She now has access to PRT databases. She may have found information on Hijack there. But definitely M/S protocol at this point.
Drift (post-Leviathan canon divergence)
- Thread starter Octobre
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- worm canon divergence
She now has access to PRT databases. She may have found information on Hijack there. But definitely M/S protocol at this point.
Chapter 26
Chapter 26
Bugs flew from under my armor to gather on the wall behind Piggot, forming the words 'Master-Stranger' with an arrow pointing at her.
Clockblocker reacted right away, reaching out to tag her just as she was about to call an end to the meeting.
"I really hope you're sure about this," he told me, "because otherwise, I'm getting the shit patrols forever."
Was I? There was no good reason for the real Piggot to answer the way she had. Combined with her abnormal body language and sudden desire to go along with Coil's plan, I couldn't see any other explanation. I'd read the files on every known parahuman in the city after joining the Wards — which had been quite sobering in Regent's case — and he was the only one capable of something like this.
"I'll take responsibility if I'm wrong," I said, "but Piggot knows my dad's in New York, and I was talking about a conversation that never happened. Not to mention that her body language was off, and that wanting to bring Chariot in as a mole doesn't make any sense. I think Regent's controlling her."
"So I wasn't crazy. She actually rolled her eyes at us?" Kid Win asked.
"Twice," I confirmed.
"What do we do?" Vista asked Weld.
"We'll restrain her for now, in case she's armed, then we'll ask the Master-Stranger passwords," Weld said. "According to interviews with people he controlled as Hijack, sleep revokes his control. I guess we'll find out whether this does the same within the next few minutes. Vista, can you please go get restraints in the armory?"
She rose from her seat and hurried around the table to leave the room.
Weld took out his phone, calling Deputy Director Renick to inform him of the situation, then Vista came back with an armful of restraints, and passed handcuffs to Piggot's wrists while Weld tied her to her chair with rope.
Clockblocker's power still hadn't worn off by the time the alarm announced Renick's arrival. He quickly joined us in the meeting room, two uniforms trailing behind him. He was unshaved and looked years older than he had when I'd first met him. The fact that he was still at the office at this hour hinted that we weren't the only ones pulling fifteen hours shifts since the Endbringer event.
"You're certain of this?" He asked, eyes wide after seeing the restraints around his frozen superior.
"No, we tied her up just for fun," Clockblocker deadpanned. "Figured it would be worth getting punished 'til the end of time for a few laughs."
"Apiary asked her a trick question after noticing that her body language was off, and she failed to give the right answer" Weld explained. "We suspect it's Regent, since he's the only known Master in town with the power to affect people."
"Not to mention that Coil is most likely behind this," I said. "I guess he figured if he couldn't get her fired and replaced with one of his puppets, he might as well make her the puppet."
Piggot resumed moving, huffing loudly like she was out of breath before looking down at the restraints around her.
"You figured it out," she stated. "Good. I was hoping someone would."
"Can you give us the Master-Stranger codes for this week?" Weld asked.
"Tournament-seven-five-horse," she answered without missing a beat. "Clockblocker used his power, I presume? That seems to have revoked Regent's control."
"It's possible that this is a trick," Weld told us. "We don't know Tattletale or Coil's powers. One of them could have figured out the password."
I didn't want to think of Tattletale being involved in this. It was hard enough to reconcile the Alec I knew with what I'd read in his file, I didn't want to sully my friendship with Lisa on top of that. I could imagine Grue and Bitch agreeing to what Coil had asked them to do, especially after seeing their reactions to Dinah, but Tattletale had to be working some kind of angle against him, even if it was in the long term.
The withered, brittle spring of forget-me-nots was still taped to the wall above my desk, an unspoken promise I couldn't bear to see broken.
Weld turned back to Piggot. "What did I tell you about Director Armstrong during our first meeting?"
"In the helicopter, you said that Director Armstrong in Boston was like a father figure to you after recruiting you to the Wards and getting you up to speed, and that you were planning to go visit him during the summer. You also said that you would step up to defend him if I were to put him down," she told him.
He nodded at the rest of us.
"Can you tell us what happened?" Renick asked.
"The Undersiders had someone with a Stranger classification waiting at my house when I arrived last night," she said. "A girl they called Imp, wearing a black costume and a grey mask with horns. Temporary rating of Stranger 5, appears to be able to escape notice at will."
Weld took note of this.
Had the Undersiders already replaced me? It had been what, two or three weeks since the Endbringer came? How had they even managed to find someone else so quickly?
Piggot continued. "By the time I realized what was happening, I was already restrained, and then the other Undersiders revealed themselves. I initially thought they wanted to hold me hostage, and told them about my medical condition requiring hemodialysis every night, but they simply took the machine with me and brought me to a vehicle. At a secondary location, they tied me to a bed, gagged me and set up the machine for the night, and then Regent began trying to take control of me. Like our files indicate, it took hours of him firing up every nerve in my body before he could assume full control. Then, they left me there for the night. The next morning, and Regent took control again, much faster this time, and directed me outside to my car, which they had also brought. He had me drive to the PRT HQ, and since I was fully conscious, I can give you the coordinates of the building they held me at."
Weld nodded, taking notes. "Where is it?"
"Near Langfield and Charlbury, across from the Colson building."
"I'll send a squad," said Renick, raising a hand to his earpiece to relay the message.
Piggot waited for him to be done before continuing.
"Once I arrived here, he had me go to my office and lock it, before logging into my computer. He managed to guess my password after a few moments, presumably with Tattletale's help. Then, he had me download our internal database to a USB drive, as well as the content of my computer, phone and emails."
"Everything?" Renick spoke.
"Everything but the most secure data."
"Are our identities compromised?" Clockblocker asked at the same time.
"That would be part of the protected data they couldn't access," Piggot said. "He could have had me order Dragon to give it up, but I suppose that would have given away the show. Then, he had me leave the building to deliver the USB drive a few streets away to someone in civilian clothes, presumably one of Coil's mercenaries. When I came back, he had me sit at my desk, writing emails and making phone calls while pretending to be me for the rest of the day."
"Until the Travelers arrived," Weld concluded.
"Yes. They came straight to my desk, and he had me order squads to stand down, and Dragon, not to put the building on lockdown or deploy one of her suit. They brought me down to the sub-basement where Trickster's cell was, and used my biometrics to bypass Dragon's system and open the door. I suppose you know the rest."
"What happens now?" Vista asked.
"According to our files and what I've witnessed, once Regent takes control of someone, he can do it much faster in subsequent times," Piggot said. "We do not know the exact distance he needs to be from someone to use his power on them, but according to testimonies of people he controlled as Hijack, once he has control, he can puppeteer them from across the city."
"So Coil got what he wanted, one way or the other," I said. "Either we find out that you're compromised and you have to step down, or we don't, and Regent continues to puppeteer you to do exactly what Coil wants. Or maybe it was never meant to work in the long-term and he already got what he wanted with the stolen data."
"Yes," she said, looking fairly composed for someone in her situation. "My career in this city is effectively over. Deputy Director Renick will now assume leadership."
"We will have a helicopter ready to evacuate you shortly, and will make arrangements to find you a hemodialysis machine there," Renick told her. "Once you are safely out of Regent's range, you can do a full debrief about the orders he gave while passing for you, so we can try to limit the damage and gain insight into Coil's goals."
"Good," she said, nodding. "I wish you luck."
The two uniforms went to her and untied the ropes, but left the handcuffs on before escorting her out. Renick took her place beside Weld.
"So just like that, Piggy's gone?" Asked Clockblocker. "What's gonna happen to her?"
"Director Piggot will be brought to Boston for now, to ensure that Regent can't regain control over her and verify that his power did not leave any lingering effect," Renick answered. "As for the future, she will most likely be transfered to another department, though with the Shadow Stalker scandal as a legacy, I doubt she will become Director again."
I felt bad that Regent had used his full power on her, and it must have been horrifying to lose control like that, but I couldn't say I was sad to see her go. I resented the fact that Coil got what he wanted in the end, but as far as I was concerned, none of this would have happened if she had acted decisively against him as soon as I gave the intel on his base, so it felt a bit like karma came calling.
"Coil might try the same thing again with you," I pointed out.
"I'll place my family in protective custody outside of the city," Renick answered, "and will temporarily move to the base full time, to minimize opportunities for them to get me. I will also work out a password system with Déjà Vu to give us an advance warning in case something happens anyways."
"What about Coil?" I asked. "Are you going to actually do something against him?"
"I do believe that he is a much more pressing priority than Director Piggot had made him, especially after today's event, both with the Travelers and with Regent. That being said, the main problem in dealing with him is that he remains largely underground and acts almost exclusively through subordinates, on top of having a precog warning him of any move we make."
"What if we could find his base?" I asked, thinking of the map I religiously filled in after every patrol. I hadn't found anything so far, but it only meant that I kept narrowing down possible locations.
"Hopefully we will, and I think it would be sensible to have a plan of action ready for that eventuality," he answered, "especially since with a precog at play, time is of the essence."
"And the Thinker warnings?"
"I've been Director for less than five minutes, so I'll have a better idea of how to handle the situation and what resources we can dedicate to this once I've gotten up to speed on everything and had some actual time to think about it," he said. "But I believe that we have no choice but to take action, as soon as we can locate him. Seeing as he appears to be growing bolder with every move, I wouldn't be surprised if he purposely unleashed the cause of the warnings upon us, and leaked the fact that we were aware of it and did nothing to further discredit us and possibly force another change of leadership."
"What Thinker warnings?" Vista asked.
Renick turned to her.
"After Apiary switched sides, she gave us intel about the location of Coil's base in hopes that we could mount an offensive to rescue Dinah Alcott. When we consulted Thinkers about it, they warned us of potential damages on par with an Endbringer attack if we moved forward and attacked his base."
"And you still want to attack his base?" Clockblocker asked, disbelieving.
"We'll try to find a way to minimize the damage, but if the chips are going to fall no matter what, I'd much prefer for it to happen on our terms than on his, especially if he's planning to set us up with another lose-lose situation."
That was good. Much better than Piggot's "out of sight, out of mind" policy. I didn't want to get my hopes up before seeing concrete results, but it was a good start.
"Until we can locate Coil," he continued, "we'll try a strike team strategy against the teams working for him, with the Protectorate responding in force whenever they show themselves. I'll request some more transfers to fill our ranks and allow us to keep the offensive pressure until they are either driven off or in custody."
That was less good to hear. I couldn't help but think about the Undersiders, and despite everything, I didn't want to see them arrested.
"What about Chariot?" Kid Win asked. "Are we still bringing him into the Wards as a double-agent?"
"Of course not," Renick answered bluntly. "We know this is what Coil wants, and for that reason alone, we cannot allow it to happen. Not to mention that he has already made attempts on Apiary's life twice, and bringing a known mole into the fray would just be too risky. No. We will offer him a place on another team, with incentives to move to a different city, but it seems unlikely that he will accept if he has already committed to working for Coil."
"So we can probably count him in our opposition," Weld concluded.
"Probably. However, between him, the Undersiders' new member and Dinah Alcott, it raises the question of how Coil manages to find all these new capes before we do. We work with hospitals and the police and have a few agents combing through records for potential trigger events to coordinate visits, but knowing that we still have moles in our ranks, I wouldn't be surprised to find one there, diverting our attention away from potential triggers while handing the information to Coil."
"What can we do about it?" Weld asked.
"I'll ask for out of town agents to take over these tasks for now. However, they won't be able to make visits, and to keep the information from reaching potential moles, I'd rather entrust this task to you Wards."
"So we have to squeeze in hospital visits on top of everything else?" Clockblocker asked.
"I know the current situation is stretching everyone out too thin, but as a reprieve, we'll also be adjusting your patrolling schedule to leave the patrols past curfew to the Protectorate."
"It's because of the Nine, isn't it?" Vista asked.
"Yes," Renick stated. "We've confirmed today that the Slaughterhouse Nine are in town. Director Piggot wanted to keep you Wards out of it, but I believe it is better for everyone to be informed."
"Great," said Clockblocker. "Just great. Things just keep getting better."
"This is above your pay grade, and you are not to engage them in any manner," Renick continued. "If you see them, run. But I'd like us to have a refresher course anyways, especially since you don't have access to the files on the S-class threats."
He thumbed his phone, and the screen changed to a picture of a relatively attractive man with dark hair, a trimmed beard and a mustache. He wore a white shirt, partially unbuttoned to show his hairless upper chest.
"Jack Slash. The leader. Blaster. He can extend and project the cutting edge of a blade. Likes to talk and get into people's heads, and likes to set up twisted games with his victims."
The image changed to a woman, naked and painted in alternating stripes of jet black and snow white.
"The Siberian. Brute, of the "don't worry about the number, just run" category. Invulnerable, implacable, so far unstoppable. Killed Hero, injured the invulnerable Alexandria, tangled with the Triumvirate a half-dozen times and always came out on top."
The image changed again. A girl, barely older than Dinah, with impeccable blond ringlets and a dress and apron stained with blood. She was pictured with a mechanical construct the size of a dog, with spidery legs ending in surgery tools.
"Bonesaw. Tinker, specialized in surgery, but with a wide enough range to include anything from robotics to biochemistry. Has been known to capture parahumans and experiment on them."
A shiver ran down my spine at the prospect.
Next was a dark-haired, brown-skinned woman with a helmet of colored glass forming a beak over the upper half of her face.
"Shatterbird. Shaker. Wide scale silica kinetic. She is known to use her power to announce the Nine's presence in a city. We have to expect that it will be the case here too. A team has already started boarding up the building's windows from the inside, and Armsmaster has soundproofed the Wards' panic room to store and preserve sensitive equipment. Kid Win, rather than going out on patrols for the next few days, you will assist him."
I made a mental note to ask Maureen about the composition of my mask's lenses, and to message Lanaro that I needed some contact lenses. At least the aquarium and terrariums in my workshop were all made of plexiglas.
The next picture showed a massive creature with six legs, its body black and iridescent and its limbs forking at the joints. I'd come across stories about him when I'd been researching possible superhero names for myself. It wasn't pretty.
"Crawler. Changer, Brute. Adaptive regeneration. Anything that doesn't kill him makes him stronger, literally. Our last reports indicates that his armor can withstand the blast of a small nuke, that he is surprisingly fast and agile, and that he has a caustic spit."
The next one was humanoid in silhouette, but looked artificial. Standing taller than the others, the body was in pieces, each section wrapped in a hard white shell, with loose chains and ball joints between the limbs' sections, in a way that reminded me of the third body from the crime scene we'd checked out earlier in the day.
"Mannequin. Tinker and collaborator of Bonesaw. Formerly Sphere. Specialized in closed systems sustaining life. Has performed extensive body modifications to rid himself of weaknesses. Likes to go after tinkers and people who try to make the world a better place."
The image was replaced with a young woman, in her late teens or early twenties, who looked almost normal, save for the vertical row of cigarette burns on each cheek and the faint glow to her eyes.
"Burnscar. Shaker. Pyrokinetic who can teleport through fire. Relatively new to the team compared to the other members."
Next was a stocky man with a shaved head, whose face looked like it was more scar tissue than flesh.
"Hatchet Face. Trump, a power nullifier who likes to hunt down parahumans."
Renick turned off the screen.
"You may have noticed that there are currently only eight of them. We suspect that they will try to find candidates to fill their vacancy. Usually, they will nominate a handful of parahumans, then submit them to a series of tests, and the survivor joins them. Again, we have no reason to expect anything different here. Questions?"
Stunned silence was the sole answer.
That was a lot to process. Some of the most fucked up parahumans on the planet, wreaking havoc in our city. Hopefully we wouldn't encounter any of them.
Bugs flew from under my armor to gather on the wall behind Piggot, forming the words 'Master-Stranger' with an arrow pointing at her.
Clockblocker reacted right away, reaching out to tag her just as she was about to call an end to the meeting.
"I really hope you're sure about this," he told me, "because otherwise, I'm getting the shit patrols forever."
Was I? There was no good reason for the real Piggot to answer the way she had. Combined with her abnormal body language and sudden desire to go along with Coil's plan, I couldn't see any other explanation. I'd read the files on every known parahuman in the city after joining the Wards — which had been quite sobering in Regent's case — and he was the only one capable of something like this.
"I'll take responsibility if I'm wrong," I said, "but Piggot knows my dad's in New York, and I was talking about a conversation that never happened. Not to mention that her body language was off, and that wanting to bring Chariot in as a mole doesn't make any sense. I think Regent's controlling her."
"So I wasn't crazy. She actually rolled her eyes at us?" Kid Win asked.
"Twice," I confirmed.
"What do we do?" Vista asked Weld.
"We'll restrain her for now, in case she's armed, then we'll ask the Master-Stranger passwords," Weld said. "According to interviews with people he controlled as Hijack, sleep revokes his control. I guess we'll find out whether this does the same within the next few minutes. Vista, can you please go get restraints in the armory?"
She rose from her seat and hurried around the table to leave the room.
Weld took out his phone, calling Deputy Director Renick to inform him of the situation, then Vista came back with an armful of restraints, and passed handcuffs to Piggot's wrists while Weld tied her to her chair with rope.
Clockblocker's power still hadn't worn off by the time the alarm announced Renick's arrival. He quickly joined us in the meeting room, two uniforms trailing behind him. He was unshaved and looked years older than he had when I'd first met him. The fact that he was still at the office at this hour hinted that we weren't the only ones pulling fifteen hours shifts since the Endbringer event.
"You're certain of this?" He asked, eyes wide after seeing the restraints around his frozen superior.
"No, we tied her up just for fun," Clockblocker deadpanned. "Figured it would be worth getting punished 'til the end of time for a few laughs."
"Apiary asked her a trick question after noticing that her body language was off, and she failed to give the right answer" Weld explained. "We suspect it's Regent, since he's the only known Master in town with the power to affect people."
"Not to mention that Coil is most likely behind this," I said. "I guess he figured if he couldn't get her fired and replaced with one of his puppets, he might as well make her the puppet."
Piggot resumed moving, huffing loudly like she was out of breath before looking down at the restraints around her.
"You figured it out," she stated. "Good. I was hoping someone would."
"Can you give us the Master-Stranger codes for this week?" Weld asked.
"Tournament-seven-five-horse," she answered without missing a beat. "Clockblocker used his power, I presume? That seems to have revoked Regent's control."
"It's possible that this is a trick," Weld told us. "We don't know Tattletale or Coil's powers. One of them could have figured out the password."
I didn't want to think of Tattletale being involved in this. It was hard enough to reconcile the Alec I knew with what I'd read in his file, I didn't want to sully my friendship with Lisa on top of that. I could imagine Grue and Bitch agreeing to what Coil had asked them to do, especially after seeing their reactions to Dinah, but Tattletale had to be working some kind of angle against him, even if it was in the long term.
The withered, brittle spring of forget-me-nots was still taped to the wall above my desk, an unspoken promise I couldn't bear to see broken.
Weld turned back to Piggot. "What did I tell you about Director Armstrong during our first meeting?"
"In the helicopter, you said that Director Armstrong in Boston was like a father figure to you after recruiting you to the Wards and getting you up to speed, and that you were planning to go visit him during the summer. You also said that you would step up to defend him if I were to put him down," she told him.
He nodded at the rest of us.
"Can you tell us what happened?" Renick asked.
