Worm

25.01

“This is exactly what I was talking about. She’s a dangerous influence.”

“She’s a sixteen year old girl with strong opinions, Wilkins,” Armstrong answered. “Nothing more. She holds onto those opinions and her core worldview, and vulnerable people get caught up in her momentum. Cult leaders will do the same thing, only it’s purposeful in their case. Get people tired, get people worn out, scared and hungry, and then give them someone with presence to give them support.”

“You’re saying she’s an accidental cult leader?”

“She’s in a position where it’s very easy to sway others. A lot of the parahumans out there fit the criteria I’m talking about,” Armstrong said. He glanced at Glenn, who looked distinctly unhappy. “So, apparently, does our staff.”

“I think you’re off target,” I said. “You’re talking about Foil, I get it, and Parian, and now the Chicago Wards and Glenn. But all of the decisions they made were when I wasn’t anywhere near them. Unless you’re implying I have some sort of mind control.”

“No,” Armstrong told me. He didn’t fit his name; he looked more like my dad than anyone, though he had a peculiarly prominent jaw and a forehead that made it look like he was perpetually glaring. “It doesn’t matter if they’re near you. The message and the idea stays with them even after they leave your presence.”

“Tecton just wanted someone to call the shots, to replace Raymancer,” I said. He was defending me, but it wasn’t helping.

“We saw the video,” Director Wilkins said. “We know what he said. I think it’s best if you stop talking.”

I bit my lip and turned my eyes to the table.

“Well,” Glenn said. “What’s done is done. Can I suggest that perhaps, because it’s been a long day, we should retire? All of us will still be here in the morning.”

“It sounds like a good idea,” Armstrong said. One or two heads around the table nodded.

“We’re going to handle this tonight,” Wilkins said.

“While the girl’s so tired she could fall asleep sitting up,” Glenn observed. “Or is it that you want to resolve this while Chevalier is in the hospital?”

“Chevalier doesn’t matter,” Wilkins said. “This is PRT business.”

“I agree. His input would be appreciated, if he was in a state to give it, but it’s ultimately not his decision,” the Washington director said. He reminded me of Piggot, but he wasn’t fat. Heavy, but not fat like she’d been. It was more the way he held himself, his tone and approach. His graying hair was cropped close, and he had a combination of paler skin and dark circles under his eyes that made me think of a corpse. Director West.

“We lose nothing by waiting,” Glenn said, calm, unflappable. I’d seen that confidence before, in people who’d had nothing to lose. I’d had that confidence before.

“We lose time. If we’re going to respond to the press and the public, we need to act sooner than later.”

“My concern…” a woman said, drawing out the thought, “Is that her actions go against the spirit of the PRT and the groups under the PRT’s umbrella. Conspiring with a known terrorist, betraying the truce, even, for a subtle advantage in dealing with that terrorist, returning to her old team against all terms of her probation, rejecting orders, and taking reckless risks with PRT personnel, getting two injured. A longstanding goal of the PRT has been to reassure the public, and this only paints heroes as something dangerous.”

I already didn’t like her. I wasn’t even sure what city she was from.

“That doesn’t even include the fact that this leak shows capes going all out. When the joy at the victory wears off, people are going to look at the footage and wonder if they’re in danger,” West said.

We won, I thought. We beat him, and you’re quibbling over details.

Why were they doing this? Why were they so intent on railroading me? Screwing me over?

These guys, or some of them, were the old guard. Defenders of the status quo. Tagg would have fit into this little cadre.

Maybe that was part of the reason.

“-Birdcage.”

The word hung in the air.

I snapped to attention, fully awake in an instant. I had to take a second to look at the faces of the people around the table before I realized who’d said it. Armstrong, the man who’d been my advocate an instant ago.

“A little extreme,” West said.

“The next few fights are going to be crucial. Every time the Endbringers come, there are major losses. We lose good capes. Others step in, but they don’t have the experience or the organization, so we lose more. New Delhi was very nearly the culmination of that.”

“We won New Delhi.”

“We lost. Scion won,” Armstrong responded. “Participation will be up for the next fight. Let’s use that. We bolster the numbers further, by tapping the Birdcage. There are powerful capes in there, and some are cooperative.”

Oh. They aren’t talking about me.

“And if they start wreaking havoc afterward? Or turn on us?”

“We can be select about it. Dragon’s willing to give us a searchable database of all of the conversation and behavior records within the Birdcage.”

I raised my head at that. “Dragon’s alive?”

“She got in contact with us a short while ago.”

I nodded. I felt a little dazed, confused. Too much in a short time. I was reaching the point where I wasn’t sure I’d be able to take it all in.

“It’s not worth it,” West said.

“A moderate risk for a chance to save hundreds, thousands, even millions of lives,” Armstrong said.

“How many lives do we lose because of the monsters we set free?” West retorted. “Those criminals were put there for a reason.”

“At first,” Armstrong said. “But the rationale for indefinite detention has been getting weaker, and the number of capes going in has been increasing. I-”

“It’s not going to happen, Armstrong,” West cut him off.

Armstrong deflated a little, settling back in his chair.

“The media is already reaching out to us to ask for interviews with Weaver,” one of the other Directors said. “They love her or hate her, but this won’t die down anytime soon.”

“Primacy effect,” West said, frowning. “That video is going to be the first thing people will think about when they think about people in the field during an Endbringer attack.”

“So we drown it,” the woman from before said. “Release the footage we held back, footage with a more favorable effect on us. Weaver gets lost in the shuffle, and we quietly address the unbecoming conduct.”

We won, you bastards. I clenched my fists beneath the table.

“Address how?”

“It’s a violation of her probationary membership. She’s off the team for the time being, if not permanently. She fulfills the remainder of her sentence, then remains in our custody as a consult. “

I noticed that my bugs were acting of their own volition, treating this as a crisis scenario. They were massing, and they were winding silk threads around the PRT uniforms that guarded the room, around the containment foam sprayers and guns that they held.

I’d missed the Undersiders, hated that I wasn’t there with them as they said goodbye to Regent. Part of the reason I’d become a hero had been to reconnect with my dad, but the gap seemed too wide. I’d killed, and he’d seen me kill. He was afraid of me.

It would be easy to disable the PRT uniforms, attack the directors and simply make my way to Brockton Bay. I could patch things up with Grue, help Rachel, ensure that Imp didn’t go to a dark place.

But it wouldn’t get me anywhere.

He wanted to play hardball? I’d play hard in return. I turned my attention to my swarm for a moment.

“I think you’re underestimating how badly the public would react if Weaver was punished,” Glenn said.

“We’re facing a lose-lose situation, Mr. Chambers,” Chief Director West said. “We cut our losses, take a hit in PR, but we can continue operating as we need to. So long as it’s quiet, she goes to prison and doesn’t go out on another big excursion, I don’t think anyone’s about to make a big deal of it.”

…make a big deal of it. I turned the words around in my head. Manipulating the media, manipulating the local capes. Damn. I’d had high hopes for Chevalier’s new Protectorate, but it didn’t seem to extend to the PRT.

“We can deflect,” the woman from before said. “Raise another issue, change the focus of the public.”

“Not so easy,” Glenn said. “It’s been done too often in the past. They’re watching for it, even anticipating it.”

“But the majority won’t be,” she responded. She turned to Director West. “The alert, educated minority will complain, but they won’t achieve anything meaningful. They never do.”

“I’m inclined to agree,” Director West said. “It’s not pretty, but it’ll suffice.”

“Why?” I asked. “You can’t deny I helped. I didn’t deliver a serious blow, but I helped to coordinate, I had ideas, I used them.”

“There’s other smart capes out there,” a man said. He didn’t give me the impression of a PRT director. Another staff member?

“I did a lot of good, and you’re railroading me. Is it because you’re losing control of things and I make an easy target? Because you’re afraid of me?”

“Because you’re consistently unpredictable. Unreliable. We set rules and you break them,” West told me.

“Rules don’t generally apply during an Endbringer attack,” I said. “The only thing that matters is taking the motherfucker down. We did.”

“I’m inclined to agree,” Armstrong said. “This is going a step too far. She did well.”

A few heads nodded around the table, but they didn’t have the majority, and they didn’t have the clout that Chief Director West did. Glenn had spoken of a fifty-fifty split in the reactions, and he was more or less on target. But the power held by the people who were standing up for me was nothing compared to the clout the others had.

“This is beyond the Endbringer attack. It’s overall conduct,” the woman at the far end of the table said.

“When? Can you name incidents? Beyond the Endbringer attack?” I challenged her.

“Spiders in the less traveled areas of the prison,” West told me.

Spiders in the prison. Shit.

I felt myself deflate a little, but I managed to keep my face straight. “If there are any, they’re eggs that recently hatched.”

“And the costume? A weave of silk cloth hidden out of sight.”

Damn.

“That predated my discussion with the Warden,” I lied. “I got rid of the spiders, moved on.”

“You could have reported it.”

“That an abandoned time-killing project was stuck in behind some pipes? Why?”

“Because this happens. There’s no reason to believe you.”

I clenched my fists.

“You’re dangerous, Taylor Hebert. Unpredictable. You’re deceptive, clever enough to come up with tricks, but not clever enough to stick to the straight and narrow from the beginning. Armstrong said it himself. You’re good at manipulating people.”

…Manipulating people, I thought. Not as good as I wanted to be.

Armstrong spoke up, “You’re twisting my words, West. I said she was well situated for interacting with vulnerable people, and stalwart enough in her own worldview that others can get swept up in her flow.”

“Regardless. Ms. Hebert was right about one thing. It’s late. It’s been an emotionally exhausting day.”

“Physically exhausting too,” I said, not taking my eyes off the Chief Director. “You know, running around, fighting Behemoth while you guys sit in your-”

Glenn shifted one leg under the table, pressing it against mine. A nudge, not overt.

I stopped.

My power crackled at the edge of my attention. My bugs were moving again, without any direct instructions from me. I reined them in, and then distributed them through the building. Was there someone I could contact? Something I could communicate to the right person, to change what was happening here?

West ignored my comment, turning his attention to Glenn. “Mr. Chambers, you’re relieved of duty. You likely knew this already.”

“I understand,” Glenn said.

“We’ll discuss on our own whether we need to press charges.”

…Press charges. Bastards.

“Okay,” Glenn said.

West met my eyes. “Taylor Hebert, you violated the terms of your probation. You’ll return to Gardener tonight, and you’ll carry out the rest of your sentence. Your test run with the Wards teams is over. Offer rescinded. Provided you do not talk to the media, we stop there. We’ll talk to you when you turn eighteen, to see about plans for the future.”

“This is a mistake,” Glenn said. “Chevalier had a number of plans, and you’re unraveling them.”

“Naturally, Mr. Chambers. We’re aware of the thrust of those plans. Recruiting villains. A darker, edgier Protectorate. Provided he keeps to the rules, we’re willing to let that be. But with the administration, the underlying framework that makes his teams possible, we have to maintain a balance, keep the public and the President happy. He won’t have our assistance.”

…He won’t have our assistance, I thought.

I heard the words, and my bugs spoke them. Every bug, within the building, repeated him, verbatim. The good, the bad, the details that damned me. It wasn’t a question of finding the right person, or saying the right thing. It was everyone, saying everything.

In that manner, my bugs repeated it to staff members, to the Chicago Wards, and to the Protectorate members who’d accompanied their Directors here. It was too late for reporters to be around, but I didn’t deny the possibility.

Tens of thousands of bugs speaking words at a sound barely above a whisper, louder in places where more people congregated.

Dispatch and Exalt were the first to make their way to our floor. They entered the room without knocking.

I met Dispatch’s eyes. Not the rescuer I’d hoped for. We’d worked together, but he’d disliked me from the outset.

“Dispatch?” West asked.

Dispatch didn’t reply right away. He glared, and it wasn’t at me. It was at the Director.

“We’ve been listening,” Exalt said.

“Listening?”

“You’ve been bugged,” Dispatch said. “Only the bugs are the ones outside. They’ve been talking. Reciting.”

I could see Chief Director West’s eyes narrow as he looked at me. He would be replaying the conversation in his head, trying to figure out if he had said anything damning.

“No guarantee she’s telling the truth,” West said.

“Provided he keeps to the rules, we’re willing to let that be,” Dispatch said. “Spiders in the back areas of the prison.”

“Yes,” Director Armstrong said. “That’s accurate. I can’t speak to particulars or the little details, though.”

“I repeated everything verbatim,” I confirmed.

“The goings-on of this meeting are confidential,” Director West said.

“Nobody told me that,” I answered. “It doesn’t matter. I violated my probation anyways, apparently.”

“Anything goes against Endbringers,” Tecton said, from the hallway. He’d just arrived with Grace and Annex beside him. “We wouldn’t have done half as well if it wasn’t for her.”

“Tell that to Kismet,” one of West’s flunkies commented. “Or Particulate. You don’t really want her on your team. Not when she’s going to stab you in the back for a better margin of victory.”

“I do,” Tecton said. “All of us do. We watched the video together. We talked about it. Kismet made a mistake. As far as Particulate, we looked him up. He’s reckless, dangerous. Not the best way she could have handled it, but it worked.”

West didn’t take his eyes off me. “Even if we ignored everything else, this kind of behavior, it’s-”

“It’s exactly what Chevalier wanted,” I said. My eyes dropped to the table. I didn’t meet his gaze, didn’t try to engage the visitors. “Open, honest. Exposing the rot at the center.”

“You’re saying you’re not rotten,” the woman at the end of the table said, almost mocking.

“Maybe I am,” I told her. “I’m not all good, not all bad. I’m just… getting by. Doing what I can, not holding back against enemies who don’t deserve it. And under Chevalier’s system, Glenn’s system, I guess I’m revealing all of that stuff we usually keep hidden, and it’s up to others to make the call whether they can roll with it or not. Up to the public, my potential teammates.”

“Honestly,” Tecton said, “If you’re going to lock her up after all this, you can consider me done. You’re going to undermine Chevalier, when what he’s doing worked? I’m gone.”

Here and there, there were murmurs of agreement.

There was a very long pause.

“Weaver,” Director West said.

I met his eyes again. I could see the hate.

“You’ll make your way to Chicago at the end of the week, and provided everything goes well, you will be a member of the team. If you’re wise, you won’t take interviews, and you won’t take any action that draws attention to you.”

I drew in a deep breath, then nodded.

“You’ll wear a tracking device at all times, and any time you leave the defined area within the Chicago headquarters, you’ll have an escort, a longstanding member of the team in your company at all times.”

“Okay,” I said.

“See to it that you follow these rules. You’ve got the backing of the heroes here, maybe you’ve got the public’s favor, but we will remove you if you give us an excuse.”

“I understand,” I said, suddenly very weary.

Beside me, Glenn stood from his chair. I took his cue.

The PRT uniforms stepped out of the doorway, where they’d been barring the small crowd access. We made our exit, joining the Wards and PRT staff members.

“Weaver,” the Chief Director called out.

I turned around.

“You didn’t make any allies in this room today.”

“I think you were my enemies before we even met,” I said. “You’d never have given me the chance to be your ally.”

“You’re wrong.”

I shrugged, then turned to walk away.

Tecton gave me a nod as I approached.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Not a problem,” he said. “You kept us alive, I figure we owe you one.”

“I don’t think you owe me much, but I’m not complaining,” I said.

“We should go. We were in the middle of something. See you soon, I hope?”

“Yeah,” I answered.

When they’d broken away, it was Glenn and I, together.

“That was foolish,” Glenn commented.

“They wouldn’t have given us any slack. Nothing we could have said or done would have changed the outcome, unless we attacked from a different angle.”

“There’s a habit some people have,” Glenn said, “Where they divide people into enemies and allies. It’s in your records, as a matter of fact, your propensity to define people as enemies and act without mercy, while being gentle and kind to your friends. The Chief Director is another person who is very similar. Pairings you two together, you could have been great allies or great enemies, but there’s not much middle ground. It’s a shame you have a powerful enemy, now.”

“I still don’t see how we would have been friends.”

“I don’t think you would have been. But humiliating an enemy is a dangerous thing. Doing it again would be terminal. You’ll need to be clever about your approach from here on out, so you aren’t threatening them to the same degree.”

“I’m too tired to strategize any more, Glenn.”

“Think. What’s motivating the Directors? First thought that comes to your mind.”

“Fear.”

“Of?” he asked, without a heartbeat of hesitation.

“Me?”

He shook his head. “More specific. If they don’t act now, what happens in the long run?”

“They can’t control me.”

“People would recognize it, that the PRT didn’t have the ability to control all of its heroes. Some would act on it. It would be devastating, damaging on a fundamental level.”

“Isn’t that what you wanted?” I asked. “Your ‘harbinger’?”

“It is. Can you guess what I’m going to suggest, now?”

“You want me to make a move. Powerful enough to shake them, break the status quo, not powerful or blatant enough to break my probation or give them an excuse to drop the book on me.”

“You’ll be with the Wards by the week’s end, if someone doesn’t trip you up. Do you think you can manage it? A big success?”

“Maybe,” I said.

“The moment you drop out of the public eye, you become vulnerable. You’ve got a reprieve, but when you do act, you’re going to need to act big. And you can’t stop once that’s happened. Once you act, you’ll be giving them an opening, and you have to keep moving after that. Understand?”

“Yeah.”

“Keep the ramifications and the scale of your actions in mind at all times. Use that strategic brain of yours. Above all, be patient.”

“Now hearing case two-seven-two-four, Weaver.”

I stood. “I’m here.”

“For the matter of committee record, would you affirm that your full name and identity are a matter of public record, and that the committee is free to use it?”

“I will.”

“Will you state your name for the record?”

“Taylor Hebert.”

“Your date of birth?”

“June nineteenth, 1995.”

“You are a minor.”

“Yes.”

“Will you testify that you were not coerced into this arrangement?”

“I’m here of my own free will.”

“You were not offered any bribes or incentives that are not already a matter of record?”

“To the best of my knowledge, it’s all been aboveboard.”

“As a minor, we ask that you have a guardian or respected professional to help guide you through the process, and to help verify what you’re testifying.”

Before I could speak, I heard someone’s chair scraping against the floor somewhere behind me. Standing up. “Her father.”

I felt my heart leap. I hadn’t seen him when I’d peeked through the crowd behind me, but I hadn’t been using my bugs either. No use disturbing anyone. I kept my eyes fixed in front of me.

“Would you please approach?”

I could hear him walk, but didn’t turn to look. Fuck, I was still hurt, still angry, even in the moment I was filled with relief. He came to stand next to me, and my hand found his. I squeezed, hard, and he squeezed back.

He was here now, at least. Not while I was in prison, not when I’d started my forays into the Wards. But he was here now.

“Your name?”

“Danny Hebert.”

“State again for the committee record, your relation to her?”

“I’m her father.”

“You’re aware of her standing in regards to the law?”

“I am.”

“And you’ve read the documents detailing her probationary status within the Wards? Document two-seven-two-four-A?”

“I have.”

“You’ve read the statement and accompanying paperwork provided by Taylor Hebert, AKA ‘Weaver’, document two-seven-two-four-B?”

“I have.”

“Do you hereby attest that all statements disclosed in the latter document are the truth, to the best of your knowledge?”

“Yes.”

I watched as the committee members paged through the documents in front of them.

My heart was pounding, and it wasn’t just my dad’s impromptu arrival. This was it. The moment my future hinged on.

I’d made enemies in the upper echelons of the PRT. The question was whether they’d pull a maneuver, do something sneaky to undermine me or screw up the case to leave me stranded without anyplace to go but jail.

“I believe each of us have reviewed the files?” the man at the center of the table finally spoke, looking to the others for confirmation. “Case two-seven-two-four has met the requirements for probationary admittance to the Wards. She is to follow the stipulations as outlined in document two-seven-two-four-A. Failure to comply will result in a return to medium security detention for a span of one and a half years or until such a time as she turns eighteen, whichever is longer. Further, failing to meet the terms for probation will result in a forfeiture of any earnings or rights granted her by the PRT, which will be held in trust until such a time as she reaches the age of majority. Do you understand these terms?”

“Yes,” I answered.

“Yes,” my dad said.

“With that, you are now a probationary member of the Wards, until such a time as you turn eighteen or violate the terms of your probationary membership. Congratulations, Taylor Hebert.”

There were cheers from the sidelines. Tecton and his group were among them.

“Next case,” the committee members said.

My dad and I retreated into the aisle. We made eye contact for what felt like the first time in an age.

“Thank you for coming.”

“I wasn’t necessary. You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t have someone else lined up.”

“It matters, dad. More than you know. Thank you.”

“Is this fixable? Us?”

I frowned.

“What?” he asked. He opened the door so we could step out of the committee room and into the hallways of the PRT office.

“I’ve kind of come to hate that word. ‘Fix’,” I said.

“You don’t think-”

“I don’t,” I interrupted him. “We can’t fix ‘us’, society can’t be fixed. It’s impossible.”

He frowned. “I don’t think it is.”

“Things change. Destroy them, rebuild them, you’re just causing change. Can’t we… isn’t it okay if we don’t try to go back to the way things were?”

“You don’t want to be a family?” he asked.

“I do. But… we tried to go back, after the city started to rebuild. It didn’t feel right. It was nice, but we were playing roles, and there was more stuff unsaid than said. Lies, unasked questions. Kind of unhappy at the root of it, you know?”

“I know.”

We found an empty bench and sat down. I could see the Chicago Wards stepping out into the hallway, but they kept their distance. Revel made her way out the door a few seconds later, and started talking to them as a group, at the opposite end of the hall.

“You’re so far away,” he said. “Doing things I can’t even imagine, facing serious danger, even on a more mundane level, the way you’re going to be living at the headquarters. It’s a fourteen hour drive.”

“Can’t we visit, though?” I asked. “Send emails every day, videochat?

“We can. I’ll come see you at the headquarters before I leave for home, see how you’re getting by. Maybe, if you need me to, I can pick up some essentials. Things you wouldn’t want to ask them for, or things they wouldn’t know your preferences on.”

I wondered momentarily if my dad even know what my preferences were, nowadays. I didn’t voice those thoughts. At the same time, I meant what I said as I told him, “That sounds amazing. Yes. Please.”

He smiled, but the expression faltered as he glanced a little to one side. “I think your team wants to talk to you.”

I nodded. “Talk to you in a bit?”

“Tomorrow,” he said.

“Tomorrow,” I replied, standing from the bench. The Wards had turned to face me.

When I approached Revel and Tecton and the others, I cast a glance back. My dad was still sitting on the bench.

It wasn’t perfect, but it was a step forward. It had to count for something.

“This space was for vehicles, but Stardust graduated three years ago, died a year after joining the Protectorate. We’ve been using it for storing paperwork, and your moving in was a good excuse to get some things sorted out. Your workshop.”

I nodded, doing my best to maintain eye contact. Campanile was about eight feet tall. I’d been given a complete physical and fitness test right off the bat, and I was five feet and nine inches tall.

The height difference put my eye level just a couple of feet above Campanile’s hip level. He wore a skintight suit, and there was little left to the imagination. I thought I might have seen a ridge or a vein, in that split-second I’d glanced down to make sure my eyes weren’t fooling me.

If I were more well adjusted, I would have been embarrassed, even offended. Instead, I almost wanted to laugh. Neither would have done well in terms of first impressions.

Focus on your bugs, I told myself. Look interested.

“Talk to Tecton before you grab anything from the build room. That’s where we keep all the panels, portable walls and furniture for customizing our spaces. Tools and everything would be down there too, but it’s easiest to let Tecton keep it all in his workshop. He’s our only tinker, and it’s not any harder to ask him for something than it is to go all the way to the basement.”

“Got it.”

“You’re distributing this stuff to other groups, right? The silk?”

“After I’m done outfitting my team, and you guys, our Protectorate.”

I’ll give Campanile thicker fabric below the waist, maybe, I thought.

“Well, there’s a budget, so negotiate with Tecton on that front. We all use the account, but the rest of us usually just dip into it to replace broken pads or lenses, stuff like that. Tecton pays for materials, which is usually enough to empty the budget, but he makes and maintains knick-knacks and tools that he rents out to other groups. Earns a bit of money to make up for taking an unfair share.”

“Got it. I can do the same? Selling the silk?”

“Yeah. Might be easier, since your stuff can be mass-produced.”

I stared out at the workshop, glad for the excuse to look away. Did he know how tightly the costume was clinging to him below the waist?

“It’s good,” I commented on the workshop. Better than the one in my old lair.

“Your bedroom isn’t with the others at the hub, since there’s not a lot of privacy there, and people are always coming and going. It’s more a place to kick back and nap if you’ve had a long patrol, keep some books and magazines, maybe some games. You do have a nook, though.”

I nodded. Maintain eye contact.

“You’re just down the hall. Here.”

I checked out the bedroom. It was better than my cell, but plain. The fact that I could come and go when I pleased was a plus, even if I was confined to the building when I didn’t have an escort.

“I can buy stuff to make it my own, right?”

“Yeah. But you should know that they’ve got cleaners to do the PRT supplied laundry, sheets pillows, towels, the generic skintight suits. You’ll have to do your own laundry, and that includes any sheets you buy or whatever.”

“Got it,” I said. I very nearly glanced down to make sure the protrusion in his skintight outfit was still there, stopped myself. Even in my peripheral vision, it stood out. Seriously, that thing’s as long as my forearm.

“Computer’s here. PRT issue laptop. Take some time, remove the crap. If you don’t know how, or if you’re not sure what’s dead weight on the system, ask Tecton. Username is your codename, password to start with is your birthday. Month-day-year, followed by your middle name. Once you type that in, it’ll set everything up automatically and prompt you for a new password.”

“Okay.”

“You’ve got a small bathroom just down here,” he pointed down a short hallway, “No shower, sorry. There’s one in the main area, not a lot of privacy, but you’ll figure out the patrol schedules, and figure out when you can go shower without a chance of being bothered, if you’re shy.”

Shy. I very nearly cracked a smile at that. He was the one who should be bashful, but he just radiated confidence, instead.

“I’ll manage.”

“Let’s see… there’s the phone and earpiece, they’ll get that to you soon. Identification, the same. Can you think of anything you need?”

“A few million Darwin’s bark spiders,” I said. “I could do with even just a hundred, but it’d mean a slow start.”

He didn’t even flinch. “We can probably arrange it.”

“Black widows would work too. Easier to find, but not nearly as good. Maybe just need an escort so I can go out for walks.”

“We could arrange that. I’m going out in an hour, meeting some kids at the hospital. If you don’t mind the detour, we could swing by a park or something.”

I tried not to imagine him in the pediatric’s wing of a hospital. You’d need to change. Or wrap something around your waist.

I didn’t voice my thoughts.

“The hub is right down here, bottom of the stairs. Command center, nook-slash-temporary bedrooms, spare costumes, televisions and everything else.”

Tecton, Wanton and Annex were at the bottom of the stairs. Grace, Golem and Cuff were sitting at the computer bank against the one wall, but they were watching. Grace had a wicked smile on her face.

I realized why. The bastards. They were pulling the same trick Campanile had, stuffing something in the front of their costumes. Tecton, for his part, wore a mechanical suit, so he’d simply bulked out the crotch portion of his armor with additional armor plating. Obvious, not even trying to hide what they were doing. Wanton gave me a cheeky smile as I made eye contact with him.

For my part, I managed to keep my expression straight.

Over the course of seconds, Annex seemed to get more and more uncomfortable. I made eye contact and maintained it as he squirmed.

“She’s not reacting, and I’m feeling really, really dumb,” he said.

“Aw, Annex, c’mon,” Wanton groaned. “She would’ve cracked up.”

Grace was laughing, now. Cuff, by contrast, wasn’t moving her eyes from the computer screen. She was probably the ideal target for this kind of prank.

“Don’t sue me for sexual harassment,” Annex told me.

I smiled a little. “I’m not going to sue. I’ve been around people who did worse.”

“It seemed funnier when we were talking about it before,” Tecton said. “It’s… kind of awkward, right now.”

“It is funny,” I said, smiling, “You guys did get me, I was so busy trying not to stare at Campanile that I barely heard what he was saying about the tour.”

There were a few chuckles.

“I was thinking it was a bad idea,” Golem said, “With your background, that you might not like being picked on. They gave me one, but I thought it was a bad idea to test you.”

“It was a terrible idea,” Tecton said. “Juvenile. But sometimes you need a cheap laugh.”

“They’re embarrassing themselves worse than they’re embarrassing me,” I told Golem. “I’m okay with it. I’m glad to have an initiation into the group. Could have been far worse.”

“Alright guys, joke’s over,” Tecton said. He unclasped and removed the metal codpiece from his armor. “She’s right. We’re just embarrassing ourselves now. Get rid of the damn things. And I don’t want to see them lying around anywhere.”

“I could keep it this way,” Wanton joked.

“No you couldn’t,” Tecton said. “You’ll forget about it, switch to your other form without absorbing it and wind up bashing someone unconscious with a foot-long silicon club.”

I glanced over my shoulder at Campanile, and saw him standing by the trashcan, no longer endowed. He didn’t look quite so ludicrous now. Freakishly tall, yes. Not freakishly long, so to speak.

“Sorry,” he said.

I shrugged. “I figure I’ve got blackmail material now. Just need to get my hands on the security camera footage.”

He smiled and shook his head. “Welcome. Be good.”

“I don’t think these guys are setting the bar that high on the ‘good’ scale,” I told him.

He clapped one hand on my shoulder, then turned around to go up the stairs, leaving.

Annex had fled, but Wanton was taking his time in leaving, with Tecton giving him the occasional push to get him to walk faster. Over by the computer bank, Grace and Golem were wrestling with something.

“Do it,” I heard her.

“No way, no way,” Golem responded

“Do it. Just a little.”

She said something else I didn’t make out. It didn’t go much further before Golem gave in.

Wanton doubled over mid-stride, falling to the ground. Once he realized what had happened, he started thrashing in his effort to get the offending object out of his pants. I had to avert my gaze before he inadvertently flashed me.

“Geez, guys,” Tecton groaned, “Too far.”

Golem rushed over, apologizing, while Wanton cursed at him, throwing the lump of plastic at his teammate. Grace had fallen out of her chair laughing, and Cuff had done the opposite, putting her unburned arm on the desk and burying her face in the crook of it.

In the midst of the chaos, I made my way over to the computer bank and leaned over the keyboard, typing in the username and password I’d been given. The desktop was up and running in heartbeats. Access to nice computers was apparently a perk of being a hero.

I dug around for the files on the local powers, and began studying. I tried, anyways. Grace’s continued laughter was so infectious and unashamed I couldn’t help but join in.

My new home, for better or worse.

25.02

“Sorry… I’m… so…”

He didn’t finish the sentence.

I could sense him slowing, using the bugs I’d planted on his costume. I stopped and waited for him.

“It’s fine, Theo. You’re doing me a favor.”

“Doesn’t feel like it,” he said. He bent down, hands on his knees.

I waited for him to get his breath.

“I might throw up,” he added.

I backed away a step. “Just getting the chance to run, it’s cool. Not many others are willing to meet me at seven to run, much less six weeks in a row. Grace is athletic, but she got sick of it fast.”

He mumbled something I couldn’t make out.

“What?”

“I’m not athletic.”

“You’re getting better. We just got a whole two blocks. That’s not bad. About as good as I was when I started.”

“Not fair to you, make you suffer for how much I suck.”

“It’s fine. It’s nice to get outside. Kind of a pain to have to get someone to come with if I want to go outside for no particular reason. If I don’t get the exercise here, I can use the treadmill back at the headquarters. Don’t feel obligated, if you’re not enjoying this.”

“I don’t. I’m… it’s good. I want to get fit.”

“Well, in that case, don’t worry about it. We’re both benefitting,” I said.

He made it another few steps before he was hunched over again, still breathing hard.

I felt a pang of sympathy, suppressing a smile at the same time. “Come on. We’ll walk one block, then try running another, walk the rest of the way.”

He was still panting for breath as he obliged.

I found myself missing Brockton Bay. It wasn’t the most beautiful city, or the most active. Or the most anything. There were already things going on around the portal, but it wasn’t a city with a lot going for it, and it hadn’t been even before the intense series of events had laid waste to the shoreline, set a water-filled crater in the northwest corner of the downtown area and left an entire swathe of the city so fucked up with random, horrifically dangerous effects that it had to be walled off.

Maybe I wouldn’t have felt the same way if I hadn’t grown up there, but I liked the balance in Brockton Bay. The way there was everything I could want, as far as malls, shopping centers, theaters. It was a big enough city. Yet there was just as much room to wake up early in the day, when others weren’t out, and have Brockton Bay to myself.

Chicago wasn’t like that. It was busy, and it was busy in a way that got in my way. People were already up if I got up at six in the morning to go run. Some were still up from the previous night, having spent the entire evening at clubs or whatever else. Everything was taken to an extreme, it seemed, in drama, opinions and ideas. It made it a little harder to sympathize with Chicago’s equivalents to the people I’d been helping in Brockton Bay. A little harder to sympathize with anyone, really.

