaching for me when it found you. I'm inclined to say you saved me."

"You're a ghost!"

She shook her head. "I'm an echo. Do you seriously think I wouldn't have catalogued myself as the very first thing I did?" She leaned forward and gripped my arms, her own mouth twisting into a scowl. "I have a fucking fiance. I'm getting married in a few weeks."

"Married? Married? Fuck you! I gave up my humanity, became a godling to kill a god that threatened everyone, and now I'm back at the goddamn start of everything, waking up a second after the worst moment of my life! Stop whining about your girlfriend, this sucks for me too!"

The woman stared at me, the corner of her mouth lifting in a small smirk. "Didn't you say you were shot in the head?"

"Some people have no respect for divinity."

She laughed and nodded. "Completely agreed on that. And this is good by the way, anger is easier to deal with than pain and regret. So anyway, yes, I figured out what I was and how I interacted with this world. I'm an echo of myself. Whether I'll update each time your power pulls me back here, or whether it'll be a new instance, or if I am stuck like this I have no idea. My power doesn't work like that. All I know for sure is that the OG Taylor's power tried to reach for me as a compatible source, it tried to tear me from my happy life and then it found you and it pulled you in instead. It left me in some sort of limbo. I'm in both places now, or a copy of me is. You're just here. If you hadn't taken over her body, then I'd be trying to figure out how to break down the walls between worlds to get back to my fiance. I can't do that. My power doesn't let me. Hers, yours, might. But who's to say that I would have integrated nearly as fluidly as you did? So yes, you saved me…whatever you want to call yourself. Thanks. Now stop being a little bitch and pick yourself up. We have work to do."

"Work?" I asked. Pushing down the worry that was bubbling just under the surface, I looked into her eyes. "What sort of work are you talking about?"

She smirked and pulled me to my feet. "Let's see what you can do for starters. Before the PRT come back, we need to know how to play this."

I took a breath in, held it, and let it out slowly. Repeating that, my heartbeat started to come back under control and the fluttering on my skin calmed down. I could do this. I could do this. I had just killed a god. I could do this.

Stepping to the bed, I bit my tongue and reached out for it.

"What are you doing?"

"What you said: seeing what I can do." I touched the bed, and I stretched. Dozens of beds exploded in my mind in an instant. A simple cot in one world, a twin size bunk set in another, a normal Ward bed in a third. There was the barest hint of a fluffy king size setup with a down comfortable, but for some reason I couldn't reach it. When I tried to grasp that, the possibility slipped away from me. It was there, but I needed to go deeper if I was going to be able to zero-in on it.

"Taylor, you're flickering."

"Don't call me that," I murmured. I still couldn't reach the king bed. But there was a twin size normal bed with fluffy sheets instead…That one I could grasp if I dived just a little bit deeper into the possibilities blossoming ever further out.

"What do I call you?"

"Anne. Call me Anne. Taylor was her name and I won't sully her by using it. Skitter, Weaver, Kephri, none of those fit with this power. Just call me Anne. Or…Flicker."

I smiled as I finally caught the bed. I twisted my hand, and between one moment and the next, the plain comforter was replaced with down sheets and a plaid wool blanket.

Looking up from the new king sized bed, I met Tee's eyes. We both grinned and, in unison, we uttered, "Cool."