"The Undersiders had someone with a Stranger classification waiting at my house when I arrived last night," she said. "A girl they called Imp, wearing a black costume and a grey mask with horns. Temporary rating of Stranger 5, appears to be able to escape notice at will."
Weld took note of this.
Had the Undersiders already replaced me? It had been what, two or three weeks since the Endbringer came? How had they even managed to find someone else so quickly?
Piggot continued. "By the time I realized what was happening, I was already restrained, and then the other Undersiders revealed themselves. I initially thought they wanted to hold me hostage, and told them about my medical condition requiring hemodialysis every night, but they simply took the machine with me and brought me to a vehicle. At a secondary location, they tied me to a bed, gagged me and set up the machine for the night, and then Regent began trying to take control of me. Like our files indicate, it took hours of him firing up every nerve in my body before he could assume full control. Then, they left me there for the night. The next morning, and Regent took control again, much faster this time, and directed me outside to my car, which they had also brought. He had me drive to the PRT HQ, and since I was fully conscious, I can give you the coordinates of the building they held me at."
Weld nodded, taking notes. "Where is it?"
"Near Langfield and Charlbury, across from the Colson building."
"I'll send a squad," said Renick, raising a hand to his earpiece to relay the message.
Piggot waited for him to be done before continuing.
"Once I arrived here, he had me go to my office and lock it, before logging into my computer. He managed to guess my password after a few moments, presumably with Tattletale's help. Then, he had me download our internal database to a USB drive, as well as the content of my computer, phone and emails."
"Everything?" Renick spoke.
"Everything but the most secure data."
"Are our identities compromised?" Clockblocker asked at the same time.
"That would be part of the protected data they couldn't access," Piggot said. "He could have had me order Dragon to give it up, but I suppose that would have given away the show. Then, he had me leave the building to deliver the USB drive a few streets away to someone in civilian clothes, presumably one of Coil's mercenaries. When I came back, he had me sit at my desk, writing emails and making phone calls while pretending to be me for the rest of the day."
"Until the Travelers arrived," Weld concluded.
"Yes. They came straight to my desk, and he had me order squads to stand down, and Dragon, not to put the building on lockdown or deploy one of her suit. They brought me down to the sub-basement where Trickster's cell was, and used my biometrics to bypass Dragon's system and open the door. I suppose you know the rest."
"What happens now?" Vista asked.
"According to our files and what I've witnessed, once Regent takes control of someone, he can do it much faster in subsequent times," Piggot said. "We do not know the exact distance he needs to be from someone to use his power on them, but according to testimonies of people he controlled as Hijack, once he has control, he can puppeteer them from across the city."
"So Coil got what he wanted, one way or the other," I said. "Either we find out that you're compromised and you have to step down, or we don't, and Regent continues to puppeteer you to do exactly what Coil wants. Or maybe it was never meant to work in the long-term and he already got what he wanted with the stolen data."
"Yes," she said, looking fairly composed for someone in her situation. "My career in this city is effectively over. Deputy Director Renick will now assume leadership."
"We will have a helicopter ready to evacuate you shortly, and will make arrangements to find you a hemodialysis machine there," Renick told her. "Once you are safely out of Regent's range, you can do a full debrief about the orders he gave while passing for you, so we can try to limit the damage and gain insight into Coil's goals."
"Good," she said, nodding. "I wish you luck."
The two uniforms went to her and untied the ropes, but left the handcuffs on before escorting her out. Renick took her place beside Weld.
"So just like that, Piggy's gone?" Asked Clockblocker. "What's gonna happen to her?"
"Director Piggot will be brought to Boston for now, to ensure that Regent can't regain control over her and verify that his power did not leave any lingering effect," Renick answered. "As for the future, she will most likely be transfered to another department, though with the Shadow Stalker scandal as a legacy, I doubt she will become Director again."
I felt bad that Regent had used his full power on her, and it must have been horrifying to lose control like that, but I couldn't say I was sad to see her go. I resented the fact that Coil got what he wanted in the end, but as far as I was concerned, none of this would have happened if she had acted decisively against him as soon as I gave the intel on his base, so it felt a bit like karma came calling.
"Coil might try the same thing again with you," I pointed out.
"I'll place my family in protective custody outside of the city," Renick answered, "and will temporarily move to the base full time, to minimize opportunities for them to get me. I will also work out a password system with Déjà Vu to give us an advance warning in case something happens anyways."
"What about Coil?" I asked. "Are you going to actually do something against him?"
"I do believe that he is a much more pressing priority than Director Piggot had made him, especially after today's event, both with the Travelers and with Regent. That being said, the main problem in dealing with him is that he remains largely underground and acts almost exclusively through subordinates, on top of having a precog warning him of any move we make."
"What if we could find his base?" I asked, thinking of the map I religiously filled in after every patrol. I hadn't found anything so far, but it only meant that I kept narrowing down possible locations.
"Hopefully we will, and I think it would be sensible to have a plan of action ready for that eventuality," he answered, "especially since with a precog at play, time is of the essence."
"And the Thinker warnings?"
"I've been Director for less than five minutes, so I'll have a better idea of how to handle the situation and what resources we can dedicate to this once I've gotten up to speed on everything and had some actual time to think about it," he said. "But I believe that we have no choice but to take action, as soon as we can locate him. Seeing as he appears to be growing bolder with every move, I wouldn't be surprised if he purposely unleashed the cause of the warnings upon us, and leaked the fact that we were aware of it and did nothing to further discredit us and possibly force another change of leadership."
"What Thinker warnings?" Vista asked.
Renick turned to her.
"After Apiary switched sides, she gave us intel about the location of Coil's base in hopes that we could mount an offensive to rescue Dinah Alcott. When we consulted Thinkers about it, they warned us of potential damages on par with an Endbringer attack if we moved forward and attacked his base."
"And you still want to attack his base?" Clockblocker asked, disbelieving.
"We'll try to find a way to minimize the damage, but if the chips are going to fall no matter what, I'd much prefer for it to happen on our terms than on his, especially if he's planning to set us up with another lose-lose situation."
That was good. Much better than Piggot's "out of sight, out of mind" policy. I didn't want to get my hopes up before seeing concrete results, but it was a good start.
"Until we can locate Coil," he continued, "we'll try a strike team strategy against the teams working for him, with the Protectorate responding in force whenever they show themselves. I'll request some more transfers to fill our ranks and allow us to keep the offensive pressure until they are either driven off or in custody."
That was less good to hear. I couldn't help but think about the Undersiders, and despite everything, I didn't want to see them arrested.
"What about Chariot?" Kid Win asked. "Are we still bringing him into the Wards as a double-agent?"
"Of course not," Renick answered bluntly. "We know this is what Coil wants, and for that reason alone, we cannot allow it to happen. Not to mention that he has already made attempts on Apiary's life twice, and bringing a known mole into the fray would just be too risky. No. We will offer him a place on another team, with incentives to move to a different city, but it seems unlikely that he will accept if he has already committed to working for Coil."
"So we can probably count him in our opposition," Weld concluded.
"Probably. However, between him, the Undersiders' new member and Dinah Alcott, it raises the question of how Coil manages to find all these new capes before we do. We work with hospitals and the police and have a few agents combing through records for potential trigger events to coordinate visits, but knowing that we still have moles in our ranks, I wouldn't be surprised to find one there, diverting our attention away from potential triggers while handing the information to Coil."
"What can we do about it?" Weld asked.
"I'll ask for out of town agents to take over these tasks for now. However, they won't be able to make visits, and to keep the information from reaching potential moles, I'd rather entrust this task to you Wards."
"So we have to squeeze in hospital visits on top of everything else?" Clockblocker asked.
"I know the current situation is stretching everyone out too thin, but as a reprieve, we'll also be adjusting your patrolling schedule to leave the patrols past curfew to the Protectorate."
"It's because of the Nine, isn't it?" Vista asked.
"Yes," Renick stated. "We've confirmed today that the Slaughterhouse Nine are in town. Director Piggot wanted to keep you Wards out of it, but I believe it is better for everyone to be informed."
"Great," said Clockblocker. "Just great. Things just keep getting better."
"This is above your pay grade, and you are not to engage them in any manner," Renick continued. "If you see them, run. But I'd like us to have a refresher course anyways, especially since you don't have access to the files on the S-class threats."
He thumbed his phone, and the screen changed to a picture of a relatively attractive man with dark hair, a trimmed beard and a mustache. He wore a white shirt, partially unbuttoned to show his hairless upper chest.
"Jack Slash. The leader. Blaster. He can extend and project the cutting edge of a blade. Likes to talk and get into people's heads, and likes to set up twisted games with his victims."
The image changed to a woman, naked and painted in alternating stripes of jet black and snow white.
"The Siberian. Brute, of the "don't worry about the number, just run" category. Invulnerable, implacable, so far unstoppable. Killed Hero, injured the invulnerable Alexandria, tangled with the Triumvirate a half-dozen times and always came out on top."
The image changed again. A girl, barely older than Dinah, with impeccable blond ringlets and a dress and apron stained with blood. She was pictured with a mechanical construct the size of a dog, with spidery legs ending in surgery tools.
"Bonesaw. Tinker, specialized in surgery, but with a wide enough range to include anything from robotics to biochemistry. Has been known to capture parahumans and experiment on them."
A shiver ran down my spine at the prospect.
Next was a dark-haired, brown-skinned woman with a helmet of colored glass forming a beak over the upper half of her face.
"Shatterbird. Shaker. Wide scale silica kinetic. She is known to use her power to announce the Nine's presence in a city. We have to expect that it will be the case here too. A team has already started boarding up the building's windows from the inside, and Armsmaster has soundproofed the Wards' panic room to store and preserve sensitive equipment. Kid Win, rather than going out on patrols for the next few days, you will assist him."
I made a mental note to ask Maureen about the composition of my mask's lenses, and to message Lanaro that I needed some contact lenses. At least the aquarium and terrariums in my workshop were all made of plexiglas.
The next picture showed a massive creature with six legs, its body black and iridescent and its limbs forking at the joints. I'd come across stories about him when I'd been researching possible superhero names for myself. It wasn't pretty.
"Crawler. Changer, Brute. Adaptive regeneration. Anything that doesn't kill him makes him stronger, literally. Our last reports indicates that his armor can withstand the blast of a small nuke, that he is surprisingly fast and agile, and that he has a caustic spit."
The next one was humanoid in silhouette, but looked artificial. Standing taller than the others, the body was in pieces, each section wrapped in a hard white shell, with loose chains and ball joints between the limbs' sections, in a way that reminded me of the third body from the crime scene we'd checked out earlier in the day.
"Mannequin. Tinker and collaborator of Bonesaw. Formerly Sphere. Specialized in closed systems sustaining life. Has performed extensive body modifications to rid himself of weaknesses. Likes to go after tinkers and people who try to make the world a better place."
The image was replaced with a young woman, in her late teens or early twenties, who looked almost normal, save for the vertical row of cigarette burns on each cheek and the faint glow to her eyes.
"Burnscar. Shaker. Pyrokinetic who can teleport through fire. Relatively new to the team compared to the other members."
Next was a stocky man with a shaved head, whose face looked like it was more scar tissue than flesh.
"Hatchet Face. Trump, a power nullifier who likes to hunt down parahumans."
Renick turned off the screen.
"You may have noticed that there are currently only eight of them. We suspect that they will try to find candidates to fill their vacancy. Usually, they will nominate a handful of parahumans, then submit them to a series of tests, and the survivor joins them. Again, we have no reason to expect anything different here. Questions?"
Stunned silence was the sole answer.
That was a lot to process. Some of the most fucked up parahumans on the planet, wreaking havoc in our city. Hopefully we wouldn't encounter any of them.
You know what, absolutely fair. Also of course you take him more seriously when he just got your predecessor mastered, it's basic self-preservation.
...odds he's *also* being mastered?
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It wouldn't have made a difference either way, but you really shouldn't have said that, Taylor.
- Location
- The Internet?
This makes it sound like Armsmaster is still on site. I know he was due to be transferred, but I thought the actual trade-off had happened by this point. I might be misremembering.
Did you hear that, Vic? Watch out for his spit.
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- Location
- Highlands
So chariot is basically going to be left in the wind? If it's unlikely he will join willingly, then play hard ball on the idiot child who thought it was a good idea to infiltrate a government organisation and how to do this? why by pulling the most powerful move of all on him.
Telling his mother.
Seriously, chariot's mother can get him forcefully transferred out of state, away form coil's reach, when she learns he's already got one parahuman child locked up in his basement. And this lets another ward transfer in.
Chapter 27
Chapter 27
Renick left to inform the rest of the employees of the recent developments, while we tried to rearrange our patrolling schedule with the new restrictions and to include hospital visits on top of everything else.
"It probably won't happen at every shift," said Glory Girl, who apparently had done this before. "The PRT will inform us of when we need to make a visit, though with the possibility of moles currently underreporting potential triggers, it might be a good thing to start strong with a visit to each hospital, just to make sure no one slips through the cracks."
It brought back memories of what Armsmaster had said, that someone had visited me shortly after the locker incident, but that it went nowhere. How different would my life be if they'd been more thorough? Would I have joined the Wards from the beginning? Then I would have been forced to work with Sophia. Would they have believed me if I told them everything she'd done? Would they have taken action? I had my doubts.
"Sounds great, but not really what we need to be doing right now," said Clockblocker. "Seems to me like the priorities are all wrong."
"They're trying to keep us out of the worst of it," Weld pointed out. "The priority is supporting the Protectorate and PRT as we can, and this is another way."
"Right. Sorry."
"No need to apologize. It's good that you're voicing your thoughts. Speaking of voicing your thoughts, anyone else wants to share?"
"It feels like things are about to get even worse," Kid Win said in a quiet voice.
"We have to take it day by day," Flechette answered. "And we most likely won't be directly involved in the conflict with the Nine."
"Still, more people are going to die," said Vista. "Civilians, and maybe even Protectorate members, and there's not much we can do about it."
"We can do our best," Glory Girl said. "Beyond that, it's out of our hands."
Weld nodded along.
"Apiary," he addressed me, "we haven't heard from you. Anything you'd like to share?"
Not really, but I suspected I wouldn't get away with saying nothing.
"I'm a bit spooked," I admitted. "About the Slaughterhouse Nine, and about what the Undersiders did."
"Understandable," Weld said, his tone inviting me to continue.
"I didn't expect them to have a new member so soon, or to use Regent's full power. I don't know how to feel about that."
Weld appeared satisfied with that, and went back to the subject of our schedule.
"Since we have to stay at the base anyways after curfew," he said, "I was thinking about moving class and training in the evening, so that we can start patrolling earlier in the day to compensate. Any objections?"
A few people shook their heads, and no one spoke up.
"If you're not too exhausted yet," he continued, "and since the rest of our evening just cleared up, we can have our first training session right now, just to show what tricks we have up our sleeves and get familiar with each other's powers. We've all heard about it or read the files, but that's not quite the same as seeing someone in action."
After everyone agreed, we headed to the gym. Glory Girl went to the armory to put on a black bodysuit before joining us.
"Who wants to go first?" Weld asked once we were all gathered.
It was like a teacher asking for volunteers to speak in front of the class. Nobody did, so Weld went first.
He removed his shirt, showing his musculature perfectly etched out in the metal, with silver lines tracing the muscle definition.
"I absorb any metal I come in contact with," he started, "which can be an inconvenient, since it's involuntary. Then I can move it around and reshape my body."
He demonstrated, his forearm elongating to become a baseball bat with spikes around the end, then shifting to a long blade.
"My physiology also means that I'm more durable than most, and can't really be injured in a fight. It also has the advantage to make me somewhat resistant to organic-only or inorganic-only powers. I can also leave a limb behind if needed, though I need to absorb more metal to reform it."
Glory Girl went next, showing off her flight and strength, as well as a few martial arts moves and midair maneuvers.
Then, Vista went, demonstrating impressive feats of space compression and various complicated tricks she had developed and named over the years.
"But living creatures interfere with it, and it takes me time to work it," she specified.
Clockblocker went next, and I learned that he carried a number of items beneath his armor, including string and sheets of paper he could turn into midair steps with a deadly edge.
Kid Win showed us his creations, mostly guns with a variety of settings, then Flechette explained her power as "imbuing inorganic material to ignore certain laws of physics, mainly to allow them to punch through virtually anything." She could also use it to increase or reduce friction, and had an intuitive understanding of angles and an enhanced sense of timing, which she demonstrated by throwing darts at targets over her shoulder.
Then, it was my turn.
"There's not much to show," I said as the gym filled with bees. "I control and get feedback from every bug in my range, which is of about eight hundred to a thousand feet all around me, but sometimes it's bigger depending on circumstances. I can see and hear through some types of bugs, but it's mostly touch and proprioception that are useful. I can tell where every single one of them is in relation to myself, so I use the more discreet types of bugs to tag people and things, to give me a mental map of my surroundings. I also make spidersilk, and use cords of it to tie up criminals from a distance."
I shaped the bees in a humanoid form, then made the form move like it was running around the gym.
"I can make decoys like that, and cover myself or others with bees to blend in with them."
"Please don't cover me with bees," Clockblocker interjected.
"I'm training to make them talk, too," I continued.
The bugs began chirping, buzzing and droning to imitate the pitch and tone of words. "Hello, Wards," they said.
"I'm not allowed to let them bite or sting, though. Glenn's rules. But the bank robbery from Faultline's crew got me thinking about using them as a vehicle for a paralytic agent like Newter's bodily fluids."
"Newter?" Asked Flechette at the same time Vista said "Bodily fluids?" in a disgusted tone.
"They're powerful hallucinogens," I explained. "I once took down Lung by smearing a bug coated with Newter's blood in his eye. If I could get my hands on something like that, I could neutralize just about anyone from a distance, with minimal risks."
"That's a good idea," Weld said. "I'll see with the guys upstairs what we can do. Well, that's it for tonight. See you tomorrow, and don't forget about the new patrolling schedule. First up, Apiary and Vista, while Glory Girl and I will make hospital rounds."
The next morning, a box of contact lenses and a bottle of solution were waiting for me on my desk, courtesy of Lanaro.
I went to the bathroom to put them on, and was immediately reminded of why I much preferred to wear glasses. I hated them so much. They were never comfortable, not when I'd tried them in the past at Emma's insistence, and certainly not now. They kept flipping inside out to cling to my fingertip instead of sticking to my eyes.
After several minutes of struggle, I managed to get them on, and went back to my room to get dressed, selecting the spare copy of my mask that didn't have my prescription integrated in the lenses so that I could see while wearing contacts underneath.
Once I was done, I went to the panic room at the far end of the corridor, where soundproofing panels had been installed on every surface. Armsmaster was there, unloading crates of electronics and tinker projects from a cart and piling them against the back wall.
"Good morning," he greeted me. "I've already removed the regulator from your workshop, so you might want to keep your spiders in their terrariums when you leave the building. I've also brought your braille computer and printer."
I nodded. "Thanks. Think you can find some room for these?" I asked, handing him the protective case with my glasses.
"I think I'll manage," he said.
I left him to his work.
Meanwhile, mosquitoes had found Flechette in the break room like yesterday, only this time, she wasn't alone.
Glory Girl was also there.
They sat on the couches, chatting, and I couldn't go to the cafeteria without them noticing me as I passed the break room.
Should I wait for them to leave?