I was feeling cramped. I wasn’t a social person at my core, and being here, like this, never allowed to be out and on my own, it rankled. I liked time on my own, with the internet or a good book, even a bad book, to get my mind settled down, my thoughts in order. It wasn’t that I didn’t like people, that I didn’t like company, but too much was too much, and I had no elbow room here.

Whether they knew it or not, the PRT directors had found a fitting way to punish me. Hopefully it wouldn’t go any further than this. I’d done as they asked, I was staying under the radar, and though I didn’t plan to stay there, I didn’t think they had any reason to make my life more difficult. I had my suspicions that my phone and computer were tapped, so I was careful about what I browsed and how I communicated.

With luck, they would forget about me until I was active again. With more luck, I wouldn’t have to worry about them much longer. The Director from Toronto, the guy I hadn’t been able to place, had already quit. Wilkins and West were still active, but the woman at the end of the table was under scrutiny.

There was stuff going on behind the scenes, and speculation was rampant on the Parahumans Online site. Satyrical’s name had come up. As far as could tell, the Vegas capes had gone rogue, and they were apparently targeting the more corrupt elements of the PRT.

I wasn’t a hundred percent sure how to feel about that, but I wasn’t complaining if someone was taking down my enemies for me, especially if it was in a more or less safe, legitimate way.

“Hey,” Theo said.

I turned to look at him.

“When you were dealing with the Slaughterhouse Nine back in Brockton Bay, you fought Jack Slash, right?”

“Yeah. Kind of.”

“Kind of?”

“He doesn’t really fight, unless he’s got his people around him and the fight’s unfair. Mostly, I was chasing him around, trying not to get killed in the process.”

He frowned.

“Worried?” I asked. “You’ll have help.”

“So will he,” Theo pointed out.

“True.”

“I’m… I’m not good at this. Everything Kaiser was, I’m not.”

“That’s not a bad thing. He was an asshole. You aren’t.”

Theo managed a weak smile. It was hard to identify just how he would react in regards to things. Backed against a wall, faced with a serious threat, he showed courage. I’d seen him on patrol, and for all his worries, he did follow through. He had against Behemoth, in what was almost his first time out in costume. Talking about his family, though, I couldn’t pin down just what he’d say or do.

The feeble smile, was that genuine? Had I hurt him, left him in a position where he wanted to defend his family but couldn’t because of what they were?

“I don’t fit the typical cape mold,” Theo said.

I resisted the urge to tell him I didn’t either, but I didn’t. I remembered a tidbit of advice I’d heard Tecton giving, and listened instead. “You’re feeling nervous. Anyone would.”

“The running, I don’t feel the difference,” he said.

“Slow gains, but they’re there.”

“The training helps,” he said. “The training feels concrete, like I’m getting significantly better.”

“You want to train when we get back?”

“I don’t have long before I have to patrol. A short one?”

“Sure. Come on. Run one more block, throw up if you have to, then we walk back.”

He made a sound partway between a gurgle and a groan, but he followed me as I took off.

Running at first, then walking, we took a different route coming back than we’d taken on our way out. The trees by the lake were aflame with autumnal colors, and I could see a handful of college students and older folk gathered, enjoying the serenity of the lake, the perfect temperature. Tranquil.

That was something I could get behind. I would have loved to sit by the lake, given the opportunity. The trouble was, I never got the chance. I was leashed to other people’s schedules, my excursions had to be in another person’s company, and nobody had really seemed keen on the idea of going out solely to go and sit at the lakeside.

As penance went, it was pretty light, but the overall effect of this restriction was wearing on me in a way that the jail cell hadn’t.

We reached the PRT headquarters, one of two in Chicago. It was squat, broad, and not terribly pretty, but it sported a statue on the roof that had been paid for by an old member, Stardust.

Once inside, we made our way up to the top floor, where the Wards’ rooms and the ‘hub’, as the others called it. It was a label that made me think of prison, and that, in turn, pushed me to think of it more as a common area or a lounge.

“Gym?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Theo said. “Let me get my stuff on. I’ll meet you there.”

I tapped into the supply of bugs that were stored in my workshop, withdrawing an assortment of flies, beetles and cockroaches, depositing the ones that I’d collected during the ‘run’. It wasn’t many, but I didn’t need much. Enough or three or four swarm clones.

I stopped by the kitchen to collect some silverware, then made my way down one floor to where the gym was.

Golem arrived a minute after I got there, decked out in his costume. It had changed from its first iteration, complete with a layer of spider silk and heavy armor over top of it. He wore a mask with a neutral, almost solemn face, and fan-like decorations at his waist and shoulders, the spaces stretching between the slats painted white, a darker metal composing the frame and edges.

The image consultant was having fits, no doubt, but the first and most important goal was for Golem to be effective. We were getting there. Image would come later.

“Hey,” Kirk greeted us, stepping out as Golem arrived. He wore a t-shirt and yoga pants, and was glistening with sweat. His head was shaved, and his skin was a striking jet black. “You guys sparring?”

“Training,” I said. “Not sparring, really.”

“Can I watch?”

I looked at Golem, “Are you okay with it?.”

“I’m the one embarrassing myself, you mean.”

“I think you’re past the point where you’re embarrassing yourself,” I said.

“You can watch if you want, Annex. Wouldn’t mind helping clean up,” Golem said. “I can’t promise it’ll be anything special.”

“Not a prob,” Kirk responded. “Kind of curious to see where you’re at.”

We made our way inside.

The area was divided, with workout machines taking up one half, and an open area for sparring and dance and whatever else on the other half. Floor panels, varying in the depth and degree of padding offered, were neatly stacked in one corner.

We moved to the open area, but we didn’t set up any padding for the floor. My bugs flowed through vents and from the hallway outside, and they filled the room, covering every surface.

The bugs congealed into a human figure, and Golem took action. His fingertips ran along the white ‘fans’ at his waist, then he jabbed one hand inside. A hand of concrete lunged out of the floor to dissipate the swarm.

A little slow, but not bad.

Another part of the swarm congealed into a rough decoy, and Golem clutched it in a fist of concrete. Faster this time. The bugs seeped out through the gaps in the fingers as the hand retreated into the floor’s surface.

Each panel of the fan was a different material. Concrete, steel, granite, wood. Common materials were in easy reach. Less common ones were a gesture away. Two at once, this time. Two figures to strike. Golem caught one with his right hand, but I moved the other as he reached for it with his left. He wasn’t quick enough to catch it, and the angle was poor.

I drew a butter knife from the pocket of my shorts, raised it above my head.

Golem was watching for it. He dug his fingertips into the topside of one panel, his thumb into the underside. Identical digits sprouted from the knife, forming half of a fist that had closed around the edge. The knife became a club, one with no cutting edge.

I threw the weapon aside and turned my attention towards creating more decoys.

I feinted, now, misleading him about where my clones were moving. He struggled but managed to deliver the hits. Dragonflies and faster insects formed a more mobile body, and I avoided the strikes, right up until he started creating hands that sprouted forth from limbs that were already sticking out of the ground: branching barriers to limit movement. I tried to simulate the general effect of the obstacles, and Golem took the opportunity to deliver a finishing blow, crushing another swarm-decoy..

“Hit them harder now,” I said. Running, I tried to raise expectations for myself. Here, I did much the same for Golem.

The movements became more violent. A hand cupped around one swarm and then pulled it against the ground, melding back into the surface. Bugs were squished against the spacial distortion field, and my swarm’s numbers were severely reduced.

Another was squashed against the wall, but the surfaces were different materials, and the hand couldn’t simply sink back in. This time, there was an audible thud, eliciting a heavy rattling from the exercise machines on the other side of the gym.

I drew my swarm together into a rough shape, not a person, but something larger, a touch bigger than Crawler, smaller than Echidna, bipedal.

He hit it, and I reformed it.

“Hit it harder,” I said.

He hit it again, drawing two hands together as if he were squeezing it. There was no substance to the monster’s body, though. I judged that he wasn’t doing enough damage and simply reformed it. The monster advanced on him.

I stepped a little closer, raising my voice. “Come on, Theo! Hit harder!”

Golem dropped a foot as one leg slipped into the concrete floor. A facsimile of his boot rose out of the floor, complete with cleats. The speed and force of it would have been enough to lift one of Rachel’s dogs, so I obliged by moving the ‘body’ of the swarm monster, raising it.

As the foot continued to rise, Golem’s leg disappearing up to the knee in the floor, he pushed one hand into the fan, causing a limb to drop from the ceiling right above the rising spiked platform that was Golem’s boot. My creation was sandwiched between the two, and the collision had enough of an impact to make Kirk and I stumble. I had to turn my head to keep the dust from getting in my eyes.

“Is that-” Golem started.

Before he finished the sentence, I had a second butter knife drawn, the tip pressed to his throat.

“Keep your eye on the threats,” I said.

“Not very fair,” Kirk commented. “Playing dirty.”

“No,” Golem said. His voice wavered, which was odd, considering I wasn’t doing anything that was actually threatening. Something else had shaken him. Had he taken the lesson to heart? “I’s good. That’s the kind of lesson I need to know. It’s why I’m training.”

“Jack’s going to throw some scary motherfuckers at you,” I said. “But he’ll be looking for an opening. Always, always watch your back. Don’t forget to watch your friend’s backs too. You probably won’t die if you do, but you might wish you were dead, when you see what Jack and his gang do to them.”

Golem withdrew his arm from the panel, but his leg was harder to free from the ground. By the time he was standing straight, the leg that stuck out of the floor had become more or less permanent. In another area, fingertips stuck out of the floor. There were also the branching ‘trees’ of hands that had formed barriers. Without us even asking, Kirk stepped forward, his body liquefying as he flowed into the surface, smoothing it all out as though we’d never been there.

When he was done, he emerged to survey his work.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Interesting to watch. Figuring out ways to apply his power?”

“Pretty much. Tricks for his repertoire, building some familiarity with using his abilities, attacking to recognize threats and attack without hesitation when needed.”

“You really buy that Jack’s going to wake up from some cryogenic sleep just to fight some kid who didn’t even have powers when they last met?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Believe it or not, with what I know of Jack, it makes perfect sense.”

“Huh.”

“You’re on board, right?” I asked. “With the plan?”

Kirk nodded. “Seems a little crazy, but doesn’t hurt, given the stakes.”

“End of the world,” Golem said.

“End of the world,” I agreed. “We’ll get as many on board as we can. Either we avert it, or we soften the blow.”

“Assuming we can figure out what it is,” Golem said.

“Yeah,” I said. “You said you had patrol soon?”

“Eight twenty. Then school after that. I’ll see you this afternoon?”

“Yeah,” I answered. I made my way to the common area and took the first unoccupied spot at the computer. Grace was there, but she wore a school uniform, and had homework spread around her.

“Don’t say a word,” she told me, clearly annoyed.

“Wasn’t going to,” I responded.

I logged in, and was greeted by the customized desktop.

The first counted upward, the other counted down.

Three days had passed since the estimated arrival of either the Simurgh or Leviathan. Behemoth had been early, but whatever factor pushed that to occur wasn’t at play here.

It made sense that they wouldn’t maintain the schedule they had been. Since the Simurgh had arrived, roughly three and a half months had passed between each attack.

These coming days and weeks would speak volumes. Were the Endbringers going to alter their tactics? Would the schedule continue at its accelerated pace, with Behemoth appearing in seven to ten months?

Something else altogether?

My eyes fell on the second clock. The countdown.

“No joke?” I asked, the second the elevator doors were open. Cuff was waiting on the other side.

“She’s here,” Cuff said. “Not here, here, but she’s showed up.”

I was in full costume, my flight pack on, an insulated box for my bugs tucked under one arm. my phone in hand. I was chilled to the core of my body, my lenses fogging up from the adjustment from outdoor temperature to indoor temperature.

I didn’t need to ask who. I knew well enough. It was a question that had been lurking on everyone’s minds. Which one, where?

I pulled off my mask as I followed her to the common area, and reached out to accept the glasses my bugs were already fetching to me, putting them on. The same images played on each of the screens.

The Simurgh, her silhouette barely visible in the midst of the clouds.

“What city?” I asked.

“Not a city,” Tecton said.

Sure enough, the camera angle changed. Water. Coastal?

No. Too much water.

Ocean. She was attacking the ocean?

It clicked when I saw the text at the bottom of the screen for one news report. BA178 under siege.

Of all of the sensitive locations in the world, the Simurgh had chosen a passenger airplane.

“Are we-” I started to ask.

“Can’t,” Tecton said. “No solid ground, and none of us fly.”

“I fly,” I said, but I could already guess the follow-up answer.

“Vehicles and tinker equipment aren’t going to cut it. Too easy for her to interfere with,” Tecton said.

“Order came down from the top. Natural fliers only,” Wanton added.

“We’re too late to join in anyways,” Grace said. “I can’t imagine this’ll be a long, drawn-out, knock down fight. We got almost no warning. It’s like she dropped straight down from where she was and picked a fight with the closest target.”

I thought of Armstrong’s insistence that we capitalize on our victory, mass in numbers to allow for another decisive victory, instead of showing up in smaller groups, with inevitable attrition.

All this waiting, all of the restlessness, watching the countdown clock tick well beyond the estimated date, and we couldn’t even fight. I wasn’t sure how to feel about that.

I watched on the screen as Legend, Alexandria and Eidolon engaged the Simurgh. She avoided the worst of their attacks, primarily through the only cover available – the airplane.

Half of the screens were showing the same video footage, though they were different channels, different organizations. The other half were showing information. The flight route, the people in the plane.

If anything here was special, the only one who knew would be the Simurgh.

My teammates didn’t talk much as we watched the fight progress. In one instant, it seemed, the dynamic changed. The heroes began trying to attack the plane, and the Simurgh started trying to defend it.

For eleven minutes, she managed, using her telekinesis to move the craft, her wings and body to block it from being damaged.

A fire started on the body of the ship as Eidolon tore into the Simurgh with a reality warping power of some kind, complete with lightning, fire, distorted light, and ice. The Simurgh cast the craft aside in the following instant, letting it flip, burn and tumble before hitting the water and virtually disintegrating.

That done, the Simurgh ascended, rising into the clouds. A few capes tried to follow, but Scion wasn’t among them.

“How long was the fight?” I asked.

“Not long enough for Scion to show,” was all Wanton said.

“Forty minutes?” Tecton asked. “About forty minutes.”

I’d spent more than half that time hurrying back to headquarters, hoping I wasn’t missing my ride. Now this. It was a farce.

“Now we wait,” Grace said, “And if we’re lucky, we find out what she just did.”

That was it.

It was almost a letdown, more than a relief. I couldn’t say she’d been softballing us, because it was the Simurgh. For all I knew, this was the most devastating attack yet. We wouldn’t know until later on.

Virtually no casualties, the planeload of people excepted. Nobody was reporting anything about heroes dying, but it had been clear enough from the footage that this hadn’t been a serious loss. Barely forty capes had been out there, and I hadn’t seen any die.

Yet I felt irrationally upset, if anything.

I turned and walked away. I let the strap of the incubation box slip from my shoulder to the crook of my elbow, caught it with my hand, and then transferred it over to the arms of my flight pack. It meant I didn’t have to stop or bend down to set the incubation box at the base of the stairs. I didn’t go up to my room or my workshop, though. I made my way downstairs, instead.

I was grateful to see that Mrs. Yamada hadn’t left yet. Her things were packed, but she’d settled into the office, and was reading a small book. A television was on in the corner, muted, showing what was happening with the Simurgh.

“Taylor.”

“Do you have a minute?”

“Of course.”

She stood and crossed the room to close the door. I hadn’t realized I’d left it open.

“It was about the best we could hope for, going by what we know now,” I said, “And I feel worse about it than I did about New Delhi.”

“You’ve been preparing for this, anticipating it, for some time. Mentally, you were preparing yourself for more losses, steeling yourself. That takes a lot out of you, and you were robbed of a chance to do something.”

My phone buzzed. I glanced at the screen. My dad. I sent him a message letting him know I was fine.

“Sorry,” I said, putting the phone away. “It was my dad.”

“Don’t be sorry. It’s a good sign if you’re reaching out to your dad, or vice-versa.”

“It’s bad manners,” I said. “But okay. Back to what we were saying before. I’m almost feeling… disarmed?”

“Disarmed. Good word.”

“I’ve been sort of enjoying the peace, the fact that the Protectorate are dealing with the meanest bastards around, the Folk, the Royals, the Condemned. But I was telling myself it came down to the Endbringer fight. That I’d participate, I’d wake up, fight.”

“Isn’t it better if you don’t have to?”

“No,” I said. I stared down at my gloved hands. “No. Not at all.”

“You came from a bad place, and, like we’ve talked about, you reinvented yourself. Maybe a lot of your identity is rooted in your concept of yourself as a warrior.”

“Maybe,” I said. “But whether it’s true or not, it doesn’t change how I feel.”

“I expect a lot of people around the world feel the same way. It’s very possible she calculated things to achieve this effect.”

I nodded.

“What do you think would be a best case scenario, Taylor? If everything went the way you were hoping it would, deep down inside, what would happen?”

“New Delhi would happen,” I said. Except without the severe losses. We’d lose people, some place would get damaged, but we’d kill another Endbringer.”

“Is that realistic, do you think?”

“No,” I said. “I know it isn’t realistic. We went decades without killing one, and it’s stupid to imagine we could kill two in a row.”

“What’s a more reasonable expectation?”

“That she’d show up, and we’d fight, and we’d drive her off without too many casualties.”

“In either of these scenarios, do you envision yourself playing a role? Maybe as big a role as you played in New Delhi?”

“I’m… Sort of?”

She didn’t seize on anything there, nor did she ask a follow-up question. I took the opportunity to reflect on it.

“Yeah,” I eventually said. “Maybe not as big a role. Again, that’s unrealistic. But I want to help.”

“If the Simurgh wanted to deliver a hit to morale, this would be a way to do it,” Mrs. Yamada said. “After New Delhi, a lot of capes were hoping to make a difference, to be heroes. Her choice of venue, the short battle, the narrow focus, it denied everyone the chance. Not just you.”

“I need to be stronger,” I said. “I’m supposed to be one of the people that’s around for this prophesied end of the world. Except I’m not getting chances here.”

“Can you talk to your superiors? To Revel?”

“I’ve hinted at it, that I could stand to sidekick around on patrols. Nobody’s taken the deal. Not with me. They took Golem, but the adult capes like him, because he’s polite to a fault, works his ass off, and his power is good. I’m good, but I wind up being a partner more than a sidekick.”

“You’ve been training with Golem.”

“Yeah.”

“You’re due some of the credit for his forward strides, I’m sure.”

“I’m not-” I started, then I made myself stop. Too much emotion in my voice. Calmer, I said, “I’m not looking for reassurance, or for compliments. I’m just…”

I struggled for a way to end the sentence.

“Let’s use the ‘I feel because’ line. Frame your emotions better.”

I drew in a deep breath, then sighed. “I feel spooked, because something’s coming and it’s going to be ugly, and I’m not prepared. I feel less prepared with every day where nothing happens.”

“I imagine your teammates feel spooked too. You’ve mentioned what they’re going through. Golem is likely going to be baited out by Jack Slash at some point in the future. Cuff has limited dexterity with her right hand, to the point that she’s having to relearn to write and type. I’m not discussing anything confidential, to be clear; only what you’ve mentioned to me in our previous sessions.”

I nodded.

“Golem has your support, I know. They all do, in some respect. In terms of what Cuff is going through, I know your team is dividing the workload in helping her with paperwork. That says a lot.”

“Supporting each other.”

“It sounds trite, but I think there’s a truth in it. You have legitimate fears about what comes down the road. But keep in mind that you’re not alone in this. Maybe you’ve hit a ceiling for the time being, in your own growth and development. But you can still progress, if you’re helping your teammates, assisting them in conquering their demons and improving their abilities.”

“Yeah,” I said. “It doesn’t feel like enough.”

“It may not be, but it’s constructive. Perhaps you’ll feel less disarmed if you focus on the tools and, so to speak, the weapons at your disposal.”

“Maybe,” I answered her. “But I hate feeling helpless.”

“Part of the reason you feel that way is because you’re waiting for opportunities to come to you. You waited for the Endbringer, so you could flex your talents in unimaginably high stress environments. It’s good, I think, that you waited, that you had a moment to breathe. I think you should strive to retain that peace, because it may help you enter a better headspace.”

It was similar advice to the parting words Glenn had left me with, but they opposed on one front. Mrs. Yamada would have been happier in general if I maintained this indefinitely. Glenn would be wanting to see me acting.

It was time to act, whatever Mrs. Yamada said.

“Thank you,” I said.

“You feel a little better?”

“Not really,” I admitted. “I’m not even sure I understand all my feelings. But I feel like I’ve got more of a plan, now. I appreciate it.”

“It’s what I’m here for. Or at least, I’m here for one more hour, and then I fly back to Boston. I’ll be around next Friday, after I finish another circuit.”

“Cool,” I said. “I’m glad you were here today.”

“I am too,” she answered.

When I stood from my chair, she did too. She stepped forward and gave me a hug.

I wasn’t sure how normal that was, but I’d remarked once on how few hugs I got, and how some hugs I’d given or received in the past had been meaningful moments for me, and she’d asked if I wanted one from her.

Somewhere along the line, t had become something of a habit, as we ended our sessions. I gave her a little smile as we parted.

I made my way back to the common area, and seated myself at the computer. The others were still following what was happening on the larger monitors. The defending heroes had frozen the plane’s half-submerged wreckage and they were preparing quarantine measures.

Whatever the reason for this particular attack, I doubted it would be clear anytime soon.

Instead, I seated myself at the computer, and logged myself in. The timers ticked away.

Once I’d updated the timer for the recent attack, it read:

Inching down steadily.

Mrs. Yamada had been right, I mused, as I found the files on the local kingpins and warlords. I was doing myself a disservice by waiting for opportunity to come to me. If I was going to do as Glenn had suggested, and make a calculated play, I needed to act, rather than hope for another chance like we’d had in New Delhi.

Looking at the others, I wondered if it was best to manipulate them or get them on board. Manipulation was almost kinder, because it absolved them of guilt. Simply making sure we were in the right place at the right time, luring a local power into a fight, with a plan already in mind…

No.

Chevalier’s Protectorate, ups and downs aside, was more about honesty. I wanted to tap into Skitter’s strengths, her ruthlessness, but I also wanted to be a hero. That was at the core of what I had achieved in New Delhi.

“Tecton,” I called out, as my eyes fell on a portrait of a supervillain with a mask of an upside-down face. An established power, located at the city’s edge for nearly ten years.

Too established? I didn’t want to set another ABB fiasco in motion. There were advantages to being open. The ability to ask questions, get feedback.

“What is it?” he asked.

“There’s something I want to talk to you about.”

25.03

Wind stirred the snow that had piled up at the rooftop’s edge. As it entered the space over the Chicago street, city lights caught the flurry and made it almost luminescent, whirling clouds in intense, intricate patterns.

I was, in other words, bored beyond comprehension.

Stakeouts? Not nearly as interesting as they were in the movies. Not even as interesting as they were in the TV shows where nothing happened and the cops complained about how dull things were.

No, this was a special kind of boring, where I was told to limit how much I moved, because of the half-a-percent chance that the targets in the building on the other side of the street might look out a window, and the ensuing one-in-a-thousand chance that they might actually be able to see me perched on the rooftop, surrounded by snow in my dark gray and white costume.

A boring, even, where I wasn’t allowed to read or listen to music.

“Weaver,” the voice came through my earbud.

“Talk to me. Please.”

Grace complied. ”Police chief and the Mayor are talking to Revel and the Director. Thought you’d want an update.”

“You could give me minute by minute updates on golf and I’d love you forever.”

“Hyperbole. That’s not like you.“

“It’s been a while,” I muttered. I shifted position to bring my feet up onto my ‘bug box’. The case was insulated, but there was some heat loss, so it included a heater that turned on periodically to maintain a consistent internal temperature. At the same time, I was wearing a PRT issue winter-weather costume beneath a doublethick silk ‘Weaver’ costume, complete with a hood, shawl and something of a skirt. It took time for my fingers and toes to get cold, so things more or less evened out with the heater.

“Well, this is your five minute check-in. Again.” I could hear the noise of a show or something on in the background.

“Thank you, Grace. Situation unchanged. Target’s grabbing a late dinner. There’s seven others working under him. Nothing special in their chatter. There’s plainclothes capes in there, but they’re not using names.”

“You’re sure they’re capes?”

“He warned them when they stepped inside that he’d act the second they used powers, so… yeah.”

“Gotcha. I’ll be in touch in another five min.”

“These five minute check-ins make it so much worse,” I groused. ”It’s like, if it weren’t for those, I could let time slip by, but no. I get measured reminders of how long I’ve been here.”

“This was your idea.”

“Dumb idea,” I commented.

“You were the one who wanted to do the stakeout, even,” she reminded me.

“Kind of thought I’d get to read,” I said.

That, and it had been a way to finally get some time to myself. We had run it by the Director, and I’d known right off the bat that he was itching to shut me down. Orders from above, no doubt. A way to get credit with the guys upstairs.

Still, I’d explained how my bugs would let me track the target’s movements. Our boss had okayed the job, with certain restrictions. The surveillance had to be airtight, with the check-ins, a mandate that any breaks had to fall between check-ins, and the restrictions on entertaining myself or drawing attention. At the same time, he’d said with a smile, the PRT rulebook said a Ward couldn’t be forced to undertake or carry out a mission. If I wanted to walk away, I could. If I got too cold I had to.

He wanted me to quit. To exercise a measure of control over me, so he’d have something to leverage against me at a later date.

Six hours in, I’d left for three bathroom breaks, each between four and a half and five minutes in duration, and had relocated three times, as our target went out to lunch and then returned to check on the business. Wanton and Annex had both come to keep me company, until the Director had found something else for them to do.

Then Revel had come on shift, and I had an ally who wasn’t just ready to go to bat for me, but able to. She was working reduced hours after her head injury, deferring more tasks to Shuffle, but she was still the boss. She’d read the logs from the check-ins, called me to verify facts on the drugs and guns I’d noted moving through the apartment, and then reached out to the Director.

That had been two hours ago. Somewhere in the midst of her battle with the Director, she’d reached out to the police chief and mayor. She would be trying to sell them on our plan.

Or, it was easily possible, they were sold and they were trying to get the ducks in a row and favors pulled to make our plan a reality.

And with all the excitement that was no doubt happening over there, I was sitting here, a little cold, wishing I’d saved a little something from the lunch I’d packed into my plastic Alexandria lunchbox.

The lunchbox was a memento, really, an impulse I’d justified in the moment by telling me it fit with my general camouflage, that it was ironic. I hadn’t counted on how long I’d be left to stare at it, while my bugs tracked the target going about his day. It made for a long time spent ruminating on past events, debating just how the bureaucrats could sabotage me, intentionally or otherwise.

For several dangerous minutes, I’d seriously considered going back to the Undersiders if this mission got derailed. I’d stopped myself before I got too far into that line of thinking, knowing it was a trap that would lead to me compromising, giving up in a way. Playing into the Directors’ hands.

No, I wouldn’t go back. I missed them; scarcely an hour went by where I didn’t wonder how they were getting by, but I wasn’t allowed to contact them. I wanted to know how Imp had changed in response to Regent’s passing, if Grue was getting enough support, or if Rachel was managing in the cold on the other side of the Brockton Bay portal. Was Tattletale using her power too much, still? How was Sierra managing as a corporate magnate and front-man for a villainous organization?

Hell, how was the Boardwalk getting on?

They were questions I couldn’t ask or answer without raising red flags with the people who were watching me for the slightest excuse. I’d cheated and sent letters, written by my bugs, delivered to a mail box while I was hundreds of feet away, and I’d received ‘fan letters’ with coded messages from Tattletale. It wasn’t enough, didn’t have the details I craved.

“Five minute check-in,” Grace said, interrupting my train of thought.

“Situation unchanged,” I replied.

“Stuff’s happening over here. Revel is right beside me. She’ll fill you in.“

I perked up a little at that.

“Weaver. Revel here. I’ve talked it over with everyone that matters and too many people that don’t, and they’re saying it’s okay. Tecton and the rest of the Wards, minus Grace and Wanton, will be mobilizing shortly.”

“We’re good to go?”

“Shortly. PRT trucks are already en route and will be standing by, when they’re not actively transporting your teammates. Campanile, Brazier, Shuffle and Gauss will be a short distance away, but they won’t engage unless this goes belly-up. This is your show. You and the Wards. Quite a few people hoping you guys can pull this off. A handful hoping you fail.”

Like the Directors. ”Got it. Do me a favor and fill me in on everyone else’s status and locations until they’re within a twelve-hundred feet of me. Coordination is going to be key here.”

“Grace will handle it.“

Not a hundred percent necessary, but it would keep me sane. I suspected the remaining minutes of waiting would be as bad as the first three hours had been.

“We’re controlling traffic,” Grace said. I could hear others speaking in the background. ”Flow through the area should slow and eventually stop.“

“Good to know,” I said. My eyes roved over the face of the building opposite me, while my bugs tracked our quarry.

“Where do you want your team?” Revel asked.

My team?

“Keep them in the vehicles,” I answered. ”I’ll let them know where to set up when things are underway.”

I stood up from my perch, making sure that our target and his employees weren’t watching out the windows before I stretched. I was alternately cool and toasty warm, where different body parts had been closer to the vent, and my costume layers thicker. Not cold, though. Not so much that I’d be affected.

Snow slid off the top of my hood as I bent down, lifting the insulated box with my bugs inside and setting it on the roof’s edge. It was essentially a thermos, but as lightweight as the materials were in the case and the heating system, the bugs I’d packed inside made it heavy.

I worried it would be an issue in my plan. With roughly eight hours by myself to think, I’d considered various ways this could go. Tactics our enemies could employ, things that could trip us up, ways our supervisors could derail the plan, but this forty pound box was something that rested entirely on my shoulders.

“We’re close to the perimeter,” Tecton reported, his voice buzzing in my ear.

I pressed a finger to my earbud, “I’m going to get us started. Sound off from all corners, please.”

“Roger from HQ,” Grace said.

“Roger-roger from the field team,” Tecton said. ”Just reached perimeter. Sending Annex and Cuff your way. Golem and I will be working.”

I stepped over to the rooftop’s edge. The streets had gone quiet. The unsteady evening traffic that had a way of continuing in the dead of night had stopped, leaving the area more or less isolated. I’d spent the better part of the day organizing bugs in the surrounding buildings, and I now moved them into position. Swarms formed into large ‘x’ marks on major exits, elevators and stairwells. In higher traffic spots where people were more likely to move, I drew out words with the swarm.

‘Cape fight in progress.’

I suspected this was a not-insignificant part of how Revel had managed to get the police chief and mayor on board with the plan, despite any protests or manipulations from the Director. The chance of bystanders getting caught up in this was minimal. As minimal as it was possible to get in the midst of a larger city, anyways.

I activated my flight pack and crossed the street, simultaneously making my way down to the ground. Not so hard, with the extra weight that made up my burden.

The doorway that led into the lobby of the apartment building required a keycard or a number punched into a resident’s phone upstairs. Not so difficult, after a day’s surveillance. My bugs were already prepared to knock a phone off the hook in an older woman’s apartment, a moment after I’d found her name on the board and dialed the number. Much as I’d done in Tagg’s office, I had my bugs punch the buttons.

The door buzzed. I walked backwards into it, carrying the insulated box, then dropped the box in the base of the lobby, opening the little door.

The bugs flowed out of the box and disappeared into the air vents. Slowly, they made their way up to the apartment of a local supervillain. A black market storehouse first, an apartment second, really. The only reason it seemed he slept here was convenience. The old adage of not shitting where one ate fell apart when ninety percent of the day was spent eating.

I knew how easy it was to fall into that trap. I thought of the Boardwalk and felt a trace of nostalgia.

The apartment was one of many detours in an extended distribution chain that saw guns and drugs making their way to the Folk, one of the rare criminal organizations that predated capes and still functioned in more or less the same fashion today. Topsy and his underlings were guarantors, middlemen who made it possible for diehard enemies to do business. If a fight erupted, he and his minions would deal with the situation quickly, promptly and efficiently.

It was a simple job, and it was one he’d done for nearly a decade. In the process, he’d apparently grown exceedingly rich, and he had recently started to become more ambitious. Campanile and Shuffle had interfered with a deal, and Topsy had hired some mercenaries to seek out retaliation. If the escalation of the situation wasn’t bad enough, the mercenaries had crossed lines, and Topsy had been relocated to the heroes’ shit list as a consequence. He was an acceptable target.

The only thing that would make Campanile and Shuffle happier than us fucking up and giving them an excuse to step in would be a perfectly executed operation and a humiliating loss for Topsy. I’d do my best to oblige on that front.

Finding the way through the building’s ventilation system was a question of mapping the system. Once I knew the way, the bugs abandoned the map and made their way into the apartment.

I could have gone on the offensive right away, but this wasn’t a conventional attack. Every step of this had to be considered, measured, and plotted.

Minutes passed as I followed Topsy’s movements through the apartment. One by one, I collected his underling’s phones, as they put them down. A girl in the group said she needed to make a call, couldn’t find her phone, and borrowed one from someone else. The second she put it down and turned her back, cockroaches swept it into the space between the table and the wall, and then proceeded to nudge it well out of reach, beneath furniture.

Topsy’s phone was the only one left, and he wouldn’t put it down long enough for me to claim it. I focused on the front hall instead, bugs collecting around jackets, boots and the winterized costume pieces, complete with warm coverings.

I could sense Annex and Cuff through the bugs that were warm and safe in the folds of their costumes. They trudged through the two inches of snow that had accumulated on the plowed sidewalks. Cuff seemed oddly more comfortable compared to Annex, who clutched his cloak around his shoulders.

“Annex, Cuff, I’m half a block up and to your right,” I said, one finger on my earpiece. ”Look for me in the lobby.”

“Got it,” Annex reported.

Back to the preparations. The goal here wasn’t to defeat Topsy, but to break him. Part of the goal, anyways.

Silk lines tangled zippers and bound laces. Gloves, both the ones for costumes and the ones for regular winter wear, were knotted with more silk, or they became home to wasps, cockroaches and millipedes.

Bugs too large or too small to be crushed found their way into boots. Cockroaches bit and chewed at the finer straps that held the inner lining of jackets against the exterior. The bugs I’d laced with capsaicin were relatively few in number due to the fact that it would kill the bugs next to them in the box, but I didn’t need a lot of the stuff. I transferred some to scarves and balaclavas by rubbing their bodies against the fabrics.

Annex knocked on the glass door, then melded into it and passed through before I could approach to open the door. He rubbed at his upper arms as he opened the door for Cuff.

“You okay?” I asked.

Annex only nodded.

There. I snapped my head up to look in the direction of the upstairs apartment, as though I could see through the walls. Topsy had put his phone down on the kitchen counter to grab a beer, setting the thing to speaker mode while he looked for a bottle opener.

Bugs from the front hallway of the apartment flowed into the kitchen and swept the phone into the half-full sink. Topsy didn’t notice right away.

“Creepy when you do that,” Cuff said.

“Hm?”

“Zoning out.”

“I’ve disabled their communications,” I said. ”Let’s go.”

I moved the empty box to a corner of the lobby, hidden in plain sight, then led the way out of the building, with Cuff and Tecton following me into the adjacent alleyway.

Topsy was swearing as he nearly dropped his beer in his haste to rush to the sink and push his sleeves up to dig for the smartphone in the mess of dishes and scummy water. I could taste how much old food was in the water. It wasn’t a sense that translated well, but I could detect a thin, strong scent permeating the kitchen, one a select few of my bugs were attracted to.

“Tecton, Grace,” I said, “Annex and Cuff are here, we’re standing aside while I engage. I’m not forcing this. Longer it takes them to catch on, the better the psychological effect.”

“Roger you,” Grace answered.

It was all about thinking a step ahead. I sent bugs into the room with the money and drugs and set them to destroying the plastic bags and eating through the paper bands of money. Wasps and other hostile bugs nestled in the gun cases and around handles. I didn’t have many bugs to spare, so I used the others from the building that I hadn’t deployed to make warning signs for the residents.

All in all, I managed about five or six minutes of quiet, steady destruction before one of the underlings walked in and saw what was happening. I rewarded him by flying two capsaicin-laced insects into his eyes.

“They’re sounding the alarm,” I said. The thug was hollering, and Topsy was shouting something about calling for the reinforcements, directing some swear words at the fact that nobody apparently had a working phone on hand.

That swearing swiftly became a stream of curses aimed at ‘that fucking bug bitch’.

“Annex, inside,” I said.

“Good,” Annex said. ”Because I just stepped outside, and now I’m going back in. It’s a pain to move through walls this cold. Sucks the heat out of me.”

“Warm up inside,” I said. ”Take your time, but try to move upstairs. Keep your head poked out so you can hear me. I’ll let you know what route they take.”

“Right,” he said, reaching into the wall. ”Fuck, that’s cold.”

Then he was gone.

My swarm continued to plague Topsy and his people. I slowly escalated the intensity of the attack, until Topsy gave the order to retreat.

“Get what you can and get the fuck out,” Topsy ordered, “Yeah, you too. I’m paying you, aren’t I? Go find the bitch.”

Not so cheery for a guy with a playful name like ‘Topsy’. Then again, I’d caught him at the end of his work day. By contrast, I’d woken up, donned my costume and started my stakeout. Eight hours, starting at four, watching and following as Topsy and his men conducted their business. He was more tired than I was, and he was both a little drunk and a little high.

It meant he was a little more likely to freak out when their outdoor clothing turned out to be festooned with stinging, biting insects, falling to pieces or too entangled in silk to use.

“Bitch! That bitch!” the girl in the group cussed.

They knew who I was, apparently. Fame had its disadvantages.

“Get downstairs, carry everything. I’ll bring the rest. We’ll take the trucks,” Topsy said.

I smiled a little, “Cuff, garage entrance. Spike strip.”

“On it,” she said, disappearing out the front door.

Once the majority of his underlings were out of the apartment, Topsy leveraged his power, reorienting gravity to shift the boxes and piles of stuff. They hit the wall, slid down the hallway, and finally tumbled through the open front door of the apartment in a heap. With money bands cut and bags chewed open, much of the merchandise in Topsy’s stock was scattered to the wind. My bugs could sense the clouds of powder filling the air. Evidence, if nothing else.

He wasn’t screaming, now, which I found odd. Now that his underlings had gone ahead, he’d settled into a grim and quiet attitude. He turned to the sole remaining underling. ”Anything?”

“Too far to see,” the man said.

“Keep looking as we head down.”

Topsy was tricky. Part of the reason for the surveillance had been to identify the other parahumans in his group. He hired mercenaries, paying well, and there was no sure way to tell who he had with him, short of seeing them in costume. Trouble was, his people were defaulting to heavier clothing over their costumes, due to the cold weather. Identities were doubly hard to discern, and Topsy wasn’t one to blab over the phone about who was working for him.

“Annex,” I said, touching my earpiece, “They’re heading for the stairwell. Do what you can, but let them keep moving forward.”

“Got it.”

I sent bugs ahead of the group to check the way. Annex flowed up the stairs to intercept them. Some steps became slopes instead, others had the supports removed, so the stairs collapsed underfoot. Each of Topsy’s underlings fell at some point, their burdens thrown from their arms or crushed beneath them. An unlucky or clumsy few fell more than once.

“Annex,” I said. No use. He was inside the stair’s surface. An unfortunate side effect of his power was the fact that his senses were limited while he was inside an object. He was blind, deaf, and his ability to feel was limited by the material he occupied. He could sense heat as much as the object could hold heat, could sense vibrations as much as the material could receive them.

“Annex,” I tried again.

“I’m here.“

“Back off. They’re catching up to you, and Topsy’s on his way down with an avalanche of stuff.”

“Right.“

I could see Cuff returning. She saw my hand at my ear and didn’t speak, giving me a thumbs up instead.

Annex spoke, his voice low, “Okay. I’ll take a detour, fix the damage I did to the stairs, then rendezvous.“

Very calm. Assured. It wasn’t even something we’d plotted out beforehand, but there was no urgency here, no panic or distress.

Not on our end, anyways.

Topsy’s crew reached the first floor of the basement, which included the parking garage. Topsy followed right after with the piles of goods, abused by their rough tumble down a dozen flights of stairs. The packages of powder virtually floated in the air, with Topsy batting them in the direction of his people.

“Everything with red tape is highest priority,” Topsy said. ”Load it into the trucks first. We can take a loss on the rest, pay the fucks back and claim intervention of bug bitch.”

“Two trips,” the man I took to be Topsy’s lieutenant said. ”Bug girl can see what her bugs see. She’ll be on our heels.”

I’m not even fifteen paces away, I thought. I’d worried they would exit at the ground floor, but it was safe. I made my way inside to grab my insulated box. Heavy.

The lieutenant continued, “Mockshow, open the garage doors. Get some cold air in here.”

“I’m already freezing,” the girl of the group said. ”We left our jackets up there.”

“Don’t fucking care. Bit of cold will deal with these bugs faster than it hurts us. Move.”

Mock obeyed, while the others loaded up the trucks.

“Be advised,” I reported, my hand to my ear, “They’re attempting retreat in vehicles. Original plan may hit a snag. Topsy’s got a newbie supervillain working for him. Mockshow. If I’m remembering right, she’s a master-slash-shaker six.”

“Roger,” Tecton said.

“Hold on,” Grace said.

Mockshow touched the garage door, and the mechanisms shifted to life. Cold air flooded into the garage. I was forced to pull my bugs back, drawing them into the stairwell and through the vents to the box I held. Only the bugs nestled in the villains’ clothing remained.

I could barely hear as the lieutenant spoke to Mockshow, “See?”

“Bosses are advising we try plan as detailed,” Grace said. ”If it fails, orders are to abort.“

And there was our first bit of interference. The Director didn’t want us to succeed. Topsy wasn’t a likable guy, was dangerous in his own way, even, but he was a known quantity. Manageable.

Fuck that, I thought. I didn’t sit in the snow for eight hours, bored to tears, to have this mission end at the first excuse.

I didn’t say it aloud. I focused on what our targets were doing.

The trucks had apparently been loaded up, because the villains were gathering into three vehicles. They peeled out with a squeal both I and my bugs could hear.

No less than ten seconds later, they ran over the chain that Cuff had laid in the snow just past the garage door. She’d reshaped it so spikes jutted out, I knew. I could hear the tires pop, and pieced together the scene from the movements of the people and boxes within the trucks. The second truck had made it halfway across the spike strip losing its front tires, but the collision of the third truck ramming it from behind drove its rear wheels over the strip.

Two of three trucks disabled.

I stayed where I was, letting the last of my bugs finish gathering in the insulated box, then carried it outside to Cuff.

“Spiked chain worked,” I commented, my voice a murmur.

Cuff pumped a fist.

I touched my earpiece. ”Two cars disabled and a third trapped behind. They-”

“Watch,” Topsy said, as he climbed out of the truck.

Not a statement. A name. I felt my heart sink a touch. Of all the motherfucking people he could have hired-

“What?” his lieutenant asked.

“They’ve got to be close. Take a second, look for them. Mockshow? Get us moving.”

It didn’t take Watch two seconds to turn and face the alley where Cuff and I were hiding.

“It’s Watch,” I whispered, “They’re on to us. Go.“

Cuff nodded and reached for her left ear. I seized her wrist to stop her.

She gave me a funny look. ”Mission’s a bust.”

“Mission is on,” I hissed the words. ”Go.”

I lifted the box, as Watch and Topsy made their way up the snow-covered ramp to us, underlings following them. An adjustment of gravity removed the issues the slope posed. Watch was saying something I couldn’t make out over the rush of wind. Something about our location. We didn’t have long.

Watch was a package deal like Grace or Circus. A lot of powers, flexible. His specific powers weren’t on record, but it was fairly well known that he was capable of short bursts of intense, short-ranged clairvoyance. He could see people’s biology, ignore the issues of light, darkness or intervening objects, and he had a limited super speed coupled with what had been dubbed ‘phantom hands’. The ability to reach through people like Shadow Stalker might, targeting particular aspects of people’s body to shred arteries or tear through nerves with his fingers and fingernails.

He was a monster who left his victims dead if they were lucky, quadriplegic if they weren’t. Maybe that was ableist, but I didn’t fancy being left to rely on the care of others for the rest of my natural life, suffering what was, by all accounts, an indescribably painful case of phantom limb.

It said a lot about Topsy and the direction he was taking his enterprise, that he’d hire this bastard.

I nearly dropped the box, slick as it was with the snow that had melted while it sat in the lobby. Cuff helped me catch it. A moment’s delay, but enough time for Topsy, Watch and the others to crest the top of the ramp that led from the basement level to the street.

As we ducked behind cover, taking our steps into the alley, the snow that had accumulated on the ground began to fall in reverse, in thick, wet clumps. I felt the same kind of lift that accompanied a use of my flight pack, and both Cuff and I were lifted off the ground as well.

The weightlessness ceased, and we fell. Only we fell up.

My flight pack kicked to life, and the wings unfolded so I could use the propulsion. I reached for Cuff with one free hand, nearly grabbing one of her braids, but found her wrist instead, felt her hand clasp my wrist in return. Snow and ice pummeled us as it broke free of the sidewalk and flew skyward.

It also, I noted, helped to obscure us. Some gunshots sounded, though we were safe around the corner.

With the flight pack, I managed to steer us towards the fire escape, throwing the box down -or up- and seizing a handhold. I found a grip and started to swing Cuff towards the railing when gravity shifted again. Cuff jerked, and I found myself half-folded over the railing, trying to keep her from falling through the open mouth of the alley and into Topsy and Watch’s sights.

Her legs dangled towards the street we’d just left, and I couldn’t muster the upper body strength to lift her. Worse, her grip was too tenuous for her to risk letting go to climb up my arms and shoulders and reach safety. Her right arm still wasn’t as strong as it should be.

The arms of my flight pack reached out to try and grip Cuff, but the angles of our bodies didn’t offer anything substantial to grab. Her braids? No. Nothing on her costume either.

The chain looped around her back? Yes.

“Chain,” I gasped the word in the moment her gauntlet slid from my grip. The insectile arm at the side of my flight suit snagged the chain and passed it to my hand in a sudden, jerky motion. She caught the lower half of the loop and jolted to a stop, her lower body dangling out in sight of Topsy and his men.

They opened fire, and Cuff shrieked in alarm.

Not quite so calm, leisurely and confident, now. Damn it.

Still, we managed to reel her in, her climbing, me hauling the chain in, inch by agonizing inch. The men with the guns rounded the corner, still shooting, as they kept out of the way of Topsy’s power. I had to duck low to take some cover behind the insulated metal box and the metal slats of the fire escape. More bullets ricocheted off of Cuff’s armor.

She found the railing, and I gripped her armor to help pull her over.

“Getting reports of shots fired,” Grace said. ”Bosses are worried.”

Fuck the bosses. “All good,” I responded, injecting calm into my voice. ”We weren’t in danger. They’re ticked and shooting indiscriminately.”

“Roger,” Grace said. ”Be safe.”

“Not in danger?” Cuff practically snarled the question at me. It was out of character for her, but that was excusable considering she’d just been shot at.

“You’re bulletproof. I’m bulletproof, even. Between the new Darwin’s bark spider silk costumes, and your armor, you were safe.”

As if punctuating my statement, a gun went off below, making the railing sing with the impact.

“Annex,” I said, communicating using the earpiece. ”I can sense your location. Climb two stories and give me an exit on the north face of the building.”

“Which way is north?“

“Your left.”

“Gotcha.“

“The way you worded that…” Cuff said.

“You’re not coming with,” I told her.

Gravity shifted again. Our backs slammed against the side of the building, the two of us grunting in unison. My metal box scraped against the metal of the fire escape to land beside me. We were now more or less lying down on the building’s face.

Watch and Topsy’s men were making their way along the side of the building, walking on it.

I pulled off my flight pack and handed it to Cuff.

“I don’t know how to fly this,” she said.

“I’ll fly it,” I told her. I noted the hole Annex was making. ”Go over the top of the building to the roof. Fall. It’ll take you out of range of Topsy’s power, you’ll be returned to a normal orientation. Drop again, off the other side of the building, sneak around and stop Mockshow. If she gets the group moving, we won’t be able to intercept and carry out the plan.”

“We’re supposed to report if we run into trouble, cancel the mission. This is a lot of trouble.”

“Trust me,” I told her. ”Please. Go fast, before Watch catches up.”

She nodded, and I gave her a boost with the flight pack to move her along as I dropped into Annex’s hole. I made it ten feet into the hallway before getting out of range of Topsy’s power and skidding to a halt on the carpeted floor.

Cuff sprinted for the ledge that was the rooftop. She fell only three or so feet before gravity reasserted itself, driving her into the snow and gravel.

I noted Mock, but I couldn’t see much of what she was doing. Her power, though, put her in the same general category as Rachel. She empowered minions. They even fit into the same general weight class as Rachel’s dogs. The difference, though, was that they were inanimate. Loose, telekinetically animated servants, typically with the size, clout and general strategy of a grown rhino. Charge things, hit them hard, repeat.

I had no doubt she’d be working on the truck. Maybe multiple trucks. Bugs were still inside the vehicles, and I could sense things shifting and lurching as she reconfigured it into a more or less mobile form.

Watch was suffering with both the winter weather and his lack of proper footwear. He was fast, but the terrain was slowing him. Ice and snow had been thrown against the side of the building by Topsy’s power, and every other step threatened to send Watch tumbling. His super speed wouldn’t help him much when he had to plot his movements like this, but it still made him incredibly dangerous if he did get one of us in reach.

He crested the top of the building as Cuff reached the other side of the roof and jumped down.

Propulsion and antigravity together weren’t enough to slow her fall. A miscalculation. She was too heavy, with her armor.

I promised myself I’d owe her one and slowed her the only way I could – I used the flight pack to push her against the side of the building, using friction and drag to slow the fall.

She hit the alley on the far side of the building at a speed that was probably too fast to be comfortable, not so fast she was gravely hurt. I used the propulsion in the flight pack’s wings to help speed her along as she stumbled, jogged, then sprinted towards the front of the apartment building.

Cuff rounded the corner just as Mockshow led her quadruped truck-minion outside. I folded the wings in just as she made contact.

Cuff could use her short range metallokinesis to manipulate her armor, effectively granting herself increased strength. She could, it seemed, also use it to impact the metal she was hitting. She wasn’t moving that fast, but everything my limited senses could tell me suggested she delivered a hit like a freight train striking a car that had stalled on the tracks.

“No! Fuck no, fuck damn!” Mockshow shouted.

Cuff threw out a chain with an audible clatter, then caught the end, moving like she was winding it around the villain. She reconsidered as Topsy and his minions reacted to the noise of the collision and came after her. She was nearly at the far end of the street when Topsy used his power. He reoriented gravity, and she veered to one side, striking the wall beside the alleyway rather than disappearing inside. The tilt continued, and she turned away, moving with the tilt.

He leveraged his power further, only this time, it was his namesake topsy-turvy ‘up is down’ variant. It was his most offensive power, the ability to hurl large numbers of people or objects into the city’s skyline, then revoke his power to let them fall.

Cuff, to her credit, was ready. I could sense her catching ahold of the building’s face, using the cover of the rising snow around her to climb up and disappear into the alley.

“Status, Weaver?” Grace’s voice came over the channel.

“All kosher,” I replied, managing to sound calm. I walked to the far end of the hall and turned a corner, until I stood by a window with a view of the villains. ”Waiting to see which way they go, so sit tight, Golem and Tecton.”

“Fuck,” Topsy was saying, as he approached the wreckage. Mockshow was using her power to animate the chain and help herself out of it.

“What the hell was that?” Mockshow asked.

“Wards. … this, it’s a trap,” Watch said. He’d made his way back down the side of the building, where Topsy’s power had oriented gravity at a right angle. He was calm as he spoke, “They shut down this … area, and they’re making …cal strikes to disable us. Even the fact that …show here doesn’t have a … and I’m wearing sneakers instead of boots, they wanted that. They want us unprepared, angry, even cold.”

“I’m paying you to get me out of this kind of situation,” Topsy said. ”Do your job. How do we handle this?”

“They want us pissed enough to fight,” Watch said. ”Don’t. Also… yeah. Bug bitch tagged us. Here.”

He reached for Mockshow, and she slapped his hand away. He caught her wrist, simultaneously capturing her arm and blocking the path of the cockroach I’d hidden in between her sweatshirt and her jacket. He plucked it out.

“Ew! Ew, ew!”

With a systematic, accurate and patient series of movements, Watch began catching and killing every single one of my bugs. Slowly but surely, I was being rendered blind and deaf. It would make tracking a great deal harder.

“Cuff,” I communicated over the earbud, “Let me have the flight pack.”

Dutifully, she unhitched the harness and let me pilot the thing back in my general direction. Annex and I made our way outdoors, back to the fire escape, as Watch killed the last bugs.

“Ew, ew, ew,” Mockshow moaned, with each bug that was revealed.

“… … think we should fight?” Topsy asked. ”… …ing kids. … money, my rep…”

“Could fight,” Watch said. ”…ther plan. Let me kill these last few, then I’ll …”

Over the ensuing four or five seconds, he killed the bugs I’d planted on him despite my best effort to retreat them to inconvenient and inaccessible areas.

My flight pack returned to me, and I strapped it on, before flying to the roof for a better vantage point.

“Going to be hard to track,” I reported. I could see them running. ”Watch killed my tracking bugs. They’re heading north, along Addison. roughly four hundred feet away from my location.”

It was Revel’s voice, not Grace’s, that came over the channel. ”Watch?”

“With Topsy and Mockshow and five underlings with guns and no apparent powers. They’re on foot, trucks are disabled. Can I get a roger?”

“Roger,” Tecton said, “Moving to intercept with Golem.“

“Belay that,” Revel cut in. ”I’m not throwing my Wards to the wolves like this. Abort. Protectorate moves in.“

“You let them face Behemoth,” I said.

“Different story.”

“We’re safe,” I said, taking flight to keep my eyes on the villains. ”There’ more danger if you derail the plan. They won’t even see us.”

“Watch sees everything,” Revel answered. ”Everything within range of conventional eyesight, from every angle.“

“Revel,” I said. ”We won’t get close to him. Promise. I’ve been on the team for six months, I’ve shown you guys I can play nice, play safe, avoid making trouble. But you guys brought me on board to be the shot caller in the field, with Tecton as the leader. Let me do what I’m supposed to do and call the shots. It’ll be a win for the good guys, I promise.”

There was a long pause. I’m up against Revel and the Director, now. My advocate had switched stances.

I took flight again to maintain a good distance. I wasn’t sure, but I thought maybe Watch had briefly turned my way.

He knew I was following, but he didn’t seem to mind. He had a plan. Maybe more than one.

They wasted no time in putting it into action. Topsy used his power over a wide area, reversing gravity’s effect. Snow began to fly in the air, and was soon joined by a pair of cars. They reached the top of Topsy’s effect, caught between the two gravities, and began to rotate aimlessly in the weightless middle-ground between normal gravity and the area Topsy had altered.

Then he shifted gravity’s direction again. An attack, such as it was. The snow and cars fell in my direction. Were flung, for lack of a better term. I flew for cover, ungainly as I raised the insulated box as a shield, snow and ice slamming into the buildings around me, pinging off of the metal. I managed to duck out of sight. The cars, for their part, were only thrown into the street a block away.

It wasn’t an attack he’d aimed, but a scattershot approach, meant to scare, to allow the possibility that he’d get lucky.

And it had given them the chance to try and slip away. A few minutes, while I recouped and tried to get my sights on them in the midst of the stirring snow and limited visibility.

“Okay,” Revel said. ”Only because we can’t move the Protectorate heroes there fast enough. You are not to engage.”

“Roger,” I reported, my relief mixed with a frustration that the go-ahead had come so late.

Their attempt to occupy me and break away might have worked, if it weren’t for Golem and Tecton. The villains had come to a complete stop as they reached the barrier. A row of asphalt and concrete hands, the gaps filled by Tecton’s power. The wall was as tall as the buildings on either side of it, spanning the breadth of the street.

Topsy began to use his power, moving snow at the far left of the wall, no doubt intending to scale the structure, move over the wall. Watch stopped him.

They turned to run instead, moving parallel with the wall.

Watch, I guessed, had seen Tecton, Golem, and the two PRT trucks on the other side of the wall, ready to spray the villains with containment foam.

By the time Topsy and his crew reached the next street over, the PRT van had pulled to a stop. Golem was outside the vehicle, creating another barrier. The implication was clear. Every escape route would be cut off.

This was a battle of attrition, a patient fight, with civilians kept out of reach. We’d let them get tired, frustrated, cold, and we’d break their spirits.

The goal here wasn’t just to win. It was to win so irrevocably that we took the fight out of them altogether, left them without any hope that they could win the next time.

Topsy hit Golem and the truck with flipped gravity. Both moved, but neither lifted off the ground. Even before he started raising the wall, Golem would have used his power to hold his feet against the ground, to grab the truck’s axle. Tecton would be waiting inside, ready to leap out and break the hands if necessary.

The villains could have continued. In their shoes, I might have. It made sense, to force Tecton and Golem to stop and start until an opening presented itself.

Except they were cold, tired, and being countered at every turn was starting to take a psychological toll.

They might have split up, scattered, but they didn’t. Again, they suspected a counterplan. Which we did have. Golem and Tecton could have tripped up the most problematic combatants while the rest of us picked off the weakest members one by one. I didn’t have bugs, but I could fly, and I had coiled lassos of silk cord that I could use in a pinch, along with a taser that I could use if I wanted to end things sooner than later. A good attack from above, I could manage. If they went inside, I could unload the bugs I had in my insulated box.

They had a different plan in mind. They reversed direction and headed straight for a restaurant with a sign showing a gold dragon against a red background.

“Grace,” I said. ”Wei shu wu? Does typing it into the computer turn up anything?”

“A cover business for a group with affiliations to the Folk,” Revel volunteered.

“We safe to harass them, or-”

“No. They have people with powers, and that’s beyond the scope of this manhunt.“

“Can you find the number at the building? A restaurant, Wei shu wu.”

“Weaver,” Revel said, her tone a warning.

“Please,” I said, as the villains disappeared inside.

Revel only sighed.

A moment later, the phone rang, and I could hear a voice.

“Wei shu wu dining. Would you like delivery? We can also arrange reservations if needed.“

“We would, if it’s no trouble,” I said, hoping I was connected. ”Eight criminals just entered your restaurant on Addison. They’re cold, bedraggled, a little desperate. It’s an ugly situation, and I’m sorry for the trouble that’s found its way to your doorstep.”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

Playing dumb?

“It was trouble they started,” I said. ”They crossed lines, and now that we’re coming after them, they’ve come running to your place for shelter.”

“We can hardly offer anyone shelter.”

“I know,” I said. ”But call your boss, if you need to. Let them know that the heroes aren’t going to start a fight, but the villains inside the building need to leave and get taken into custody. If this goes any further, we’re not going to press you, but it’s going to draw attention. People will wonder why the bad guys are hiding there.”

“Weaver,” it was a man’s voice this time, over the comms. ”You don’t have the authority to make promises or offers.“

“We can’t make them leave,” the man from the restaurant said, his voice a whisper. ”We don’t have ability to make threats.”

Because you’re hapless restaurant owners or because your gang doesn’t have the clout there to go head to head with Topsy?

“Don’t hang up the phone,” I said, “Use your cell phones, talk to anyone you can think of that might help. Bosses, franchise owners, whoever. Fill them in. Let them know that the guests in your store include men called Topsy and Watch. If they ask who I am, you tell them I’m a superhero called Weaver.”

“From the video?”

“From the video,” I said.

His tone changed, as if he’d shifted mental gears, at that. He sounded vaguely plaintive. ”You’re talking as if my boss is an important man, but-”

“You’re just a restaurant employee,” I said. ”I understand. Call whoever. We’ll figure this out together.”

There was a muffled sound, as if he was covering the phone’s mouthpiece with his hand.

“You’re talking as if you’re on the same side,” the man said. The Director, I was pretty sure.

“Weaver,” Revel chimed in, sounding annoyed.

“Mute me so he doesn’t hear?” I asked.

“Already done,” Revel said. ”This isn’t the way we should do this.”

I bit my lip. I wanted to retort, to argue, but I knew there were too many listening ears.

This is exactly what we should be doing.

“They’re people,” I said. ”They’re bad guys, maybe, but they’re all people. Topsy and Watch and Mockshow want the same things we do, to be safe, warm, dry and well rested, and we’re taking that away from them. And the people who work with this restaurant? They don’t want to deal with people like Topsy and Watch. All we have to do to resolve this is make it easier to deal with us than to deal with the other villains.”

“We shouldn’t be dealing with them, period,” the Director said.

“We-” I started to reply, then I stopped.

Topsy, Watch and Mockshow had stepped from the building.

“They just decided to leave,” the restaurant employee said. His voice shook a little.

I could see the body language of the three villains and their henchmen. Topsy kicked the window at the outside of the restaurant, and a crack appeared in it. He shouted something I couldn’t make out from my vantage point.

I’m sure they did, I thought. But I only said. ”Thank you for cooperating.”

“Thank you for talking me through this,” the man said.

With that, he hung up.

Something had gone on that I hadn’t overheard. An exchange of words, a message from the Folk?

It didn’t matter right now. I watched as the villains made their way down the street, then broke into a store to find shelter from the cold.

It was over. I could read it in their body language. As much as the Director had wanted to wear me down, to have me sit in the cold with nothing to occupy myself with but the five minute check-ins, we’d achieved the same thing against the villains, and we’d been successful in doing it. This was only residual stubbornness.

My arms were stiff with the weight of my bug box. I was glad to set down on the roof and deploy the bugs, flooding the building and driving the villains out into the elements. They had winter clothing they’d stolen, but it wasn’t enough to restore the warmth they’d already lost.

By the time they found more shelter, Annex and Cuff had met up with a PRT van and been delivered to the scene. Annex approached from behind, slithering close, and then used his power to open up a closed storefront, allowing cold to pour into the building’s interior.

This time, when the villains emerged, they did so with arms raised in surrender.

“We did it,” I muttered.

“Be wary of Watch,” Revel said. ”Containment foam him first, then move him to a truck. Good job, Wards.“

I watched Mockshow on the monitors. She was young. Well, young was relative. She was fourteen or so, and now that she had her costume with her, she wore a hard mask sporting a stylized smiley-face, a headband with screws sticking out like antennae. She’d lost the outdoor clothing and had donned her mask, as if it were a shield between her and us.

I glanced over at our superiors. Revel was in a discussion with the Director, the Mayor and the police chief.

Mockshow’s eyes widened as she saw the bugs filtering into the interrogation room. The tables and chairs had been removed to deny her anything solid enough to use her power on, so she had nothing to hide behind as they began forming into a mass.

“Aw hell no,” she said, as she backed into a corner. ”No, no, no, no…”

They gathered into a rough humanoid shape. My shape. A swarm-clone.

“No!” she shouted, as if her refusal to accept it could banish the thing from existence.

“Let’s chat,” I communicated through the swarm. ”Off the record.“

“Screw you! Driving me out into the cold, fucking with us without a fair fight? Go die in a fire!”

“I’ve been in a lot of fights,” I commented, “Rare to have one that’s actually fair. Most are pretty brutally one sided.“

“Do you not hear me? Screw yourself!”

The swarm advanced a little, and she shrunk back.

“Paradigm is changing, Mockshow. I want to make that clear, so you know what people are talking about when they offer you deals. People aren’t going to be inclined to play nice.”

“Nice?”

“The three strike rule, cowboys and indians, counting coup…“

“You’re cracked. The fuck are you talking about?”

“It doesn’t matter. Things are shifting. People are relaxing when they shouldn’t be, because Behemoth died, and-“

“Pat yourself on the back more, why don’t you? I saw that video.”

Everyone did, I thought.

I couldn’t let her get me off topic. ”I’m going to tell you what I would’ve wanted to hear if I found myself in your shoes, at this point in time.“

“Oh, so generous.”

“There’s two groups of people. There’s the people who’re preparing for the end of the world, who are on pins and needles waiting to see just what hits us next, how the dynamic’s going to change. I’m in that group, understand? In my book, in our book, anyone who isn’t keeping the peace and isn’t helping doesn’t deserve any mercy. They’re detriments. You’re dangerously close to falling into that category.”

“Whatever.”

“And the other group? They’re the people who’ve finally found a glimmer of hope, and they’re relaxing, thinking maybe we can take out the remaining Endbringers, maybe the world can go back to normal.“

She snorted.

“Yeah. Exactly,” I said. I glanced at the others. The Director wasn’t participating in the conversation anymore. He was staring at a monitor, but his reaction didn’t suggest he was watching me interact with Mock.

Either way, I had to wrap it up. ”But those guys? They aren’t on your side either. Once upon a time, they’d be the same people who’d push for people like you to go free. Because maybe you’d help somewhere down the road. Now? They have no reason to give you that slack. You’ve got no help here, and I think you’ll be surprised at how hard they come after you.”