Flechette could be waiting for me specifically, so that might not work, not to mention that the others would be getting up soon. Vista's first alarm had already gone off, though she was still in bed, but that meant she would get up in ten to fifteen minutes. If I waited, there was a higher chance of encountering her or Kid Win, not to mention that Flechette would probably wave me over in the cafeteria anyways. I decided to go to the break room despite Glory Girl's presence. It felt like the least awkward option.
Flechette greeted me as I arrived, and I did the same. Glory Girl looked back at me, but didn't say anything, face unreadable. She was wearing a plain black bodysuit, like during yesterday's training.
"Should we wait for the others before heading out?" Flechette asked.
"They usually get up after seven, so they won't be ready for a while," I answered.
"We might as well go, then," she said, getting to her feet, and to my surprise, Glory Girl did the same without a word.
I would have thought that she'd rather hang out with the pre-Leviathan Wards than with me, but after yesterday, she appeared to have decided that my presence was tolerable, even in a casual setting. Either that or she wanted to hang out with Flechette more than she minded my presence.
We made our way to the cafeteria in silence, going our separate ways to grab our food, then I joined Flechette just outside of the canteen, and we waited for Glory Girl. When she arrived, we went to a table on the side, Flechette siting across from me, and Glory Girl, beside her. She had a tea, a raspberry muffin, and a banana.
I removed my mask to take a sip of coffee as Flechette and Glory Girl began talking about training regiments, presumably a follow up to the conversation they had before my arrival.
I didn't really participate, aside from revealing that I'd started running every day in preparation for going out in costume, and was content to listen with one ear and nod along.
Meanwhile, I was reading about the Slaughterhouse Nine through my bugs. Last night, after training, I'd turned to the internet for research about the Slaughterhouse Nine since we didn't have access to the files on the S-class threats from the database, then went to my workshop to print my findings in braille to be able to read them later.
I'd told myself that it was better to be armed with information, but the more I read, the more discouraged and spooked I became. These guys were the real deal, racking up a body count of at least four digits in every major city they visited. Shatterbird alone accounted for a large part of that. When she "sang," her power allowed her to make every piece of glass and silica within her range explode violently.
Maureen had answered my message, reassuring me that the lenses of my mask weren't glass, so at least, I wouldn't end up with glass shards exploding in my eyes. I also wore my old spidersilk bodysuit beneath my costume, so I was at least somewhat protected, but the others weren't.
On the workbench, my black widow spiders were working relentlessly, and were nearly done with the suits. I hoped that they would finish them before any encounter with the Nine. I wanted to make more, for Flechette, Weld and possibly even Glory Girl, but I figured it was better to finish the first batch rather than to spread my weavers too thin.
I finished breakfast just as the others arrived to the cafeteria, and I excused myself to my workshop to avoid any awkwardness if Flechette tried to wave them over.
I called a swarm through the trap on the ceiling to feed the spiders, and it also carried fresh leaves for the cicadas and grasshoppers. Meanwhile, I gave the horseshoe crabs pieces of shrimp, and refilled the water dishes in every terrarium. Then, I made a batch of sugar syrup, and left it in the pot to cool so I could refill my bees' feeders later in the day.
A few minutes before eight, I sent the spiders back into their terrariums before going down to headquarters to join Vista for our first patrol together.
I felt irrationally nervous, given that I'd survived my patrol with Glory Girl, who had much more specific reasons to hold a grudge against me. Still, we'd fallen into a routine of mutually ignoring each other, and deviating from it brought me into an uncharted territory I couldn't help but be anxious about.
As I entered the base, Clockblocker was manning the console while Kid Win worked on the soundproof room with Armsmaster, and Flechette was doing paperwork in her room. Vista was waiting by the console, chatting with Weld and Glory Girl, who were heading to a hospital to check on some potential triggers. They stopped talking when the door opened, and I couldn't help but assume that they'd been talking about me.
We took the elevator together, then walked out of the lobby, and went our separate ways in the parking lot, Weld and Victoria heading South, while Vista and I went North.
Unlike Glory Girl, Vista didn't remain silent for very long.
"Clockblocker said that you wanted to be a hero and that you joined the Undersiders to infiltrate them," she said in a neutral voice as we left the parking lot.
Part of me suspected that she'd been waiting for an opportunity to question me alone. Maybe Weld had encouraged her to do so, hoping that it would soothe the tensions between us.
"I did," I answered. "Though I changed my mind eventually."
"Why?"
I hesitated, trying to find the least pathetic way to phrase the fact that I had no friends before because of the bullying.
"I got to know them better, and we became friends. It made it that much harder to betray them," I said.
"So you decided to become a villain for real, despite wanting to be a hero" she stated.
"Yes. For about a week and a half, then I learned about Dinah, and that wasn't something I could turn a blind eye to like the rest of the team."
"And you really quit them over it?" She asked. "Despite them being your friends?"
"I couldn't live with myself if I stayed there and did nothing," I explained. "I didn't really have a plan in mind or anything when I left. I just couldn't stand to keep working for Coil after that, and wanted to find a way to rescue her. Then Leviathan happened, and I asked for the PRT and Protectorate to intervene in exchange for joining the Wards, but they didn't want to do anything because of the Thinker warnings. By the time Piggot was actually willing to make a plan and mobilize resources, he'd moved out of his base, and now we're back to square one."
"I thought you joined the Wards because of what Shadow Stalker did, though Clockblocker said that the big guys more or less twisted your arm," she said, not quite a question, but I answered it as one.
"They did. Armsmaster managed to find my identity and tried to back me into a corner, but mainly, I realized that the best thing I could do against Coil was to reveal his plan and the location of his base to the authorities and ask them to rescue Dinah. At least, that's what I thought at the time."
"Why not join the Wards in the first place, if you wanted to be a hero?" She asked after a pause as we crossed the street.
I hesitated. The subject felt dangerously close to school and the bullying, and I certainly didn't want to give her an opening to talk about those. I settled on a half-truth.
"I wanted to retain some independence and control while I figured things out."
She seemed to be satisfied with that, and we walked in silence for a minute, until I my bugs found something.
"There's a group of ten or so who are cornering a woman and two children in an alley, three blocks down Danford Lane," I told her before relaying it to the console.
She stopped walking, so I did the same, and she began compressing the street in front of us. A few moments later, she was done, and we crossed the section of street she'd used her power on.
The assailants, whom I assumed to be Nazis based on their hairstyles and the fact that the family they'd cornered was black, were screaming and trashing around, covered in bees. A few were down already, hands and feet bound, while my bees were working on the others, tying loops around each limb before drawing them together.
I cleared the bees once they were done.
"Console, we have nine unpowered ready for pickup," I said while squeezing my earpiece.
"Roger that," said Clockblocker. "There's a police station just two streets away, so they should be there soon."
Meanwhile, Vista was talking to the victims, asking whether they needed medical assistance. They were unharmed but shaken, and one of the boys was allergic to bee stings, so my intervention did not comfort them at all.
I sheepishly apologized, and explained that the bees were under my full control, shaping the swarm in different ways to demonstrate. The kids began naming increasingly complicated shapes, and the swarm followed their instructions, hopefully taking their mind off of the matter at hand until the police arrived to take over.
As we returned to our patrol route, Vista spoke again.
"Did you really get powers because of Shadow Stalker?"
"Yes," I said, not elaborating further.
She opened her mouth to say something else, then changed her mind and closed it.
"Were you friends?" I asked after a pause, trying to sound casual.
She scrunched up her face. "I wouldn't say that."
That was pretty much the same thing Clockblocker had said before.
She continued. "She used to make fun of me for pretty much anything. My age, my height, the fact that I can't do solo patrols, other stuff… In a twisted way, part of me is glad that she's not around anymore. I mean, what happened sucks, why she's gone sucks, but I'm just glad I didn't have to deal with her comments these past few weeks."
"So she wasn't better here than at school," I realized.
She shrugged. "It was never… I mean, I saw some of the stuff she did to you, with the leak. It wasn't like that. Maybe because she didn't have anyone else on her side to back her up, maybe because she was worried she would get in trouble if she did anything too overt, but it was always small stuff. Insignificant stuff. It felt like complaining about it would make me look whiny more than anything else."
"But it adds up," I said.
"It does. And then when I'd lose my cool, she would act like I was some brat overreacting just to get her in trouble, like the fact that I was reacting at all proved her point."
"Definitely sounds like her."
"One time, she—"
That's when I felt it, or rather, my bugs did. A whining sound, like someone was running their finger along the rim of a wine glass, too high-pitched for my human ears to hear. It came from the windows of every building in my range.
"Shatterbird is singing," I yelled at Vista.
I pressed my earpiece to relay the message, then I threw it away along with my phone, and she did the same. I was protected, wearing my spidersilk suit under my costume, but she wasn't, and I wasn't sure whether the fabric of her costume could withstand Shatterbird's attack.
Apparently, she wasn't either, instead raising the sidewalk all around us until we were trapped in a dark, egg-shaped box of concrete.
In every building with open windows, I sent bugs in to spell out SHATTERBIRD wherever I found people. In places with no easy way in, I tried gathering the bugs that were already present, but it took more time, and they weren't necessarily numerous enough to be noticed.
"Are you sure about it?" Vista asked after a few moments without anything happening.
"My bugs can hear the sound coming from the windows, and it's getting louder. Anyti—"
Bees weren't the easiest bugs to see through, but their vision was highly sensitive to motion. Through the ones high above the street, I saw what looked like a tidal wave rolling over us, shattering glass as it went.
The sound came a second later, loud. A heavy impact, followed by the sound of trillions of glass shards simultaneously falling like rain across the cityscape.
Our concrete prison shielded us from the glass, but those in nearby buildings had been less lucky. Their screams were punctuated by a dozen car alarms, dampened by the walls around us.
"It's over?" Vista asked.
"Yes," I said.
The concrete around us returned to its rightful place, revealing the devastated street.
To our right, a tall office building that used to have a glass façade overlooking the street was now ripped open, exposing the dead and injured desk workers who'd been sitting at their computers near the windows when the glass shards shot out like bullets.
I averted my eyes.
This wasn't the kind of situations that could be improved with bugs or spatial distortion, and we couldn't even call console to relay a message to emergency services. It would be useless anyways, given that the whole city was in the same situation.
"We should get back to base," I told Vista, and she nodded, eyes still on the bodies.
Renick left to inform the rest of the employees of the recent developments, while we tried to rearrange our patrolling schedule with the new restrictions and to include hospital visits on top of everything else.
"It probably won't happen at every shift," said Glory Girl, who apparently had done this before. "The PRT will inform us of when we need to make a visit, though with the possibility of moles currently underreporting potential triggers, it might be a good thing to start strong with a visit to each hospital, just to make sure no one slips through the cracks."
It brought back memories of what Armsmaster had said, that someone had visited me shortly after the locker incident, but that it went nowhere. How different would my life be if they'd been more thorough? Would I have joined the Wards from the beginning? Then I would have been forced to work with Sophia. Would they have believed me if I told them everything she'd done? Would they have taken action? I had my doubts.
"Sounds great, but not really what we need to be doing right now," said Clockblocker. "Seems to me like the priorities are all wrong."
"They're trying to keep us out of the worst of it," Weld pointed out. "The priority is supporting the Protectorate and PRT as we can, and this is another way."
"Right. Sorry."
"No need to apologize. It's good that you're voicing your thoughts. Speaking of voicing your thoughts, anyone else wants to share?"
"It feels like things are about to get even worse," Kid Win said in a quiet voice.
"We have to take it day by day," Flechette answered. "And we most likely won't be directly involved in the conflict with the Nine."
"Still, more people are going to die," said Vista. "Civilians, and maybe even Protectorate members, and there's not much we can do about it."
"We can do our best," Glory Girl said. "Beyond that, it's out of our hands."
Weld nodded along.
"Apiary," he addressed me, "we haven't heard from you. Anything you'd like to share?"
Not really, but I suspected I wouldn't get away with saying nothing.
"I'm a bit spooked," I admitted. "About the Slaughterhouse Nine, and about what the Undersiders did."
"Understandable," Weld said, his tone inviting me to continue.
"I didn't expect them to have a new member so soon, or to use Regent's full power. I don't know how to feel about that."
Weld appeared satisfied with that, and went back to the subject of our schedule.
"Since we have to stay at the base anyways after curfew," he said, "I was thinking about moving class and training in the evening, so that we can start patrolling earlier in the day to compensate. Any objections?"
A few people shook their heads, and no one spoke up.
"If you're not too exhausted yet," he continued, "and since the rest of our evening just cleared up, we can have our first training session right now, just to show what tricks we have up our sleeves and get familiar with each other's powers. We've all heard about it or read the files, but that's not quite the same as seeing someone in action."
After everyone agreed, we headed to the gym. Glory Girl went to the armory to put on a black bodysuit before joining us.
"Who wants to go first?" Weld asked once we were all gathered.
It was like a teacher asking for volunteers to speak in front of the class. Nobody did, so Weld went first.
He removed his shirt, showing his musculature perfectly etched out in the metal, with silver lines tracing the muscle definition.
"I absorb any metal I come in contact with," he started, "which can be an inconvenient, since it's involuntary. Then I can move it around and reshape my body."
He demonstrated, his forearm elongating to become a baseball bat with spikes around the end, then shifting to a long blade.
"My physiology also means that I'm more durable than most, and can't really be injured in a fight. It also has the advantage to make me somewhat resistant to organic-only or inorganic-only powers. I can also leave a limb behind if needed, though I need to absorb more metal to reform it."
Glory Girl went next, showing off her flight and strength, as well as a few martial arts moves and midair maneuvers.
Then, Vista went, demonstrating impressive feats of space compression and various complicated tricks she had developed and named over the years.
"But living creatures interfere with it, and it takes me time to work it," she specified.
Clockblocker went next, and I learned that he carried a number of items beneath his armor, including string and sheets of paper he could turn into midair steps with a deadly edge.
Kid Win showed us his creations, mostly guns with a variety of settings, then Flechette explained her power as "imbuing inorganic material to ignore certain laws of physics, mainly to allow them to punch through virtually anything." She could also use it to increase or reduce friction, and had an intuitive understanding of angles and an enhanced sense of timing, which she demonstrated by throwing darts at targets over her shoulder.
Then, it was my turn.
"There's not much to show," I said as the gym filled with bees. "I control and get feedback from every bug in my range, which is of about eight hundred to a thousand feet all around me, but sometimes it's bigger depending on circumstances. I can see and hear through some types of bugs, but it's mostly touch and proprioception that are useful. I can tell where every single one of them is in relation to myself, so I use the more discreet types of bugs to tag people and things, to give me a mental map of my surroundings. I also make spidersilk, and use cords of it to tie up criminals from a distance."
I shaped the bees in a humanoid form, then made the form move like it was running around the gym.
"I can make decoys like that, and cover myself or others with bees to blend in with them."
"Please don't cover me with bees," Clockblocker interjected.
"I'm training to make them talk, too," I continued.
The bugs began chirping, buzzing and droning to imitate the pitch and tone of words. "Hello, Wards," they said.
"I'm not allowed to let them bite or sting, though. Glenn's rules. But the bank robbery from Faultline's crew got me thinking about using them as a vehicle for a paralytic agent like Newter's bodily fluids."
"Newter?" Asked Flechette at the same time Vista said "Bodily fluids?" in a disgusted tone.
"They're powerful hallucinogens," I explained. "I once took down Lung by smearing a bug coated with Newter's blood in his eye. If I could get my hands on something like that, I could neutralize just about anyone from a distance, with minimal risks."
"That's a good idea," Weld said. "I'll see with the guys upstairs what we can do. Well, that's it for tonight. See you tomorrow, and don't forget about the new patrolling schedule. First up, Apiary and Vista, while Glory Girl and I will make hospital rounds."
The next morning, a box of contact lenses and a bottle of solution were waiting for me on my desk, courtesy of Lanaro.
I went to the bathroom to put them on, and was immediately reminded of why I much preferred to wear glasses. I hated them so much. They were never comfortable, not when I'd tried them in the past at Emma's insistence, and certainly not now. They kept flipping inside out to cling to my fingertip instead of sticking to my eyes.
After several minutes of struggle, I managed to get them on, and went back to my room to get dressed, selecting the spare copy of my mask that didn't have my prescription integrated in the lenses so that I could see while wearing contacts underneath.
Once I was done, I went to the panic room at the far end of the corridor, where soundproofing panels had been installed on every surface. Armsmaster was there, unloading crates of electronics and tinker projects from a cart and piling them against the back wall.
"Good morning," he greeted me. "I've already removed the regulator from your workshop, so you might want to keep your spiders in their terrariums when you leave the building. I've also brought your braille computer and printer."
I nodded. "Thanks. Think you can find some room for these?" I asked, handing him the protective case with my glasses.
"I think I'll manage," he said.
I left him to his work.
Meanwhile, mosquitoes had found Flechette in the break room like yesterday, only this time, she wasn't alone.
Glory Girl was also there.
They sat on the couches, chatting, and I couldn't go to the cafeteria without them noticing me as I passed the break room.
Should I wait for them to leave?
Flechette could be waiting for me specifically, so that might not work, not to mention that the others would be getting up soon. Vista's first alarm had already gone off, though she was still in bed, but that meant she would get up in ten to fifteen minutes. If I waited, there was a higher chance of encountering her or Kid Win, not to mention that Flechette would probably wave me over in the cafeteria anyways. I decided to go to the break room despite Glory Girl's presence. It felt like the least awkward option.
Flechette greeted me as I arrived, and I did the same. Glory Girl looked back at me, but didn't say anything, face unreadable. She was wearing a plain black bodysuit, like during yesterday's training.
"Should we wait for the others before heading out?" Flechette asked.
"They usually get up after seven, so they won't be ready for a while," I answered.
"We might as well go, then," she said, getting to her feet, and to my surprise, Glory Girl did the same without a word.
I would have thought that she'd rather hang out with the pre-Leviathan Wards than with me, but after yesterday, she appeared to have decided that my presence was tolerable, even in a casual setting. Either that or she wanted to hang out with Flechette more than she minded my presence.
We made our way to the cafeteria in silence, going our separate ways to grab our food, then I joined Flechette just outside of the canteen, and we waited for Glory Girl. When she arrived, we went to a table on the side, Flechette siting across from me, and Glory Girl, beside her. She had a tea, a raspberry muffin, and a banana.
I removed my mask to take a sip of coffee as Flechette and Glory Girl began talking about training regiments, presumably a follow up to the conversation they had before my arrival.
I didn't really participate, aside from revealing that I'd started running every day in preparation for going out in costume, and was content to listen with one ear and nod along.
Meanwhile, I was reading about the Slaughterhouse Nine through my bugs. Last night, after training, I'd turned to the internet for research about the Slaughterhouse Nine since we didn't have access to the files on the S-class threats from the database, then went to my workshop to print my findings in braille to be able to read them later.
I'd told myself that it was better to be armed with information, but the more I read, the more discouraged and spooked I became. These guys were the real deal, racking up a body count of at least four digits in every major city they visited. Shatterbird alone accounted for a large part of that. When she "sang," her power allowed her to make every piece of glass and silica within her range explode violently.
Maureen had answered my message, reassuring me that the lenses of my mask weren't glass, so at least, I wouldn't end up with glass shards exploding in my eyes. I also wore my old spidersilk bodysuit beneath my costume, so I was at least somewhat protected, but the others weren't.