“I didn’t do shit. I’ve barely had my powers a month.”

“You signed up with Topsy. With Watch. This is as much about them as it is about you. Making Topsy uncomfortable, denying him a resource they’d just acquired. Stripping away his conveniences, leaving him wondering if you’ll plea out.”

“Fuck that. I’m good. Not saying a word.”

“Probably,” I said. ”But take it from someone who’s been there. You don’t want to go down this road. The heroes will come after you hard, the villains will never trust you. Honestly? I don’t care if you stay a villain or become a hero. But it’s not worth it to be a villain and stick with guys like Topsy. The gains aren’t worth what it costs you.”

“I turn traitor and walk away, I’m fucked.”

“Join the Wards,” I suggested.

I experienced a momentary flashback to my first night out in costume, talking to Armsmaster.

Holy shit, have I become him? Pursuing my agenda, offering the options I know she won’t take, steering her towards my self-serving goal?

It chilled me, bothered me far, far more than Mockshow’s snort of derision.

“Or go be a scumbag, but be a scumbag who helps save the world,” I said.

She rolled her eyes.

“Us or them, Mockshow,” I told her. ”Saving the world or getting in the way. If you’re helping, we pull our punches, the charges don’t stick, whatever. You get in the way, well, every night can be like tonight was.”

She scowled.

“That’s all.”

“Fucking rich. You’re just pushing me to go join your old team.”

“I’m suggesting that you consider your options. Pay fucking attention to where you’re going. I wish I had. That’s all. If you want to contact me, that door will be left open. I’ll pull strings to make sure of it.”

“I gotcha,” she said. Her shoulders slumped a little, as if in defeat. She glanced up at me, and I could see a glimmer of vulnerability in her expression. ”Weaver?”

“What?”

“Can I ask you something personal?”

“Yes. Of course.”

She opened her mouth, then closed it. She stuck her hands in her pockets, then glanced at the windows, which were partially obscured with half-closed blinds.

Finally, she spoke. ”Would you please, please go fuck yourself? Upside-down and backwards?”

I sighed, dissipating the swarm.

I felt my hair stand on end as the Director approached. I’d always felt a little caught off guard by him. He looked more like a classic politician than the generals and soldiers I was used to associating with the PRT, with dimples, styled sandy hair and a tidy suit. His demeanor, body language, everything, it was warm. That warmth didn’t reach his eyes. Not when he’d looked at me. Especially not right now.

He’d seen the swarm-clone in the interrogation room. I knew it.

For long seconds, we stared at each other. I’d thought he would say something, but he didn’t.

“Thanks,” I said, “For playing ball.”

“I didn’t.”

“You could have made that harder.”

“Making it harder would have done more harm than good,” he said. ”I’ve still got two teams to run, a specialized police force to organize.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Mockshow. Was she receptive?”

I shook my head, but I said, “Maybe. Maybe something will sink in.”

“Teenagers have a way of being bullheaded,” the Director said. ”Villains too. Teenaged villains? Well.”

His eyes didn’t move one iota away from me as he said it. It left no question about how he’d compartmentalized me in his head.

“I suppose you’re right,” I said.

“Having Topsy off the streets is going to be a feather in a few caps, I think,” he said. ”It’s messy to credit you.”

“I really don’t care,” I said. ”I just want to make some steps forward in this mess. Prepare for the worst.”

He studied me in a very slow, careful way, as though taking everything in. Assessing the target.

“I could raise an issue with you being in that interrogation room.”

“Maybe,” I said. ”It’d look obvious, that you were coming after me. I didn’t say anything really problematic. But it’s an option.”

“You withheld details.”

“It’s kind of crazy out there, in the midst of a fight. You lose track of stuff.”

“I know,” he said. ”I used to be a soldier.”

That caught me off guard. He didn’t look like he’d ever been in a fight, let alone a war. He was so young, too.

“You haven’t been a cape for long,” he said.

“A year.”

“A year. But you’ve been through a lot. I’d hope you were better about minding those details.”

A slap in the face, not calling me out on the fib, but turning it against me.

He seemed content with that for the moment. He didn’t press the offensive. I didn’t either.

“We both got what we wanted tonight,” I said. ”It’s a win, isn’t it?”

He didn’t reply, glancing at the Mayor. The man seemed happy as he talked to Revel and the police chief. Not giddy, but happy.

“Is this going to let up?” I asked. ”Or are we going to be fighting each other constantly?”

The Director glanced at me. ”You want this to stop?”

“It’s a waste of energy. There can’t be compromise?”

He didn’t even have to think about it. He shook his head, briefly pursing his lips. ”No compromise.”

I clenched my fist. Damn him.

“A balance,” he said. ”Maybe a balance.”

“What’s the difference?”

“I think,” he said, choosing his words carefully, “That a compromise would be disastrous. You’re not going to be confined. You showed that in the interrogation room in Brockton Bay, when you murdered Director James Tagg and Alexandria. You’re not going to be confined by law. I haven’t seen a single case where you’ve followed the rules that were outlined for you. Boundaries don’t work, in any sense. If we reached a compromise, worked out some kind of a deal, you’d find a way around it, extending your influence.”

“That’s not fair,” I said.

“It’s reality. It’s a horrible waste of energy, a tragedy, really, but I’m forced to dedicate time to reining you in, controlling you, keeping you in check. If that results in nights like tonight, we have a balance. Hardly a compromise, but we’ll manage.”

“I suppose we’ll have to,” I said.

“I’d tell you to avoid leaking the fact that you played a major role in tonight’s events, but we both know you wouldn’t listen,” he said. ”I’d threaten punishment, but you’d do what you wanted and even enjoy it, feeling vindicated. So we’ll go another route. If you don’t play ball and let us share this narrative the way we need to, I punish the other Chicago Wards. Inconvenient shifts, extra volunteer work, more paperwork.”

“I told you, taking credit isn’t a concern for me. I’ve got other priorities.”

“Good,” he said. He flashed me a smile. White capped teeth. ”Good. Then this is ideal. We may not have a compromise, but a consensus? It’ll do.”

“It’ll do,” I said.

“Just do me a favor? Try not to murder me like you did the other three Directors.” He winked.

It was a jibe, a verbal thrust, delivered with humor and offhandedness, but it struck home, stirred ugly feelings.

He turned to rejoin the others. The Mayor looked at me, and Revel waved me over. I knew the Director wouldn’t want me to, so I walked over with confidence, my head held high.

“Eight hours?” the Mayor asked. ”Sitting in the cold?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Is that even legal?”

The Director stepped in, “It wasn’t on the clock. For all intents and purposes, she wanted to take the day off, have some time by herself. We had the tracking device monitored by GPS, so we knew she wasn’t going anywhere she shouldn’t. Being the workaholic she is, she wanted to get intel while she had her alone time.”

I didn’t argue the point. He wasn’t wrong. That was how it was going down in the paperwork. Part of the deal we’d arranged to get this off the ground.

The mayor smiled. ”Well, good to see our most controversial member is doing her part. You should smile more. Can we get a smile out of you?”

I smiled a little.

“Better, better! You do bide your time, then make a big splash, don’t you, Ms. Weaver?”

He was managing to sound a little condescending, which was at odds with the events he was alluding to. How did one make me sound so diminutive when making vague reference to the death of an Endbringer, to the murder of Alexandria and the takeover of a city?

I didn’t mention it. I had my pride, but it wasn’t something worth fighting over. I wanted to pick my battles, and any moment now-

“Hopefully we’ll see more of the same from you in the future,” the Mayor said.

The Director started to speak, deflecting, but I cut in. ”Actually-”

Eyes fell on me.

Picking my battles. If the Director wanted this to be a war, if he thought I needed to be tempered by an opposing force, then I was game.

I glanced at the Mayor. ”Tecton went over it with me, we’ve got more plans like we had for tonight. If you guys are willing.”

“Willing? I can’t imagine why not!” the Mayor said. He smiled at Director Hearthrow, who smiled back.

The moment the Mayor wasn’t looking, the Director shot me a glance, a dangerous, warning look.

I told you, I thought. My priorities are elsewhere.

“How soon?” the police chief asked. Her stare was hard, judgmental, but there was curiosity in her tone.

“The sooner the better,” I said. ”Before they catch on about what we’re doing and adjust. I think I know where a few possible major players are situated. I’ve spent the past few months looking for them. I gathered the intel in my spare time, on my morning runs and patrols. Just like Director Hearthrow was saying. I’m a bit of a workaholic.”

“Like, two weeks?” she asked.

“Give me a day to recuperate, maybe two days if the other Wards need it, I’d be down for another. We could potentially hit seven or eight major targets in the next two weeks, if you wanted. Each of them would be major targets, villains who aren’t playing along, who are more trouble than they’re worth.”

The Director shook his head. ”I think that may be extreme. The resources expended, funding-”

“Funding can be conjured up for a project like this,” the Mayor said. ”Imagine the impact. Can we do this with the Protectorate team as well? Switch off with the minors?”

“It’s a good idea,” Revel commented. ”Weaver’s capable of handling her own in high pressure situations, but the other team members might not be. They have school, family, other concerns.”

“I agree,” I chimed in. ”Makes sense. We could have the bad guys reeling.”

“We can’t set our hopes too high,” the Director warned. He gave me another dirty look.

The Mayor chuckled. ”No. Of course not. But the impact. And to do it with so little risk? They barely interacted with the villains, by all accounts. It would be insane to pass up the opportunity.”

“Insane,” Revel said, her tone flat. I couldn’t read her feelings on this. I hoped I hadn’t provoked her as much as I had the Director.

“If you’re willing to allow me to suggest some targets,” the police chief said, “I think I could adjust shifts, ensure we have enough squad members to limit or stop traffic inside potential sites of conflict.”

It was consent, in the form of a negotiation. The mayor and police chief were interested, Revel was probably on board. The Director would be forced to play along.

It was done. I was all set to hit the ground running, like Glenn had recommended. Big moves. Actions with momentum. Here on out, I’d have to keep moving so they couldn’t get me.

And hopefully, in the midst of this, we’d be able to organize things for our potential end of the world scenario. Eliminate the obstacles, big and small, train up the rank and file troops.

If anyone thought I was cleaning up Chicago, they were wrong. Like the Director had said, I’d take as much rein as they gave me, use all of the leverage and momentum I could get my hands on. Topsy was a small fry in the grand scheme of things. A test run. I wanted to hit big targets in other cities. To get as many Mockshows into the interrogation rooms as possible, to play the odds and increase the chances that we could get those people on the fence and make sure they were positioned appropriately.

The clock was ticking.

25.04

Touché, PRT.

You got me.

Touché.

“You’re attempting to reach Glenn Chambers, co-president of Faceti. For our mutual convenience, please categorize your message. Press one to contact my personal assistant, who can get your message to me in text asap. Press two if you got my number from my business card. Press four if you are an employee. Press five if this is a personal call. Press nine if the call is of utmost urgency, to put yourself on the line immediately if I’m on the phone, or set off an alarm if I’m not.“

I seriously debated pressing nine. I felt like this was a nine.

I hit one instead.

“This is James, receiving a call for Mr. Chambers.“

“It’s Weaver, I… I don’t know who else to call.”

I wasn’t coherent, which was unusual, considering how I could normally keep myself together in a crisis.

“Oh, Weaver! He’s actually talking to someone about you right now. I got his attention. He’ll be with you in a second.“

“I’m not sure I have a second,” I said. There was no response. He wasn’t on the line.

“Oh man,” Golem said. “I’m… oh fuck.”

Quite possibly the only person who was as concerned as I was.

“Glenn here. You should have called earlier.”

“I didn’t get a chance,” I said. I would have explained, but time was precious here.

“I imagine you didn’t. Well, there’s good news and bad news. You’ve already run into the bad news. Here’s the good. This? It’s my plan they’re using.”

I could believe it. I didn’t respond.

“Their timing is off. I would have done this differently if I were your enemy. It’s too much of a gamble as it stands.“

“They planned this, have been setting it up for a while. I expected interference with the missions, being supplanted with the Protectorate squad, not this. I just need to know-”

There was a fanfare, musical, light and jazzy. By the time it faded, a crowd I couldn’t see had started applauding.

“It’s starting,” Tecton said. He was a pillar of confidence here.

Glenn was talking, but I couldn’t hear over Tecton and the crowd. I stepped away, my free hand raised to block out the noise.

“…nds like the show just started. They have to have leverage against you if they’re pulling this. Your probation?“

“They’re threatening to declare a breach if I don’t play along.”

“Play along. I heard what you did, announcing what the PRT was doing to the entire building. Word got around, in certain channels. Do not do that again. Don’t call your bosses out and let people know that you don’t want to be here. They’ll be ready for it, and you’ll hurt worse than they do.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Did they prep you?“

“No. I got off a six-hour graveyard patrol with Gauss and returned to the base to hear about this. They even put our new Protectorate member on the comms to keep me out of the loop, then fed me just enough information I had to listen without telling me enough. I’ve never even seen this show, and I barely had time to get my costume brushed off and my hair in order. They tidied it up some here, but-”

Glenn cut me off. “Okay. It’s not the end of the world, but I don’t think this show will help you. These shows almost always result in a ratings dip over time. It boosts your appeal but hits you on respectability. It’s only worth it if there’s merchandise or media to sell, which there isn’t. They’re tanking you. Still, this is minor in the grand scheme of things.“

Being in front of millions of people was minor. It wasn’t that I hadn’t had appearances before, but most had been without my knowledge. The unveiling of ‘Weaver’ was a good example of how tongue-tied I was liable to get.

“What do I do? How do I approach this?”

“I’d tell you to just be yourself, but that’s a terrible idea. Be yourself as you normally are with the Wards. Be the teenager, the friend. Play up the fact that you’re a group, that there’s camaraderie. Build a relationship with the audience by sharing things they probably don’t know. Nothing sensitive.“

I wondered if the dildo prank that the Wards had initiated me with would qualify as sensitive.

More than that, I wondered if I even had enough of a bond with the others, something I could draw on.

“Be engaging. It’s more important to keep the conversation moving than it is to say what you want to say.“

“Wards!” A woman called out. “All together. Hurry up now. You’re on in two minutes.”

Like a kindergarten teacher herding students around.

“Two minutes,” I said. “I should go.”

“Good luck. This is a day the strategist needs to take a vacation, understand? Or delegate a task to it. They’re putting you out there because they think you’ll either take a hit to your reputation or you’ll try to be clever and self destruct. You stand to lose more than they do, and this isn’t live, meaning they can pull anything they don’t want on the air.“

“I get it,” I said. “They aren’t just giving me enough rope to hang myself with, they’ve put me in a rope factory.”

“Exactly.“

“Thank you, Glenn.”

I joined the others, my heart was pounding with enough force that the thumps rocked my entire body. Tecton was closest to the stage, followed by Grace and Wanton. The core team members, the veterans. Veterans in one sense. Wanton didn’t have half the field experience I did, even with our sustained campaign against the local villains, starting to help out in Detroit and trying to deal with that one jerkass in Milwaukee who we hadn’t yet managed to pin down. Tecton and Grace were a little more seasoned, but not by a lot.

The stage manager was checking the microphones everybody wore. She paused by me, and ensured it was plugged in, and that the connection was unbroken. I was essentially wearing the same costume I had in the winter, but had skipped the extra layer beneath. I suddenly felt intensely conscious of every wrinkle and all of the grit that had gathered up around my ankles and feet as I’d patrolled.

The costumes the others wore were immaculate. Wanton had styled his hair to be messy in a good way, and was draped in flowing, dark blue clothing with lighter armor situated across his chest, his waist, his boots and along the length of his arms. I suspected that the cloth afforded him more protection than the thin plates of metal, but it served to mask his artificial arm.

Grace’s costume was light, in contrast to the dark of Wanton’s. Her new costume was white cloth, almost a martial artist’s outfit, but designed to offer more coverage. Reinforced pads were situated at every striking point, complete with studs to offer more traction and focused impacts. There wasn’t a single hair out of place beneath her combination headband, hairband and mask. She had glossy, wavy locks I was a little jealous of, and a trace of lipstick.

I wish I’d considered some make up. Not that I wore a lot, or that I’d had the time. I had only what they’d given me in the studio, and they hadn’t gone overboard, on the assumption that I’d keep my mask on. No, if anything it forced me to keep it on. Heavy eyeshadow to make it easier to see my eyes behind the blue lenses.

Cuff seemed to be in the same department as Grace. She’d done herself up, with a more ornate braid to her hair, and had altered her costume a fraction, to allow for more decorative tailoring at the ends of each panel and the nose of her visor. Slivers of skin were visible between some slats of armor at the upper arms and collarbone. Of everyone here, she seemed the most excited. She couldn’t sit still, but she was smiling, and it was a genuine expression.

That left Annex and Golem. Golem was uncomfortable, and I couldn’t blame him. Like me, he had details he’d want to hide. His family, his background, the fact that he was in foster care. His costume, too, was a work in progress. It was a resource for him, and maximizing that resource often set him back in the appearance department. Annex, by contrast, had settled into a ‘look’. It was plain, intentionally so. The white cloak was form-fitting, with ribs to keep the fabric straight and close to his body so it was easier and quicker to absorb.

“Grace,” Tecton said. “No swearing.”

Wanton snickered a little.

Tecton pitched his voice lower. “Golem? You’ve got to stop calling adults sir while you’re in costume. You do it as a civilian, dead giveaway. Hasn’t mattered up until now, but this is the test.”

“I probably won’t say much,” Golem said. “I’m so nervous I feel like I need to puke.”

“No puking,” Wanton said.

“No puking is a good idea,” I agreed.

“Weaver…” Tecton said. He gave me a look, with only his eyes visible behind his helmet. “…I don’t even know. But I’ve kind of gone the extra mile for you, and you’ve done a lot in return, but-”

The stage manager stooped down a little to talk to us, even though both Tecton and I were both taller than her. “Alrighty, guys! You’re on in five, four…”

“I still owe you one. I’ll be good,” I told Tecton, just under my breath.

“One!”

The jazzy fanfare played. As if that wasn’t cue enough, the stage manager gave us a little prod, literally pushing Tecton forward.

It was surprising how small the studio was, both the stage with its slate gray floor and fake cityscape behind it and the studio audience. Tecton led the way to the half-circle of a table with the three hosts on the far side. The largest chair closest to the hosts was undoubtedly his, shipped here by the PRT so he could sit down in his armor without crashing to the floor.

We sat down. Tecton, Grace, Wanton, me, Annex, Cuff and Golem, in that order. The music died as we took our seats, opposite the three hosts. An adult man, African-American by the looks of it, a woman with peroxide blond hair and a girl who could have been her daughter, a brunette who bordered on overweight, with a winning smile and an overly generous chest.

“Welcome back to Mornings with O, J and Koffi,” the woman said. “School’s out for the day and we’ve got the Chicago Wards here for breakfast. Good morning, guys.”

We voiced our replies. Wanton gave me a look, smiling, and I made myself smile as well.

The young girl gave a small wave, “So nice to meet you. We had the team here before, but you guys have definitely changed things up since. Campanile was the team leader then.”

“Campanile graduated to the Protectorate a little while ago,” Tecton said. “He said to say hi.”

“You were there too, weren’t you?” Koffi, the man, said.

“In my old costume,” Tecton said. “Which I’d prefer we didn’t talk about.”

There were chuckles from the hosts at his comment, and the audience echoed them. It was oddly surreal. I intended no offense to Tecton in thinking it, but the comment just wasn’t that amusing.

“The updated costumes look good,” Koffi said.

“We can thank Weaver for that. Any cloth you see is spider silk,” Tecton said.

“Spider silk, wow!” This from the blonde woman.

“Cuff and I sort of missed out on that front,” Tecton added.

“I don’t know whether to be amazed or freaked out,” the younger woman said.

“We had a giant Japanese crab on the show just a month ago, I think. Jo had to leave the stage,” Koffi said. “I think she’s a little nervous with Weaver here.”

“That was so embarrassing,” the young woman said. I made a mental note of her being ‘Jo’. “And you’re never going to let me live it down.”

More laughter.

Oh hell, I thought. It was all so fake. Fake responses, fake conversation. The personalities, the way they were over-talking, it was like they’d taken everything that irritated me and condensed it into this, and situated it all in front of countless viewers so I couldn’t even respond the way I wanted to.

“I don’t dislike you, Weaver,” Jo said. “It’s bugs I don’t like. I’m not nervous.”

“Thank you. Good,” I said. Then, in an attempt to recover the clumsy sentence, I added, “I’m glad.”

The blonde, who was ‘O’ by the process of elimination, said, “There’s been a fair bit of attention directed at your team. The leaked video thrust you all into the spotlight. Then you dropped off the radar.”

“Recuperating,” Tecton said. “We’re teenagers. We go to school and play video games and being a cape is only part of it.”

“Except for Weaver,” Wanton said.

Both Tecton and I shot him a look, and then I remembered that there were eyes on me. There was a reaction from the audience. Light laughter.

“What do you mean?” Jo asked.

How could I even explain that I was working towards stopping or mitigating the degree of the world ending, when I wasn’t allowed to mention the fact? Or that we were systematically targeting the most problematic villains, when I didn’t want anyone to see the show and hear the battle plan outlined for them?

“Wanton has been poking fun at Weaver about how she doesn’t go out or maintain any hobbies,” Tecton explained. “Which isn’t entirely fair. My apologies to Weaver bringing this up, but it’s not a secret that she’s on house arrest. She’s on probation, and so she’s limited in what she can do.”

Koffi seized on the topic. “You had a pretty colorful life as a villain, Weaver. We’ve seen the cell phone video of you in the cafeteria of your high school, opposite Dragon and Defiant.”

I felt simultaneously glad that the conversation was moving and horrified that I was the subject. I blamed Wanton.

Still, I said, “Clockblocker too. I wasn’t actually attending school, though. It was a couple of unlucky circumstances that put me there, and… yeah. At that point in time, I’d wanted to focus on taking care of my part of the city.”

“That’s interesting, isn’t it?” O asked. “You were a criminal overlord. How were you even qualified for that?”

“It wasn’t like that,” I said. I was more nervous now, half-convinced I was damning myself further with every sentence. I’d inevitably come off too harsh and ‘dark’ for the civilians who were watching and too soft for any villains who happened to see. Damn it. “Taking the territory and being a villain were independent things. Related, but different. It was after Leviathan attacked, food, water, shelter and safety were hard to come by. It was a way to help. If I’d been a solo hero then, I’d have done much the same thing. I’d have been gentler, but yeah.”

With less money to spend, I thought. I’d avoided mentioning I was an undercover, aspiring hero when I’d started out. That had never worked out for me, and only complicated things.

“And Alexandria? I think everyone’s curious about your thoughts there. You were shocked, in the video, when she made a reappearance.”

I shook my head. “It’s not her. I’m… I’m not happy, obviously, to see her up there. It’s an ugly reminder of what happened. But to have another person fighting Endbringers? I’m okay with that part of it.”

“A long, bumpy road, and it’s brought you here,” O said.

“With the Chicago Wards,” I said, in a vain hope to turn the conversation away from me.

She took my cue. “New costumes, a new group. Behemoth is defeated and it looks like the Endbringers might have reverted to the schedule they had pre-2002. An attack every four to five months.”

“Yes,” Tecton said. “Everything’s new. There’re a lot of changes going on.”

“Are you excited?” Jo asked.

Oh man, was I ever starting to dislike her.

“I’m really excited,” Tecton said.

The response caught me off guard. Was he lying for the sake of appearances or was it honest? How could someone be excited when the end of the world was nigh? Did he not believe it was coming?

Whatever the answer was, I felt oddly disappointed in him.

Cuff shifted in her seat, and metal scraped against the metal of the chair’s footrest with a high-pitched noise. She whispered, “Sorry.“

O leaned forward. “It’s fine. Let’s hear from some of the others. Wanton, your thoughts? Are the changes good?”

“The changes are good. I give Weaver a hard time, but she really kept us alive.”

“She did, by the looks of what happened in that video,” O said.

Bringing the conversation back to me. Again.

“Grace?” she asked. “Thoughts on your team member?”

“If you told me way back on the first time we met that I’d come to respect her, I’d have been surprised.”

Jo looked at me. “Does that bother you?”

“No. I respected and liked the Chicago Wards right off the bat, but I don’t blame them if there was any suspicion,” I said.

“Pretty generous.”

“If anything, I was pretty amazed by how they all pulled together in New Delhi. Three of them were new, two hadn’t even been in a real fight before, and they went up against Behemoth?”

Cuff was perched on the edge of her seat, doing her best not to move and make things squeak again. She had the ability to liquefy the metal touching her skin, which would have eliminated the problem, but the act would have ruined the look of it. Part of that stiffness was anticipation, like a child who hadn’t done their homework, sitting at their desk and dreading the moment where the teacher called on them. A stark contrast to her excitement earlier. Had the screech knocked her off cloud nine?

“Cuff,” Koffi said. “What do you think? We saw the video, and you were pretty scared at the start, there.”

“Terrified.”

“You got injured? We didn’t get to hear how.”

“A burn,” Cuff said, smiling a little. “I recuperated in a few days.”

A lie. She still hadn’t fully recuperated today, eight months after the fact. She might never.

“I love to ask this question,” Jo said. “What’s it like, being a superhero?”

She loved that question?

“It feels weird to think of myself as a hero,” Cuff said. “I’m… I don’t think I’ll ever be one of the big heroes. I’m not a cape at heart. Fighting isn’t in my personality, and I got powers like this.”

“Cuff is a girly-girl,” Wanton commented. “Her bunk at the Wards headquarters has pink sheets and rainbows and there’s a unicorn picture on the-”

Cuff leaned around me to mock-punch him. “I’m not that bad!”

“You’re bad, though.”

Tecton raised a hand to cover Wanton’s mouth. “I’m thrilled to have her on the team. She hasn’t disappointed me yet.”

Cuff smiled at him. “Thank you.“

I wasn’t sure I’d have been able to say the same about Cuff, but my standards might have been higher. She’d always done the job, but there was a reticence to her that wasn’t going away. Three months ago, in our first real conflict outside of fighting Behemoth, she’d needed a push to carry out an offensive. Four days ago, in Milwaukee, she’d needed that same coaxing.

Cuff was competent. She had her strengths, and was stellar in some narrow cases. At the same time, I still worried if a moment’s hesitation on her part would get one of us hurt somewhere down the road.

She was talking, happy to be in the limelight, stage fright forgotten. “I was saying what it’s like being a hero. It’s overwhelming. It’s something that eats into every part of your life even if you want to limit it to four hours a day, four times a week. If you don’t train and exercise then you fall behind. If you don’t read the briefings on the bad guys, then you look stupid when you do run into them and have to ask someone.”

“I certainly hope you’re not getting into serious fights,” Koffi said.

“Um,” Cuff said. Stage fright back in full force. She’d touched on something that would get her a slap on the hand from the PRT, and now she didn’t have her footing.

I was trying to think of a way to rescue her when Tecton said, “Fights happen. We’re actively trying to avoid direct confrontation, but we patrol and we practice our abilities so we can handle ourselves in the real crisis situations. Many of our members patrol with other capes so they can get experience while having someone to rely on in case of an emergency.”

All true, but he was omitting the fact that we were actively seeking out indirect confrontation. It was an admirable spot of double-speak, simultaneously reinforcing the atmosphere we were hoping to establish. Heroes are safe. Everything is under control.

“I kind of like those times,” Annex said. “You get to hang out with the local powerhouses, hear what they have to say, learn from them. I had a brief stay in a few other teams, but the one thing I really like about Chicago is that everyone is okay with me asking questions, and I have a lot.”

“Who’s your favorite cape to hang out with?” Jo asked.

“Shuffle. Our powers work well together, if we’re careful not to let them interfere.”

“And Golem? I can almost guess. When Campanile appeared in the evening news, he had some promising words to say about the Protectorate’s newest member. When we asked him who the most promising new recruit in the Wards was, he named you.”

“Ah,” Golem said. “Yeah.”

“Do you think you can live up to that?”

“I hope I can,” Golem said.

The conversation was faltering. I thought of what Glenn had said. Showing some of the bonds between team members. If I had one with anyone, it was with Golem. The running, the shared perspective on the end of the world, the fact that we were both Brockton Bay natives…

“Everything Tecton has been saying about Cuff is true for Golem,” I said. “If he’s getting praise from the heroes, he deserves it. He’s a classic hero at heart.”

“A classic hero?” Koffi asked.

“He’s like Tecton. Grace and Annex are too, to a lesser degree. He’s genuinely good-natured and kind. When everything starts falling apart, he’s still there, naturally courageous.”

“I like how I’m omitted from that list,” Wanton said. “Only person who hasn’t been praised so far.”

“I think you’re awesome,” Jo said, smiling. The audience cooed.

“Golem’s steadfast,” I said. “He’s working out, he’s studying hard for both regular school and cape stuff. And with all of that going on, he’s still generous enough to help me out with my stuff. Like Tecton said, I’m limited in where I can go and when, and Golem helps with that.”

The running, primarily, but not wholly that. He’d walked with me to the mall once or twice. I didn’t want to share details, though, in case people decided to try to find us while we were out, with Golem not in costume.

“Do relationships develop in this environment?” O asked. “Anything besides friendship?”

“If you’re talking about Weaver and me, then no,” Golem said. “We’re friends.”

“Friends,” I asserted.

“You had a thing going on with Grue,” Wanton chimed in.

“And this is the third time you’ve turned the conversation awkwardly back to me,” I retorted.

He gave me a sheepish grin.

“A tender moment on the battlefield,” O said. “I think a lot of people were surprised.”

It was a personal moment, I thought. If I harbored any ill will towards Glenn, it was for that. He’d deleted sound or video where it gave up identifying details, like the nature of Cuff’s injury. He hadn’t erased the scene with the woman in the suit, but the reception hadn’t held up that deep underground, so there was no need. He’d also been kind enough to erase the scene where Imp had promised to get revenge on Heartbreaker. The villain hadn’t been notified of her plan.

But all of the bonding, the closeness, leaving interactions with Rachel open for hundreds of millions of people to speculate on? That was scummy.

Necessary on a level, but still scummy.

I hadn’t replied to his statement. I almost wanted to let the silence linger awkwardly, just to nettle them and drive home that it wasn’t their business.

Jo didn’t give me the chance. “You talked about Tecton and Golem as naturally heroic people. What about you?”

Man, her questions irritated me. Asking questions where they already knew the answer or where the answer was so immaterial… Who watched this kind of garbage?

Why was I being forced to support it by my presence?

“I was a villain for three months,” I said. “Maybe I’d like to think I was a little bit heroic as a villain, and I’m a little bit villainous as a hero. But I’m working on that last part.”

“Hold on, hold on. You think you were heroic, before you switched sides?” Koffi asked. “By all accounts, you killed Alexandria and a law enforcement official. You were quoted as talking to schoolchildren about the huge quantities of money you earned from criminal activities.”

Was he just sitting back, waiting for an opening?

Grace stepped up to my defense. “She said a little. She fought the Slaughterhouse Nine. She helped the people in her district.”

“That actually sounds impressive,” Jo said. “If that’s a little, then I wonder what being a little bit of a villain nowadays is like.”

She tittered along with the audience’s reaction.

“No response?” Koffi asked.

They were ganging up on me. I wished I knew who these guys were, what their normal style was, so I could roll with it.

“I’ll let my actions speak for themselves,” I said.

Tecton was quick to speak, backing me up. “I think that’s the best way to go about it. It’s untreaded ground, in a way, to have a notorious ex-villain on the team. Whatever happens, people are going to wonder where she stands, if I’ve been corrupted by association, or if this is all some elaborate scheme. But we can work on it. She can keep doing good work, and hopefully a few months or years down the road, I’ll still be able to say that Weaver’s a good person at heart and she’s done a lot for the good of the city and the world, you know? Some people won’t be convinced no matter what she does, but time and reliability should let Weaver prove her worth.”

“Makes sense,” O said. “We’re rapidly approaching another ad break. I don’t suppose we could get any of you to step up to the plate? A demonstration of powers? A neat trick?”

I almost volunteered, but then decided against it. I didn’t want to spend more time in the spotlight.

Annex stood from his chair.

“One of the new members! Excellent!” Jo said. “We’ve got a crash test dummy, a beat up car…”

“I can do something with the car. Maybe we could remodel the exterior?” Annex asked. “Maybe the audience could name a car? What should we make?”

Jo hopped out of her seat, arm raised like a kid in class. She was short. I mentally re-evaluated my estimation of her age to put her closer to her late teens than her early twenties.

A series of beeps, not even a half-second apart, interrupted all of us. Our phones?

I was still drawing my cell from my belt when I saw a commotion backstage. People who’d been standing still were running now, talking into headphones.

My cell phone screen was surrounded by a thick yellow border. A text was displayed in the middle.

The others had identical messages on their screens.

There were murmurs among the audience members as someone from backstage stepped up to talk to Koffi and O.

“It can’t be,” Cuff said, her voice quiet.

“We got texts just like this for the incident where we met Weaver,” Tecton said. “It could be a similar situation.”

The lighting changed. Tecton stood from his seat, and I joined the others in following suit.

A studio employee advanced to the front of the stage. When he spoke, the microphone headset he wore carried the sound, “A possible emergency has come up elsewhere in the world. If this blows over in the next few minutes, we’ll edit out anything problematic and resume the show. For now, remain calm while we prepare for an emergency broadcast from the news team upstairs. There is no danger here.”

My phone buzzed. I checked it to see another text.

A little more ominous than the ‘maybe’ the studio employee had given us.

Panel by panel, the backdrop of the ‘Mornings with O, J and Koffi’ set transformed, images flickering to show a composite of a grainy, long-distance shot of a city. It had been taken with a cell phone, and the resolution didn’t translate well with the size of the ‘screen’. There were tall buildings, neon signs glowing in the late evening. Somewhere in Asia.

“Japan,” Wanton said.

The camera was shaking, and the view on the screen reacted in kind.

Dust rose in clouds, billowing, until they obscured the camera’s view.

The audience was reacting. Moans, cries of alarm and despair. They knew what was going on.

“Please be the Simurgh,” Cuff said, her voice small. Grace put an arm around Cuff’s shoulders.

That may be the first time in history anyone’s thought that.

She’s right, too. Even the Simurgh would be better than this.

The timing, the fact that it was happening so soon after Behemoth had died… it was all wrong.

Behemoth had come from deep underground. Leviathan had emerged from the ocean. The Simurgh had approached from the far side of the moon and descended to hover just above the tallest building in Lausanne.

The fourth, it seemed, was appearing in plain sight.

The dust took forever to clear. But for a few mutters here and there, small animal sounds of despair from the audience and studio employees who were watching, the studio had plunged into quiet horror.

It stood somewhere between Leviathan and Behemoth in height, if I ballparked by the number of stories in the adjacent buildings. I waited patiently for the view to clear, revealing more details. Clues, as if there was a solution to what we faced here.

I pegged him as a he before I saw too much else. He was broad, a Buddha in physique, if more feral in appearance. He was as black as night, with something white or silver giving definition around the edges of his various features. He didn’t wear clothes, but he had features somewhere between leaves and fins, with elaborate designs at the edges, curling away from elbows, his wrist, his fingers and around his legs. It made his fingers and toes into claws, and left dangerous looking blades elsewhere. His face was a permanent snarl, frozen in place, his teeth silvery white behind the ebon lips. Tendrils like the whiskers of a catfish marked the corners of his mouth.

All across the exterior of his body, there were gaps, like the gills of a fish, and that brilliant white or silver glimmered from beneath, a stark contrast to the absolute black that marked the rest of him. It made me think of a tiger. And at the center of it all, quite literally, there was a perfect sphere of that same material, a marble or a crystal ball, his body perched on the upper half and his legs attached to the lower half.

Arms extended out to either side, he took a step, almost waddled. He floated as though he were walking on the moon.

“He’s not a fighter,” I murmured.

“No,” Tecton agreed.

“What is he?” Grace asked.

People were fleeing, still in close proximity to the site, evacuating tall buildings. The Endbringer stopped and extended a hand. His arms weren’t long enough to reach around his girth, but his upper body rotated on the sphere that formed his midsection, giving him the freedom of movement needed.

The camera shook as he used his power, and an unseen cameraman had to catch it before it fell. A faint glowing line appeared on the ground, a perfect circle. The light gradually intensified, reaching higher, and the space within the circle seemed to darken in equal measure.

It moved, the circle roaming, the glowing lines adjusting to scale obstacles and account for higher ground and dips in the terrain.

When it intersected a building, the effect became clear. Barely visible with the camera’s range, they were nonetheless a blur, moving within the circle’s perimeter.

“They’re trapped,” Golem said. “He’s manipulating time in there and they’re trapped.”

Golem was right. How many days were they experiencing in there, with only the food they had on hand? Was water reaching them? There didn’t seem to be power.

“Oh god,” Cuff said. “Why isn’t anyone stopping him?”

“There’s no heroes on scene,” Tecton said. “Japan doesn’t have many dedicated heroes anymore.”

It took six or seven seconds for the blurring of their movements to slow. In another second, it stopped altogether.

He left his power where it was. The glass on the building’s exterior cracked. Cracks ran along and through the other material, in the street and at the edges of the structure. It leaned, then toppled, and the destruction was contained inside the effect.

Wanton spoke, almost hesitant. “Is that- doesn’t that remind anyone of-”

“Yes,” Grace said. “The barrier, the time manipulation. It’s similar.”

Similar to what we did.

All in all, the Endbringer was there for a minute. The effect moved on, and it left a ruined husk of a building behind. Though there was no sun shining, the stone and terrain had been sun bleached, worn by elements, eroded.

The Endbringer extended his hands out to either side, and two more glowing circles appeared. Like the first circle had, they flared with light. Like the first, they moved, drifting counterclockwise around him. It was a slow, lazy rotation, slower than a moving car but faster than someone could hope to run.

He advanced with floating steps, and the circles maintained a perfect, steady distance away from him and from each other, orbiting him like the shadows cast by three invisible moons. Here and there, people and cars were caught inside. He wasn’t a full city block down the street before one circle had a crowd trapped within, half-filling the base of it, another circle perhaps a quarter of the way full.

He moved through a less populated area, and he left trails of skeletons in his wake, in odd fractal patterns that followed the circles’ movements.

He chose what entered and he chose what left. An attack form that couldn’t be defended against, only avoided.

“Movers will be important,” I said. “Maybe shakers too, if we can find a way to stop him or his circles from progressing. His threat level depends on how fast and how much he can move those time-stop areas.”

There was no reply from the others.

I glanced at Cuff, and I saw that she was hugging Grace. She was silent, but tears were running down her face. Grace was more resolute, but her eyes were wet.

The timing, it was wrong.

Strategy, figuring out a battle plan, it was crucial here. The first attacks were often some of the worst for cape casualties, if not necessarily the overall damage done. Too many lives would be lost in finding out his general capabilities.

But it didn’t matter.

I reached out and took Cuff’s hand, holding it. A glance in the other direction showed me Golem. I took his hand too.

This was the key thing in this moment. Not the future, what came next. Support, morale and being a team in the now.

Silent, we watched as the heroes engaged. Eidolon and Legend joined the Japanese heroes in fighting the unnamed Endbringer, keeping a safe distance.

One circle disappeared, and the Endbringer reached out. Defending capes were too slow to escape the perimeter before the effect took hold, a new third circle forming. Eidolon tried hitting the effect with three different powers, but it didn’t break.

“No, no, no…” Cuff whispered.

In a minute, the capes were dead.

Our phones beeped, and I felt a moment’s despair. We’d have to fight this thing.

“I’m…” Cuff said, staring down at the phone. “I’m staying.”

“Okay,” I said.

“You’re going?” she asked.

I nodded.

She nodded back, swallowed hard, before she turned her eyes back to the screen. In that moment, the Endbringer, Khonsu, reversed the direction the circles were drifting, extending the distance they were orbiting around him in the same movement.

Capes who’d been trying to time their advance to close the distance to Khonsu were caught. Four trapped and doomed to die a slow death, a fifth caught between a building and the orb’s perimeter as the circle continued its rotation. When the circle had left the building behind, there was only a bloody smear where the fifth cape had been. Skeletons for the rest.

Now he stood still, weathering attacks with the same durability the other Endbringers had. Damage to his flesh exposed silver, and damage to the belly or other silver parts showed ebon black. The onionlike layers Tattletale had described, plain to see.

I tore my eyes from the screen, marching towards the emergency doors.

So much was wrong with this.

It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t right. Fucked on so many levels.

A woman was sobbing in the hallway as we passed. A group of twenty-somethings in dress shirts sprinted down the hallway, carrying bags.

The dragon-craft was waiting for us outside, ramp doors open.

Odd, to see the sky so bright, when the battlefield was shrouded in night.

We stepped inside, entering the center of the craft. I found a seat by a monitor, with a laptop ready and waiting for use, login screen displayed. The monitor was showing the battlefield, roving over the dead, the buildings that had collapsed under the weight of years. Oddly, the cameraman wasn’t focusing on Khonsu or the defending heroes. A few heroes were fleeing, but most weren’t in view.

“We’re ready,” Tecton called out. “Ship?”

The craft hadn’t taken off.

My growing sense of dread was confirmed as the image on the monitors changed.

Even with those circles being as devastating as they are, it wasn’t enough. There wasn’t the same broad scale, the promise of lingering devastation.

No. There was something more to Khonsu.

The monitors showed him in a different city. A caption on the bottom of the screen showed the words ‘Cape Verde’.

He’d teleported halfway around the planet.

All of the problems with getting to Endbringer fights on time, with mobilizing and dealing with the fact that half of our best teleporters and movers had been slain in past battles… he was capitalizing on that weakness.

My phone vibrated to alert me to a new text. I didn’t need to read it to guess what it said. I read it anyways.

“No,” I whispered to myself.

The heroes were engaging, now. Legend and Eidolon had caught up. Khonsu had situated himself near some kind of military installation, and they’d wasted no time in readying for a fight. Missiles and shells exploded around him. The columns of frozen time that rotated around him caught many, and they exploded within the delineated structures.

For long minutes, he fought. I watched, my eyes fixed on the screen, to see his behavior, to look for the cue.

He waded into and through the arranged military squadrons with their parahuman supplementary forces. He was as tough as Behemoth or Leviathan. No attack delivered more than scratches or nicks.

Five minutes, six, as he leisurely tore through the forces he’d caught off guard. Eidolon ducked between two of the pillars of altered time and delivered a punch that sent the Endbringer tumbling. The orbiting columns were pulled behind Khonsu as he moved, and Eidolon came only a hair from being caught.

Alexandria and other capes joined the attack. Too few. Everyone else retreated.

Khonsu didn’t pursue. He remained where he was, arms extended out to either side, palms down.

Then he disappeared in a massive, tightly contained explosion. Trucks and sections of fence were thrown into the air by the movement.

Long seconds passed. Then my phone vibrated. Another text.

I struck the laptop that sat in front of me. One hinge holding it in place snapped. I shoved it hard, and it fell to the floor of the craft.

“Fuck!” I shouted. “Fuck it!”

I kicked the fallen laptop, and it went skidding across the floor, down the ramp and into the parking lot. My foot stung with the impacts.

The other Wards were gathered, sitting or standing around the craft that was taking us nowhere. There was no way to approach if he’d teleport by the time we arrived. We’d never catch up to him. The others were as quiet and still as I’d been violent, haunted, scared.

Nobody talked. Nobody volunteered ideas, because we didn’t have any.

I wasn’t sure any of us knew how to fight this one. Nobody in the Chicago Wards did. Nobody elsewhere. Speaking, commenting on the situation, it would only remind us of what we were facing.

Above all else, I wasn’t sure I wanted to think about the detail we hadn’t spoken aloud. The thing, above everything else, that made this so fucked up. In the nine years that we’d been fighting Behemoth, Leviathan and Simurgh, they’d never attacked this close together.

Even if we found a way to beat this Khonsu, to mount a defense and stop him from picking us apart, settlement by settlement, darker possibilities loomed.

Two attacks, two months apart. Had their schedule changed? Would the next attack come in a mere two months, or would it be more unpredictable than that?

No, I thought, with a dawning horror. No, it was worse than that. The Endbringer’s schedule of attack had always depended on the number of Endbringers in the rotation.

If they were keeping to their usual rules, it promised a fifth, waiting in the wings.

25.05

Three days.

Nearly three days and we hadn’t managed to kill him.

A new target every thirty minutes, give or take. Ten to twenty minutes for the defending forces to get their shit together. The remainder of that time was our capes trying to hurt him. Chipping away at him.

Sometimes we made headway.

Sometimes he crushed the bulk of the defending forces and then stood still, drawing those rotating columns of altered time to himself. Not covering himself, but allowing the altered time effects to graze the outer edges of his body. He’d heal, regenerating as much as half of the damage we’d done.

He hit major cities and small ones. Villages, even, when he needed some elbow room to regenerate. He’d hit a weapons stockpile in Russia, and nuclear weapons had been accelerated in time, the casings wearing down in that odd entropic, eroding effect that accompanied the time accelerations. A nuclear detonation. Heroes were still trying to minimize the damage.

He was teleporting less often than he had at first, and there were a number of heroes who were appearing regularly on the scene. Legend, Alexandria, Eidolon, they were stepping up, though they’d started taking breaks, shifts. Legend would skip one, then participate in the next two. Alexandria would do two on, then two off.

They were tired, weary. Everyone was. How could you rest when he could appear where you were? Six or eight hours of sleep meant he’d be changing location twelve to sixteen times, if not more. And at the same time, that fatigue, it made it easier to make mistakes, and he wasn’t an opponent that let mistakes slide.

Tecton approached me, setting his hands on my shoulders.

“What?” I asked.

“You need to rest. The others have managed it.”

“I’ve napped.”

“Sleep. You’re swaying on your feet.”

I wanted to protest. My eyes fell on the others, and I could see how affected they were. Scared, tired, helpless. They were arranged around the Chicago headquarters, perpetually in costume, with no idea what to do with themselves. Thirty minutes, and then that intense period of tension, waiting, wondering as it took the media or the PRT time to grasp just where he’d gone, to report the information. If we were lucky, we got video footage, and we didn’t have to wonder if Khonsu had caught any of the big guns.

In a way, I’d grown used to being a little different from my peers, here. I could be blasé about things that had them freaking out, confident. I could put myself in the bad guy’s shoes because I’d been one, once.

Except here, I was no different. Three days in, unable to sleep for more than an hour or two at a time, feeling my heart plummet into my stomach every time Khonsu teleported, I was on the same page as the others.

“I only ever wanted to do something to help,” I said.

“I know,” Tecton said.

“Even at the beginning, even when I was undercover in the Undersiders, I wanted to stop the bad guys. A lot of it was selfish, me wanting to escape, but I still wanted to work for the greater good.”

“Yeah,” Tecton said. He let his gauntlets fall from my shoulders. I turned around to look at him. Our man of iron, his face hidden beneath his helmet. He was standing firm, giving no indication of how affected he was. It let him be strong, or appear to be strong, for our sakes.

“And then I decided to be a villain full-time, but my motivations were still sort of good, even if I wasn’t. I knew the Undersiders needed help. That there was something wrong with a lot of them, something missing in them. And being a part of all of that, it was a way to help Coil, when I thought his plan was something good.”

“You’re not a bad person, Taylor.”

“I’m not… being good or bad was never a thing for me. Not really. It was all about the actions I was taking and why, instead. I became a warlord and I took care of people. I helped seize the city from Coil and we started implementing changes. Again and again, I’ve escalated in terms of the kind of power I wield.”

“Do you think you’re more powerful now? With the Wards?” He sounded almost surprised.

“I… think so. Yeah. Maybe my hands are tied, I can’t be as direct or ruthless as I would otherwise be, but I can reach out to the villains and I can reach out to the heroes, and I can affect a kind of change. I have resources. Tools and information I might not otherwise have.”

“Makes sense,” he said, his voice soft. “Taylor, you need to sleep. I can hear it in your voice.”

“I just… why is it that I get more powerful over time, and yet I feel more and more helpless?”

“You ask too much of yourself,” Tecton said. “You could have all of the power in the world, and you’d still feel like you should do more.”

“If he hits Brockton Bay-”

“Your father and friends will be okay. Hell, our strike squad that we used against Behemoth was made up of Brockton Bay residents, wasn’t it?”

“If I have to watch people I care about getting hurt while I’m helpless to do anything, I’ll lose it.”

“It wouldn’t be constructive to lose it,” Tecton said. “And you’re more likely to lose it if you’re tired. Go sleep.”

I didn’t reply. Instead, I trudged off to the quarters that had been set aside for me. Roughly pie-shaped, with the door at the tip, it sat at the edge of the ‘hub’. I had a bedroom upstairs, more personal, more of a home, but I didn’t want to be that far away. I didn’t want to lapse into being Taylor Hebert, even in a moment of rest. Better to keep thinking, keep considering options.

I lay down on the bed, pulling my mask off. I didn’t put my glasses on. My vision was blurry, but it didn’t do anything to block out all of the individual little lights, some blinking, that studded the interior of my quarters. Laptops, batteries, alarm clock, the charging station with my spare flight pack inside, the television screen, the slat of light that filtered in beneath the door… so many little points of light. If I hadn’t been so tired, I might have blocked the lights. Using bugs wouldn’t work, as they’d wander, but a towel at the base of the door, books propped up against various devices…

I sighed and draped my arm over my eyes, my nose in the crook of my elbow.

I spent a long span of time in the twilight of near-sleep, trying not to listen to the murmurs of people’s voices in the main hub. Idly, I wondered how much time was passing. Where was Khonsu attacking now?

A lot of people crossed my mind, too. Enemies, allies. How were they dealing? My dad had fired off emails, asked that I let him know before I joined the fight, and right after I got away safely.

For every cogent thought that crossed my mind, two or three stray thoughts followed. The devastation, scenes burned into my mind’s eye. People caught and left to die of dehydration in Khonsu’s fields.

Somewhere in the midst of that, I managed to drift off, the recollections becoming dreams, or something close enough to feel like it was an immediate transition.

My uneasy rest was interrupted by a touch to my shoulder.

My eyes opened, and I could see the vague shape of a woman standing over me.

Mom?

I was awake and alert in an instant, but she was already turning away. Not my mom. Dark haired, but too short. Both of my parents were taller than her.

I only recognized her when I saw the doorway. A rectangle of light, almost glaringly bright, just beside my closet.

“Hey,” I said, as I hopped up from my bed.

She didn’t respond. She was already gone.

But the doorway remained open.

I had to cross the length of my quarters to see the interior. A dark hallway, with only dim lighting cast by tubes recessed into the ceiling. The woman in the suit wasn’t on the other side.

I accessed the various storage containers for the bugs I was keeping in the workshop upstairs. Beetles navigated the trap that kept them from flying out, then made contact with various touch panels, opening the cages where the various individual species were kept.

As a mass, they flowed down the stairs and into the hub. The Wards who were at the command center and watching the monitor stood, alarmed, as the mass of bugs made their way across the room to my quarters.

“Taylor.” It was Tecton speaking, hurrying to the door of my room.

The bugs filtered into my quarters through the space where the walls joined, and beneath the door.

My swarm entered the hallway. No traps. The woman in the suit was standing off to one side. I stood at the threshold, and glanced down at the tracking device that was strapped to my ankle. What the hell would happen if I stepped through?

I supposed I’d find out. I stepped through in the same moment Tecton opened the door.

The rectangular portal closed, and I was left staring at a wall. I turned to see the woman in the suit. She was tidy, her hair tied back in a loose ponytail with strands tracing the side of her face, and she held a fedora in one hand. The hat was beaded with moisture. Another excursion she’d made before reaching out to me?

I was going to speak, when I noticed another presence. A non-presence. It was a shift of air currents that seemed unprovoked, affecting certain bugs when it should have touched other bugs in front or behind them.

The topographical sense I got from the movements of my bugs suggested a woman’s form, nude. It wasn’t entirely gone when another appeared across the room. The way they moved in sync- not two people. One person, if she could be called a person; a phantom, flowing through the space around me and the woman in the suit.

The woman in the suit extended the hand that didn’t hold her hat, directing me to a doorway.

I glanced at the woman, noting how there wasn’t a trace of the anxiety or exhaustion that everyone else seemed to show. My swarm checked the path.

There were people I recognized on the other side. I stepped through.

The area was dark, but there was ambient light from a series of panels. Large panels, floor to ceiling, eighteen by five feet, had been erected in a general circle. Two accompanying panels, only two or three feet wide, were set up on either side of each larger panel, to cast light at a slightly different angle. A bar sat at just below waist height, a semicircle, simultaneously a handrest and a way of indicating a boundary the designated parties weren’t to cross.

A different person or group of people at each station, lit from behind rather than the front. The light from the other stations barely reached them, which meant their features weren’t well illuminated. Distinct silhouettes, with only a few more reflective materials catching the light.

I ventured up to the panel closest to the door I’d entered. Tattletale stood there, and I deigned to stand just behind her and to her left. Grue, I saw, was leaning against the panel itself, his arms folded. Tattletale glanced at me and smiled, and I could just barely make out the white of her teeth.

“Asked if they’d pick you up,” she murmured.

“Thank you,” I said. “What is this?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” she asked.

She turned her attention forward, and then she was taking it in. I didn’t want to interrupt her, with the amount of information she was doubtlessly gathering. It was obvious, considering the general presence of those who’d gathered, even if I could only recognize a handful.

Opposite us, Chevalier’s silhouette was unmistakable. His cannonblade was too distinct. Exalt stood to his left, and a cape I didn’t recognize stood to the right. I wondered momentarily if it would count against me that I was standing here. It hadn’t been by choice, exactly, but it wouldn’t look good that I was with the Undersiders.

Bugs helped me make out Dragon and Defiant at the station to Chevalier’s left. Both wore their power armor, but apparently the presence of firepower wasn’t a concern, here.

For the most part, that was where my ability to recognize people stopped.

To my left, there was a man in power armor with his face bared. The tattoo across his face reflected a dark blue-green in an odd way, as though he stood beneath a blacklight, flecks of light… only the fragments flowed. No, they were traveling a circuit, instead. Faintly blue, the glimmers traveled a circuit that marked the interior of an elaborate, stylized cross, his eyes unlit shadows in the midst of the two horizontal bars.

I could make out a station with a woman, black, accompanied by a massive shadow of a monster with an auroch’s skull for a head. The woman’s head hung, her hair braided or bound into dreads, I couldn’t be sure. I moved my bugs closer to check to see if she had any weapons, and her pet shadow reached out to block the swarm. They died so quickly it was almost as though the shadow had killed before it made contact.

I decided to leave her alone.

Further down, hard to make out due to the angle of the panel that framed them, there was a small crowd. A young girl stood at the forefront, and others were gathered around and behind her. My bugs noted twelve people gathered in front of the panel.

Another station had only a woman and a man sitting at a table that had been set out. The man had his hands folded neatly in front of him, and the light from neighboring panels was reflected on the large-frame glasses he wore. The woman leaned forward, elbows on the desk, hands clasped in front of her mouth. Dark skinned, with some kind of pin in her hair. My bugs traced their hips – the area least likely to be unclothed, and I noted the presence of ordinary clothing. A button up shirt for him, a knee-length skirt and blouse with accompanying lab coat for her.

Three men in robes that bore a striking resemblance to Phir Sē’s were arranged to our right.

“One moment longer,” the woman in the lab coat said.

“Quite alright,” a man answered her, from the group of twelve. “I’m really quite excited. Been a rather long time since I’ve had a breath of fresh air.”

“Hush, Marquis,” the girl at the front of that particular group spoke, and her voice was a chorus, a number of people speaking in sync, “I will not have you speaking out of turn. Our hosts have been gracious to invite us, you will not offend them and besmirch my reputation by association.“

“My sincere apologies.”

Marquis? I had to search for the name for a moment. Then I stopped. That Marquis?

Another panel lit up, and the circle was complete. My bugs found the people gathered in front, allowing me to investigate that crowd, who had silhouettes I couldn’t make out in the jumble. A woman with a ponytail and a number of monstrous parahumans behind her… Faultline.

The woman in the suit arrived in the room, crossing through the darkness at the center with the steady taps of her shoe heels against the hard floor.

She joined the man with the glasses and dress shirt and the woman with the lab coat. It clicked for me.

Cauldron. I was looking at the people behind Cauldron. I felt a chill, despite myself.

“Ms. Alcott declined to join us,” the woman in the lab coat said. “As did Adalid, who wanted to be ready to defend his home in case the new Endbringer arrived there. The three blasphemies and Jack Slash were unreachable, but we would have far fewer problems if individuals like them could be reached so easily.”

Except you didn’t do anything about Jack when it counted, I thought.

“We reached out to a number of major powers and sources of information, and you are the ones who responded. As useful as it might be to have the Yàngbǎn or Elite with us, I’m almost glad that we can have this discussion with only those who are truly committed. Thank you for coming. I go by Doctor Mother, and I am the founder of Cauldron.”

I could hear a growl from within Faultline’s group. They were directly opposite Doctor Mother, as far away as they could have been.

Probably sensible, all things considered. Cauldron was to blame for the case fifty-threes. I suspected they could have handled themselves if anyone in Faultline’s group were to attack, but setting a distance between the two groups made sense.

“Look,” Tattletale said, abruptly, “Let’s cut past the formality bullshit. I know a lot of you are big on that sort of thing, but we should talk nitty-gritty tactics sooner than later, especially considering the amount of squabbling that’s sure to happen.”

“Agreed,” Chevalier said, from across the room.

“Mense sterf elke sekonde van elke dag. Babas sterf in die moederskoot en die kinders doodgeskiet soos honde. Vroue word verkrag en vermoor en nagmerries skeur mans uitmekaar om te fees op hul binnegoed,” the woman with the skull-headed shadow said, her voice quiet and level. I was startled to see that it was a human skull, now.

“I gave you the ability to understand and speak English,” a man in the group of twelve said. “It wouldn’t cost you anything to use it.”

“Ek sal nie jou tong gebruik nie, vullis,” the woman replied, her voice still quiet, though it was flecked with anger, just a bit of an edge.

The man sighed, “Well, I could use my power on everyone else here, but somehow I don’t think the offer would be accepted.”

Another person in that group, a woman, spoke. “She doesn’t believe in using English. Her first statement was, to paraphrase, ‘People die every day’.”

“Helpful,” Tattletale commented. “Enough with the bullshit and posturing. We were brought here for one reason. Well, a lot of reasons, but the main one that ties us all together is that we’ve got that monster rampaging around and we’re not making headway. We whittle him down, he heals. Scion attacks, he teleports, and the golden fool doesn’t follow. So let’s be honest, let’s talk about this and introduce ourselves before we say anything so we’re not completely in the dark-”

“Some of us have identities to keep private,” the man with the cross on his face said.

“We can’t bullshit around about secrecy and all that. We need to dust off our weapons and the schemes we’ve been keeping on the back burner and hit that motherfucker. More than half of us have cards we’re keeping up our sleeves for a rainy day. Someone needs to bite the bullet and play their card. And then we need to talk about who plays the next card, when number five comes around. Because there will be a fifth. Or a fourth, if you count Behemoth or not.”

“Many of us are playing on a scale where a particular play would put us at a critical disadvantage,” the man with the cross on his face said. “Acting now, at the wrong time, it wouldn’t only hurt us, but it would put bigger things at risk. There’s doing wrongs for the greater good, and there’s doing noble deeds and dooming ourselves in the process.”

“You’re hardly so noble, Saint,” Defiant said, his voice a growl.

“I wasn’t speaking about me,” Saint retorted.

“Either way, this is why you’re here,” Doctor Mother said. “To negotiate. With luck, you can barter to guarantee your safety in the future, or ask favors of others, in exchange for whatever it costs you to use whatever weapons or resources you’re holding back.”

“We can barter,” Faultline said. Her voice was hard. “Unless you’re saying the people who’ve been creating and hoarding parahumans en masse don’t have any cards to play.”

“Unfortunately, Faultline, we cannot. Cauldron, to be specific, cannot. I have provided this forum for discussion, we can help troubleshoot or support plans, or even provide assistance, but our cards must remain in place. There is nothing any of you could offer us that would be worth what it costs to act.”

“Bullshit,” I said. I could feel anger stirring. “No way I believe that. Even just that portal system you’ve got, that’s enough to change the tide of this fight.”

“Not an option,” Doctor Mother said.

“Because you’re afraid,” Tattletale said. “There’s a fear that someone’s going to come after you, trace the portal back home. But there’s another, bigger fear, isn’t there?”

“Yes,” Marquis said, from among the group of twelve. “And I suspect I know what it is.”

“Contessa here has informed me you do,” Doctor Mother said, cutting him off. She was gesturing towards the woman in the suit. “Let me assure you, it would do more harm than good to reveal the details. Especially here, especially now.”

“Shit on me,” Tattletale said. “You bastards figured this out. How the hell did a bunch of prisoners in a jail that’s dangling inside a mountain get to figure it out before I did?”

“Hands on experience,” Marquis answered.

“Panacea,” Tattletale said.

“Exactly,” Marquis said. “Clever girl. Well, I’m not looking to stir waves. I can’t disagree with the good doctor, so I’ll keep my mouth shut. Back to business.”

“Damn it,” Tattletale said, under her breath. Louder, she said, “You’re sure that this doesn’t relate to our Endbringer situation?”

“It doesn’t,” Doctor Mother said. “The Endbringers are a puzzle unto themselves, independent of every other major variable.”

“That reeks of bullshit,” Tattletale said. “I want to think you’re bullshitting or you’re absolutely wrong and they’re connected to everything, but I’m getting the feeling it’s not. It’s bullshit because it’s true?”

“I think we’re on the same page, Tattletale,” the Doctor said.

“Can we progress this discussion?” one of the robed men asked.

“We can,” the Doctor said. “Thank you for getting us back on track, Turanta of the Thanda. Let’s open the floor to discussion. Let’s start with the possibility that we might draw from the Birdcage.”

“Freedom matters little to me,” the girl with the eerie voice said. “The true end draws nearer.“

“The end of the world, you mean,” I said.

“The end of all things, queen administrator,” she said.

Queen administrator? What? “Isn’t that the same thing? The end of the world and the end of all things? Or do you mean the end of the universe?”

“It doesn’t concern other celestial bodies. It doesn’t matter. This ends, one way or another. We and ours will carry on, in some form, whether it happens today or three hundred years from now.“

“How reassuring,” Tattletale quipped. “You won’t help?”

“I am safe where I am, whether it beyond the Endbringer’s reach here or deep beneath the mountain. I will collect from among the dead, and I will keep them company until the faerie rise from the ruins.“

Oh, I thought. She’s completely out of her mind.

“There’s no way to barter for assistance from within the birdcage then?” Doctor Mother asked. “Nothing you want, Glaistig Uaine?”

The girl, Glaistig Uaine, responded, “A hundred thousand corpses, each being one naturally gifted by the faerie.”

“We don’t have time to laugh about like this,” Turanta, the apparent spokesman of the cold capes said.

“I am not joking, astrologer. I would like to see their lights dancing in the air. I have seen only glimmers, fragments of the performance. To see it all at once… yes.“

I heard someone in Faultline’s group swearing. Newter, I suspected.

Honestly, I kind of agreed. I clenched my fists, biting back the worst of my anger. I managed to stay calm as I commented, “I’m getting a better idea of why things are as screwed up as they are. We’ve got all of the major players here, and half of you are willing to do nothing while the world burns.”

“All of the major players who were willing to come to the table,” Doctor Mother said.

Not any better, I thought, but I held my tongue. Doctor Mother had turned to the girl from the birdcage. “If you participated in the fight, I can promise there would be a number of dead parahumans there.”

“I fear that would not be enough. It would need to be all together, for the greatest effect,” Glaistig Uaine said.

“We could provide that many over a period of ten years, if required, but we’d want more assistance than simply this one fight,” Doctor Mother said. She stopped as the man with the glasses leaned close. A moment passed, “Or we could provide that many twenty-seven years from now.”

I felt a bit of a chill. They were so casually discussing this, as if it were possible.

I opened my mouth to cut in, but Glaistig Uaine spoke first.

“No. No, I don’t think I’ll accept. My word is too vital to me, and you seem to want me to war with the abominations. I don’t fear my own death, but I would rather be together with the others than be separated until the grand celebration. I won’t fight. I would only grant my advice, some power here and there.“

Doctor Mother sat back in her seat. The ominous silence suggested she was still considering it.

A hundred thousand lives, being mulled over so readily.

“That’s a shame,” Doctor Mother said, in the end.

“If I may?” Marquis spoke up. “With your permission, faerie queen.”

“Granted,” Glaistig Uaine said.

“There are others who wouldn’t mind being free again,” he said. “Myself included. We’d fight that monster if you gave us the chance. All we’d ask is that you let a select few others out, and that you don’t create a portal that leads back to the Birdcage after the fact.”

“No,” Chevalier said, breaking his long silence. “No, I’m sorry.”

“Some of the strongest parahumans are contained inside that building,” Marquis said. “Glaistig Uaine is one, but there are others. My daughter is another.”

“Your daughter was a mental wreck the last time anyone outside of the Birdcage saw her. There are too many dangerous individuals in there. She,” Chevalier said, pointing in the direction of the woman with the shadowy pet with the massive bird skull, “Has killed thousands of people. That’s nothing compared to what some individuals in the birdcage have done. We’d be letting the wolves run free again, in the hopes they deal with the lion.”