On the workbench, my black widow spiders were working relentlessly, and were nearly done with the suits. I hoped that they would finish them before any encounter with the Nine. I wanted to make more, for Flechette, Weld and possibly even Glory Girl, but I figured it was better to finish the first batch rather than to spread my weavers too thin.
I finished breakfast just as the others arrived to the cafeteria, and I excused myself to my workshop to avoid any awkwardness if Flechette tried to wave them over.
I called a swarm through the trap on the ceiling to feed the spiders, and it also carried fresh leaves for the cicadas and grasshoppers. Meanwhile, I gave the horseshoe crabs pieces of shrimp, and refilled the water dishes in every terrarium. Then, I made a batch of sugar syrup, and left it in the pot to cool so I could refill my bees' feeders later in the day.
A few minutes before eight, I sent the spiders back into their terrariums before going down to headquarters to join Vista for our first patrol together.
I felt irrationally nervous, given that I'd survived my patrol with Glory Girl, who had much more specific reasons to hold a grudge against me. Still, we'd fallen into a routine of mutually ignoring each other, and deviating from it brought me into an uncharted territory I couldn't help but be anxious about.
As I entered the base, Clockblocker was manning the console while Kid Win worked on the soundproof room with Armsmaster, and Flechette was doing paperwork in her room. Vista was waiting by the console, chatting with Weld and Glory Girl, who were heading to a hospital to check on some potential triggers. They stopped talking when the door opened, and I couldn't help but assume that they'd been talking about me.
We took the elevator together, then walked out of the lobby, and went our separate ways in the parking lot, Weld and Victoria heading South, while Vista and I went North.
Unlike Glory Girl, Vista didn't remain silent for very long.
"Clockblocker said that you wanted to be a hero and that you joined the Undersiders to infiltrate them," she said in a neutral voice as we left the parking lot.
Part of me suspected that she'd been waiting for an opportunity to question me alone. Maybe Weld had encouraged her to do so, hoping that it would soothe the tensions between us.
"I did," I answered. "Though I changed my mind eventually."
"Why?"
I hesitated, trying to find the least pathetic way to phrase the fact that I had no friends before because of the bullying.
"I got to know them better, and we became friends. It made it that much harder to betray them," I said.
"So you decided to become a villain for real, despite wanting to be a hero" she stated.
"Yes. For about a week and a half, then I learned about Dinah, and that wasn't something I could turn a blind eye to like the rest of the team."
"And you really quit them over it?" She asked. "Despite them being your friends?"
"I couldn't live with myself if I stayed there and did nothing," I explained. "I didn't really have a plan in mind or anything when I left. I just couldn't stand to keep working for Coil after that, and wanted to find a way to rescue her. Then Leviathan happened, and I asked for the PRT and Protectorate to intervene in exchange for joining the Wards, but they didn't want to do anything because of the Thinker warnings. By the time Piggot was actually willing to make a plan and mobilize resources, he'd moved out of his base, and now we're back to square one."
"I thought you joined the Wards because of what Shadow Stalker did, though Clockblocker said that the big guys more or less twisted your arm," she said, not quite a question, but I answered it as one.
"They did. Armsmaster managed to find my identity and tried to back me into a corner, but mainly, I realized that the best thing I could do against Coil was to reveal his plan and the location of his base to the authorities and ask them to rescue Dinah. At least, that's what I thought at the time."
"Why not join the Wards in the first place, if you wanted to be a hero?" She asked after a pause as we crossed the street.
I hesitated. The subject felt dangerously close to school and the bullying, and I certainly didn't want to give her an opening to talk about those. I settled on a half-truth.
"I wanted to retain some independence and control while I figured things out."
She seemed to be satisfied with that, and we walked in silence for a minute, until I my bugs found something.
"There's a group of ten or so who are cornering a woman and two children in an alley, three blocks down Danford Lane," I told her before relaying it to the console.
She stopped walking, so I did the same, and she began compressing the street in front of us. A few moments later, she was done, and we crossed the section of street she'd used her power on.
The assailants, whom I assumed to be Nazis based on their hairstyles and the fact that the family they'd cornered was black, were screaming and trashing around, covered in bees. A few were down already, hands and feet bound, while my bees were working on the others, tying loops around each limb before drawing them together.
I cleared the bees once they were done.
"Console, we have nine unpowered ready for pickup," I said while squeezing my earpiece.
"Roger that," said Clockblocker. "There's a police station just two streets away, so they should be there soon."
Meanwhile, Vista was talking to the victims, asking whether they needed medical assistance. They were unharmed but shaken, and one of the boys was allergic to bee stings, so my intervention did not comfort them at all.
I sheepishly apologized, and explained that the bees were under my full control, shaping the swarm in different ways to demonstrate. The kids began naming increasingly complicated shapes, and the swarm followed their instructions, hopefully taking their mind off of the matter at hand until the police arrived to take over.
As we returned to our patrol route, Vista spoke again.
"Did you really get powers because of Shadow Stalker?"
"Yes," I said, not elaborating further.
She opened her mouth to say something else, then changed her mind and closed it.
"Were you friends?" I asked after a pause, trying to sound casual.
She scrunched up her face. "I wouldn't say that."
That was pretty much the same thing Clockblocker had said before.
She continued. "She used to make fun of me for pretty much anything. My age, my height, the fact that I can't do solo patrols, other stuff… In a twisted way, part of me is glad that she's not around anymore. I mean, what happened sucks, why she's gone sucks, but I'm just glad I didn't have to deal with her comments these past few weeks."
"So she wasn't better here than at school," I realized.
She shrugged. "It was never… I mean, I saw some of the stuff she did to you, with the leak. It wasn't like that. Maybe because she didn't have anyone else on her side to back her up, maybe because she was worried she would get in trouble if she did anything too overt, but it was always small stuff. Insignificant stuff. It felt like complaining about it would make me look whiny more than anything else."
"But it adds up," I said.
"It does. And then when I'd lose my cool, she would act like I was some brat overreacting just to get her in trouble, like the fact that I was reacting at all proved her point."
"Definitely sounds like her."
"One time, she—"
That's when I felt it, or rather, my bugs did. A whining sound, like someone was running their finger along the rim of a wine glass, too high-pitched for my human ears to hear. It came from the windows of every building in my range.
"Shatterbird is singing," I yelled at Vista.
I pressed my earpiece to relay the message, then I threw it away along with my phone, and she did the same. I was protected, wearing my spidersilk suit under my costume, but she wasn't, and I wasn't sure whether the fabric of her costume could withstand Shatterbird's attack.
Apparently, she wasn't either, instead raising the sidewalk all around us until we were trapped in a dark, egg-shaped box of concrete.
In every building with open windows, I sent bugs in to spell out SHATTERBIRD wherever I found people. In places with no easy way in, I tried gathering the bugs that were already present, but it took more time, and they weren't necessarily numerous enough to be noticed.
"Are you sure about it?" Vista asked after a few moments without anything happening.
"My bugs can hear the sound coming from the windows, and it's getting louder. Anyti—"
Bees weren't the easiest bugs to see through, but their vision was highly sensitive to motion. Through the ones high above the street, I saw what looked like a tidal wave rolling over us, shattering glass as it went.
The sound came a second later, loud. A heavy impact, followed by the sound of trillions of glass shards simultaneously falling like rain across the cityscape.
Our concrete prison shielded us from the glass, but those in nearby buildings had been less lucky. Their screams were punctuated by a dozen car alarms, dampened by the walls around us.
"It's over?" Vista asked.
"Yes," I said.
The concrete around us returned to its rightful place, revealing the devastated street.
To our right, a tall office building that used to have a glass façade overlooking the street was now ripped open, exposing the dead and injured desk workers who'd been sitting at their computers near the windows when the glass shards shot out like bullets.
I averted my eyes.
This wasn't the kind of situations that could be improved with bugs or spatial distortion, and we couldn't even call console to relay a message to emergency services. It would be useless anyways, given that the whole city was in the same situation.
"We should get back to base," I told Vista, and she nodded, eyes still on the bodies.
- Location
- Chicago
- Pronouns
- She/They
I don't think I've seen this perspective on shatterbird's power before, and I love that Vista is setting herself up as anti authority pals with Taylor. Just a bit more emotional honesty and we are golden, just in time for casualties.
Looks like GG and Flechette are maybe a thing- shield and sword combo is strong.
I wonder if that means Amy and parian?
Looks like GG and Flechette are maybe a thing- shield and sword combo is strong.
I wonder if that means Amy and parian?
- Location
- Highlands
Of course. The moment vista and Taylor start to bond, everything goes to hell.
Got a small issues however, thanks to Taylor doing PRT power testing, she has started working on talking through her swarm sooner than canon, as seen in this very chapter, but, in the same chapter, she doesn't utilise it by screaming 'SHATTERBIRD IS SINGING! TAKE COVER' over and over to help as many people in her range and outside of it coz sound carries. Honestly thought something like that was what was going to happen when you introduced the plot point earlier.
Got a small issues however, thanks to Taylor doing PRT power testing, she has started working on talking through her swarm sooner than canon, as seen in this very chapter, but, in the same chapter, she doesn't utilise it by screaming 'SHATTERBIRD IS SINGING! TAKE COVER' over and over to help as many people in her range and outside of it coz sound carries. Honestly thought something like that was what was going to happen when you introduced the plot point earlier.
It takes a lot of bugs combined to produce sounds as loud as a human voice, and comparatively few bugs to spell it out, so by spreading her bugs, she can reach more people. Not to mention that in a lot of cases, she's limited to the bugs already inside buildings.
- Location
- The Internet?
And now the open secret among LEOs that the S9 were in town is out to the public. Hopefully the panic isn't that bad. Certainly shouldn't be, not with a notorious collection of serial killers and someone that can manipulate emotions on a massive scale. Why would there be anything to worry about? /s
Somehow, I doubt the S-Class truce from Canon is going to go down the same way given Coil's squirrely behavior.
Any guesses if the acceleration of the timeline on Amy's breakdown and alteration of the S9's game plan from canon means that the Merchant massacre was butterflied away?
Great chapter, thanks for sharing!
But seriously, what's that conversation like? "I know we're all working overtime, but our boss is stepping down because she got body snatched? Please read the memos from HR."
not wearing hockey pads not using tranqs anymore, for a number of reasons. Why dont they just let her reappropriate those?
Somehow, I doubt the S-Class truce from Canon is going to go down the same way given Coil's squirrely behavior.
Any guesses if the acceleration of the timeline on Amy's breakdown and alteration of the S9's game plan from canon means that the Merchant massacre was butterflied away?
Great chapter, thanks for sharing!
Not a task made easier when Regent returned and had Piggot screaming about it being a coup. /s
But seriously, what's that conversation like? "I know we're all working overtime, but our boss is stepping down because she got body snatched? Please read the memos from HR."
This is the way.
Why do they even need to rescue Dinah, again? This guy can see the future!
Okay, this one's an actual typo. This ought to be an 'inconvenience.' Hope that's not inconvenient.
Show 'em how you can aimbot with it!
I mean... Shadow Stalker's
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- Location
- Highlands
I get that it might be tricky but don't you think just writing the name on walls lacks clarity that is needed at that urgent moment? I think she would atleast try to be clear in the few seconds it takes before shatterbird sings to when the glass explodes but panic does make it hard to think clearly and quickly, yet she has the means and has been working on it for some time and just demonstrated it. So it would probably be in mind.
Besides what about the people asleep or distracted or blind or illiterate? Words on the wall are not gonna help them at all. Taylor was strangely considered like that in worm.
I really do think she should have all her bugs work together have them speak/shout as one 'shatterbird's singing! Take cover!', over words on the wall they might not see and will take a moment to figure out the don't have. That it's easier for her to reach more people and get her point across that way.
Still, it's your story, a great story, and I'm going keep reading regardless, coz I'm invested.
Chapter 28
Chapter 28
With Vista's power, the buildings bordering the street looked like funhouse mirrors as we crossed the compressed space, but she looked at each of them in turn, taking in the widespread destruction while I forcibly kept my attention on the street ahead of us. Her head kept whipping around with every new scream we heard, and the only thing I could do was walk faster and urge her to come along, to get her away from this as soon as possible.
We arrived to the PRT HQ at the same time Glory Girl landed with Weld in front of the entrance.
"Are you alright?" He asked us.
"With Apiary's warning, I had time to shield us," Vista answered.
"Good," he said, nodding. "We got the heads up from console, so we relayed it to the hospital staff and tried to get as many people as possible away from the windows and electronics. They'd already received the PRT's heads up about the Nine last night, but I don't think anyone expected it to happen so soon."
Neither of them was visibly injured, but Glory Girl looked upset, and it was easy enough to guess why. They'd been in the children's ward, and not everyone would have been mobile enough to hide in under a minute.
Weld headed to the entrance, and we followed him.
Gone were the glass doors leading to the lobby; only the metal frames remained, and we stepped on the broken shards as we walked in.
The elevators weren't working, so we took the stairs down to the Wards headquarters. They were pitch black, since light bulbs had exploded and that there were no windows. I called the two hundred and seventeen fireflies I had in my workshop, and used them to highlight the edge of each step so we wouldn't trip.
"Hello?" Weld called out after opening the emergency exit at the bottom of the stairs.
Nobody answered.
"Let's check the soundproof room," he said.
We walked slowly, following the fireflies that traced a path toward the soundproof room. As we reached it, Glory Girl turned the handle, and light filtered out as the door opened.
Armsmaster, Kid Win, Clockblocker and Flechette were huddled in the room, surrounded by crates of electronics and tinker projects.
"It's over, then?" Clockblocker asked.
"Yes," Weld said. "Did you have time to get the message out?"
It was Armsmaster who answered.
"Unfortunately, we didn't get enough of a heads up to turn on the sirens or have Dragon send out a mass alert through cellphones, but we were able to warn emergency services, shelters and hospitals. We'd already informed them yesterday of the Nine's presence in the city, and had radio and television stations run warnings to the population, though I'm not sure how many people actually got the message over the past twelve hours, with the current state of utilities."
I thought back to the people in that office building, the image of them seared in my mind's eye. Had they not known the danger that loomed over the city? They worked on computers, but that didn't mean that they'd checked the news. With the short time between the confirmation of the Nine's presence in town and Shatterbird's attack, I could imagine that most had been unaware, or thought they had more time before it happened. It was also possible that they or their employer hadn't taken the warnings seriously, or had expected that they would get a heads up from the authorities before Shatterbird sang.
Armsmaster gestured to the electronics around the room.
"We didn't have time to bring all sensitive equipment in here, but we have a few computers and phones, enough to manage until new ones arrive. The lights should be replaced tomorrow. In the meantime, you can take these."
He handed us flashlights. I put mine in my dress' pocket.
"I'll go check on everyone else," he said before exiting the room. Apparently, he didn't have trouble seeing in the dark with his helmet on. I supposed it was the same thing that had allowed him to see through Grue's darkness at the fundraiser.
"At least now we have an excuse not to do paperwork," said Clockblocker as the staircase's door closed behind Armsmaster.
The joke drew a few snorts and giggles, though I didn't join them.
All I could think about was the wide scale destruction inflicted upon our city, the hundred or thousands of dead and injured from this incident alone, and the promise that more would soon follow. How could he joke at a time like this?
"What do we do now?" I asked.
"I'll go see Director Renick to ask where he wants us, and whether we'll be coordinating with emergency services to manage the influx of injured people to hospitals," Weld answered.
"There's someone I'd like to check up on after Shatterbird's attack," said Flechette. "Mind if I go take a stroll? I'll be back in half an hour tops."
"Alright," Weld said, "It will probably take that long to decide our next move anyways. But take someone with you, and I want someone on console, in case you run into trouble. We'll have to man it from one of the laptops that survived in here and use spare phones and earpieces for communications."
"I can go," I offered.
Glory Girl and Vista already looked shell-shocked over the disaster, Weld would be busy meeting Renick, and Kid Win would probably help Armsmaster deal with the damage to the building's infrastructure like the elevators, security system and communications, leaving Clockblocker and I as possible escorts for Flechette.
I didn't particularly want to see more of Shatterbird's victims, but Flechette was the closest thing to a friend I had here, and I didn't want to let her down.
Not to mention that my other option was staying awkwardly cooped up in the dark with the others with nothing to do while waiting for the Director's orders.
Flechette smiled. "I just need to grab my arbalest and quiver from my room."
"I can handle console," Vista piped up, looking relieved that she wouldn't have to head out again right away.
Weld handed her a laptop, then gave Flechette and I a new earpiece and phone each, and we took the stairs to go one floor up. As I waited for Flechette to come out of her room, I entered my identification into the phone and set up the earpiece. Once she was ready, we went upstairs to the shattered lobby.
She led me at a brisk pace toward the North end of the Leviathan-made lake downtown, and I could guess who she wanted to check up on before we arrived at the two blocks stretch that was still standing near the college. Parian. The cape with the giant stuffed animals.
As we went, I tagged everyone I could find with bugs, taking note of the dead and injured. There wasn't much we could do for them, as emergency services certainly had their hands full already, and their communication systems were down anyways.
There were some people in the street, hurrying to check up on their neighbors, friends or loved ones. A few accosted us, seeking reassurance about what was going on. Flechette was much better than me at answering them, even managing to sound comforting and in control. I supposed that was a perk of having been here for only a few days rather than seeing her hopes of things getting better slowly eroded over time since the Endbringer came.
"Don't cross the yellow line," she warned me as we arrived to our destination.
She leaned forward, making a strange motion with her hand, which I only understood when I took a step closer to her and saw the light hit a taunt string. She had plucked it twice.
A few seconds later, Parian arrived in a hurry, a ten feet tall panda following behind her. She wore a white porcelain mask framed with golden curls, and a white, Victorian-style frock with a few stains.
"Hi Apiary," she greeted me, sounding out of breath. "Hi Flechette."
"Hey," Flechette smiled. "I—We just wanted to check up on you after the attack."
"That's nice of you," Parian said, batting her eyelashes behind her mask. "I'm mostly okay. Some of my friends and their families got injured by the glass or their phones, but nothing too bad, thanks to the heads up you gave me. I stitched them up as well as I could, since hospitals are overloaded."
"That's good to hear. Are you managing okay?" Flechette asked.
"Yes, for now, though I'm worried that it's only a matter of time before someone tries to attack us, with the state of the city" Parian answered.
"You have my number, if there's anything."
"I do, but phones don't work anymore."
"Right. Sorry, I didn't think of that." Flechette bit her lip.
"It's not your fault, and not your responsibility either," Parian insisted.
"But it is my responsibility to protect people, you included."
"You can't save everyone," Parian said, sounding coy.
"Still, I'll see what I can do."
I tuned them out, frowning.
At the very edge of my range, I could feel people running in a panic. I sent bugs to investigate, but they couldn't tag the person whom people were running from. The bugs slid right off of them. They had long hair, from what I could tell, and my bugs couldn't find any clothes to latch onto.
"Flechette," I interrupted the duo. "Trouble."
Immediately, Flechette straightened up, all business.
"What kind of trouble?" She asked.
"The kind with a capital S," I answered.
Her mouth fell open.
"Which one? Where?" She asked.
"The Siberian. About eight hundred feet away from here."
Parian's hand went to her mouth. "The Siberian? Here?"