“If there is no other way to deal with the lion, and we know the wolves have been caught in our snare once before…” Saint said, trailing off.

“We know they can be dealt with. We’re just lacking resources. Opening the doors of the Birdcage has to be a last resort.”

“Oh, I don’t know, I could stand for it to be the first resort,” Marquis said. He turned toward the Doctor, “I’m staying mum about what my daughter discovered. The details we both know that must not be shared. Surely that’s worth some goodwill.”

“It is,” the Doctor replied.

I glanced at Tattletale. Her eyes were moving quickly, hungrily taking in details.

Chevalier sighed. “Dragon? Some backup.”

“I have to say no,” Dragon said. “The prisoners must stay within the Baumann Parahuman Containment Center. If you intend to rescue them, I’ll deploy everything I have to stop you. Neither of us can afford the losses at this juncture.”

“But if we did try,” Saint said, “And if we did free a handful of deserving individuals, you wouldn’t be unhappy, would you?”

There was a pause, telling. It was enough of a delay for Chevalier to look from Saint to Dragon and give her a curious stare before she spoke. “My view on who is deserving is far different from yours, Saint.”

“Those of us standing here. Me, my daughter, Lung,” Marquis said.

“You cannot speak for all of us on that front,” a matronly woman spoke. “One of my girls was unfairly imprisoned, another is on the verge of losing her mind, in captivity.”

“We all have people we’d see freed,” the man who’d spoken about granting the ability to speak English said. “Let’s say two for each of us.”

“Thirty six in all,” Dragon said. “One in five of the people currently in the Birdcage, almost. Six more could potentially use the opportunity to slip out, through Stranger powers or other malfeasance. Glancing over the notes my artificial intelligences have made regarding the facility, I can guess who some of the cell block leaders would choose to release. No. I harbor concerns about the Birdcage, but this is not the answer to that.”

“It would do more harm than good,” Chevalier said. “And I say that with full knowledge of what we’re up against here, today. The last three days.”

“Their opinions don’t decide this,” Marquis said. “If it were solely up to our officers and jailer in the first place, then we’d be free already. You, Cauldron, have the means to send us back or not. It’s your authority that matters.”

Chevalier shifted his grip on his weapon, but he didn’t attack. “We’ll bargain. Marquis is offering assistance, but the PRT has influence. We’ll deal with you, Doctor, if it means the Birdcage remains sealed. With the ongoing inquisition against Cauldron capes, perhaps there are one or two you’d want to be ignored. They couldn’t be promoted, that’s the PRT’s jurisdiction, and it would only draw attention to them that I couldn’t help them avoid. Still, I could time a transfer, allow someone to slip through the cracks.”

“A few someones,” the Doctor said. “Yes. I’m sorry, Marquis. Our clients must come first.”

“You’ll be twisting our arms and escorting us through the portal, then?”

“You’ll go willingly. This place cannot sustain life. It’s a facility in the middle of a wasteland, and your Earth is several universes away.”

“I see,” Marquis said. “Unavoidable, I take it. And if I were to share the particularly valuable information that you and I both know, that you don’t want me to share with others who are present?”

“I can’t believe I’m not getting in on this,” Tattletale whispered to me.

Doctor Mother didn’t reply. She remained still, her eyes on Marquis, as the woman in the suit, who she’d called Contessa, leaned in close, whispering.

“You won’t,” the Doctor said, when Contessa had straightened and stepped back, standing guard behind the Doctor’s chair.

“I won’t?”

“You won’t. Teacher would, hearing that, but Teacher has a secret he doesn’t want divulged, and he now knows we know.”

Marquis turned, his shadow shifting, presumably as he looked at Teacher. He turned back, “Ah well. I suppose I’ll just say we’re here if you need us.”

“If we need you that badly,” Chevalier said, “Then we’ve already lost.”

“Rest assured,” Marquis retorted, “I think you’re doing a very good job at getting yourselves to that juncture.”

“It’s a failure across the board,” I said, surprising myself by speaking. “All of us, the Birdcage prisoners excepted, we’re not doing enough. If we don’t come up with an answer or get someone to step up to bat and fight, then we’re doomed. We’ve got the end of the world happening in twenty-thirteen, and we can’t even band together for this.”

“Complaining gets us nowhere,” Faultline said. “Besides, it’s not like this is small potatoes.”

“Okay then,” I said. “Let’s talk resources. If you’ve got parahumans or information, let’s hear it. Let’s show a measure of trust and have Marquis or Cauldron share the tidbit of information they’ve gleaned. Let’s talk options that don’t involve fighting. Tattletale thinks these bastards are designed. Where’s the designer?”

“Nowhere we can find,” Doctor Mother said. “And we have the most powerful clairvoyance we know about, alongside the most powerful precognitive.”

“Does that mean there isn’t a designer?” Faultline asked. “That Tattletale’s wrong?”

“Get fucking real,” Tattletale retorted. “I’m confident on this count.”

“If they can’t find the designer-” Faultline started.

“There’s other possibilities. Lots of powers confound precogs and clairvoyants.”

“Both at the same time?”

“Be constructive,” I cut in.

“We will assist,” Turanta said. “Sifara, Bahu and I, others beneath us in our organization. I cannot speak for my fellow brothers, but I will ask them because we all owe a debt. Our brother died, but Weaver helped to make it not for nothing.”

“Phir Sē died?” I asked, surprised.

“At the hands of the First, very late.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“We owe you,” he said. “As we owe some of the others. It is your choice how you would use this.”

“You can pay me back by helping, here,” I said. “You’d be paying us all back.”

“We have the means,” he said. “But this hurts us, because we rely on our enemies not knowing what we are truly able to do.”

“If this goes much further,” I said, “It might not matter.”

“This is true. Of each of you but Weaver and Chevalier, we will ask a small favor, after. Nothing dangerous or painful to give away. Token gestures, most.”

“Favors make for a good currency,” the Doctor said. “Granted.”

There were murmurs of assent from others. The woman with the shadow pet didn’t respond, but Turanta didn’t press the issue with her either.

Dragon glanced at Defiant, but ultimately relented, accepting the terms.

The Doctor spoke “Moord Nag? We could use your assistance.”

The woman and her shadow pet with its crocodile skull looked at Doctor Mother. “Laat hulle almal sterf. Ek is tevrede om die wêreld te sien brand en die vallende konings te spot. Ek en my aasdier sal loop op die as van die verwoeste aarde.”

“She says no. Let them all die,” the woman from the Birdcage said.

“Can I ask who she is?” Faultline asked.

Tattletale was the one to answer. I think she got a measure of joy out of rubbing the fact that she knew in Faultline’s face, “Moord Nag. Warlord based in Namibia. As far as the current warlords in the area go, she’s had the longest lifespan at about eight years or so, and she’s gotten things to the point where most of the other bastards around there are kowtowing, asking permission to attack this city or occupy that area, to go to the bathroom or unite two groups in an alliance.”

“Die badkamer?”

“Us, basically,” Tattletale said, glancing at me. She turned her head to look at Grue, “Only on a much, much bigger scale, and she did it alone.”

“Ek het dit reggekry met aasdier,” Moord Nag responded. “Nie alleen nie.“

“With your pet monster, right.”

“She said she’d be willing to let the world burn, before,” the woman from the birdcage said. “I don’t think you have an ally there.”

“From her attitude,” Saint added, “I don’t even see why she was invited.”

“I’ll ask you the same thing I asked the others,” the Doctor said. “What would it take for you to fight, here?”

“Ek kan nie krag spandeer sonder om die nag lande hulpeloos teen hul bure te los nie.”

“She can’t spend her power, not without-”

“We’ll supply what you need to replenish it,” the Doctor said.

“No,” Dragon spoke. “No, you won’t.”

“Ek sal nie-“

“It would be appreciated,” the man from the Birdcage that had granted her the ability to understand English spoke. “Reconsider. Don’t underestimate our resources.”

“Vyf duisend, lewendig, dit maak nie saak of hulle mag het of nie. ‘N Fraksie van wat jy die gek aangebied het.“

“No,” Dragon said, before the translator could speak.

“Yes,” the Doctor said, just as readily. “I caught the number, I can figure out the rest. You’ll get what you need.”

“I can’t stand by and watch this, not like this,” Chevalier said.

“How many more will die if we don’t act?” the Doctor said. “The Thanda will counteract the Endbringer’s teleportation ability, at least for a time. Moord Nag gives you much-needed clout. Again, at least for a short time.”

“In exchange for five thousand lives?” Dragon asked.

“A small price to pay. How many have died as we conducted this meeting?”

“Jy praat asof dit saak maak. Die kontrak is verseël. Sal ons gaan nou,” Moord Nag said.

“What did she just say?” Chevalier asked. Moord Nag was already walking away, stepping away from the panel and into the recessed passage beside it, almost completely hidden in shadow. I could only make out the rodent’s skull, overlarge and pale in the darkness.

“The contract is settled,” Dragon said. “She sees it as inviolable, now.”

“I like her,” Marquis commented. “Mass murder aside, anyways. Woman of her word.”

“We’ll find her,” Chevalier said, to the Doctor, “After the battle is done, before you deliver those people to her.”

“You promised us a favor, in exchange for our not letting Marquis and the other cell block leaders free,” the Doctor said. “I could ask you to leave this be,” the Doctor said.

“No. Not this. Not five thousand people, fed to that woman’s pet.”

“Stop us, then,” the Doctor replied. “Or try, as it may be. That’s one Endbringer we should be able to drive away. As Weaver said, we may have to evacuate the planet if this doesn’t work. Faultline, your assistance would be invaluable on that front. You’ve already created nine, I believe?”

“Three of which were supposed to be secret,” Faultline replied.

“It doesn’t matter. We’ll pay for several more, at major locations, and we’ll arrange your transportation.”

Faultline stared at the woman. “No, Doctor.”

“No?”

“Not your money. Not you.”

“Shortsighted,” Saint commented.

“I think this is pretty big picture. Money talks, and I don’t like how this money sounds. She spends five thousand lives like someone else would spend change. Cauldron made innocent people into monsters. They took everything from them. I can’t deal with that in good faith.”

She turned to Chevalier, “We’ll give you a discount. Escape routes in major cities across America. Leading to the world that the Brockton Bay portal goes to.”

“Fuck that,” Tattletale said.

“I’ll talk to my superiors,” Chevalier said.

“Good,” Faultline said, “that’s settled, then.”

“Leaving only the Endbringer that comes next,” I said.

“We won’t know what measures need to be taken until it makes an appearance,” Defiant spoke.

“Another meeting,” the Doctor said. “Another day.”

I could feel my heart skip a beat at that. I wasn’t sure I liked what this was becoming.

Then again, the nature of this meeting had been suggested from the start, with the shadows concealing identities. Everything the PRT had been fighting to assure people that parahumans weren’t doing was happening here, in this room. Scheming, trading lives like currency, and wielding incredible amounts of power, money and influence.

“But before we get that far,” the Doctor said, “Tattletale?”

“You asked me here for a reason,” Tattletale said. “Multiple reasons.”

“The first being to give you an opportunity to check something for our mutual benefit.”

“You brought the major players in so I could see if anyone was the designer, the creator of the Endbringers.”

“And?”

“Nobody here.”

The Doctor nodded. “I suspected. They remain immune to precognition, but the designer wouldn’t be, I don’t think. It’s good to double check, regardless. Will you be attending if we hold another meeting, Chevalier?” the Doctor asked.

Others, the Thanda, were departing, now. Grue had stepped away from the panel to step close to Tattletale, whispering something.

Then Grue walked past me, not even glancing my way, before disappearing into the corridor I’d used to enter.

Hurt, confused, I couldn’t speak to ask Tattletale why without possibly interrupting Chevalier, as he spoke in a steady, quiet voice.

“I don’t think I have a choice. If I don’t come, then I’m left blind to what’s occurring behind the scenes. I wouldn’t be able to intervene if you tried something like you did with the Birdcage.”

“That’s true,” Doctor Mother said.

“And I think that’s exactly what you wanted,” he said. “You have that Contessa there, and she sees the road to victory. You schemed this.”

“Yes.”

“Why?” Chevalier asked.

“It’s not time for you to know,” she said.

“Fuck that,” Tattletale cut in. Most of the other groups were gone. Faultline and her group lingered behind. “I think it’s damn obvious what you’re doing.”

“A new world order,” I said. Tattletale nodded in agreement beside me.

There were a few curious glances shot our way. I could see the Doctor shift position. Exasperation? Annoyance?

I leaned forward, resting my hands on the railing in front of me. Grue’s odd departure only fueled an anger that had been simmering, “I had a hell of a lot of time to think, in prison, in my downtime and during stakeouts. There’s only one thing that really makes sense, as far as your motivations go. It’s not the clues or what you’re doing, it’s what you weren’t doing. Only Legend helped against the Slaughterhouse Nine, but he wasn’t in the know, from the looks of it. You didn’t help Coil, and you didn’t help against Coil. You only helped against Echidna when it looked like everything might go down the toilet. But Alexandria steps in when I leave, confronts me after I’d surrendered to the PRT. So I had to ask myself why.”

“I can imagine,” Doctor Mother said.

“We were guinea pigs,” I said. “For what? So you could be in charge?”

“Not us. Never us,” the Doctor said. “There’s a lot you don’t understand.”

“Try us,” Tattletale said, almost snarling the words.

“All of this? It’s small scale,” the Doctor said. “Important? Yes. But it’s nothing in the grand scheme of things.”

I clenched my fists. “Five thousand lives, nothing. Talking about a hundred thousand parahumans to be delivered after twenty-some years, nothing. The lies you perpetuated with Alexandria, the schemes, Echidna, the human experimentation, the case fifty-threes, everyone you watched die just so your experiment with parahumans in charge of Brockton Bay wouldn’t be tainted…”

“We’ll go down in history as the villains,” Doctor Mother said. There wasn’t a trace of doubt or hesitation in her voice. “But it’s worth it if it means saving everyone.”

“You sound so sure,” Gregor the Snail spoke, from behind Faultline. He had a heavy accent. European-ish, in the same vein as Moord Nag.

“Do morals matter, if our alternative is a grim and hopeless end?”

“I would never question your morals,” Gregor said. “I know you have none. I merely wonder why you are so confident you will succeed in all of this, that you will save the world and you will achieve your new world order and your parahuman leadership.”

“We have a parahuman that sees the path to victory. The alternative to traveling this path, to walking it as it grows cloudier and narrower every day, is to stand by while each and every person on this planet dies a grisly and violent death.”

“You know how the world ends,” I said, my eyes widening behind the lenses of my mask.

“Of course,” she answered, standing from her chair. She collected papers and a tablet computer from the table in front of her. She collected it into a neat bundle, and the man with the glasses took it from her, holding it under one arm. Only then did she add, “We already saved it once.”

There were no responses to that. Confusion and disbelief warred with each other as I stared at her silhouette. The others seemed to be in similar straits.

“You had better hurry if you want transportation to the battlefield,” she said. Then, with the man with the glasses and Contessa following, she strode from the dark chamber.

25.06

Khonsu allowed himself to be struck by Alexandria, using the impact to float back at a higher speed. The act gave him the positioning he needed to draw his spheres closer to the Jaguars’ contingent.

A lack of coordination, a simple error, and ten capes were caught, to be killed in moments. Moments they experienced as weeks, months and years. Some had brought food and water. I almost pitied those capes.

Moord Nag appeared, riding her shadow’s skull like a surfer might ride a wave, except there wasn’t any joy in the act. Her arms remained still at her sides, her head not fully erect, eyes almost looking down, as if she watched the skull with one eye and Khonsu only merited her peripheral vision.

She didn’t wear armor. Her top was a simple t-shirt with the sleeves removed and bottom half cut off. There was a faded image of a rock band on the front, her bra straps showing through the gaping armholes. Her dress was ankle length, frayed a little at the edges. Her feet were bare, her hair in braids and tied back behind her neck.

The skull dipped close to the ground, and the warlord stepped off as though she was getting off an escalator. The shadow’s head had taken on the appearance of a serpent’s skull, complete with fangs, and the body was a column behind it, stirring around Moord Nag without touching her.

It lunged, and fragments flew off Khonsu’s shoulder as the shadow made contact, rubbed against him. It was as though the shadow’s body were a series of circular saws, a rasp.

Khonsu’s field made contact with the shadow’s body, catching the middle of its body. Moord Nag didn’t even flinch as her serpent was trisected, the middle section dragged away.

The serpent was winding around Khonsu now, maximizing the surface area that was making contact. Khonsu elected to ignore it, floating forward to put himself in reach of more of the defending capes.

Califa de Perro used his massive spear to sweep a squadron out of the way before striking the ground, using the impact to throw himself back out of the way. He landed and straightened. He was shirtless, and had no doubt oiled his skin, though dust had collected on it, turning him a gray-bronze. He had bracers with fur tufts near the elbows, and a dog mask that covered the upper half of his face, extending a distance forward. The only other affectation he wore that made his outfit resemble a costume was the mount at his waist, too large to be a belt buckle, with a molded dog’s face jutting a rather generous handspan in front of him. He smiled, his teeth white and perfect, as the capes he’d batted aside climbed to their feet.

Apparently deeming that the circles weren’t working in this situation, Khonsu banished all three. Moord Nag’s shadow was freed, and rejoined the remainder of the mass. Khonsu’s forward advance was momentarily paused by the impact. He created the circles anew, placing them in spots where people at the epicenter couldn’t move fast enough to escape.

That was the moment I advanced.

“Weaver, how the fuck did you get to South America?“ It was Tecton. “The Director is flipping out.”

“Someone gave me a ride. Chevalier will explain later.”

“You completely dropped off the radar for half an hour. We were convinced someone had come after you to take revenge for the work we’ve been doing cleaning up.“

“Not revenge. It doesn’t matter. I-” I stopped short as a fresh circle appeared. The placement, the timing… Legend had been caught.

“Weaver?“

Legend became a blur within the field. Then, in a matter of two or three seconds, the entire space filled with a red light. It slowly became white. Khonsu’s power apparently affected all of the space above the bubble, reaching into the stratosphere. It was like a pillar of light.

Eidolon created a forcefield, much like the one he’d fashioned to contain Phir Sē’s time bomb, only this one was open on one side, a ‘u’ shape with the opening facing Khonsu.

Khonsu seemed to notice, because he moved the column. It intersected Eidolon’s forcefield, and Khonsu’s power won out. The forcefield collapsed. This wouldn’t be an effect Eidolon could contain.

“I’m in the middle of something, Tecton. I’m wearing the same camera I had at the last fight, so ask for access to the feed, or get over here. We think we’ve got a way to pin him in place.”

“Right.”

Eidolon was shouting something I couldn’t make out. Alexandria joined the fray, fighting to keep Khonsu in place, pummeling the Endbringer, dodging the columns that closed in on her.

It was impossible to say exactly how he did it, but Eidolon managed to catch the light before it could turn the battlefield into a smoking ruin. It condensed into a ball, swinging around past Eidolon as if he were a planet and it was in orbit, and then flew into Khonsu and Alexandria with a slingshot turn.

It wasn’t a long, steady stream like the one in New Delhi had been. It was a white bullet sliding out in a heartbeat, cutting past Khonsu, Alexandria and a good mile of landscape, before driving into the ocean at the horizon’s edge. Steam billowed out explosively.

Eidolon crossed the battlefield in a flash, weaving to the left of one of the two remaining columns of altered time, the right of the next, and erected a wall to keep the steam from frying the flesh from our bones.

It couldn’t have been precognition that let him move that fast. Enhanced reflexes? Something else entirely?

And he’d been saying his power had been getting weaker.

Alexandria had been stripped of much of her costume, but she fought on without a trace of modesty. Legend, too, seemed unfazed, unaffected by however many years he’d spent in Khonsu’s trap.

And Khonsu, for his part, hadn’t suffered nearly as much as Behemoth had. Five or six layers had been stripped away, and what was left was glimmering with a light that danced around the outside of his body.

The hue and intensity of it matched the light at the edges of his time fields. It slowly faded.

I reached the battlefield proper, but lingered near the back, beyond the reach of the time fields. This wasn’t a scenario where I’d be on the offensive. At best, I was a helping hand. My bugs spread out over the area, and I was able to track the movements of the time fields, the combatants. I started drawing out the spools of silk I had on my costume, extending them between me and the various combatants, using the arms on my flight suit to manipulate them and ensure that neither I nor my threads got tangled up.

Spider silk extended between me and the various capes around me. These guys were South American. Three out of four would be in league with the various criminal factions and cartels. One in four were ‘heroes’. I couldn’t tell the difference between them. The cues and details in their costumes weren’t ones I was familiar with. The choices in color, style, attitude and more were too similar. A cultural gap I couldn’t wrap my head around, in any event.

Things were confused further by the fact that, by many accounts, the villains running or serving within the cartels were the ones sponsored by the government. The ‘heroes’, in turn, were rogue agents.

Califa de Perro, King of Dogs, howled and joined the fight, ready to capitalize on the success. In the same instant, I sensed my bugs being eliminated. Not dying, per se, but being eradicated from existence. The ones who’d been following after the column had been caught inside.

It hadn’t changed direction. It had stopped, in preparation for a change in direction. I didn’t even have to look to see Khonsu’s target. I caught an earring of the King of Dogs with my silk, tugged.

He stopped, yelping as he looked in my direction.

“Run!” my voice was no doubt lost in the cacophony. I tugged again.

He used his spear to move. A second later, the time field veered into the space he’d just occupied.

It was moving faster. A third circle appeared, and the movement had accelerated.

Sensing that Khonsu was about to beat a retreat, the Thanda made their move. A piece of rubble descended from the heavens, striking Khonsu with a force that knocked half of the defending capes off their feet, myself included.

Another of the Thanda used their power to anchor themselves to the rotating circles. They floated through the air, equidistant to the circle, effectively untouchable, waiting, watching.

When they reached a certain point in the rotation, they caught a small hill so it could join them, anchored to them as they were anchored to the circle. It swung into Khonsu like a wrecking ball.

The falling star, such as it was, had broken through more of the exterior. Not a lot, but some. As the dust cleared, I could see glimmers of light, dancing through the space beneath the injury.

It was the moment I realized that the motherfucker was reinforced. He had forcefields set between layers, so he couldn’t be wiped out in a matter of good hits like Behemoth had been. It was eerily reminiscent of Glory Girl.

Still, he was feeling the hurt. Moord Nag’s shadow ripped into the site of the injury, widening it, danced back as Khonsu swung one arm at the skull, clipping and shattering one antler, and then lunged again, driving itself into another injured area.

It caught Khonsu off-balance, and he landed on his back on the ground. The shadow flowed over him, the skull butting him in the face to knock him down once again as he tried to rise. It simultaneously extended out, reaching across the battlefield to push Moord Nag back out of the way of a swiftly approaching Khonsu-field. She stumbled a little as she was deposited a hundred feet back, but she didn’t really react. The shadow had more personality than she did, here.

Khonsu had apparently had enough, because he extended his hands out to either side, lying with his back to the ground.

The Thanda member who was rotating around the Endbringer reached out, and each and every one of the defending capes was swept up in his power, drifting counter-clockwise around the Endbringer. My feet lifted off the ground as he rose, and all of us rose with him.

The Endbringer teleported, and thanks to the Thanda, we were collectively teleported with it. My bugs, Moord Nag’s shadow, and several tinker-made mechanical soldiers were left behind, as we found ourselves on a beach riddled with stones the size of my fist. Silos bigger than most apartment buildings loomed just over the hill.

The fight resumed in heartbeats, capes closing the distance to fight the instant the Thanda deposited them on the ground.

My phone rang. I felt only alarm for a brief second, my blood running cold.

I sighed and struck a key on the keyboard. The window with the video footage of the Khonsu fight closed down.

I let the phone ring twice more before I made myself check the screen. Tecton.

I wouldn’t pick up for most others, I thought. Hell, I’d have left the phone off if I didn’t fear that there’d be a critical call. I’d seen most of it anyways. I answered the phone.

“Weaver, where the fuck did you go?“

I smiled a little to myself. It was an eerie, amusing parallel to what he had said in the video, except he was a little more frayed, a little more weary with me.

“You know where I’m going,” I said. “So do the bosses.”

“We haven’t even- you’re going to screw this up for yourself. Why now?“

“It’s fine, Tecton,” I said.

“It’s not fine, it’s…“

“They don’t have to like it. I don’t think it matters if they don’t.”

He seemed to be lost for words at that.

I didn’t push the offensive. I’d been working on that in the therapy sessions, not treating social interactions like fights. Calm, patient, I dragged my finger down the side of the screen. The text scrolled down.

Tecton interrupted my scrolling, finally speaking. “I kind of hoped we’d gotten to the point where we were okay, that you’d trust me.“

“I trust you,” I said. “But-”

“But,” he said, echoing me as he cut me off. “Take a second and think about what you say next. Grace asked me to call because, I’d like to think, I’m a pretty calm, laid back guy. All things considered, anyways. But I’m on the verge of being pissed at you, and saying the wrong thing now will push this from me being angry in terms of something professional to me being pissed because of something personal.”

“I-”

“Think for a second before you talk, Taylor. You start talking right away and you’ll find your way to a really good argument, and I’ll concede this argument, this discussion, but it won’t get us any closer to a resolution.”

“Right,” I said. “Thinking.”

“I’ll be on the line.“

I mulled over his words. I was anxious on a number of levels. Terrified might be the better word. I stood on a precipice, and the meeting I was running the risk of missing was only part of it. I continued scrolling down as I thought, as if the individual entries could give structure to my thoughts.

I stopped at the entry that followed. I clicked it. The one for Bucharest.

The video box opened up, but it was dark, the camera covered by my hair at the outset. There was only audio.

“Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.“ It was Grace.

“Are you hurt?“ Tecton’s voice.

“Golem is. Shit.“

The image wobbled as the camera mounted on my mask did, and the me on the camera moved the hair aside, allowing the camera to record the video. The streets were empty, old stately buildings loomed close on all sides, my bugs crawling along the face of each of them.

There was a beep. The camera was mounted on the right side of my face, the armband on my left wrist, so the glimpse was fleeting. A yellow screen.

“Heads up!” the me behind the camera called out.

“For what!?” it was Annex responding, breathless. “Oh! Oh shit!“

It was only a second later that it became clear just why Annex was swearing. The city shifted. Roads narrowed, doors splintered and were virtually spat out of the frames as the door frames themselves narrowed.

The image on the camera veered. I’d seen the shift coming, and the bugs on the faces of the buildings let me know that the attack was coming a fraction of a second in advance. As buildings on either side of me lunged closer together by a scale of five or six feet each, spikes sprung from the elaborate architecture, from gargoyle’s mouths at either side of a short flight of stairs, from the sign that bore a store’s name, a blade rising from a manhole cover… ten or twelve spikes, for me alone, each fifteen or twenty feet long. They criss-crossed, came from every direction.

The camera had gone very still. Then, slowly, it moved again, examining the surroundings. Blades and prongs surrounded me, poised ready to prick and gouge like the thorns of a rosebush, all around me. My fingers rose to the camera’s view, wet with blood.

I’d only dodged as much as I had by virtue of the ability to sense where the bugs that clung to the blades were moving, and enough luck to be able to move into a space that escaped the various thrusts. The blood had been from a glancing blow, along the underside of my right breast. I traced it now, as I sat in front of the monitor, feeling the spot over where the scar would be. The fucking things were sharp enough to pierce my armor and silk both.

I could remember my outrage at that fact, the stupid, silly comment that had run through my mind, that I’d refused to say in fear that this video would somehow leak as well.

Can’t believe the blade hit such a small target.

“Everyone okay?” I asked, on the screen.

I listened to the various replies of confirmation. I followed by relating how the armor I’d made them wasn’t sure protection.

Then the camera’s view shifted as I freed myself of the spikes I’d so narrowly avoided -mostly avoided-. I took two steps forward, and then threw myself to the ground as a figure sprung from the wall, a woman, moving so fast she could barely be glimpsed. The camera veered again as I rolled on the ground, avoiding two blades that plunged from the underside of her ‘body’ to the ground, punching into the earth.

She had carried forward, uncaring that I’d dodged, slamming into another wall, and she had left a piece of herself in her wake. Or a piece of what she’d made herself out of, anyways. She’d become the city, and this small fraction of herself had been formed out of the light gray brick that formed the building to my right. She’d left the pillar behind, three feet across, barring my path.

My head whipped around as I followed her progress. One more of the rushing figures appeared a block down, two more behind me, simultaneous. A pillar, then a short wall and another pillar, respectively.

“Heroes, be advised,” Dragons A.I.’s voice came over the armband, “The Endbringer Bohu appears to follow a strict pattern. The city is condensed in twenty-four minute intervals, followed almost immediately by the miniature Endbringers producing barriers, walls, pillars, blocking apertures and more. The next phase, occurring gradually over the next ten minutes, will produce deadfalls, pitfalls and a smoothing of terrain features. Following that, we should expect more complex mechanical traps to appear, after which point the cycle will start anew. Be advised that she attacks with the spikes as she enters each phase. Disparities in reports suggest that she is feinting in some cases, feigning an inability to do so.“

“Good news,” Annex said, over our comm system. “She can’t affect what I’m affecting. Bad news is I wasn’t entirely submerged. I’m bleeding pretty badly.“

“We’ll get to you,” Grace promised.

I shut my eyes for a moment. Empty promise, I thought.

There was a distant sound of something massive crumbling. I now knew it was Tecton, tearing through the area. I’d be using bugs to direct him to trapped citizens. I was avoiding the terrain features, he was simply plowing his way through them, doing maximum damage.

The image veered as I approached an archway the Endbringer had created. I paused before entering, circumvented it by going over, avoiding the traps I’d noted with my smallest bugs.

I could see her. Bohu. She was a tower, spearing into the sky, gaunt and stretched thin to the point where her head was five times longer than it was wide. Her body widened as it reached towards the ground, reached into it, extending roots and melding into the landscape. Her narrow eyes were like beacons, cutting through a cloud cover that was virtually racing towards the horizon in the gale-force winds. Her hair, in tendrils as thick around as my arm, shifted only slightly, heavy as stone, despite everything. She dwarfed the other Endbringers in scale, one thousand three hundred feet tall, and her body extended into the city. I couldn’t even guess at the radius she controlled.

Beside her was her sister, Tohu, who would have been almost imperceptible if it weren’t for the glow around her. Tohu, with three faces. Legend’s white and blue mask, Eidolon’s glowing shroud, and Kazikli Bey’s red helmet, each twisted to be feminine, framed by the long hair that wove and wound together to form her body. It condensed into cords and ribbons, and the ribbons and cords, in turn, condensed into her chest and lower body, two torsos made with overlapping versions of the hairstuff, small breasted, with only one pair of legs at the lower half. The colors were extensions of the costumes she was copying, predominantly white here, but with streaks of crimson, green and sky blue highlighting the ridges and edges.

Her four hands were long-fingered, claw-tipped extremities in shapes that served as mockeries of the people she was mimicking. Two of Eidolon’s hands with the blue-green glow around them were holding a forcefield up to protect her sister, while a white-gloved one focused on using Legend’s lasers to target capes who thought flying up and out of the city was a good idea. Not that it was easy to fly in winds like this. Not the sorts of winds that an aerokinetic like Kazikli Bey could make, capable of slicing someone with air compressed into razorlike ribbons. A hand in a red gauntlet was gesturing, redirecting the wind to blow down, across, and in crosswise currents that formed brief-lived whirlwinds.

The me in the video made a small sound as she took the brunt of that cutting wind, hopped down from the arch, entering the city once more. It was just now starting her third phase, the pitfalls and deadfalls, eliminating cover, cleaning up rubble, and slowly, painfully crushing anyone who had been trapped in either of the previous two phases. If crushing wasn’t possible, she would apparently settle for suffocation.

I closed down the video. There wasn’t anything more to hear in the exchange between the Wards, and it wasn’t a good memory.

Another counter to Scion. All too often, he was late to arrive, and once Tohu had chosen three faces and Bohu had claimed the battlefield, well, the fight was more or less over.

“I could hear,” Tecton said. “You were watching one of the Endbringer videos.“

“Yeah,” I said.

“Thoughts?“

“We’ve been through a lot,” I said. “I owe you a lot.”

“And we owe you in turn. We’re a team, Taylor. You have to recognize that. You know that. We’ve been together far, far longer than you were with the Undersiders.“

I sighed and scrolled down.

We’d participated in more than half of those fights. My eyes fell on the clock in the top right hand corner of the screen.

“Listen,” Tecton said. “I’m not demanding anything here. I just need a straight answer, so I know what to tell the others. If you say you’re not going to be here, that’s- I’ll understand. Except not really, but I’ll…“

He trailed off.

“You’ll accept it,” I said.

“I’m going to lie and say yes,” Tecton answered me.

I looked at the list of recent Endbringer fights, flicking my finger on the screen’s edge to scroll up, then down.

“I’ll be there at two,” I told him.

“You will?“ He almost sounded surprised.

“We’ve been through too much, and you’re right. I can’t throw it all away.”

“I’m glad.“

“See you in a couple of hours,” I said.

“See you, Taylor. Have a happy birthday.“

“Thank you,” I said, hanging up.

Eighteen, I thought. I stood and stretched, swaying a little as the craft changed course. A two-fingered swipe on the screen showed the craft’s course and our ETA. Another two-fingered swipe returned me to my desktop.

Sixteen days late. The only person more freaked out than me was Golem.

I’d revised the countdown clock to assume that Jack Slash would appear on the date he’d set with Golem. June fourth was the deadline he’d given, for Theo to find him, to kill him, or the madman would kill a thousand people in some spectacular fashion, ending with Aster and Theo himself.

No appearance, no mass murders.

June twelfth was the date the Slaughterhouse Nine had left Brockton Bay. The day that was supposed to start the two year countdown.

It wasn’t supposed to be precise, but watching the clock tick with each second beyond the supposed deadline, knowing that something could be happening in a place I wasn’t aware of, the mere thought made my heartbeat quicken, an ugly feeling rise in my gut.

Dinah had confirmed to the PRT that things were still in motion, that it was imminent, but the idea was swiftly losing traction.

I’d heard people joke about it. PRT employees who had likened Dinah to the evangelical preachers who promised an endtime, then scrabbled to make up excuses when the date in question passed.

My bugs could sense the insects within the city as the craft descended. Sand billowed in dramatic clouds the Dragonfly settled on the beach.

It wasn’t my ship, but the name was a joke, due to the degree Dragon had been sending me this way and that. Defiant was busy now, so it was mostly her doing the chaperoning, when the Protectorate couldn’t oblige.

The ramp finished descending, and I stepped down onto the beach, feeling the sand shift beneath the soft soles of my costumed feet. I could have flown or floated, but then I wouldn’t have felt like I was truly here.

I ascended a set of wooden stairs to rise from the beach to the street proper, joining the scattered residents who lived here. Men and women on their way to work, starting their day, children on their way to school, many in their Immaculata school uniforms.

I walked, taking it in. The smells, the feel, even the subtleties in pace and general atmosphere, they were familiar, comfortable.

Not good, but they were things I associated with home.

It was an unfamiliar area, but I had studied the satellite maps. I no longer wore my tracking device, but the PRT no doubt knew exactly where I was, for just that reason. If they couldn’t monitor the Dragonfly’s location, they would have found it on my computer.

I could see additions in the distance, the white tower that speared into the sky, the blocky, windowless structure that contained the scar. It wasn’t visible, but I knew I could make my way to the crater and see how they’d drawn up a border around it, done construction work underground to contain the contents and keep the water from eating away at the city infrastructure. I’d read up some on changes in Brockton Bay, had heard more from my dad in our regular visits.

Here, the area was marked with graffiti, always in the same variants, no two pieces alike. Devils, castles, angels, hearts. I suspected the arrangements and combinations meant something. The buildings here were new, quaint, the layout intuitive.

And in the midst of it, they’d wedged in space for an addition. It made for a break in the flow of the footpaths. It forced an abrupt turn, a hesitation as you tried to work out the way to your destination. Accord had drawn out the city plans, and the Undersiders had altered it to make room for this. For a marking.

It fit, somehow, the way it broke the rhythm, the way it didn’t really jibe.

The fact, I thought with a slight smile, that it irritated.

Two masks, resting against one another, one almost resting inside the other. One laughing, the other not frowning, but the expression blank. They were cast in bronze, set on a broad pedestal, four feet high.

I approached, my eyes falling on the objects that had been placed on the pedestal. Wedding rings, a weather-beaten gold that didn’t match the bronze. Twenty, thirty. I might have obtained an exact count, but I didn’t want to dirty it with my bugs.

I turned, looking around, and saw how the buildings surrounding the edifice were marked with graffiti. Castles and landscapes with blue sky above.

“I thought I’d see you first, Regent,” I said. “A kind of apology, for not coming sooner. For not being there at the funeral, if there was one.”

The empty eyeholes of the solemn mask stared down at me.

“I’ve thought about a lot of things in the time I’ve been gone. Framing stuff, stepping back to consider just how fucked up it was that I was spending time with you, condoning what you’d done. You took over small-time gang lords, I know. Took over Imp, even. So why did I let it happen?”

The wind blew my hair across my face. I noticed that there were people staring, looking at me from the other side of the street. Whatever. It didn’t matter anymore.

“Then I think about how you went out, and I think… you know, it doesn’t balance out. One selfless deed, after all the shit you did? No. But that’s your cross to bear, not mine. I don’t believe in an afterlife or anything like that, but, well, I guess that’s the mark you left. When we die, all that’s left are the memories, the place we take in people’s hearts.”

I reached out to touch one of the wedding rings. It was partially melted into the surface of the edifice. I imagined someone could strike it free with a hammer.

Not that I would do that.

“Sounds so corny when I say that, but it’s how I have to frame this, you know? You lived the life you did, with a lot of bad, a little bit of horrific, and some good, and now you’re gone, and people will remember different parts of that. And I think that would sound arrogant, except, well, we’re pretty similar on that score, aren’t we? It’s where we sort of had common ground, that I didn’t have with any of the others. We’ve been monstrous.”

I let my finger trace the edge of the wedding ring.

“I’ve hurt people for touching those.” The voice sounded just behind me, in my ear. I jumped, despite the promises to myself that I wouldn’t.

Then again, she wasn’t someone you could anticipate.

“Imp,” I said.

I turned around to look at her.

She’d been attractive in that dangerous too-much-for-her-age way before, and to judge by her body alone, she’d grown fully into it. She was statuesque, wearing the same costume I’d given her two years ago, when she’d been shorter. A quick glance suggested she’d cut off portions to adjust, wearing high boots and elbow length gloves to cover the gap, and wore a cowl to cover the gaps in the shoulders and neck. It might have looked terrible, but it fit. Her mask was the same as it had been, gray, noseless, long, disappearing into the folds of the cowl as the fabric sat around the lower half of her face, with only hints of teeth at the sides marking the mouth. The eyes were angled, with black lenses, curved horns arching over her straightened black hair.

“Tattletale said you’d be back today.”

“I figured she’d know,” I said.

“Was it worth it? Leaving?”

I hesitated. “Yes.”

I hesitated, I thought.

“I told the others. They’re on their way.”

“Okay,” I answered. Fast response.

No. Too fast. I reached out with bugs, and I sensed the crowd, the way they were standing.

Here and there, there were people who shouldn’t have been paying attention to the scene. A young girl inside one of the buildings with the graffiti-mural on the exterior, holding a baby. A boy was standing a little too far away to see, but he didn’t approach to get a better view.

There were a small handful of others.

I looked at the rings on the memorial. “Heartbreaker’s.”

“He collected them. I uncollected them.”

“I’d heard he died.”

Imp nodded slowly. “Said I would. I told you I’d kill his dad for him.”

An admission. I felt a kind of disappointment mingled with relief. Not a set of feelings I wanted to explore. I suspected the sense of relief would disappear under any kind of scrutiny.

“People keep prying them loose, but there’s usually someone nearby to keep an eye out and get a photo or description. I track them down and bring the rings back. Once every few months, anyways. Kind of a pain.”

“It’s how he would want to be remembered, I think,” I said.

“Yeah.”

No snark, no humor? I wondered how much of that had been a reflection of her friendship and almost-romance with Regent.

“And you recruited the kids,” I said. I used my bugs to track the bystanders, my eyes to note more who fit the criteria. Boys and girls, some narrow in physique, most with black curls, others with that pretty set of features that had marked Regent and Cherish. Some were fit on all counts, others mingled two of the qualities and skipped a third. Heartbreaker’s offspring, unmistakably.

“I recruited some. They needed a place to go, and it’s kind of nice, having them around,” Imp said. “They’re good enough at fending for themselves. One or two, you get the feeling they’re almost like him. In a good way.”

“I’m glad,” I replied. Glad on more counts than I’m willing to say.

Then, as I realized that any number of those kids might have taken after their father in the powers department, I was struck by the thought that they might know that, that they might report that relief I was experiencing back to their de-facto leader.

If that was the case, they would also report the way I felt ill at ease, just a little creeped out, as I eyed Imp’s followers.

Imp was eyeing me. I cocked my head a little, the best expression I could give without taking off my mask, hoping it conveyed curiosity.

“I like you better than her,” Imp said.

Like me better than who? I wondered. Than Lisa? Rachel? I didn’t get a chance to ask. I was distracted as I sensed an approach and turned to look.

“Bitch is here,” Imp said, noting the turn of my head and the figure at the end of the street, ignoring traffic as her dogs made their way to us.

Rachel, I thought.

“She’s been going to the fights, helping out here when we send for her. I haven’t been going to the fights, so I dunno how much you’ve seen her there. She’s been checking in on me, wandering around here with her dogs and scaring the everloving shit out of people until I come to say hi, then she leaves for another few weeks. I’ve probably seen her the most.”

“I’ve barely seen her at all,” I said. Even with the Endbringer attacks.

The dogs weren’t running, and it took me a moment to realize why. There was one dog that was larger than the rest, with half of a bison’s skull strapped over the left side of its face, the horn arching out to one side. Armor and bones had been strapped on elsewhere. It didn’t seem like something Rachel would have done, dressing up her dog. One of her underlings?

It’s Angelica, I realized. The dog lumbered forward, moving at a good clip, but certainly not the speed the dogs were capable of when they went all-out. Rachel was controlling the speed of the other dogs to allow the wounded animal to keep up.

She was riding Bastard, I recognized. It was different from the others, symmetrical, the alterations flowing into each other better. Two other dogs accompanied her. Bentley wasn’t among them.

The onlooking crowd, Imp’s underlings included, sort of hurried on their way as the dogs approached Regent’s monument. Rachel hopped down as they reached our side of the street.

Rachel was taller, I noted, browned by sun, the jacket I’d given her tied around her waist, a t-shirt and jeans, with calloused feet instead of shoes or boots. Her auburn hair, it seemed, hadn’t been cut in the two years since I’d seen her. Here and there, hair twisted up and out of the veritable mane of hair, no doubt where tangled bits had been cut away. Only a sliver of her face and one eye were really visible through the hair, a heavy brow, an eye that seemed lighter in contrast to the darkened skin.

And damn, I thought, she’d put on muscle. I’d gained some, working out every day, but even with her frame and her natural inclination towards fitness, I suspected she must have been working hard, all day, every day. Maybe not quite what a man might have accomplished, but close.

“Rachel,” I said. I was overly conscious of how we’d parted, of the way I’d left the group and the awkward conversation during the New Delhi fight. “Listen-”

She wrapped me in a hug, her arms folding around me.

I was so caught off guard that I didn’t know how to respond. I put my arms around her in return.

She smelled like wet dog and sweat, and like pine needles and fresh air. It was enough that I knew the new environment had been good to her.

“They told me to,” she said, breaking the hug.

They wouldn’t be the Undersiders, I gathered. Her people, then.

“You didn’t have to, but it’s… it was a nice welcome,” I said.

“Didn’t know what to say, so they told me to just do. I wasn’t sure what to do, so I asked and they told me to hug you if I wanted to hug you and hit you if I wanted to hit you. Yeah.”

I’m guessing she only just decided, I thought. I’d been gambling by wearing my Weaver costume, but then, I hadn’t expected them to converge on me like this. I would have changed before seeing Rachel.

“It’s good?” I asked. “Over there?”

“They’re building, it’s annoying to get in and out. But its good. Tattletale made us bathrooms. We’ve been building the cabins around them.”

“Bathrooms are good,” I responded.

She nodded agreement, as if I hadn’t just said something awkward and lame.

“I remember you complaining about the lack in your letter,” I added.

“Yeah,” she said.

Wasn’t the easiest thing in the world, to carry on a conversation with her.

“Others are checkpointing in,” Imp said. “Just to give you a heads up.”

“Checkpointing?”

“Teleporting, kinda. Limited. Um. We’ve only got a second, but you should know in advance that they’re married.”

“Who?”

But Imp didn’t respond.

Foil and Parian appeared in a nearby building, the same building the girl with the baby was watching from. Two others had arrived with them.

Them? I wondered, mildly surprised. Then again, it made sense.

They approached, holding hands, and a bear managed to form itself from the roll of cloth Parian had bound to her back, without anyone, the stuffed creature included, really breaking stride. They’d barely changed, but for a little more height. Foil carried the crossbow that the PRT was apparently maintaining for her, and Parian had donned less dark colors, though the hair remained black.

The two capes with them each wore red gloves as part of their costume. I knew who they were from the stuff on the forums. The Red Hands. The alliance had gone through, apparently.

“So. You draw me over to the dark side, and then you flip,” Parian commented.

“I hope it’s working out,” I said.

She shrugged. “It isn’t not working out.”

“We’re fine,” Foil said. “I suppose I should thank you. If you hadn’t left, I don’t think I could’ve come.”

“You may be the only person to thank me for leaving,” I said.

“Don’t be so sure,” Imp added.

“Huh?”

“Nevermind.”

Tattletale arrived next. Grue appeared at the location with more Red Hands as she stepped outside. Where the others had been modest, approaching with a kind of leisure, she almost skipped for the last leg of the approach. She hugged me briefly, then kissed me on the cheeks. The mandibles, really, where the armor framed my jaw. Whatever.

Of everyone, I was least surprised at the changes with her. Her hair had been cut shorter, and she wore a mask that covered the entire upper half of her face, coming to a point at the nose. Her shoulders, elbows and knees had small shoulderpads on them, and there was a definition to the horizontal and vertical lines of black that marked her lavender costume. She wore a laser pistol at her hip, which bounced against her leg as she ran. PRT issue. Extremely illegal to own.

“Jerk!” she said, after she’d kissed me on the cheeks, “You’ve barely responded to my fan mail!”

“It’s kind of hard to reply to it without drawing attention,” I said. “You don’t know how much I wanted the details on what’s being going on here.”

“Jerk,” she said, but she smiled. “But I should warn you-”

She didn’t get a chance to finish before I saw.

Grue approached. Of everyone, he was the least changed. Physically, anyways.

But the Red Hands walked in formation around him, and one, a young woman, walked in step with him, close enough that their arms touched. They could have held hands and it would have been just as blatant.

I’d faced Endbringers, the Slaughterhouse Nine, I’d taken down who knew how many bad guys… and I had no idea how to face this.

He’d moved on, and I was glad he’d moved on. He maybe needed someone to lean on, to give him emotional support, and maybe she was that. I told myself that, I tried to believe it, but I was jealous and hurt and bewildered and…

And I bit back the emotion, approaching, ready to hug.

When he extended a hand for me to shake, I had to fight twice as hard to suppress any reaction to the hurt. I could tell myself that he’d at least done it before I’d raised my arms to hug him, but… yeah.

I took his hand and shook it. Then, on impulse, I pulled on it, drawing him forward and down a little, and put my other arm around his shoulders. Half of a hug, half a shake.

“Happy birthday,” he said, after I stepped back.

The others echoed him. Welcomes and happy birthdays. He’d remembered, but… that choice of words.

I eyed the young woman. She was a rogue, in the dashing villain sense, wearing a mask around the eyes, and old-fashioned clothes with lace around her ample cleavage. Her jacket and slacks were festooned with belts, bearing utility pouches and knives. The glove that wasn’t red had a knife attached to each fingertip, a brace around it to keep everything in place.

She met my own gaze with one of her own, a narrow, hard look.

“Oh. Skit- Taylor, meet Cozen. Second in command to the Red Hand.”

“Nice to meet you,” I said. They don’t really match.

“Pleasure’s mine,” she said. “I’m meeting a legend, after all.”

Awkwardness followed.

And in the midst of that, Imp’s statements finally caught up with me.

I like you better than her.

Don’t be so sure, Imp had said. Well, Cozen would be happy I’d left.

Then, with a realization like a dash of cold water to the face, I remembered.

They’re married.

“Taylor,” Tattletale said, rescuing me before I could say something dumb. She hooked her arm around mine and led me around and away. “Much to talk about.”

“The end of the world,” I said. “Endbringers. Finding Jack, or the designer-”

Safe topics, somehow more reassuring than this.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Everyone’s playing it safe, keeping things quiet.”

“What do we do?”

“What was the plan?” she asked. “When you came?”

“I’ve got six hours before I need to be in New York. They’re swearing me into the Protectorate.”

“Congratulations,” Grue said. He sounded genuine.

“I should be saying that to you,” I said, glancing at him and Cozen.

“Oh. Thank you,” he answered, in his characteristic eerie voice. I couldn’t read his tone, and felt a little grateful that at least one of us was spared sounding awkward.

“Six hours,” Tattletale said. Another rescue.

“I was going to visit everyone in turn to catch up, visit my mom, then see my dad.”

“Well, we’re all here. We can go somewhere together,” Tattletale said. “There’re stories to tell, I’m sure.”

“I’m sure,” I said. I almost wished my original plan had gone ahead, that I could have a really short visit with Grue, a longer sit with Rachel and her dogs, then a long discussion with Tattletale about what was going on, before I headed off to see my mom’s grave and my dad.

“Come on. We’ll walk, see the sights,” Tattletale said. “figure out what to do for breakfast or brunch.”

“Okay,” I said. I glanced at the others. Would they be down, or would they back out? Parian and Foil weren’t close to me, but they were sticking around. Cozen wasn’t making an excuse and leaving, and neither was Grue. I could see him exchanging murmured words with her.

I must have looked a little too long at him, because Imp fell in step beside me.

I glanced at her.

“I was just fucking with you,” she whispered. “I thought you probably deserved it.”

My stomach did a flip flop at that. Anger, relief, bewilderment, more anger. Still more anger.

“Man, the way your bugs reacted. Hilarious. You act like you’re all stoic, but then I just have to look over there and over there and I see bees and butterflies circling around like eagles ready to dive for the kill.”

I opened my mouth to say something, but she cut me off.

“She is pregnant,” Imp said.

My mouth shut.

“Kidding. This is fun. Come on, butterflies, I see you over there. Do your worst, I know you want to kill me.”

I considered jabbing her with my taser, and the thought was vivid enough that I imagined it buzzing at my hip.

Except it wasn’t my taser. It was my phone.

As it had so often this past month, I felt my heart leap into my throat, that pang of alarm. A very different kind of alarm than Imp had been provoking from me. More real, more stark.

I drew the phone from my belt, then stared down at the text that was displayed. A message from Defiant.

“Endbringer?” Rachel asked. Something in my body language must have tipped her off.

I shook my head, but I said, “Yes. Sort of.”

“Sort of?”

“An endbringer with a lowercase ‘e’,” I said. “It looks like Jack may have made his challenge to Theo. It’s starting.”

25.x (Interlude, Bonesaw)

July 8th, 2011

“...The reality is clear. The repercussions of what happened today will change the relationship between hero, villain and civilian. It remains up to them to decide whether it will be a change for the better, or a change for the worse.”

“Pretentious, isn’t he?” Jack asked. He was naked, covering himself with both hands, sitting on a metal bench with more brushed stainless steel behind him. With the angle of the device, he faced the ceiling.

“Likes to hear himself talk,” Bonesaw replied, agreeing. “Which do you think it’ll be? Change for the better or change for the worse?”

Jack only smiled, his eyes crinkling a bit at the edges. He was getting older. It was reassuring and spooky at the same time. He’s the daddy of the group and I’m the kid and he’s getting older which makes him more daddylike.

But it meant he moved slower and got tired more easily. It was only a matter of time before he made a mistake, lost a fight.

“It’s a given?” she asked. She pressed the button, and the lights started to flicker again.

“I think so,” Jack commented. “But I almost hope things do turn out well.”

The flickering steadily increased. The progression had to be slow, or they could set off a cascade cycle and overwhelm the power cell they had liberated from Toybox. If that happened, then the shell that was keeping this reality together would break, the holding grid for the pocket dimension’s substrata would become fluid and leak out into other hardened realities. They would likely be crushed by the air, pulped as gravity twisted into eddies and condensed points of hyperconcentration.

Which would be funny, really. A reckless, violent, unpredictable death would be awfully ironic, really. An artful death, almost, in an anticlimactic way. It would be better if there was an audience, if anyone could even know and tell the story. But art wasn’t art without an audience.

“Makes for a greater fall?” she asked.

“Exactly,” Jack replied. He had to raise his voice to be heard over the whine of the generator. “I guess we find out soon!”

She laughed in response, giddy with the idea, with possibilities, ideas.

Then she pulled the switch. In a heartbeat, Jack was frozen in stasis, contained.

She walked over to the computer. Flowers, rainbows and gray-green smiley faces with the eyes crossed out in death bounced around the screen. She moved the mouse to end the screensaver, giggles still periodically finding their way out of her mouth.

She set the timer, the alarm clock for the stasis to end.

The giggles trailed off.

Silence.

The lights slowly flickered back to life, and Bonesaw found herself standing in front of the keyboard. The smile fell from her face.

Jack had assumed she would freeze herself. The empty pod reinforced the idea.

Except… she was telling herself she had to be there to wake them up, and that wasn’t wholly true. It was smart, but it wasn’t true. She wasn’t one to be afraid of something, but she felt a touch of trepidation at the idea of entering stasis without someone to handle the exit process, without assurance she would wake up. That was without touching on the issue of the power cell, watching that things didn’t go tilt with the pocket dimension.

No, that wasn’t wholly true either. It was a one percent chance. Five percent, if she counted her lack of knowledge about other tinker’s stuff. But she hadn’t touched it, even to move it. It should be safe.

Her eyes tracked the rows and columns of incubation chambers. They weren’t her field either. A different row for each member of the Slaughterhouse Nine, past or present.

King

Screamer

Harbinger

Breed

Crimson

Gray Boy

Nyx

Psychosoma

There were ten of each in various glass chambers. The original members.

With many, many more besides. She looked down the length of the room. Most members of the Nine had lasted only weeks or months. She could count the ones who’d lasted longer than that on the one hand.

Her, Jack, Mannequin, Siberian, Shatterbird.

Crawler had managed pretty well, too.

He’d been a doofus in the end, though.

She smiled. It would be a family reunion, really. But there was work to be done.

They’d come out blank. Wouldn’t do. She had access to some of the toys they’d liberated from the Toybox. She’d have to put the new Slaughterhouse’s memories together herself. Brains. Memories, or things close enough to memories. She had notes and records, all of the bedtime stories Jack had told her as she drifted off to sleep these past few years. There was information saved on the computer. She could hodgepodge it together.

This would be real art. How well could she rebuild them?

Cranial had been selling memories on the black market, selling skills. She’d kept bad memories too, took them from people, even gave them to some people. Silly, really. A lot of them had wanted trigger events, except the trigger events didn’t work like that.

This computer was only an access point. The other computers took up vast amounts of space, out of sight, out of mind. If something failed, she’d have to go fix it, but she would spend most of her time here, surrounded by her family, some she’d never met.

Mannequin had lost his wife and children in a Simurgh attack. How to approach it? A file here, with a woman who had lost her spouse and children in a car accident she’d driven. Close enough. She could leave gaps and it would fill in all on its own. Build it all on a foundation of an academic background, a doctor with confidence to spare, an architect in the same vein, a celebrity singer who’d come in wanting inspiration at the press of a button… run everything in parallel, with the ideas of the former two and the experience of the other…

But that wasn’t enough. He’d been driven, haunted. How was she supposed to put it all together? Could she make it a recurring idea, so this Mannequin-clone would see the events flashing before his eyes with every waking moment? Something he could only quench with a quiet, cold rage? Or was it something he’d put behind him?

Winter had been an arms dealer, sadistic, ruthless, cold.

Bonesaw giggled at the private joke. The noise echoed in the utter silence. It was quiet enough that she could hear her own heartbeat and the blood rushing in her ears, the creak of her muscles shifting, even. That wasn’t anything she had enhanced. Humans simply never experienced true quiet. Those that had come close tended to go insane.

Another giggle, smaller. No worry on that score.

How to model Winter? She wasn’t truly a person who created or manipulated cold. It was a different power. A dampening power, causing objects and people both to lose inertia. The ambient effect was one of altered physics, the effect on people was one of will. The woman had gained power, money and more, and she’d found she liked tormenting people as much as anything else. She’d turned to the slave trade, then crossed paths with the Nine.

How to make the Winters with the materials she had? A child that had a gun in her hand before she could read, someone who had found the drive necessary to rise above her roots, meeting all expectations. She’d taught herself numbers and business, she’d ruthlessly eliminated competition, and then when she had everything she’d wanted, she had stagnated, rotted like an overripe fruit.

Searches for keywords in Cranial’s notes failed to turn up any of the necessary elements.

“Hey, Blasto, buddy,” she said, and her voice sounded artificially chirpy, even to her. She looked at her minion, who stood at the other end of the desk, staring off into space, his entire body rigid. A tear was running down his cheek.

Would have to cauterize his tear ducts, maybe.

“Speak,” she ordered. She tapped a key to open a menu, then released the lock on his lung control and breathing. “Try now.”

“Ungh,” he rasped. “Ugh.”

Would have to exercise his vocal cords, or he might lose the ability to speak.

“It’s too quiet. Let’s see… do you know the theme song to Love Bug?”

“Ugh. Guh. Fuh- fuck-”

She hit the key to lock him down, feeling irritated.

“Swearing is so crass! Okay. Guess you don’t know them. Let’s see. I’ve got something in my backpack…”

It took only moments to rig. Her spider boxes ran on interconnected lumps of gray matter, basic impulses, motor control and storage, with some computer chips to handle functions that were more trouble than they were worth to implement. One of those chips managed rote movements. She removed a defunct spider box from the backpack she was keeping beneath her desk and attached it to Blasto’s spine, between his shoulder blades.

Overriding motor control, rote movement operation, hook it to the lungs and mouth, tongue, jaw…

Her hands were crimson halfway up to the elbow by the time she was done setting it all up. She handed the task over to a spider box to handle stitches and cauterizing the bleeds. A quickie job.

Would be better with a real eyeball, but she’d settle for a camera.

She set a video to play. Furry cartoon bugs with hearts, peace symbols and other icons on their backs began to dance with cartoon children.

“Love bug love hug! A, B, C, D!

There they are, coming to say hi!

Love bugs are here, no need to cry!

When you’re feeling lonely, when you’re alone,

Who can you count on, to be in the zone?”

“Get a love bug love hug!” Bonesaw sang along, pulling up a chair. She used a pencil to press the buttons on the keyboard so she didn’t get it mucky. Few things were quite as fun as letting the blood dry and then peeling it all off in one congealed strip.

Behind her, Blasto watched the video. She set it to repeat, and the bug box kicked in the second time around. Blasto’s reedy voice sang along. It was so pathetic and mournful that she laughed aloud.

Better give him some exercise too.

By the time the fourth repeat had finished, he was all set up. He started dancing along with the fifth, mimicking characters on the screen. Each repeat would be a little more precise, as the camera captured the necessary elements.

There.

Something to occupy herself with, for the next year and a half.

September 28th, 2011

“I’m going to take over the world!”

“Wonderful,” Bonesaw commented, feigning a cultured voice. “More tea?”

“Tea, yes! Obey, serve me. Give me tea.”

Bonesaw dutifully poured a beakerful of hot water into the cup, then set a spoon by the saucer. “No milk? You’re sure?”

“Milk is for weaklings and children. I’ll drink it black,” Damsel said.

“We are children, Damsel.”

A biologically seven year old Damsel of Distress glared across the table at Bonesaw as she took a sip, then had to momentarily steel herself to keep from making a face. Her face was gaunt, but that was her natural appearance. Her pale blue eyes deep set, platinum blond hair simultaneously fine and thick, matted together. The chemical stew the clones were growing in didn’t make for typical looking hair growth.

“I could end you, for that insult.”

“Yes,” Bonesaw said. “But then you wouldn’t have anybody to pour you tea.”

“This tea is too hot anyways.”

“I’ll strive to do better,” Bonesaw said. “World domination, hm? Sounds like a bother.”

“It’s my natural place.”

“Maybe,” Bonesaw said. “Well, I don’t envy you. You’ll need to hurry, too. World’s going to end soon, I think.”

“I’ll rule the ashes.”

“I see. That’s even harder, isn’t it? If there’s no way to communicate, then how do you manage it all? There won’t be phones or internet after everything else is gone.”

Damsel’s forehead furrowed in concern. “I’ll delegate.”

“Can you trust the people you delegate to?”

“No. I trust nobody.”

“Well,” Bonesaw said, pausing as she took a sip of tea. “That’s a problem.”

“Yes,” Damsel agreed. She swayed in her seat for a moment, then gripped the table with foot-long, clawed fingers to steady herself. Bonesaw’s design, replacing the skeletal structure. A way to channel Damsel’s power and -if needed- briefly shut it off.

“I put a little something in your tea to help you sleep,” Bonesaw commented. “Best to see you off to bed.”

“I’m not…”

“Not sleepy? You’re going to faceplant in your tea.”

Damsel’s confusion became a swift, violent anger. “You poisoned me, wretch!”

“Yes. I thought you didn’t trust anyone. What a shame that you couldn’t be constructive in that distrust,” Bonesaw said. She stood and walked around the table, then took the little girl’s hand, leading her back to the incubation chamber. The girl obeyed, though she spat epithets.

“I’ll flay your skin from your bones, irrevocably destroy everything you cherish,” Damsel said, her voice fainter. “You’ll cry your rage to the heavens until your torment subsumes everything. Madness will be a refuge.”

She was virtually whispering by the time she was done.

“Yes, sweetie,” Bonesaw answered, dropping the fake accent. She leaned forward and gave Damsel a kiss on the cheek. Damsel blinked, as if in slow motion, opened her eyes briefly, then shut them.

A press of a button and a flick of a switch bid the glass case to rise and surround Damsel before she could tip over. The tube rapidly filled with a soupy liquid, rich in nutrients. Damsel was fully asleep before the fluid raised her from the ground to float buoyantly in the middle of the tube. Her tea party outfit billowed out around her, making her look like a jellyfish in the pale lighting. Her hat, a wide-brimmed, shallow-topped hat with a false flower on the ribbon, drifted off her head and gradually sank to the base of the tube.

She sought out the other clone, finding him at the far end of her lab. He was a boy, narrow, with long blond hair and a very worried expression. A complex pyramid of beakers and glass measuring cups was arranged around him.

He was muttering to himself, “Wall them in. Wall myself in. Wall them in. Wall myself in.”

“Come on, A.G.,” Bonesaw said. She reached through the structure and took his hand. “Out through the door.”

“Not a door. Trap. Safest way to ward off attackers. Used my hair, made a tripwire, tying ends together. Maximum devastation if intruder breaks perimeter.”

“Through the window, then. I’ll wall you in. Promise.”

He nodded. With excessive care, he climbed on top of the jars that were precariously balanced on one another and slipped out through another aperture in the arrangement, higher up. He stumbled as he landed.

“This way. We’ll wall you in.”

He followed obediently. “Where’s my Catherine? She’s my…”

“Your mom, silly billy.” Cognitive dissonance would be bad. He could lash out. Not that he was that dangerous, like this.

“I was going to say wife. And I have two children. They’re seven and five. Except I’m…”

“You’re seven. You’re thinking of your sisters.”

“I’m confused,” he almost mewled the words. “It hurts, so much of it hurts to think about. I- I let a lot of people down. I can feel their disappointment like… like it’s pressing in on me from all sides. I can’t hide from it and I can’t stop myself from caring. I-”

“Hush,” she said. “It all gets better when you wall yourself in, doesn’t it?”

He nodded mutely.

“Walling you in,” she said, as she put him on top of the stand. A press of the button raised the glass enclosure. She could see him relax a fraction at that.

A bit of a problem, Bonesaw mused, as the container filled with the nutrient fluid.

Various elements that were unique to every individual served as a signal that the passenger could reach out to in an attempt at reconnecting with a host. DNA, electromagnetic patterns, patterns she could barely measure with instruments, all contributed, none was absolute. Once the connection was established, powers were possible as well. A moment of trauma sped the process along considerably. Her initial assumption had been that coming to life would be enough for the clones.

But the clones were dreaming, and those dreams were founded in the fabricated memories she was providing. It was something of an art, an interesting experiment, to strike all the right notes, to get geography and birthplace right, culture, custom, habit and every other detail, along with the major, defining moments of their lives.

The Corona Pollentia was developing as the originals did, drawing from DNA to form as a lobe in the brain, right from the outset. The dreams formed the connections between the corona and the clone. The bonds were forming too quickly and easily.