"I'm calling it in," I told Flechette before pressing my earpiece. "Console, this is Apiary. The Siberian is a few hundred feet East of our location."
"Fuck!" Vista exclaimed. "I'm warning Weld and the Protectorate heroes. Can you take a detour to come back to base?"
"We'll take the long way around the lake," I answered, then let go of my earpiece and turned to Flechette. "We gotta go."
She looked reluctant, stealing glances at an increasingly agitated Parian.
"Hide," Flechette told her. "She's probably looking for easy targets out on the street."
Parian hesitated, then threw her arms around Flechette, crossing the yellow line to give her a quick hug before letting go and turning around, giant panda following behind.
Flechette stayed frozen in place as Parian left. I had to tug on her arm to get her moving.
We went South, taking a detour around the lake at a brisk pace until the Siberian fell out of my range.
The uneven, shattered streets with standing water didn't make for ideal walking ground, far from it. I had to keep most of my attention on the ground in front of me, to avoid tripping on debris or pieces of asphalt, but I was simultaneously focusing bugs at the edge of my range, toward the Siberian's last known location, in case she crossed into my range again.
We turned East on Tilbrook Ridge, and all of a sudden, the Siberian jumped down from a rooftop, landing right in front of us.
Blood pounded in my ears as I backed away, Flechette doing the same by my side.
How had she gotten there so fast? How had I not felt her coming? I didn't have time to ponder.
The Siberian cocked her head, eyes on me, and took one step forward.
We took another step back, and her, another step forward.
"She's backing us against a wall," whispered Flechette. I knew. I could feel it through my bugs. But going forward wasn't exactly an option.
The Siberian's glowing eyes didn't leave me. She raised one hand, curling a finger to motion for me to come.
"Me?" I asked.
She nodded once.
What did she want with me? Why me specifically? Did she want to nominate me as a candidate? Why? What had I done that was so bad one of the Slaughterhouse Nine would notice me?
I remembered what Renick had said about her. Invulnerable, implacable, unstoppable. This wasn't someone we could get away from easily.
She hadn't acknowledged Flechette, I noticed. Only me. Could I exploit this? Buy time for Flechette to get away?
I took a step forward, and a shiver ran down my spine as a smile graced the Siberian's lips.
"What are you doing?" Flechette whispered harshly.
It took everything in me not to flinch as I took another step forward, then another, until I was face to face with the Siberian.
In one swift motion, she grabbed my arm and swung me over her shoulder like a sack of potatoes. She then turned around and walked away, one arm over my waist.
I mouthed at Flechette to get away, but she ignored me, instead retrieving one of the three feet long metal spikes from her quiver and loading it up in her arbalest. She took aim as I shook my head no, begging her to run instead, and she fired at the Siberian's back.
All of a sudden, I collapsed in the water.
Flechette ran over to help me to my feet, looking just as bewildered as I felt.
"Did she teleport just before you hit her?" I asked.
"No," Flechette answered, picking up the spike of metal from the ground. "If she had, it would have kept going. It's like it bounced off of her, and if she were able to teleport, surely someone would have noticed it at some point in the past ten years."
If she hadn't teleported, then what happened? Had she just vanished after Flechette's loaded ammunition hit her?
It reminded me of yesterday's fights against the Travelers, of Genesis disappearing after Flechette fired at her.
My phone rang, and I grabbed it from my pocket to answer.
"Hel—"
"Apiary," came a high-pitched voice. "It's Déjà Vu. You're right. She's a projection."
"How do you—"
"I got Vista's warning that the Siberian was nearby, so I was focusing my attention on you and Flechette, to make sure that you would get back okay. I saw the report you would give about what happened, and your theory that the Siberian is like Genesis from the Travelers. So, I tried to think of the best way to verify that theory, and if I trace a grid over a map of the city with squares that fit into your range, then use a random generator to pick a square and send you there to attack everyone you can find, most of it is a bust, but there's one result where the Siberian shows up to protect someone."
"So you found her? The person behind the projection?" I asked.
"Not yet," she answered. "I see every possibility at once, so it's like watching several movies superimposed over each other. Cacophonous and blurry. All I know for now is that you're right about the projection, and that Flechette's power is the first thing to affect her in over ten years of activity. Our window of opportunity to take down the Siberian for good is right now, before the cape realizes that we know their weakness, but for that, I need to narrow down the cape's location, and the quickest way to do it is with your help."
"Sure, but what if the Siberian comes after us again in the meantime?" I asked.
"I've checked, and she won't."
"Alright. What do you need me to do?"
"I'm going to send you a location, and you're going to go there and feel out with your bugs to find every person in your range, then you will attack them indiscriminately. The harder, the better. No holding back."
"Attack them? But—"
"Miss Militia okay'd it. Will okay it if I ask. It doesn't matter. I need you to solidly make up your mind that you will attack every person within the zone I'll send you. It's important."
Attack them? It went against everything Glenn had told me about image, not to mention that I didn't want to attack people.
"But—"
"Consider it an order."
I hesitated.
She huffed in annoyance, then explained. "I'm creating parameters for my simulations. You're not doing it for real, but you need to be ready to do it, hypothetically, if I ask you. It's really important. I would allow me to shorten the path and reduce the number of divergences to allow me to get a clearer picture, instead of having to include convincing you as part of my visions every single time.
"Okay, then."
"I've narrowed their location down to the South-East quadrant of the city so far, and I'm trying to narrow it down further. Give me a moment." She went silent.
"What is going on?" Flechette mouthed at me.
"Déjà Vu thinks that the Siberian is a projection like Genesis from the Travelers, and she's trying to find the cape behind it," I told her.
Her mouth fell open.
"Seriously?"
I nodded.
"Does she know why my bolt didn't go though?" She asked. "It's the first time that's ever happened, since I got my powers. It can usually punch through anything."
I shrugged. "She didn't say. She's focused on narrowing down the location of the cape to try and take them down before they realize that we know about them."
Her stunned silence accompanied us for a few minutes as we continued walking, then Déjà Vu spoke again.
"Found 'em!" She exclaimed. "A truck parked in an alley near Lord Street and Pinel. You describe it as a burgundy truck with plastic sheeting over the windshield and windows. The cape is a middle-aged man."
A middle-aged man?
"You sure?"
"I can't run a simulation where Revoke touches him to gain insight into his power, since her power blocks me from seeing her at all, but if you attack the man, the Siberian will appear to protect him."
"Why can't you use your power like that to find Coil's base?" I asked.
"I've tried," she answered. "So far, you can't find it with your bugs. Either his base is inconspicuous enough that you can't identify it as such, or he's got tinkertech countermeasures in place to avoid easy detection, some kind of notice-me-not effect. With the kind of money and resources he has, I wouldn't be surprised."
Which meant that all my work scouring the city's underground over the past few weeks to fill in my map was now worthless, sending me back to square one. How could we find his base?
I set the thought aside to focus on the matter at hand.
"What do we do about the Siberian?" I asked. "We're told not to engage."
"Don't worry," she said. "I've got a plan."
Author's note
Heya! Just a quick word to say that since this is the busiest time of year at work, I have a lot less free time to write/edit. To give myself some breathing room, I will be lowering the frequency of updates to twice a week, on Tuesdays and Fridays.
With Vista's power, the buildings bordering the street looked like funhouse mirrors as we crossed the compressed space, but she looked at each of them in turn, taking in the widespread destruction while I forcibly kept my attention on the street ahead of us. Her head kept whipping around with every new scream we heard, and the only thing I could do was walk faster and urge her to come along, to get her away from this as soon as possible.
We arrived to the PRT HQ at the same time Glory Girl landed with Weld in front of the entrance.
"Are you alright?" He asked us.
"With Apiary's warning, I had time to shield us," Vista answered.
"Good," he said, nodding. "We got the heads up from console, so we relayed it to the hospital staff and tried to get as many people as possible away from the windows and electronics. They'd already received the PRT's heads up about the Nine last night, but I don't think anyone expected it to happen so soon."
Neither of them was visibly injured, but Glory Girl looked upset, and it was easy enough to guess why. They'd been in the children's ward, and not everyone would have been mobile enough to hide in under a minute.
Weld headed to the entrance, and we followed him.
Gone were the glass doors leading to the lobby; only the metal frames remained, and we stepped on the broken shards as we walked in.
The elevators weren't working, so we took the stairs down to the Wards headquarters. They were pitch black, since light bulbs had exploded and that there were no windows. I called the two hundred and seventeen fireflies I had in my workshop, and used them to highlight the edge of each step so we wouldn't trip.
"Hello?" Weld called out after opening the emergency exit at the bottom of the stairs.
Nobody answered.
"Let's check the soundproof room," he said.
We walked slowly, following the fireflies that traced a path toward the soundproof room. As we reached it, Glory Girl turned the handle, and light filtered out as the door opened.
Armsmaster, Kid Win, Clockblocker and Flechette were huddled in the room, surrounded by crates of electronics and tinker projects.
"It's over, then?" Clockblocker asked.
"Yes," Weld said. "Did you have time to get the message out?"
It was Armsmaster who answered.
"Unfortunately, we didn't get enough of a heads up to turn on the sirens or have Dragon send out a mass alert through cellphones, but we were able to warn emergency services, shelters and hospitals. We'd already informed them yesterday of the Nine's presence in the city, and had radio and television stations run warnings to the population, though I'm not sure how many people actually got the message over the past twelve hours, with the current state of utilities."
I thought back to the people in that office building, the image of them seared in my mind's eye. Had they not known the danger that loomed over the city? They worked on computers, but that didn't mean that they'd checked the news. With the short time between the confirmation of the Nine's presence in town and Shatterbird's attack, I could imagine that most had been unaware, or thought they had more time before it happened. It was also possible that they or their employer hadn't taken the warnings seriously, or had expected that they would get a heads up from the authorities before Shatterbird sang.
Armsmaster gestured to the electronics around the room.
"We didn't have time to bring all sensitive equipment in here, but we have a few computers and phones, enough to manage until new ones arrive. The lights should be replaced tomorrow. In the meantime, you can take these."
He handed us flashlights. I put mine in my dress' pocket.
"I'll go check on everyone else," he said before exiting the room. Apparently, he didn't have trouble seeing in the dark with his helmet on. I supposed it was the same thing that had allowed him to see through Grue's darkness at the fundraiser.
"At least now we have an excuse not to do paperwork," said Clockblocker as the staircase's door closed behind Armsmaster.
The joke drew a few snorts and giggles, though I didn't join them.
All I could think about was the wide scale destruction inflicted upon our city, the hundred or thousands of dead and injured from this incident alone, and the promise that more would soon follow. How could he joke at a time like this?
"What do we do now?" I asked.
"I'll go see Director Renick to ask where he wants us, and whether we'll be coordinating with emergency services to manage the influx of injured people to hospitals," Weld answered.
"There's someone I'd like to check up on after Shatterbird's attack," said Flechette. "Mind if I go take a stroll? I'll be back in half an hour tops."
"Alright," Weld said, "It will probably take that long to decide our next move anyways. But take someone with you, and I want someone on console, in case you run into trouble. We'll have to man it from one of the laptops that survived in here and use spare phones and earpieces for communications."
"I can go," I offered.
Glory Girl and Vista already looked shell-shocked over the disaster, Weld would be busy meeting Renick, and Kid Win would probably help Armsmaster deal with the damage to the building's infrastructure like the elevators, security system and communications, leaving Clockblocker and I as possible escorts for Flechette.
I didn't particularly want to see more of Shatterbird's victims, but Flechette was the closest thing to a friend I had here, and I didn't want to let her down.
Not to mention that my other option was staying awkwardly cooped up in the dark with the others with nothing to do while waiting for the Director's orders.
Flechette smiled. "I just need to grab my arbalest and quiver from my room."
"I can handle console," Vista piped up, looking relieved that she wouldn't have to head out again right away.
Weld handed her a laptop, then gave Flechette and I a new earpiece and phone each, and we took the stairs to go one floor up. As I waited for Flechette to come out of her room, I entered my identification into the phone and set up the earpiece. Once she was ready, we went upstairs to the shattered lobby.
She led me at a brisk pace toward the North end of the Leviathan-made lake downtown, and I could guess who she wanted to check up on before we arrived at the two blocks stretch that was still standing near the college. Parian. The cape with the giant stuffed animals.
As we went, I tagged everyone I could find with bugs, taking note of the dead and injured. There wasn't much we could do for them, as emergency services certainly had their hands full already, and their communication systems were down anyways.
There were some people in the street, hurrying to check up on their neighbors, friends or loved ones. A few accosted us, seeking reassurance about what was going on. Flechette was much better than me at answering them, even managing to sound comforting and in control. I supposed that was a perk of having been here for only a few days rather than seeing her hopes of things getting better slowly eroded over time since the Endbringer came.
"Don't cross the yellow line," she warned me as we arrived to our destination.
She leaned forward, making a strange motion with her hand, which I only understood when I took a step closer to her and saw the light hit a taunt string. She had plucked it twice.
A few seconds later, Parian arrived in a hurry, a ten feet tall panda following behind her. She wore a white porcelain mask framed with golden curls, and a white, Victorian-style frock with a few stains.
"Hi Apiary," she greeted me, sounding out of breath. "Hi Flechette."
"Hey," Flechette smiled. "I—We just wanted to check up on you after the attack."
"That's nice of you," Parian said, batting her eyelashes behind her mask. "I'm mostly okay. Some of my friends and their families got injured by the glass or their phones, but nothing too bad, thanks to the heads up you gave me. I stitched them up as well as I could, since hospitals are overloaded."
"That's good to hear. Are you managing okay?" Flechette asked.
"Yes, for now, though I'm worried that it's only a matter of time before someone tries to attack us, with the state of the city" Parian answered.
"You have my number, if there's anything."
"I do, but phones don't work anymore."
"Right. Sorry, I didn't think of that." Flechette bit her lip.
"It's not your fault, and not your responsibility either," Parian insisted.
"But it is my responsibility to protect people, you included."
"You can't save everyone," Parian said, sounding coy.
"Still, I'll see what I can do."
I tuned them out, frowning.
At the very edge of my range, I could feel people running in a panic. I sent bugs to investigate, but they couldn't tag the person whom people were running from. The bugs slid right off of them. They had long hair, from what I could tell, and my bugs couldn't find any clothes to latch onto.
"Flechette," I interrupted the duo. "Trouble."
Immediately, Flechette straightened up, all business.
"What kind of trouble?" She asked.
"The kind with a capital S," I answered.
Her mouth fell open.
"Which one? Where?" She asked.
"The Siberian. About eight hundred feet away from here."
Parian's hand went to her mouth. "The Siberian? Here?"
"I'm calling it in," I told Flechette before pressing my earpiece. "Console, this is Apiary. The Siberian is a few hundred feet East of our location."
"Fuck!" Vista exclaimed. "I'm warning Weld and the Protectorate heroes. Can you take a detour to come back to base?"
"We'll take the long way around the lake," I answered, then let go of my earpiece and turned to Flechette. "We gotta go."
She looked reluctant, stealing glances at an increasingly agitated Parian.
"Hide," Flechette told her. "She's probably looking for easy targets out on the street."
Parian hesitated, then threw her arms around Flechette, crossing the yellow line to give her a quick hug before letting go and turning around, giant panda following behind.
Flechette stayed frozen in place as Parian left. I had to tug on her arm to get her moving.
We went South, taking a detour around the lake at a brisk pace until the Siberian fell out of my range.
The uneven, shattered streets with standing water didn't make for ideal walking ground, far from it. I had to keep most of my attention on the ground in front of me, to avoid tripping on debris or pieces of asphalt, but I was simultaneously focusing bugs at the edge of my range, toward the Siberian's last known location, in case she crossed into my range again.
We turned East on Tilbrook Ridge, and all of a sudden, the Siberian jumped down from a rooftop, landing right in front of us.
Blood pounded in my ears as I backed away, Flechette doing the same by my side.
How had she gotten there so fast? How had I not felt her coming? I didn't have time to ponder.
The Siberian cocked her head, eyes on me, and took one step forward.
We took another step back, and her, another step forward.
"She's backing us against a wall," whispered Flechette. I knew. I could feel it through my bugs. But going forward wasn't exactly an option.
The Siberian's glowing eyes didn't leave me. She raised one hand, curling a finger to motion for me to come.
"Me?" I asked.
She nodded once.
What did she want with me? Why me specifically? Did she want to nominate me as a candidate? Why? What had I done that was so bad one of the Slaughterhouse Nine would notice me?
I remembered what Renick had said about her. Invulnerable, implacable, unstoppable. This wasn't someone we could get away from easily.
She hadn't acknowledged Flechette, I noticed. Only me. Could I exploit this? Buy time for Flechette to get away?
I took a step forward, and a shiver ran down my spine as a smile graced the Siberian's lips.
"What are you doing?" Flechette whispered harshly.
It took everything in me not to flinch as I took another step forward, then another, until I was face to face with the Siberian.
In one swift motion, she grabbed my arm and swung me over her shoulder like a sack of potatoes. She then turned around and walked away, one arm over my waist.
I mouthed at Flechette to get away, but she ignored me, instead retrieving one of the three feet long metal spikes from her quiver and loading it up in her arbalest. She took aim as I shook my head no, begging her to run instead, and she fired at the Siberian's back.
All of a sudden, I collapsed in the water.
Flechette ran over to help me to my feet, looking just as bewildered as I felt.
"Did she teleport just before you hit her?" I asked.
"No," Flechette answered, picking up the spike of metal from the ground. "If she had, it would have kept going. It's like it bounced off of her, and if she were able to teleport, surely someone would have noticed it at some point in the past ten years."
If she hadn't teleported, then what happened? Had she just vanished after Flechette's loaded ammunition hit her?
It reminded me of yesterday's fights against the Travelers, of Genesis disappearing after Flechette fired at her.
My phone rang, and I grabbed it from my pocket to answer.
"Hel—"
"Apiary," came a high-pitched voice. "It's Déjà Vu. You're right. She's a projection."
"How do you—"
"I got Vista's warning that the Siberian was nearby, so I was focusing my attention on you and Flechette, to make sure that you would get back okay. I saw the report you would give about what happened, and your theory that the Siberian is like Genesis from the Travelers. So, I tried to think of the best way to verify that theory, and if I trace a grid over a map of the city with squares that fit into your range, then use a random generator to pick a square and send you there to attack everyone you can find, most of it is a bust, but there's one result where the Siberian shows up to protect someone."
"So you found her? The person behind the projection?" I asked.
"Not yet," she answered. "I see every possibility at once, so it's like watching several movies superimposed over each other. Cacophonous and blurry. All I know for now is that you're right about the projection, and that Flechette's power is the first thing to affect her in over ten years of activity. Our window of opportunity to take down the Siberian for good is right now, before the cape realizes that we know their weakness, but for that, I need to narrow down the cape's location, and the quickest way to do it is with your help."
"Sure, but what if the Siberian comes after us again in the meantime?" I asked.
"I've checked, and she won't."
"Alright. What do you need me to do?"
"I'm going to send you a location, and you're going to go there and feel out with your bugs to find every person in your range, then you will attack them indiscriminately. The harder, the better. No holding back."
"Attack them? But—"
"Miss Militia okay'd it. Will okay it if I ask. It doesn't matter. I need you to solidly make up your mind that you will attack every person within the zone I'll send you. It's important."