It was interfering with the cloning process, as the passenger’s typically indistinct and subtle influence on the subject was becoming rather dramatic. The brain was too pliable while the clones were in their formative ages, the passenger too insistent.

She’d have to scrap everything. Wipe them clean, grow a new batch of clones. Nearly three weeks of work down the drain.

Already, she was figuring out how to solve the problem. She’d have to stagger it, introduce memories in phases, starting with earliest and working her way forward. Maybe it would be easier, organized. She could consider each member of the Nine in turn and decide if they had been treated well as babies, if their home and school lives were comfortable… that would be a yes for someone like Mannequin, less so for Ned, for Crawler.

She typed on the computer for a minute. Special disposal procedures for Crawler. The rest could be boiled to death.

She watched until the bubbles started to rise. One or two woke. It didn’t matter.

She returned to her makeshift bedroom. There hadn’t been a mattress, so she’d made a hammock instead.

Blasto lay on the floor. His voice was barely audible. He couldn’t stand, and his attempts at trying to dance were scraping his arms against the floor.

“Bug… hug. I, J, K, L.”

“Forgot to turn the music off,” she said. She found the smartphone and switched off the music. “Have a bit of an errand. Sleep for now, I’ll patch you up when I get back.”

Her hair dyed black, a bit of makeup and clothes made the same way she’d made her mattress, creating a lifeform that could spin and ink fabric.

A touch roughspun, but it would do.

She found the remote and hit the button. There was a quiet whoosh, and she was on the other side.

Back in Earth Bet.

Her heart was pounding. If Jack found out about this, he’d be furious. The risk, the idea that someone would be checking this one spot for a signal, or using a parahuman ability to search for her here…

But, she thought, she needed supplies she couldn’t make on her own. Resources, information, materials.

She entered a small grocery store.

“Good morning,” the man at the counter said. Thirty-two or thirty-three, to judge by his appearance. His hair was too long in the back, just starting to recede in the front, his stare intense, but he wasn’t unattractive otherwise.

“Good morning,” she responded, upbeat. Don’t talk to me. It would be messy if I had to kill you. She corrected herself. I’ll fix your hair and then I’d kill you.

“We don’t get many new people here. Kind of out of the way.” He smiled.

“Driving through,” she said. “My mom is shopping down the street.”

“Dollar store or the boutique?”

“Boutique.”

“Don’t blame you for not wanting to go,” he said. “Let me know if you need help finding something.”

She made her way through the store. Lemon juice, vinegar, sugar, salt, a box of Frooty Toots, some milk, pancake mix. Nutrient slop was great when she needed to work without cooking, but it was still slop.

Glancing up, she could see the man at the counter looking at her in the mirror that had been positioned to give him a view of the aisle.

She wondered momentarily if he’d recognized her. No, the reaction would be different.

A distrust of outsiders? No, he seemed too at ease for that.

Something else, then.

She felt more at ease, realizing what it had to be.

She deposited the things on the counter, then paid. He bagged it and she waved goodbye as she left, offering him a winning smile.

She’d need to stop by a library, there were a few things she needed to look up. There wasn’t enough information on Harbinger, for one thing. King’s background was another blank. People Jack didn’t talk about much, even if he talked about them fondly.

He’d be so pleased, she could imagine, if she hit the right notes with them and got their basic personalities right.

Then she could buy clothes and sheets. If there was a good hardware store, she could imagine some tools that would serve. Her scalpels were getting dull.

This little bumhole of a town didn’t have much, and she’d seen maybe one car on the road since she had arrived, but still, she looked both ways before crossing the street.

A pale, dark-haired woman stepped out of the bank, wearing a black suit.

Her attitude, her demeanor, casual. Nothing combative in the slightest.

Bonesaw still felt a twang of alarm. The timing with which she’d appeared, the way the clothes didn’t fit the area…

Better to guess and be wrong. “Are you picking a fight with me?”

“No,” the woman replied. “No I’m not, Bonesaw.”

Gosh darn ding darn… golly. Jack was going to be maaaaad if he found out about this.

“Because if you kill me, it doesn’t change anything.”

“You worked a biological key into the transporter device. Unless you are alive, calm and holding the device, it won’t work. It will only transport you. We can’t use it to get inside, and killing you wouldn’t stop the stasis period from ending.”

“Yeah. That’s why.”

“I understand. But I wasn’t sent here to assassinate you. We could. We could even reach Jack, I think, now that we know where to make an entrance. Still, that’s a dangerous prospect, putting powerful parahumans in the same space as a man who’s been prophesied to end the world.”

“I’m not a pushover, you know,” Bonesaw said. She stabbed a finger in the woman’s direction.

It would be so easy to fire a poison needle into her throat.

“I only want to talk. I’ll ask a favor, then leave you alone,” the woman said.

“You don’t know how the Slaughterhouse Nine work, do you? We don’t do favors.”

“You’ll do this one. The Slaughterhouse Nine you’re mass producing, you’re going to install a control switch. You’ll give that switch to me. Not soon, but later. Later than you think.”

Bonesaw laughed, high and shrill. Then she laughed some more.

The woman only waited patiently.

“Silly! You couldn’t be more wrong,” Bonesaw said. “Betray Jack? Betray the others?”

“You will.”

Bonesaw laughed again, not for quite so long. Through the giggles, she said, “If you’re going to try to mind control me, I can tell you you’ve got another thing coming. I’ve got safeguards. You’ll only activate my berserker mode.”

“No mind control. There’s a great deal at work here, and this is the best way to go about it, even with the blind spot looming.”

“That’s the best argument you can give me?”

“No. I can tell you two things.”

Bonesaw raised her eyebrows, smiling. “Two things?”

“Breadth and Depth.”

“I don’t get it. Those are the things?”

“No. There’s another. Each of these things is a sentence, an idea. The second sentence is simple. Say goodbye.”

Bonesaw bristled. Mechanical traps, spring-loaded needles and venom venting systems readied throughout her body. She let the bags drop to the ground.

The woman didn’t attack. Instead, she turned to leave.

An empty threat?

She debated firing her hollow needles at the woman’s back. But if she missed, she’d be largely unarmed. She’d have to get even closer to use a venom spray, or poison spit, or her telescoping humerus with flesh dissolving acid capsules beneath her fingernails.

The woman entered the bank, and Bonesaw hurried across the street to follow.

But her quarry was gone.

January 20th, 2005

Riley panted for breath. Her body wasn’t listening, now.

She reached her mommy’s room, then collapsed on the floor, head turned towards the foot of the bed.

The carpet was stained with blood. On it, just beside the bed, her mother lay face down, head turned to one side just like Riley’s was. She was covered in stitches. There wasn’t a place where Riley could have reached out and placed a hand down flat without touching one of the marks.

An entire row had been cut open, the stitches severed, from temple, down the side of her throat, along the side of her body to her pelvis.

Too much blood loss. Her mind leaped into action, reaching for knowledge she hadn’t had earlier in the night, knowledge of how to fix people. She took in details, grasped everything from the amount of blood her mommy had to heart rate and the amount of air she was breathing, just from the clues in how fast the blood flowed and the color of the skin. She knew the order she’d have to fix things. Ideas fired through her mind, telling her how to close the wounds, to draw the blood out of the carpet and clean it, or even making something that would do the same thing blood did, out of water and some junk from the kitchen, all with the exact right amount of electricity, to fill the veins and carry a low amount of air throughout the body, staving off the shut down of her brain long enough for Riley to figure out something else.

But she was too tired.

“Hurry,” Mister Jack’s voice was almost gentle. “You have time. You can fix her, can’t you?”

She could. Maybe she even had the strength to do it, to get downstairs and climb up onto the kitchen counter to get the things she needed out of the cabinets, and get back up here. She could cut the lamp cord and use the frayed end with… with a lot of salt, to get the right frequency.

But she was too tired. The moment she was done saving her mommy, she’d have to run to the bathroom and save daddy. Then she’d have to run downstairs and save Drew. After that she’d save Muffles, and hurry back to mommy. In each room, one or two scary people waited for her. Waited and watched while she worked, then undid her work or came up with worse things to do.

She knew because she’d been doing this for hours.

“Come on,” Mister Jack whispered. “You can do it. Don’t you love your mommy?”

She stared across the room at her mommy. They were lying with their heads pointed in different direction, so her mommy’s face was upside down, almost covered with as many stitches as skin.

She’d done a bad job, she knew. She couldn’t even cut a straight line with the scissors in school, how was she supposed to do this?

Mommy mouthed some words, but the stitches pulled her lips in funny directions.

She thought maybe she knew what mommy was saying.

“No,” she told Mister Jack.

“No?”

“I don’t love her,” she answered. She blinked, slow, so she wouldn’t have to look her mommy in the eyes, and tears were squeezed out.

“Alrighty,” Mister Jack said. “Say goodbye, then.”

Say goodbye.

“Goodbye, mommy,” Riley said, obediently.

Silent, her mom mouthed a reply.

It took a long time.

A long, long time, watching the blood volume tick down, seeing how the breathing rate changed, and the heartbeat slowed. Knowing how the brain would be affected, knowing what the organs were doing, and the order they were shutting down.

At some point, it ceased to be mommy, became something else. A moment when her mommy became only a dying thing, a machine of flesh and blood that was winding down.

It was easier.

Didn’t make her chest hurt as much.

Lips that had been fixed up with imperfect stitches mouthed one final sentence.

“There we go,” Mister Jack whispered. “…There. That’s it.”

For a little while longer, the three of them rested on the floor of the room. Mister Jack, Riley, and her mommy.

Others appeared in the doorway, casting the room in shadow.

“She done?”

“She’s done,” Mister Jack said, standing. He stretched. “As for what we do with her, we-”

He broke off as the clown in the hallway laughed, an eerie, offbeat sound that seemed to be missing something most laughs had. It seemed to take Jack a moment to gather why the clown had laughed.

When he looked down, Riley was looking up at him, smiling. It was a forced expression.

“What’s this?” Jack asked. He smiled back. “Something funny?”

“No. I just… I wanted to smile.”

“Well,” he said. “Me too. Let’s smile together.”

She looked momentarily uncertain, but kept the strained smile in place.

“Yes. Come with us. We’ll keep you safe.”

She didn’t want to. She wanted nothing less.

But she had nowhere else to go.

“Yes please,” she said. “That… that sounds nice.”

Her mother’s final words rang through Riley’s head, the last words she’d before she had become a machine that had stopped working.

Be a good girl.

She’d be good. She’d be polite and cheerful and she’d do her chores and she would mind her manners and she’d eat all of her dinner and she’d keep her hair nice and she wouldn’t swear and…

November 15th, 2011

She woke from a nightmare that was becoming all too familiar. Usually it was only a few times a week, fragments. Now it was more distinct, more cohesive.

She didn’t like it.

As was her habit, she reached across the bed, holding her companion close.

Not enough. Not warm enough, not responsive, not caring.

He wasn’t family.

She pushed her covers away, annoyed.

Blasto lay there, unmoving.

“Up,” she said.

The hardware worked throughout his body bid him to move.

She stared at him, unfamiliar feelings warring inside her. The dream was fresh in her mind and she couldn’t banish it, just like she hadn’t been able to banish it yesterday, or the day before, or the day before that.

It was just a little harder every day.

She felt a flare of anger, but pasted a smile on her face instead. Think happy.

Be good, she thought, and the thought was too close to an idea in her dream. It had the opposite effect, dashed her resolve to the wind.

She was left only with a mingled sense of unease and frustration.

No mind control? My fanny! The darn woman in the suit had put a mind-whammy on her!

It made her upset, which was a terrible way to start the day. Most days, she could cuddle with whoever was sleeping beside her. Blasto wasn’t so good at that.

It didn’t help that Blasto had died a week ago. A stroke, no doubt from stress, in the midst of a refrain of the Love Bugs theme song. The only thing that let him move now were the control mechanisms she’d set up.

Not so good for snuggling.

Most days, if snuggling didn’t quite cut it, Jack would keep her busy, give her something to do, and entertain her. Always, his voice in her ear, always ushering her forwards, praising her for being a good girl, for her art, for her talent. Others were interested. Her family.

Now she was alone.

She left the closet that was her bedroom, with Blasto standing beside the fleshy mattress, and she approached the cases.

The third draft, still in a foetal state, nine of each. She had a good feeling about it. There were a few more brains to create, more personalities to research and draw up, but she felt fairly confident about her ability to piece it all together.

The only rub was the Bonesaws. A whole row, empty.

They didn’t need as long to gestate, but she had yet to begin figuring out how to create them.

She could have scanned her own brain and copied over the results, but the setup was awkward to manage, best done with a sleeping subject. She could have set Blasto up to manage it, but… that was tricky in its own way.

She wasn’t used to feeling a lack of confidence. The thing about art was that one could create anything, could incorporate mistakes. But art needed an audience and she had none here.

She’d set herself the task of having everything ready for when Jack and the others woke up, and now she felt she was unraveling, coming apart in the quiet and the solitude.

She stared at the seeds of the Bonesaws that hadn’t grown and wondered if she really could look long enough to see the real her, to fabricate anything like herself. Her test runs with the others had all worked. They were close enough to feel familiar, even if little details were off. Their personalities, their approaches, all would be close enough. Here and there, she’d fixed things, corrected the most detrimental personality traits that had been turned against them and allowed them to be captured or killed.

Sighing, she turned away. She took the time to dress in the clothes she’d bought, and then used the remote to teleport to Earth Bet.

“Our regular is back,” the man at the counter said. “You get out a lot, with that home schooling.”

“Yeah,” she said. She folded her hands on the edge of the counter and rested her chin on them. “Your haircut looks good, Eli.”

“Thank you,” he said. He looked genuinely embarrassed. She smiled a little at that.

“See any good movies lately?” she asked.

“You like horror movies right?”

“Mm hmm.”

“The Darkness. You’d like it, it comes from a good pedigree. It’s about a mafia-”

A woman entered the store, and Eli jumped as though he’d been caught doing something wrong.

“Can I- can I put up a sign in the window?” the woman asked.

“I’d have to see it first,” Eli responded. “Might have to ask my dad. He owns the store, even if I run it. If there’s any question, it’d be his call. He gets back this Monday.”

The woman’s face was grave as she handed over the paper.

Eli took the time to read it. “I think everyone in town knows about this, Mrs. Hemston.”

“Can I put it up anyways? If someone passes through and sees it-”

Eli shifted, uncomfortable. “I don’t see any reason you couldn’t. My dad wouldn’t say no.”

Without responding, Mrs. Hemston set about taping it to a spot at eye level on the back of the glass door.

She glanced at Bonesaw. “You shouldn’t be out without a guardian. Go home.”

“Yes ma’am,” Bonesaw replied, smiling.

And then the woman was gone.

Bonesaw opened the door and held it open so she could see the sign. A missing person sign, with a picture of a girl. She let the door swing closed.

Eli hesitated. “Riley, I was thinking, if you wanted to come over and watch that movie…”

“No.”

“No? Why?”

“You know why,” she said. She walked down the aisle to grab some snacks. Gummy candies, more Frooty Toots, some more milk.

“I wouldn’t, you know I-”

“You’d be a gentleman, I’m sure,” she replied. The funny thing was, she was sure. She knew her monsters.

He struggled to recover. “I… you’re talking about the home schooling. Strict parents?”

It was feeble. She knew it was feeble.

“Exactly,” she responded, setting the stuff on the counter. “Sorry.”

“Eight ninety-five,” was all he said.

He was hurt. He’d recover. She collected her things, gave him a small wave, and then made her way back. She glanced at the woman who was making her way into the next store.

She stepped out of sight, then used the remote to exit back to the pocket realm.

She felt a growing sense of unease as she set the milk in the fridge and put the Frooty Toots on the counter with the candy. Not an unease with what had happened with Eli. That would resolve itself. She’d see him in two or three days, and it would be awkward. Then she’d see him after that, and things would be okay again.

No. That wasn’t what was resting heavily on her heart.

She called for Blasto and then entered one of the other closets.

Melanie, the girl’s name was.

A week and a half ago, it had been so commonsense. A solution to her problems. The girl had been right there. So easy to approach. A tranquilizer shot to the neck, calculated on the fly to fit with body weight and overall health. Recalibrating the teleporting remote with the unconscious girl in the back lot had been a little riskier, but it was a quiet town.

Bonesaw had found herself busy enough that the girl could be left here, an IV in her neck, catheter and poop tube inserted. Now that she had free time, she could handle the Winter issue.

She needed a child soldier. This was a way to make one. To insert the wartime memories from Cranial’s database into the girl, let it steep, then harvest the results. The rest could be tweaked, rebalanced, fixed.

And there, again, that unease.

She couldn’t think of her mother’s face, only stitches. Her father she hadn’t even seen. His face was a vague idea in her head, a few isolated features with nothing to bind them together.

Yet when she tried to visualize herself going ahead with it, it was Eli’s face that intruded. Disappointed, confused.

Eli and Mrs. Hemston both, now.

The girl was meat. A tool, a collection of resources to be taken apart and put together in a different configuration, a machine. Any number of things, but not a person.

But the people from the periphery of the girl’s life… they were harder to compartmentalize. Distant. They weren’t at arm’s reach to use as resources.

An emotional factor.

Darn it, she thought. She’d stopped talking to herself, after she’d gotten in the habit and weirded Eli out.

She turned her attention to the computer, crossing the room. Need a distraction.

Except it backfired. She thought of the woman in the suit, and the statement. Breadth and depth.

As things tended to do, a connection drew across her mind’s eye. All of the problems at hand, the challenges, dealing with the clones, figuring out how to program them.

The first batch had failed because they were too young, and the connection with the passenger had become too broad, consuming too much of their personality, leaving room for little growth as a human being. Things were missing, other things bloated or exaggerated as the passenger needed.

Jack had a different kind of connection. A deep connection. He was in alignment with the particular nature of his passenger. The passengers naturally sought conflict, and Jack had fed that need from very early on, and he had sustained it for years. The line between the two was so thin as to be impossible to mark, but Jack’s personality remained his own. Altered, but not subsumed.

And Bonesaw… well, she was talented. There was little doubt her passenger fed her a great amount of detail.

But what kind of connection was it?

Darn mind whammies! Darn it, drat, gosh, golly fuck!

She stared down at her hands, splayed and resting on either side of the keyboard.

What kind of connection was it?

Young age? Check. That had meant breadth for the others.

Fed by conflict? Check. Depth, if the single data point that was Jack was any indication.

How much of me is me?

She stared at the backs of her hands.

What difference does it make? It wasn’t a rhetorical question. There was a difference, it did matter in the grand scheme of things. She just wasn’t sure what that difference was, how it mattered.

She hadn’t had to make many of her own decisions before. Or, it was better to say, she hadn’t had to make important ones. There was a security in being with Jack, because it meant she didn’t have to face this sort of thing. One comment, and the question was decided.

She turned to look at Melanie. The girl was her age.

Odd to think about.

The girl had seen her face. She couldn’t trust her ability to erase memories, not without test subjects, which was a new set of risks, a new set of problems. It would only compound the problem she was trying to solve.

She wasn’t used to thinking like this, considering ways to minimize chaos.

Couldn’t trust that she’d scrub the right memory. It wasn’t her tinker tech.

Couldn’t trust that she could overwrite the memories either. Inserting memories, yes, but the brain was a funny thing. Again, it wasn’t her tinker tech.

Going ahead would be safest.

She thought of Eli. A friend. Not family, like the Nine had become, but a friend.

She thought of the effect of the passenger on her personality. Was the art hers or did it belong to it? Her sense of family among the other Nine, again, who did it belong to?

She bit a thumbnail, cut deep into the material with the special cutting materials she’d laced her incisors with, and then tore the end off in one swift motion. The quick of her nail started bleeding.

The pain gave her clarity.

Maybe the family thing was the passenger’s. Maybe the art was too.

But Eli? It wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t normal. But if the passenger had never made contact, and she’d still lived a life a little like the one she lived now, she could see herself being Eli’s friend.

That in mind, she made her decision.

November 12th, 2012

She shifted her weight from foot to foot.

A lot of time alone. A lot of time to think.

Every decision now was made on a fulcrum. Was she acting as Riley or as Bonesaw?

This… it wasn’t a hard decision. In a way, she’d imagined she’d always make it. But it, like every other call, had to be carefully measured.

First menstruation, check.

Might as well get it over with. She made notes on the computer.

Auto-hysterectomy.

Auto-masectomy.

Limb shortening.

Bone shaving.

Plastic surgery.

Bonesaw would approve. Maybe it would be better to be taller, to have more room for equipment. Still, she could reverse the procedure. It wouldn’t be her parts, but that wasn’t such a problem.

But for Riley, this was essential. It was a matter of months before Jack woke. She needed time to recover. The clones were in a good state. Only the Bonesaw vats were empty. Each of the others had an adolescent or nearly-adult clone inside. A month or two before the others woke from cryo-stasis, she’d start doing the surgeries, adding the augments, combining a handful of them together.

She laid out everything on the table next to her. Scalpels, blood bags, IV drips, screwdrivers, wire, staple, cauterizing gun, hammer, stapler… a mix and match.

She hefted the bonesaw and frowned a little. The word had taken on a different meaning for her, in recent months. It had stopped being her name somewhere along the line, had become her passenger’s.

Anesthetic? No. She needed optimal awareness of her own body. Anything that dulled her senses would spoil that.

She had the ability to switch off pain at will. She wouldn’t use it.

No. She wouldn’t say she felt guilty about the things she’d done, but she recognized that she was broken, now. She recognized that maybe she should.

A part of her wished she could reach inside and find that carefree perspective, the innocence she’d enjoyed. Another part of her was glad. Everything about herself was modifiable, reversible, pliable. Pieces in the machine. But this? She wasn’t sure she could alter it, nor that she wanted to.

This wouldn’t be a penance. That would suggest penitence. But it’d be just, as best as she could figure.

She started cutting.

January 24th, 2013

“The sign’s down,” she commented.

“Riley!” Eli looked startled. He glanced back at his dad, who was stocking shelves. “It’s been… a really long time. I was worried I said something.”

“No. Went to live with my dad,” she said. The lie was smooth, effortless. She didn’t even feel bad.

“You’re back?”

“Stopping by, like the first time you saw me.”

He nodded, still a little stunned. “Uh… they found the girl dead in the woods. Some dogs had chewed her up pretty badly.”

“Oh,” she responded. She’d practiced the look of concern in the mirror. Even now, she didn’t really feel guilt, but nothing was reliable, like it once had been. “I stopped in to say goodbye, Eli.”

“Goodbye?” He seemed more surprised than disappointed.

Maybe he already said goodbye to me, she thought. She didn’t feel hurt. Growing up with the Slaughterhouse Nine had numbed her in many respects. It made sense, little more.

“I wanted to give you a gift,” she said. “As thanks for the movie advice, and the conversation over the past while. You helped me, gave me a friend when I needed one.”

He frowned. “After your parent’s divorce, you mean.”

“Yes.” Another easy lie.

“I get that,” he said. He looked at the card. “Can I open it?”

“No. There’s a date on it. Wait, then read it on the date in question. Break that rule and I’ll be mad, understand?”

“I understand,” he responded. He looked down at the envelope. “My birthday.”

“Yeah. And I don’t think you do understand,” she said, “But that’s okay. Just don’t break the rule, and don’t lose the letter.”

“Okay,” he said. “Um. I would’ve gotten you something, but… oh.”

He rummaged in his bag, then handed her a video tape.

“I… I rented it, but I’ll pay the fee to replace it. One of my favorites from the last year.”

A horror movie. A child werewolf?

A child monster.

She glanced at him, but there was nothing in his expression. She’d become exceptionally good at reading people, and… no. He had no idea how ironic the gift was.

“Thank you,” she said, holding it to her stomach. “It’s probably okay if we just say hi and bye like usual, isn’t it? Fits?”

“You look different,” he blurted out the words, a non-sequitur.

She’d hoped the winter clothes would hide any of the reversions she’d made.

“You look good,” he added.

“Be fucking good, Eli,” she retorted, staring at him.

Before, he might have protested, feigned confusion. He’d changed, much as she had.

Now, he only nodded a little. “I will.”

May 25th, 2013

She sat with her feet propped up on the table, a bowl of Frooty Toots on her stomach, as the alarm went off.

She felt a momentary sadness. She tapped her pinky with her thumb twice, and the embedded magnets noted the signal. She’d recorded her own brain activity and movements when contemplating the Bonesaw clones, and it was this that she drew on, manipulating her own body much as she had manipulated Blasto’s.

Her body language wasn’t her own. Her smile, the way she walked, the gestures, all were fine tuned to match the Bonesaw of before.

Her height, too, had changed. She’d cut her hair to match, had downgraded her body so the last year and a half of development had never happened.

It was the burning of a bridge, in a way. It would retard her growth in the future, and that would arouse suspicion.

In a way, she couldn’t carry on her relationship with the Nine. There would be too many tells, no time to herself to make changes in secret.

The individual cases opened, and slowly but surely, the members of the current Slaughterhouse Nine stepped out. Jack, Hookwolf, Skinslip, Night Hag.

She could see the conscious effort on Jack’s part to maintain his composure. He was barely able to stand.

His eyes fixed on her.

Somehow, she knew. She knew he knew. But that was no surprise.

All she really needed was reasonable doubt. He would harbor suspicions, and he would pull something on her. Later.

In the meantime, she’d have options.

“You’re awake,” he commented.

“And you’re nude,” she said, covering her eyes. “Where are your manners?”

Like riding a bike. Back to her old self. Playing the role.

“I’ll remedy that in an instant. Cereal?”

“Made it myself. Took me a whole three hours to get it right. Felt like keeping busy.”

“And the milk?”

“Made it myself,” she responded. She grinned, and the device took over, gave it that width, that guilelessness she couldn’t manage on her own.

“I won’t ask. My clothes?”

She pointed him in the direction of the closet where she’d placed all of the roughspun uniforms, alongside the clothes Jack and the others had removed before stepping into the cryostasis chambers.

He took a step, then stumbled.

“I’m… not as coordinated as I should be,” he said.

“Seems there’s trouble with the recovery phase,” Riley said. “Be a month or two before you’re on your feet.”

“We have a schedule.”

“I know. But I can’t fix this. Not my stuff.”

He stared at her, brushed ice-crusted hair away from his face.

But she wasn’t lying. There was no falsehood to pick out.

“You could have woken us sooner.”

“Nope, nope,” she said. “Would’ve mucked up the scheduling.”

Still, that penetrating stare. This was the make or break moment.

“Well,” Jack said, smiling, “Unavoidable. We’ll have to make it extra special.”

“Triple special,” she answered. “Things have been interesting while we’ve been gone.”

“Interesting?”

“I’ll show you later.”

“And the clones?”

“I was waiting for you to wake up before we greeted them.”

“Good,” Jack said. “Excellent.”

She smiled wide as he turned, covering his bare rear end on his way to the closet, even as she felt coldness in her heart.

Hookwolf, for his part, only drew blades around his body, forming into a giant metal form. She wondered if he looked a little introspective, before his head was covered in the mass of shifting, skirring hooks and needles.

She chewed on her cereal, and watched more of her movie.

She did like it, after all. Eli had been right.

She smiled, hiding the sense of loss as she deleted it from the system and cleaned up the evidence.

One by one, the recently unfrozen members of the Nine rejoined them, dressed in their outfits and costumes.

Jack gestured, and she hit the key on the keyboard. Lights.

Spotlights went on beneath each of the glass chambers.

Drain.

The fluids poured out, draining into the openings in the floor. Blurry figures became more distinct, marred only by the residual droplets clinging to the interior of each chamber.

“You didn’t do yours,” Jack commented.

“Didn’t work out.”

“I see,” he said.

Every line of dialogue felt like a nail in the coffin.

But that coffin wasn’t a concern today, or even tomorrow.

For now, Jack needed her. For now, she had options.

She smiled, wide, with a glee she didn’t feel.

The woman in the suit had options. She would come to Riley and claim the remote.

Countless enemies would be mustering their forces, ready to deal with this.

Eli had the letter. He’d find a plane ticket inside, along with an urging to leave and stay gone. To drive the point home, she’d revealed her identity.

Yet Riley still felt a moment’s doubt.

Some rose from their knees. Others had managed to remain standing from the moments the fluid left the chambers. As they roused, powers flickered into action.

Siberians flickered into being near the Mantons. Six like the daughter, three more like Manton himself, all in black and white.

Chuckles, tall, fat, with arms that zig-zagged, her own addition. Thirty-one elbows, and arms that dragged behind them as they moved. Here and there, one of them would twitch, a tic. The clown makeup was a series of scars, tattooed on. One activated his speedster abilities experimentally, crossing the room in a flash.

Nostalgic, in a way. Chuckles had been around when she’d joined.

Murder Rat. Not stapled together as the original had been. She’d taken the time to do it well. When membership had been down, Bonesaw had made Murder Rat as a created addition to the Slaughterhouse Nine. She’d passed the tests, but degradation in mental and physical faculties over time had seen to her demotion.

Winter, white-haired, with white irises edged in black, nude, her eyes peering. Madeline’s eyes, Riley thought. Winter would need guns, of course.

Crimson, Winter’s brief-lived lover. Riley had taken the time to program their relationship into them. Crimson had been one of the first members in the group, Winter one of the more recent ones to die. Winter had been followed by Hatchet Face -there he was, over there, nine of them- and Hatchet Face had been followed by Cherish.

Nine Cherishes, gathering in a huddle. She’d forgotten to give them the tattoos. It didn’t matter. A glance suggested they were discussing different ways to do their hair.

The smile on her own face was so wide it hurt, but it wasn’t her smile.

King, tall and blond, unabashed in his nudity. All nine Kings were broad-shouldered, each half a foot taller than Jack.

Their interaction would be an interesting one. She’d wondered if she should program King with the knowledge that Jack had been the one to kill him, reconsidered.

Oh, and there were others. Some were harder to recognize. Nine Alan Grammes, who lacked his armor. Nine Neds, narrow shouldered and only five and a half feet tall. When the others had done some damage and given him a chance to regenerate, he’d resemble his true self a little better. He’d be Crawler.

“And the last one?” Jack pointed at the remaining chamber.

She hit a button, and for a moment, her expression slipped. She closed her eyes, a brief moment too long, as nutrient soup drained out of the chamber and the glass lowered.

But nobody was looking at her.

The boy stepped out, and there was no sign of any difficulty. He didn’t struggle as others had, nor have trouble finding his feet. He was prepubescent, to look at him, older than ten but younger than fourteen. His hair was neatly parted, and he wore a private school uniform, complete with glossy black shoes. Dry.

Even though he was naked in the tube.

Then again, that was sort of his thing. One of them, anyways.

Visually, the most notable part of him was the effect that surrounded him. He was monochrome, all grays and whites and blacks, with spots of light and shadow flickering around him. Here and there, he flickered, a double image momentarily overlapping him, ghostly, looking in a different direction.

As far as parahuman powers went, his was as unfair as they got.

“Jack,” Gray Boy said. His voice was high, clear as a bell.

“Nicholas.”

Jack extended a hand and Nicholas shook it.

Riley felt her stomach sink.

It would be like Gray Boy to use his power and take out someone in the room, just because he could. Jack had only wanted one, and the unspoken reality was that he only wanted one because he could only control one.

If he wasn’t going after Jack, then… she was the only other person in the room without clones surrounding her.

He approached her, his expression placid.

For a brief moment, she felt stark fear.

It was perhaps her salvation that the fear was buried under the expressions that her system pasted on her face. The false smile that spread across her face was the push she needed to hop down from her seat, approaching him. She leaned in close to kiss him on the cheeks, her hands on his shoulders, one leg cocking upward like she’d seen women in older films doing.

“Little brother,” she murmured.

“Bonesaw,” he said, voicing a name she hadn’t programmed into him. His hand found hers, and he held it. She felt a chill. “We’ll be inseparable, I think.”

“Inseparable,” she answered, smiling falsely.

The others from rows further down in the chamber slowly approached. She watched Jack taking it all in. Two hundred and seventy-five in all. Two hundred and seventy regulars, five special makes. Snowmann, Nighty Night, Laughjob, Tyrant, Spawner.

The names had never been a strength of hers.

I’ve given you everything you want, she thought. Now we see who comes out ahead. Succeed, and Bonesaw comes to the fore. Fail, and Riley wins.

She wanted Riley to win, but that wasn’t as simple as making a decision. She had to bury her life with the Nine. Bury Jack, and see him defeated.

Gray Boy squeezed her hand. She would have jumped, if her body language wasn’t in the system’s control. She looked at him, and he winked.

Her expression hadn’t wavered, she hadn’t allowed herself the slightest tell, but somehow he fell in the same category as Jack.

He knew.

Staring out at the gathered crowd, Jack seemed to reach a conclusion. He glanced at her, as Gray Boy was doing.

“Good,” he said.