Attack them? It went against everything Glenn had told me about image, not to mention that I didn't want to attack people.
"But—"
"Consider it an order."
I hesitated.
She huffed in annoyance, then explained. "I'm creating parameters for my simulations. You're not doing it for real, but you need to be ready to do it, hypothetically, if I ask you. It's really important. I would allow me to shorten the path and reduce the number of divergences to allow me to get a clearer picture, instead of having to include convincing you as part of my visions every single time.
"Okay, then."
"I've narrowed their location down to the South-East quadrant of the city so far, and I'm trying to narrow it down further. Give me a moment." She went silent.
"What is going on?" Flechette mouthed at me.
"Déjà Vu thinks that the Siberian is a projection like Genesis from the Travelers, and she's trying to find the cape behind it," I told her.
Her mouth fell open.
"Seriously?"
I nodded.
"Does she know why my bolt didn't go though?" She asked. "It's the first time that's ever happened, since I got my powers. It can usually punch through anything."
I shrugged. "She didn't say. She's focused on narrowing down the location of the cape to try and take them down before they realize that we know about them."
Her stunned silence accompanied us for a few minutes as we continued walking, then Déjà Vu spoke again.
"Found 'em!" She exclaimed. "A truck parked in an alley near Lord Street and Pinel. You describe it as a burgundy truck with plastic sheeting over the windshield and windows. The cape is a middle-aged man."
A middle-aged man?
"You sure?"
"I can't run a simulation where Revoke touches him to gain insight into his power, since her power blocks me from seeing her at all, but if you attack the man, the Siberian will appear to protect him."
"Why can't you use your power like that to find Coil's base?" I asked.
"I've tried," she answered. "So far, you can't find it with your bugs. Either his base is inconspicuous enough that you can't identify it as such, or he's got tinkertech countermeasures in place to avoid easy detection, some kind of notice-me-not effect. With the kind of money and resources he has, I wouldn't be surprised."
Which meant that all my work scouring the city's underground over the past few weeks to fill in my map was now worthless, sending me back to square one. How could we find his base?
I set the thought aside to focus on the matter at hand.
"What do we do about the Siberian?" I asked. "We're told not to engage."
"Don't worry," she said. "I've got a plan."
Author's note
Heya! Just a quick word to say that since this is the busiest time of year at work, I have a lot less free time to write/edit. To give myself some breathing room, I will be lowering the frequency of updates to twice a week, on Tuesdays and Fridays.
That's so broken. They just swept the entire city to locate Manton. Coil would kill to have that kind of information gathering ability.
- Location
- The Internet?
Thanks for sharing, and good luck with your work!
Skitter Apiary' as part of her testing?
"Annoying? But think of how much time we're saving."
Spooky ambiance, but very handy use of powers, good thinking!
Sounds like some bad bosses. The survivors oughta unionize to bargain for less suicidal workplace policies.
Sad clown gotta laugh too keep from crying or thinking about it too hard, T. You'll figure it out someday... maybe.
Who are you, my bus driver?
Cherish is a targeting computer? Who wants to speculate about what she was hauling her away for? Bonesaw experimentation, or Amy deciding if 'I'm going to be a monster I'll take it out on
"Man, talking to precogs can sure be-"
"Annoying? But think of how much time we're saving."
This is like that feeling when your Google searches actually turn up useful responses. So quick and handy!
- Location
- Highlands
Deja vu has been in Brockton bay for 3 weeks now and she been using her power on everything. Finding Coil location and his organisation target, never mind the near-endbringer threat. The chosen and the pure and the merchants all clashing with the hero's for the supply trucks. Apiary's assassination attempts. God knows what else.
Seriously, if the undersiders abused tattletale like this she would be in bed for a week crying from the thinker headache. Dinah too. In fact almost every similar thinker would be burned out by now, with the exception of contessa.
On that note, I think you're overusing Deja vu as a character and her power as a plot device. If only there was someone to share the burden, like roulette form department 64.
Seriously, if the undersiders abused tattletale like this she would be in bed for a week crying from the thinker headache. Dinah too. In fact almost every similar thinker would be burned out by now, with the exception of contessa.
On that note, I think you're overusing Deja vu as a character and her power as a plot device. If only there was someone to share the burden, like roulette form department 64.
Hmm, Deja Vu is almost doing as much as every thinker we've seen before in Brockton Bay combined... Thinkers we've seen before... Deja Vu
That's not a thinker! It's Coil, Lisa, and Dinah in a trenchcoat!
Chapter 29 - Interlude (William Manton)
Chapter 29 — Interlude (William Manton)
August 5th, 2000
Divorce was the worst thing that could happen to a good man, in William Manton's opinion.
When Vanessa had been little, William described his work to her as "studying how superheroes are made," which naturally resulted in her wanting him to make her a superhero. She kept asking about his studies, his breakthroughs, his results, his publications, all without being old enough to truly comprehend anything he said.
Vanessa had always been fascinated with superheroes, and for a glorious few years, William had been her everyday hero. She even wanted to study parahumans in college, following in his footsteps.
That was before Myriam began poisoning their daughter's mind against him.
Now, Vanessa barely talked to him, and stayed with her mother full time, refusing to visit.
He knew he hadn't been a perfect father — not with his busy schedule, especially in the last few years — but he hadn't been anything near the monster Myriam painted him as. He'd been loving and caring, always looking forward to spending time with his daughter. It was just that he couldn't always make the time when duty called.
Now, his attempts at maintaining contact with his only child were being framed as stalking and harassing and disrespecting her wishes by his vindicative future ex-wife.
He'd read the studies on parental alienation, enough to know that the alienated parent nearly always lost.
What could he do? How could he prove to Vanessa how much he loved her?
He got the idea while looking through her childhood scrapbook, seeing her using her bath towel as a cape while pretending to be a superhero. The rest was a matter of sneaking behind the Doctor's back.
Armed with a new disposable phone, since she wouldn't answer his regular number, he called Vanessa. She picked up halfway through the second ring.
"Hello?" She spoke, and just hearing her voice brought a smile to his face.
"Remember when you were little, and that you wanted to be a superhero?"
"Dad?"
"What if I could make you one for real?"
August 7th, 2000
William sat down at a table in the dinky little coffee shop Vanessa where Vanessa had agreed to meet him, a black coffee in hand.
His bag contained a canister holding a single vial, one of the highest quality formula they'd managed to make. His gift to her. His last chance to get her on his side.
He brought his hands together beneath the table, not quite in a praying position, but rather to keep them from expressing his nervousness.
Would she actually hear him out? What if she refused to drink the formula?
The bell above the door chimed, and there she was. Seeing her in person for the first time in nearly a year, he couldn't help but appreciate that she was growing into a lovely young woman, much like Myriam had been when they first met. Tall, slender, with a heart-shaped face, delicate features, and dark hair all the way down to her waist. More than anything, it was her eyes that drew attention. Large, vivacious, a striking amber.
He rose from his seat, unsure of how to greet her after all this time, but she didn't make any move toward him, no kissing or hugging, not that he had expected any. For now.
"Vanessa. It's good to see you."
"Hi dad," she said, sitting down. He did the same.
"How have you been?" He asked.
"Good," she answered tersely, her expression closed. She didn't reciprocate the question.
"Do you want a coffee? My treat," he told her.
The look she gave him made him regret ever offering.
"I don't drink coffee."
It stung, that he didn't know her well enough to know that.
"A hot chocolate? A tea?"
"I'm good."
So she wasn't planning to stay any longer than necessary, he thought.
His own coffee was still full, untouched, displaying his hopes for a longer talk.
"How was your summer?" He asked, desperate to stretch this out.
"It was good."
Cold, expectant silence loomed between them, making it painfully clear that she wasn't here to see him.
"I have something for you," he hurried to say, rummaging through his bag for the cannister. He set it up on the table, pushing it toward her.
Her eyes went from him to the cannister, then back to him.
"What is it?" She asked.
"Open it."
She twisted the lid and removed it, setting it down on the table beside the cannister, then peered inside and removed the vial from the protective foam holding it in the middle of the cannister.
"What is it?" She repeated, but her eyes sparkled like she already knew.
"What we talked about. Superpowers."
She examined the vial, the content a dark, metallic amber that had reminded him of her eyes.
"For real?"
He nodded. "You need to drink it. Not here, though," he added as her hand found the black cork. "Somewhere more private. We can go back to mine, if you want."
She frowned, looking away. "I'd rather not. Can I take it back home?"
"It would be better if I was present when you take it. That way, I can help you discover your new powers. They aren't always obvious. We could go to my office," he told her. He'd taken her there a few times before, to impress her. No one would mind.
"No," she said, firm. "There's an alley behind the coffee shop, that should be private enough. Let's go," she said, rising from her seat, vial in hand.
William put the empty cannister back in his bag, and followed her outside, abandoning his coffee in the trash.
It wasn't ideal. He would have preferred a controlled environment, but Vanessa could be obstinate when she wanted, and he didn't want to risk her leaving if he voiced his objections. It would have to do.
"I just drink it? That's all?" She asked as they reached the alley.
He nodded. "Drink it all at once, fast."
She uncorked the vial and brought it to her lips, then tipped it and drank.
Nothing happened at first, then she stumbled back against the wall.
"It hurts," she said.
"It's normal. It'll get better."
She was tense, hands shaking in front of her, eyes wide.
"Relax," he told her, stressing the word.
She didn't. Her whole body began shaking, and she let out a half-scream, half-cry that broke his heart.
"It'll get better," he repeated.
It didn't.
To his horror, her skin began bubbling, melting, and she hunched over, a hump rapidly growing on her back. Her hair began to fall in clumps, her skull elongating to fuse with the hump and form a kind of dark, flexible carapace resembling a pill bug's. Her mouth fell open as she screamed, and kept opening like a zipper, all the way to her groin, ripping her clothes as ridges appeared. The exposed flesh grew several rows of spiky teeth, resembling a gaping lamprey mouth that covered her entire front.
He back away. No. What had gone wrong?
Was it her mental state? Was she stressed enough to have a bad reaction to the sample? Was it her panic as the side effects began?
Was it because of him?
She fell to her knees, letting out a low growl that shook him to his core.
Her amber eyes found him, round and without lids and barely human anymore, and then the creature pounced.
"Door!"
The brick wall behind him gave way to a portal that closed as soon as he fell through, the sterile white walls welcoming him to his office. He found his feet and stood, shaking and breathless.
How had it gone so wrong?
A part of him wanted to bury himself in study, to numb himself until he understood, but the bigger part of him needed to help his daughter however he could.
There was only one way he could think of.
The Doctor was in her office, her bodyguard away on business, thankfully. The coast was clear. William exited his office and went to the storage room.
He went to the same shelf he had taken Vanessa's sample from. The high end ones. He didn't take the same formula, but still one of comparable P, R and O values.
He brought it back to his office, sat down at his desk, and imbibed the vial.
It burned his mouth, all the way down to his esophagus and stomach. Then, the fire began to spread outward, to the rest of him.
His fingers were digging into the chair's armrests, and he forced himself to relax. It would all be over in a minute or two.
The thought wasn't comforting at all.
Would he change like his daughter had? He forced himself not to think of it, knowing that stress was a negative factor.
He squeezed his eyes shut, feeling himself melt into creeping darkness.
The pain was still there, but he was numb, now. Disconnected. He was adrift in a vast space, incoherent images he couldn't comprehend flickering in his mind's eye. Something impossibly vast, a landscape of biological shapes.
Then, his body called him again. The pain was gone, but he was still numb.
He opened his eyes, and his daughter was there.
The shape and face were recognizably hers, but she was covered in stripes of ebony black and alabaster white, naked. The only color on her was the yellow of her eyes, many shades lighter than the amber he was used to.
"Vanessa?" He whispered, disbelieving. Had the vial given him his daughter back? It didn't make sense.
She cocked her head at him and blinked.
He could feel her more accurately than he could feel his own body, and see himself at the same time as he could see her. Experimentally, he imagined her raising her hand, and she did.
A puppet, then. Shaped like his daughter.
He swallowed his disappointment.
What now?
Could he find Vanessa? Help her? He didn't know how. He didn't even know whether there was anything left of her in the beast she had become.
He'd seen the failures. Had studied them. He had little hope, but still enough to call for a door back to the alley in New York City.
Sooner or later, the Doctor would notice the missing samples, and her bodyguard would know it was him. Staying wasn't an option. Maybe he could find Vanessa, reason with her, and they could go on the run together.
She was gone when he arrived back in the alley.
He followed the screaming, sending the puppet to investigate and looking through her eyes. She found the heroes first.
Legend and Hero were in the air, alternating between firing at Vanessa and evacuating the street. She was crouching over a body on the sidewalk, her gargantuan mouth devouring it. Ripped limbs were scattered around her.
He sent the puppet forward, joining his daughter, to shield her from the heroes's fire. To his surprise, the puppet appeared to be impervious to their attacks.
Vanessa, what remained of her, growled at the puppet.
The puppet picked up an arm from the remnants of Vanessa's meal, and brought it to her mouth in a move he hadn't consciously ordered. Then, she ate it, chewing and annihilating the flesh.
Establishing that she was on Vanessa's side, if only his daughter could understand it.
Vibrant amber eyes stared as the puppet continued to eat.
The heroes repositioned, Hero taking out a large golden gun with lines of electric blue.
He fired, and the puppet moved to take the impact, protecting Vanessa.
He fired again, and the puppet lunged at him, swatting away the gun with a strength that undoubtedly broke his hand.
Then, the puppet picked up Vanessa and ran away until they lost the heroes.
William climbed in his truck, following as he could. The puppet was fast, on top of being strong and resistant to attacks.
He'd lucked out, unlike his daughter.
The puppet carried her to a junkyard, where there were no people around, and William joined them there.
He exited the truck, slow and careful steps carrying him to his daughter while the puppet set her down.
"Vanessa?" He spoke softly.
She growled at him, a low sound that reverberated in his bones.
What could he do? For all his years researching parahumans, he couldn't think of a single thing he could do to help her.
"Vanessa, it's me. It's dad."
Nothing indicated any recognition, or even that she could understand the words.
She lunged, and the puppet moved before he could consciously order it, protecting him. Her arm went through Vanessa's midsection, at the center of her gaping lamprey mouth.
No. No!
He hadn't meant to, the puppet acting reflexively.
Vanessa crumpled on the ground, and through the puppet's enhanced senses, he could hear the heroes catching up.
He looked back at Vanessa's form, not quite sure whether she could survive this. Was it better to let her die? To put an end to her suffering?
There was nothing left of her.
Nothing but the image of his puppet.
He retreated to his truck.
September 15th, 2000
William's eyes were closed, meditative, as he reclined in his truck's seat.
A few hundred feet away, the Siberian, as his puppet had been dubbed by the authorities, savored a well-earned meal.
She didn't need to eat, strictly speaking, but he enjoyed the sensations. His own senses and feelings were so dulled in comparison that what little food he ate might as well be ash. But the Siberian never had that problem. The vivid, exhilarating feelings were like a drug, especially compared to his own existence, living on the run in his truck, every waking moment spent mourning.
To forget, he spent less and less time as himself, so much so that she was beginning to feel more real than he did.
Like with a drug, he hadn't meant to go off the deep end. It had just happened, slowly, then all at once. In the brief moments of clarity where he was truly alone, he pondered whether he should kill himself, but suspected that his puppet wouldn't let him.
She wasn't truly independent, but she sometimes took initiatives that surprised him. She was wilder, more feral than he would consciously make her, responding to baser instincts and reflexes.
It also took something out or him, to summon her. It took out the part of him that would have cared about the damage, about the dead, about the heroes. The part that cared about what he'd done to Vanessa. It only made him crave the escapism even more.
His quietude ended when the door in front of the Siberian was blasted open, and the World's greatest heroes entered the room. His former colleagues.
Despite all their years collaborating, he resented them. What did they have, that Vanessa lacked? What made them so special? Was it dumb luck? Why had they come out of this stronger and more powerful, but still recognizably human?
Why had he?
Alexandria wasted no time, fist slamming into the Siberian's head. The Siberian didn't budge, only raising a hand to claw at the heroine, who hurried to fly out of reach.
Legend fired beam after beam, without result.
Eidolon cast out crystals that exploded into a formation around the Siberian on contact, encasing her. She shrugged it off like it was nothing, then lunged after Hero. Her arm plunged through his chest cavity, then she dragged it free, nearly bisecting him.
Eidolon screamed, flying close to scoop up the two pieces of Hero, carrying them outside.
The Siberian leaped after them, but missed after Legend shot his comrades with a laser to alter their trajectory.
She landed on her feet, rejoicing at the screams of bystanders and heroes alike.
Alexandria gave chase, and the Siberian flung PRT vehicles at her. In the midst of this, Eidolon began switching abilities every few seconds to constantly throw something new at her, but nothing affected her.
Alexandria came within reach, and Siberian swung at her. The heroine moved out of the way, but not completely, and the hit made contact. Her visor fell, as did one of her eyes and a chunk of her face.
The Siberian moved on to hunting the bystanders as the fallen Alexandria was buried in containment foam.
May 5th, 2002
He'd heard about them of course, in his life of before. These days though, he wasn't so up to date with the news. He hadn't even known they were in town until the beast showed up.
It was roughly the size of a car, black and iridescent, with multiple legs and shiny eyes all over its body.
"Fight me," it growled, so low the words were barely audible.
"Now, Crawler, don't importunate our guest," said a man with dark hair and a goatee, knife in hand. "Shatterbird, if you would do the honors?"
The woman was flying a dozen feet in the air, clad in colored glass, with a beak-shaped helmet around the upper part of her face.
"We would like you to join us," she spoke. "As fellow predators, we appreciate your work, and have been keeping an eye on it for a while now."
"We would like to offer you the opportunity to do more," said the man. "More killing, more rampaging, more terrorizing. In exchange, we can offer you company."
Company did sound nice, after all this time alone. As did spending more time as her rather than as himself.
The Siberian nodded, and Jack smiled.
January 20th, 2005
The girl was clearly terrified.
After a long stretch of unsuccessful recruiting, Jack had decreed that if they couldn't find a cape fit to join them, they could always try to make one. Thus began a new game, of trying to get people to trigger.
They hadn't expected their first success to be a six years old girl.
She didn't look anything like Vanessa, but already, bittersweet memories were inviting themselves to his mind, hard to dismiss.
Playing pretend. Reading her bedtime stories. Her climbing in bed to join them after a nightmare. The birthdays at a local restaurant with children's games. Telling her all about superheroes.
Jack held the girl's hand as they walked over to a house, ringing the doorbell.
The man who opened the door quickly tried to shut it, but Jack's boot blocked it from closing.
"So impolite. What do you say, little girl? Should we teach him a lesson in politeness?"
She hesitated, clearly searching for the right answer, then nodded.
Jack stepped aside, foot still in the door, and let Chuckles the clown push the door with his super strength. The door splintered open, revealing the man who was backing away.
There would be no getting away from them.
Winter used her power, decreasing his momentum until he was barely able or willing to move.
"Go ahead," Jack told the little girl, placing a knife in her hand. "Show us what you can do."
Her eyes went wide as she hesitated.
"Unless we made a mistake bringing you along," Jack continued, his tone even despite the obvious threat.
She shook her head, eyes still wide.
"No no," she said, "I'm just thinking about what to do, to make sure it's special."
"Alrighty, but don't take too long. The others will want their turn too."
The knife shook in her hand as she bent down next to the man, then steadied as she began cutting.
It was pretty good, for a first try.
Later that night, when the girl woke up screaming from a nightmare, the Siberian was there to soothe her, sharing her invulnerability in a silent vow.
January 20th, 2011
Bonesaw clapped her hands as the cake was deposited in front of her by a terrified employee of the Pizza-Riffic Palace while the rest of them sang "Happy birthday."
The Siberian couldn't sing along, not without using Manton's voice and betraying her secret. Instead, she stood behind Bonesaw, hand on her shoulder and granting her her protection in what had become her own way of showing affection to the girl.
Bonesaw was growing into such a remarkable young woman, so far removed from the terrified little girl they had initially taken under their wing. She had truly blossomed under their care, with such a vivid imagination and artistic side, they never knew what to expect next.
Bonesaw blew the candles, then Jack cut the cake, handing out the first slice to her, and she patiently waited for everyone to be served before digging in. So polite.
Had Vanessa ever been this polite? This bright? This creative?
The memories were distant enough not to be painful, dulled by the years spent pouring himself into the Siberian
"Do you want one, Siberian?" Bonesaw asked.
So considerate.
She accepted the plate.
Later, after the cake was finished, that the presents were opened and that the restaurant's employees were flayed and surgically bound together, Bonesaw insisted to go spend some time in the ball pit, leaving the adults at the table.
"They grow up so fast," Jack sighed, and the Siberian agreed.
Now
The mission was simple: find the new Ward, Apiary, and bring her back to Jack for one of his games.
They'd come to the city at Bonesaw's insistence, as she wanted to meet Panacea and had insisted that the chaos left by the Endbringer would be conductive to their activities.
Shortly after arriving, Cherish gave them a play by play of Panacea's crumbling life and mental health, leading Bonesaw to convince everyone to giving her a chance, rather than each nominating a different person. Shatterbird hadn't been too happy about it, citing traditions, but Jack had been intrigued by the games suggested by Bonesaw, and Shatterbird eventually folded when faced with the majority.
They'd offered Panacea a choice. Endure their tests, and they would go after her enemies only. Refuse, and they would attack her loved ones before rampaging through the city.
Now that the tests were ongoing, Jack had set up a series of games with the list of people they'd coaxed out of Panacea.
At first, the girl had been reluctant to name anyone, but had relented after Jack reminded her that they would go after her sister if she went back on their deal. She had then named the various criminal elements of Brockton Bay, solely because they were villains, which made the choices less interesting, but Cherish had twigged onto her personal grudge against the Undersiders, which had caught Jack's interest. He had needled Panacea about it until she agreed to give them and their former member a starring role in his games. Then, Cherish exposed her simmering resentment against her adoptive parents, and Jack decreed that they would keep those for last, to end with a (Flash)bang.
For now, the Siberian was tracking down Apiary with Cherish's indications. She was supposed to be at the North end of the lake, but was gone when the Siberian arrived. With the way the streets were laid out, she could only have gone South, or else the Siberian would have crossed paths with her. She wasn't out on patrol, only checking up on someone, and going South would only bring her further away from the PRT HQ, so she wasn't headed there either.
From Jack's research, he knew that she had a wide range. Had she known that the Siberian was coming? Was that why she'd left?
Would she respond to the Siberian's every move, trying to get away from her?
A rush of anticipation washed over him, and he had to remind himself that they were on a schedule. Bonesaw would be upset if they had to rush the game because the Siberian took the time to play cat and mouse.
Instead, William dismissed the Siberian, then summoned her again. She appeared beside him, in the passenger's seat, then exited the truck and jumped on top of a nearby building. From there, she leaped from rooftop to rooftop, tracing the most likely path one would take if one were to go around the lake. Indeed, she quickly found her prey, walking with a purple-clad Ward.
She jumped off the roof, landing in front of them.
They froze, then backed away slowly.
The Siberian walked forward, and the purple Ward whispered something at Apiary.
The Siberian raised one hand, motioning for her to come.
"Me?" Apiary asked.
The Siberian nodded.
The girl hesitated, then stepped forward until she was face to face with the Siberian, who grabbed her and swung her over her shoulder before turning around to bring her to the others.
Something hit the Siberian's back, and all of a sudden, William was himself, alone in his truck.
What had happened? Had the purple Ward somehow managed to pierce through the Siberian's invincibility? How?
The Siberian reappeared next to him, in the passenger's seat. Should he send her back against the two Wards? No. Better not to, given the circumstances. He couldn't risk this newfound weakness being exploited.
Except that the others wouldn't understand if the Siberian came back empty-handed. They would be disappointed. Bonesaw would be disappointed.
Maybe he could follow the two Wards from afar, and corner Apiary when she was alone.
Go, he thought, and the Siberian went.
He closed his eyes, forgetting his body.
The Siberian jumped on top of a building, then moved from roof to roof until she found the two Wards again. She followed them, unseen, waiting for an opportunity to get her target alone.
As they got closer to his location, a flicker of worry had William squeeze his eyes shut to focus on the Siberian's senses, but the two Wards continued down the street parallel to the alley where he was parked.
It was the click of the doors unlocking that made William open his eyes, and he didn't have time to ponder at the mass of cockroaches on the button before the door opened.
The Siberian reappeared just outside the truck, ready to strike, but something hit her from the back before she could take action, and she vanished again. The two Wards were at the other end of the alley, and the purple one had a crossbow raised.
The red-clad cape who'd opened the door grabbed William's hand as he tried to summon his puppet again, but she never appeared.
He tried swatting away the cape's hand, but she was stronger than him, with his years spent wasting away in a daydream. She grabbed his other hand and brought his wrists together, a swarm of bees coalescing around them. When they dispersed, his hands were bound together with a thin cord he couldn't break. When he tried to kick at the cape, he found that his feet were similarly bound.
Still holding one of his hands, the red cape reached into her pocket, then jammed a syringe into his thigh as the two Wards walked over from the other end of the alley.
"It's really him?" The purple Ward asked, crossbow at the ready.
"Yes," the cape in red nodded as he felt himself waver. A sedative, no doubt. "Let's bring him in."
August 5th, 2000
Divorce was the worst thing that could happen to a good man, in William Manton's opinion.
When Vanessa had been little, William described his work to her as "studying how superheroes are made," which naturally resulted in her wanting him to make her a superhero. She kept asking about his studies, his breakthroughs, his results, his publications, all without being old enough to truly comprehend anything he said.
Vanessa had always been fascinated with superheroes, and for a glorious few years, William had been her everyday hero. She even wanted to study parahumans in college, following in his footsteps.
That was before Myriam began poisoning their daughter's mind against him.
Now, Vanessa barely talked to him, and stayed with her mother full time, refusing to visit.
He knew he hadn't been a perfect father — not with his busy schedule, especially in the last few years — but he hadn't been anything near the monster Myriam painted him as. He'd been loving and caring, always looking forward to spending time with his daughter. It was just that he couldn't always make the time when duty called.
Now, his attempts at maintaining contact with his only child were being framed as stalking and harassing and disrespecting her wishes by his vindicative future ex-wife.
He'd read the studies on parental alienation, enough to know that the alienated parent nearly always lost.
What could he do? How could he prove to Vanessa how much he loved her?
He got the idea while looking through her childhood scrapbook, seeing her using her bath towel as a cape while pretending to be a superhero. The rest was a matter of sneaking behind the Doctor's back.
Armed with a new disposable phone, since she wouldn't answer his regular number, he called Vanessa. She picked up halfway through the second ring.
"Hello?" She spoke, and just hearing her voice brought a smile to his face.
"Remember when you were little, and that you wanted to be a superhero?"
"Dad?"
"What if I could make you one for real?"
August 7th, 2000
William sat down at a table in the dinky little coffee shop Vanessa where Vanessa had agreed to meet him, a black coffee in hand.
His bag contained a canister holding a single vial, one of the highest quality formula they'd managed to make. His gift to her. His last chance to get her on his side.
He brought his hands together beneath the table, not quite in a praying position, but rather to keep them from expressing his nervousness.
Would she actually hear him out? What if she refused to drink the formula?
The bell above the door chimed, and there she was. Seeing her in person for the first time in nearly a year, he couldn't help but appreciate that she was growing into a lovely young woman, much like Myriam had been when they first met. Tall, slender, with a heart-shaped face, delicate features, and dark hair all the way down to her waist. More than anything, it was her eyes that drew attention. Large, vivacious, a striking amber.
He rose from his seat, unsure of how to greet her after all this time, but she didn't make any move toward him, no kissing or hugging, not that he had expected any. For now.
"Vanessa. It's good to see you."
"Hi dad," she said, sitting down. He did the same.
"How have you been?" He asked.
"Good," she answered tersely, her expression closed. She didn't reciprocate the question.
"Do you want a coffee? My treat," he told her.
The look she gave him made him regret ever offering.
"I don't drink coffee."
It stung, that he didn't know her well enough to know that.
"A hot chocolate? A tea?"
"I'm good."
So she wasn't planning to stay any longer than necessary, he thought.
His own coffee was still full, untouched, displaying his hopes for a longer talk.
"How was your summer?" He asked, desperate to stretch this out.
"It was good."
Cold, expectant silence loomed between them, making it painfully clear that she wasn't here to see him.
"I have something for you," he hurried to say, rummaging through his bag for the cannister. He set it up on the table, pushing it toward her.
Her eyes went from him to the cannister, then back to him.
"What is it?" She asked.
"Open it."
She twisted the lid and removed it, setting it down on the table beside the cannister, then peered inside and removed the vial from the protective foam holding it in the middle of the cannister.
"What is it?" She repeated, but her eyes sparkled like she already knew.
"What we talked about. Superpowers."
She examined the vial, the content a dark, metallic amber that had reminded him of her eyes.
"For real?"
He nodded. "You need to drink it. Not here, though," he added as her hand found the black cork. "Somewhere more private. We can go back to mine, if you want."
She frowned, looking away. "I'd rather not. Can I take it back home?"
"It would be better if I was present when you take it. That way, I can help you discover your new powers. They aren't always obvious. We could go to my office," he told her. He'd taken her there a few times before, to impress her. No one would mind.
"No," she said, firm. "There's an alley behind the coffee shop, that should be private enough. Let's go," she said, rising from her seat, vial in hand.
William put the empty cannister back in his bag, and followed her outside, abandoning his coffee in the trash.
It wasn't ideal. He would have preferred a controlled environment, but Vanessa could be obstinate when she wanted, and he didn't want to risk her leaving if he voiced his objections. It would have to do.
"I just drink it? That's all?" She asked as they reached the alley.
He nodded. "Drink it all at once, fast."
She uncorked the vial and brought it to her lips, then tipped it and drank.
Nothing happened at first, then she stumbled back against the wall.
"It hurts," she said.
"It's normal. It'll get better."
She was tense, hands shaking in front of her, eyes wide.
"Relax," he told her, stressing the word.
She didn't. Her whole body began shaking, and she let out a half-scream, half-cry that broke his heart.
"It'll get better," he repeated.
It didn't.
To his horror, her skin began bubbling, melting, and she hunched over, a hump rapidly growing on her back. Her hair began to fall in clumps, her skull elongating to fuse with the hump and form a kind of dark, flexible carapace resembling a pill bug's. Her mouth fell open as she screamed, and kept opening like a zipper, all the way to her groin, ripping her clothes as ridges appeared. The exposed flesh grew several rows of spiky teeth, resembling a gaping lamprey mouth that covered her entire front.
He back away. No. What had gone wrong?
Was it her mental state? Was she stressed enough to have a bad reaction to the sample? Was it her panic as the side effects began?
Was it because of him?
She fell to her knees, letting out a low growl that shook him to his core.
Her amber eyes found him, round and without lids and barely human anymore, and then the creature pounced.
"Door!"
The brick wall behind him gave way to a portal that closed as soon as he fell through, the sterile white walls welcoming him to his office. He found his feet and stood, shaking and breathless.
How had it gone so wrong?
A part of him wanted to bury himself in study, to numb himself until he understood, but the bigger part of him needed to help his daughter however he could.
There was only one way he could think of.
The Doctor was in her office, her bodyguard away on business, thankfully. The coast was clear. William exited his office and went to the storage room.
He went to the same shelf he had taken Vanessa's sample from. The high end ones. He didn't take the same formula, but still one of comparable P, R and O values.
He brought it back to his office, sat down at his desk, and imbibed the vial.
It burned his mouth, all the way down to his esophagus and stomach. Then, the fire began to spread outward, to the rest of him.
His fingers were digging into the chair's armrests, and he forced himself to relax. It would all be over in a minute or two.
The thought wasn't comforting at all.
Would he change like his daughter had? He forced himself not to think of it, knowing that stress was a negative factor.
He squeezed his eyes shut, feeling himself melt into creeping darkness.
The pain was still there, but he was numb, now. Disconnected. He was adrift in a vast space, incoherent images he couldn't comprehend flickering in his mind's eye. Something impossibly vast, a landscape of biological shapes.
Then, his body called him again. The pain was gone, but he was still numb.
He opened his eyes, and his daughter was there.
The shape and face were recognizably hers, but she was covered in stripes of ebony black and alabaster white, naked. The only color on her was the yellow of her eyes, many shades lighter than the amber he was used to.
"Vanessa?" He whispered, disbelieving. Had the vial given him his daughter back? It didn't make sense.
She cocked her head at him and blinked.
He could feel her more accurately than he could feel his own body, and see himself at the same time as he could see her. Experimentally, he imagined her raising her hand, and she did.
A puppet, then. Shaped like his daughter.
He swallowed his disappointment.
What now?
Could he find Vanessa? Help her? He didn't know how. He didn't even know whether there was anything left of her in the beast she had become.
He'd seen the failures. Had studied them. He had little hope, but still enough to call for a door back to the alley in New York City.
Sooner or later, the Doctor would notice the missing samples, and her bodyguard would know it was him. Staying wasn't an option. Maybe he could find Vanessa, reason with her, and they could go on the run together.
She was gone when he arrived back in the alley.
He followed the screaming, sending the puppet to investigate and looking through her eyes. She found the heroes first.
Legend and Hero were in the air, alternating between firing at Vanessa and evacuating the street. She was crouching over a body on the sidewalk, her gargantuan mouth devouring it. Ripped limbs were scattered around her.
He sent the puppet forward, joining his daughter, to shield her from the heroes's fire. To his surprise, the puppet appeared to be impervious to their attacks.
Vanessa, what remained of her, growled at the puppet.
The puppet picked up an arm from the remnants of Vanessa's meal, and brought it to her mouth in a move he hadn't consciously ordered. Then, she ate it, chewing and annihilating the flesh.
Establishing that she was on Vanessa's side, if only his daughter could understand it.
Vibrant amber eyes stared as the puppet continued to eat.
The heroes repositioned, Hero taking out a large golden gun with lines of electric blue.
He fired, and the puppet moved to take the impact, protecting Vanessa.
He fired again, and the puppet lunged at him, swatting away the gun with a strength that undoubtedly broke his hand.
Then, the puppet picked up Vanessa and ran away until they lost the heroes.
William climbed in his truck, following as he could. The puppet was fast, on top of being strong and resistant to attacks.
He'd lucked out, unlike his daughter.
The puppet carried her to a junkyard, where there were no people around, and William joined them there.
He exited the truck, slow and careful steps carrying him to his daughter while the puppet set her down.
"Vanessa?" He spoke softly.
She growled at him, a low sound that reverberated in his bones.
What could he do? For all his years researching parahumans, he couldn't think of a single thing he could do to help her.
"Vanessa, it's me. It's dad."
Nothing indicated any recognition, or even that she could understand the words.
She lunged, and the puppet moved before he could consciously order it, protecting him. Her arm went through Vanessa's midsection, at the center of her gaping lamprey mouth.
No. No!
He hadn't meant to, the puppet acting reflexively.
Vanessa crumpled on the ground, and through the puppet's enhanced senses, he could hear the heroes catching up.
He looked back at Vanessa's form, not quite sure whether she could survive this. Was it better to let her die? To put an end to her suffering?
There was nothing left of her.
Nothing but the image of his puppet.
He retreated to his truck.
September 15th, 2000
William's eyes were closed, meditative, as he reclined in his truck's seat.
A few hundred feet away, the Siberian, as his puppet had been dubbed by the authorities, savored a well-earned meal.
She didn't need to eat, strictly speaking, but he enjoyed the sensations. His own senses and feelings were so dulled in comparison that what little food he ate might as well be ash. But the Siberian never had that problem. The vivid, exhilarating feelings were like a drug, especially compared to his own existence, living on the run in his truck, every waking moment spent mourning.
To forget, he spent less and less time as himself, so much so that she was beginning to feel more real than he did.
Like with a drug, he hadn't meant to go off the deep end. It had just happened, slowly, then all at once. In the brief moments of clarity where he was truly alone, he pondered whether he should kill himself, but suspected that his puppet wouldn't let him.
She wasn't truly independent, but she sometimes took initiatives that surprised him. She was wilder, more feral than he would consciously make her, responding to baser instincts and reflexes.
It also took something out or him, to summon her. It took out the part of him that would have cared about the damage, about the dead, about the heroes. The part that cared about what he'd done to Vanessa. It only made him crave the escapism even more.
His quietude ended when the door in front of the Siberian was blasted open, and the World's greatest heroes entered the room. His former colleagues.
Despite all their years collaborating, he resented them. What did they have, that Vanessa lacked? What made them so special? Was it dumb luck? Why had they come out of this stronger and more powerful, but still recognizably human?
Why had he?
Alexandria wasted no time, fist slamming into the Siberian's head. The Siberian didn't budge, only raising a hand to claw at the heroine, who hurried to fly out of reach.
Legend fired beam after beam, without result.
Eidolon cast out crystals that exploded into a formation around the Siberian on contact, encasing her. She shrugged it off like it was nothing, then lunged after Hero. Her arm plunged through his chest cavity, then she dragged it free, nearly bisecting him.
Eidolon screamed, flying close to scoop up the two pieces of Hero, carrying them outside.
The Siberian leaped after them, but missed after Legend shot his comrades with a laser to alter their trajectory.
She landed on her feet, rejoicing at the screams of bystanders and heroes alike.
Alexandria gave chase, and the Siberian flung PRT vehicles at her. In the midst of this, Eidolon began switching abilities every few seconds to constantly throw something new at her, but nothing affected her.
Alexandria came within reach, and Siberian swung at her. The heroine moved out of the way, but not completely, and the hit made contact. Her visor fell, as did one of her eyes and a chunk of her face.
The Siberian moved on to hunting the bystanders as the fallen Alexandria was buried in containment foam.
May 5th, 2002
He'd heard about them of course, in his life of before. These days though, he wasn't so up to date with the news. He hadn't even known they were in town until the beast showed up.
It was roughly the size of a car, black and iridescent, with multiple legs and shiny eyes all over its body.
"Fight me," it growled, so low the words were barely audible.
"Now, Crawler, don't importunate our guest," said a man with dark hair and a goatee, knife in hand. "Shatterbird, if you would do the honors?"
The woman was flying a dozen feet in the air, clad in colored glass, with a beak-shaped helmet around the upper part of her face.
"We would like you to join us," she spoke. "As fellow predators, we appreciate your work, and have been keeping an eye on it for a while now."
"We would like to offer you the opportunity to do more," said the man. "More killing, more rampaging, more terrorizing. In exchange, we can offer you company."
Company did sound nice, after all this time alone. As did spending more time as her rather than as himself.
The Siberian nodded, and Jack smiled.
January 20th, 2005
The girl was clearly terrified.
After a long stretch of unsuccessful recruiting, Jack had decreed that if they couldn't find a cape fit to join them, they could always try to make one. Thus began a new game, of trying to get people to trigger.
They hadn't expected their first success to be a six years old girl.
She didn't look anything like Vanessa, but already, bittersweet memories were inviting themselves to his mind, hard to dismiss.
Playing pretend. Reading her bedtime stories. Her climbing in bed to join them after a nightmare. The birthdays at a local restaurant with children's games. Telling her all about superheroes.
Jack held the girl's hand as they walked over to a house, ringing the doorbell.
The man who opened the door quickly tried to shut it, but Jack's boot blocked it from closing.
"So impolite. What do you say, little girl? Should we teach him a lesson in politeness?"
She hesitated, clearly searching for the right answer, then nodded.
Jack stepped aside, foot still in the door, and let Chuckles the clown push the door with his super strength. The door splintered open, revealing the man who was backing away.
There would be no getting away from them.
Winter used her power, decreasing his momentum until he was barely able or willing to move.
"Go ahead," Jack told the little girl, placing a knife in her hand. "Show us what you can do."
Her eyes went wide as she hesitated.
"Unless we made a mistake bringing you along," Jack continued, his tone even despite the obvious threat.
She shook her head, eyes still wide.
"No no," she said, "I'm just thinking about what to do, to make sure it's special."
"Alrighty, but don't take too long. The others will want their turn too."
The knife shook in her hand as she bent down next to the man, then steadied as she began cutting.
It was pretty good, for a first try.
Later that night, when the girl woke up screaming from a nightmare, the Siberian was there to soothe her, sharing her invulnerability in a silent vow.
January 20th, 2011
Bonesaw clapped her hands as the cake was deposited in front of her by a terrified employee of the Pizza-Riffic Palace while the rest of them sang "Happy birthday."
The Siberian couldn't sing along, not without using Manton's voice and betraying her secret. Instead, she stood behind Bonesaw, hand on her shoulder and granting her her protection in what had become her own way of showing affection to the girl.
Bonesaw was growing into such a remarkable young woman, so far removed from the terrified little girl they had initially taken under their wing. She had truly blossomed under their care, with such a vivid imagination and artistic side, they never knew what to expect next.
Bonesaw blew the candles, then Jack cut the cake, handing out the first slice to her, and she patiently waited for everyone to be served before digging in. So polite.
Had Vanessa ever been this polite? This bright? This creative?
The memories were distant enough not to be painful, dulled by the years spent pouring himself into the Siberian
"Do you want one, Siberian?" Bonesaw asked.
So considerate.
She accepted the plate.
Later, after the cake was finished, that the presents were opened and that the restaurant's employees were flayed and surgically bound together, Bonesaw insisted to go spend some time in the ball pit, leaving the adults at the table.
"They grow up so fast," Jack sighed, and the Siberian agreed.
Now
The mission was simple: find the new Ward, Apiary, and bring her back to Jack for one of his games.
They'd come to the city at Bonesaw's insistence, as she wanted to meet Panacea and had insisted that the chaos left by the Endbringer would be conductive to their activities.
Shortly after arriving, Cherish gave them a play by play of Panacea's crumbling life and mental health, leading Bonesaw to convince everyone to giving her a chance, rather than each nominating a different person. Shatterbird hadn't been too happy about it, citing traditions, but Jack had been intrigued by the games suggested by Bonesaw, and Shatterbird eventually folded when faced with the majority.
They'd offered Panacea a choice. Endure their tests, and they would go after her enemies only. Refuse, and they would attack her loved ones before rampaging through the city.
Now that the tests were ongoing, Jack had set up a series of games with the list of people they'd coaxed out of Panacea.
At first, the girl had been reluctant to name anyone, but had relented after Jack reminded her that they would go after her sister if she went back on their deal. She had then named the various criminal elements of Brockton Bay, solely because they were villains, which made the choices less interesting, but Cherish had twigged onto her personal grudge against the Undersiders, which had caught Jack's interest. He had needled Panacea about it until she agreed to give them and their former member a starring role in his games. Then, Cherish exposed her simmering resentment against her adoptive parents, and Jack decreed that they would keep those for last, to end with a (Flash)bang.
For now, the Siberian was tracking down Apiary with Cherish's indications. She was supposed to be at the North end of the lake, but was gone when the Siberian arrived. With the way the streets were laid out, she could only have gone South, or else the Siberian would have crossed paths with her. She wasn't out on patrol, only checking up on someone, and going South would only bring her further away from the PRT HQ, so she wasn't headed there either.
From Jack's research, he knew that she had a wide range. Had she known that the Siberian was coming? Was that why she'd left?
Would she respond to the Siberian's every move, trying to get away from her?
A rush of anticipation washed over him, and he had to remind himself that they were on a schedule. Bonesaw would be upset if they had to rush the game because the Siberian took the time to play cat and mouse.
Instead, William dismissed the Siberian, then summoned her again. She appeared beside him, in the passenger's seat, then exited the truck and jumped on top of a nearby building. From there, she leaped from rooftop to rooftop, tracing the most likely path one would take if one were to go around the lake. Indeed, she quickly found her prey, walking with a purple-clad Ward.
She jumped off the roof, landing in front of them.
They froze, then backed away slowly.
The Siberian walked forward, and the purple Ward whispered something at Apiary.
The Siberian raised one hand, motioning for her to come.
"Me?" Apiary asked.
The Siberian nodded.
The girl hesitated, then stepped forward until she was face to face with the Siberian, who grabbed her and swung her over her shoulder before turning around to bring her to the others.
Something hit the Siberian's back, and all of a sudden, William was himself, alone in his truck.
What had happened? Had the purple Ward somehow managed to pierce through the Siberian's invincibility? How?
The Siberian reappeared next to him, in the passenger's seat. Should he send her back against the two Wards? No. Better not to, given the circumstances. He couldn't risk this newfound weakness being exploited.
Except that the others wouldn't understand if the Siberian came back empty-handed. They would be disappointed. Bonesaw would be disappointed.
Maybe he could follow the two Wards from afar, and corner Apiary when she was alone.
Go, he thought, and the Siberian went.
He closed his eyes, forgetting his body.
The Siberian jumped on top of a building, then moved from roof to roof until she found the two Wards again. She followed them, unseen, waiting for an opportunity to get her target alone.
As they got closer to his location, a flicker of worry had William squeeze his eyes shut to focus on the Siberian's senses, but the two Wards continued down the street parallel to the alley where he was parked.
It was the click of the doors unlocking that made William open his eyes, and he didn't have time to ponder at the mass of cockroaches on the button before the door opened.
The Siberian reappeared just outside the truck, ready to strike, but something hit her from the back before she could take action, and she vanished again. The two Wards were at the other end of the alley, and the purple one had a crossbow raised.
The red-clad cape who'd opened the door grabbed William's hand as he tried to summon his puppet again, but she never appeared.
He tried swatting away the cape's hand, but she was stronger than him, with his years spent wasting away in a daydream. She grabbed his other hand and brought his wrists together, a swarm of bees coalescing around them. When they dispersed, his hands were bound together with a thin cord he couldn't break. When he tried to kick at the cape, he found that his feet were similarly bound.
Still holding one of his hands, the red cape reached into her pocket, then jammed a syringe into his thigh as the two Wards walked over from the other end of the alley.
"It's really him?" The purple Ward asked, crossbow at the ready.
"Yes," the cape in red nodded as he felt himself waver. A sedative, no doubt. "Let's bring him in."
- Location
- The Internet?
A really good interlude, thank you for sharing it with us!
Which, considering it happened to two of the world's leading small-t thinkers, selecting to become mute psychotic murderers is one heck of a coincidence. Something something that two nickels quote.
He only had to be lucky ONCE, and then Revoke or Lily are bleeding from a torn throat and you're all hoping you can hit Manton around a pissed off, unstoppable force you brought into your headquarters. I understand their reasoning, I just think they're being dumb as hell, which is not a reflection on the quality of your storytelling. This is me throwing popcorn at the screen and wondering why the people in the pre-recorded thing can't hear me screaming at them to make better choices.
The woman in red at the end there is Revoke, for those of you trying to place 'cape in red' and thinking Assault. Her appearance is first described in Chapter 4 if you need a refresher like I did.
Freeze frame record scratch, "But ol' Bill had no idea just how wrong he was. Coming to a town near you, this summer, William Manton IS: Wet (blood-soaked) Horrifying American Siberian."
But by God is he going to be.
Never follow a hippy to a second location, Lemon. Good thinking, girl!
Oh dear.
Haven't you learned by now? Super powers aren't made to help anyone.
But why? It's what you always wanted?
Coward.
'Of' him. And what, his soul?
Since it's a compound adjective, the 'years' shouldn't be plural, right?
Does he know this? It sounded like the first time he spoke to Vanessa in the junkyard, it had been with his mouth. I honestly forget whether the Siberian's speaking voice is described beyond 'a whisper' in Rachel's interlude, 11a, for the curious. Had he just never tried, and wasn't sure? Seems like an excuse to not speak, to me.
Which, considering it happened to two of the world's leading small-t thinkers, selecting to become mute psychotic murderers is one heck of a coincidence. Something something that two nickels quote.
As is tradition.
And brave, heroic Panacea chose..?
Plotting to cap the occasion with betrayal and a pun? What kind of joker is this guy?
"I know, let's bring him back to our base. There's no way that can go wrong." There are very few times when I think state sanctioned murder is the moral choice, but... Come ON guys, you're fumbling at the one yard line here! I get that you want to interrogate him for information, but you don't know about the city-scale emotional manipulator, and Manton presumably needs to be AWAKE to give you any useful intel.
He only had to be lucky ONCE, and then Revoke or Lily are bleeding from a torn throat and you're all hoping you can hit Manton around a pissed off, unstoppable force you brought into your headquarters. I understand their reasoning, I just think they're being dumb as hell, which is not a reflection on the quality of your storytelling. This is me throwing popcorn at the screen and wondering why the people in the pre-recorded thing can't hear me screaming at them to make better choices.
The woman in red at the end there is Revoke, for those of you trying to place 'cape in red' and thinking Assault. Her appearance is first described in Chapter 4 if you need a refresher like I did.
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Chapter 30
Chapter 30
Despite Déjà Vu's insistence that the man would be harmless once sedated, none of us relaxed when he finally stopped moving. Revoke didn't let go of him, Flechette didn't lower her arbalest, and I kept my attention on the handful of bugs on his joints, ready to warn the others at the slightest movement.
"How are we even going to contain him?" I asked.
"For now, orders are to keep him sedated until Alexandria gets here," Revoke answered. "For the longer term, there are tinker devices that can create areas where powers don't work. Then again, I'm not sure what the higher-ups will decide. There's a kill order standing, after all."
I looked at the man. He was thin and dirty, with several layers of clothing in the way I usually associated with homeless people, and his truck had smelled like he'd been living in it and hadn't had a single shower in years.
That was it? The man behind the monster who'd terrorized the country for a decade? The one who would possibly be executed for his crimes? As shaken as I still was about my encounter with the Siberian, I almost pitied him.
Were the rest of the Nine even aware of his existence? If I had to guess, I would say no. I'd read about the infighting, the members killed by their own teammates. One of them would have tried to leverage his weakness, if they'd known.
A PRT van parked at the end of the alley, four agents coming out of the back to join us.
Revoke tentatively let go of the man, Flechette still aiming her arbalest at him, and nothing happened, so the uniforms grabbed him and brought him to the van as we followed.
We rode in silence to the PRT HQ. By the time we arrived, the word had spread, and a delegation was waiting for us in front of the boarded up doors.
The rest of the Wards, as well as Miss Militia, Armsmaster, Triumph and several PRT agents were there, gathered to see the man we'd captured as uniforms hauled him out of the van.
As we joined the rest of the Wards, Weld clapped Flechette and I on the back.
"Good work," he said.
"Now, if we can just get Shatterbird, Dragon will be able to step in," added Armsmaster.
"That would be a game changer," Miss Militia conceded.
"It's really him?" Asked Clockblocker as the uniforms carried the unconscious man into the building.
"Yes," Revoke confirmed.
"Is it really a good idea to put him in a cell just below our headquarters?" Asked Vista. "What if he wakes up and summons the Siberian here?"
"We'll keep him sedated until Alexandria can bring him to a more secure location to interrogate him," answered Miss Militia.
A slow clap sounded in the distance, and we whirled around in its direction.
The people I found there made me regret focusing my attention on the Siberian's maker rather than on my surroundings.
Jack Slash, Bonesaw, and a pretty young woman with a stripe of red in her long, dark hair stood thirty feet to our side, at the corner of the building. Mechanical beings the size of a dog, with spidery hydraulic legs trailed behind them.
White smoke rolled around them. I tried tagging them with bugs, and the bugs died in contact with the smoke, like it was some kind of bug killer. I noticed they were each wearing a vial on a chain around their necks, which seemed to be the source.
"Bra-vo!" Jack said, stressing each syllable. "Truly didn't see it coming, that the Siberian would turn out to be some random homeless man."
Next to him, Bonesaw looked upset, frowning. He put his hand on her shoulder.
"Don't worry, poppet. There will be others. Soon enough, you might gain a new big sister. Now where's that smile?"
She smiled at him, but her eyes were still shiny and red.
"What are you doing here?" Asked Miss Militia, aiming a rifle at them and positioning herself in front of the rest of us along with Armsmaster. "Are you trying to break him out?"
"Worry not," he said with a dismissive hand gesture. "Now that the Siberian's mystique is gone, so is her appeal. No. We're here to invite one of your own to a game, a challenge, if you will. You see, we decided to do things a bit differently this time, to shake things up. Bonesaw insisted to nominate Panacea as our sole candidate, and in exchange for her participation in our tests, we promised her that we would focus our attention on the people she wanted us to target. Set up some games starring them."
Glory Girl's hand flew to her mouth at the mention of her sister.
Something twisted in my stomach at his words, the threats Panacea had made at the bank sounding through my mind, as well as her words when she healed me after Shadow Stalker's attack, about how switching sides changed nothing about her feelings about me.
"She's figured it out," said the girl with the red stripe. Something about her reminded me of someone, but I couldn't tell who. "Tell me, little worm, do you know how much everyone here resents you? Nobody wants you here. Kinda like at school."
I bristled at the mention of school, but there were hints about her power there. She could read emotions, it appeared.
She continued. "To the people in charge, you're just a burden, a headache, a bunch of trouble and a walking conflict of interest. They might placate you for appearances, but they all wish they didn't have to deal with you at all. Some of them have even wished for you to die."
It stung. To die? Really? I would have thought they would wish for me to transfer elsewhere, at most.
"What about your so-called teammates? The one in charge who finds that the team isn't working because of you? The one who might joke about it but still has nightmares about you? The heartbroken midget you constantly remind of the teammates she lost? The geek who's building somethings to keep bugs out of his room because he doesn't trust you? The lonely one who just wanted a friend and had to settle for you? The newbie who resents you for messing with her sister and being a villain?"
"That's enough," said Armsmaster. "I can tell that you're trying to mess with my emotions, and are surely messing with everyone else's. It won't work on me. I've set up psychic and empathic shielding to protect myself from Masters like you."
The girl shrugged. "Sure, but I could still read you when you took your helmet off, in the past few days. The arrogant geek. The worst of them all. So full of resentment. And what is that? Guilt? Shame? Why feel so guilty about her? Could it be—"
"You're lying to sow discord in the ranks," Armsmaster interrupted.
"Look who's lying now."
"That's quite enough, Cherish," Jack said. "As entertaining as this is, that's not what we came here for, and we're on a schedule." He turned toward me. "Apiary. Skitter. Whatever name you go by these days. We have your little friends. Come with us, play our game, and we won't touch your teammates. Refuse to play, and everyone here pays the price."
My little friends? Was he talking about the Undersiders? I tensed, cold seeping through my veins at the prospect.
"Nobody's playing your games," said Miss Militia, cocking her rifle.
Jack gave an exaggerated sigh. "A shame, really. Bonesaw?"
Bonesaw raised a hand, holding a vial. "These are special prions I made. Kinda like Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, infecting the brain and making a sponge out of it, but with an onset of three days between exposure and death. And it won't be a fun three days either. Personality changes, mood swings, hallucinations, paranoia, seizures, loss of motor control, then psychosis, and finally death. Completely and utterly incurable."
I swallowed, bracing myself.
If I had to choose between my death and the excruciating death of everyone present, it was an easy decision. An acceptable price to pay.
I stepped forward.
"Apiary," said Miss Militia, her tone a warning.
I took another step, then another, and kept going until I faced the trio.
"If I go, you won't hurt the rest of them?" I asked.
"I'm a man of my words," said Jack, which I noticed wasn't a confirmation. "As long as they don't attack us, we have no reason to attack them."
I nodded. "Then, I'm coming."
Jack smiled, holding his hand out to me. I took it.
"Heroes," he said with a bow, "we'll be on our way. Any attack, and we're going back on our deal."
He turned around, dragging me along. Bonesaw took my other hand.
I didn't look back.
Once we had turned the corner and were far enough not to hear, bugs coalesced in front of the heroes, forming a humanoid shape. The grasshoppers and jumping spiders in the mix allowed me to see and hear.
"That was by far the stupidest thing you've done," said Armsmaster, irate.
"Yeah?" Answered my bugs, "You can make it less stupid by taking down Shatterbird while I keep them busy, so Dragon can step in. Don't come after me, or the emotion-reading cape will know it."
He grumbled something I couldn't make out.
"Can Déjà Vu help us?" Triumph asked.
Revoke shook her head. "Her power will be out of service for at least a week after the stunt she pulled to find the Siberian's maker."
"Apiary," said Miss Militia, "be careful."
I dismissed the bugs.
I had no idea how to get out of my current predicament. The way I figured, the best I could do was stall them so they weren't doing damage elsewhere.
We walked for a long time, heading North of the PRT HQ.
Bonesaw was humming and skipping in the water, her yellow rain boots splashing it around.
"So," said Jack. "Why change teams if you're obviously not wanted?"
Did he really have to make conversation? It felt strange, exchanging small talk with someone like him. A serial killer.
"I had my reasons," I answered.
"Like?"
"The Undersiders and I had a disagreement, and I didn't want to be on my own."
"Not the most ambitious of answers."
"That's not all there is to it," said Cherish. "The heroes cornered you, tried to force you to make a deal. You accepted because you wanted to rescue someone. The drugged girl."
How did she know so much details?
"Perks of my power," she answered as if I'd spoken aloud.
"A damsel in distress," Jack said, grimacing. "How noble."
I didn't answer.
I was beginning to recognize my surroundings. My house wasn't too far. At first, I thought this was where we were headed, but we went past it and kept heading North-West.
We arrived to a part of town that had mostly been leveled by tidal waves, near Winslow High. That's when I felt them.
People were gathered in the remnants of the school, each person bound to a seat. One of the people was tied with something different, that I couldn't quite wrap my head around. Forty people or so in total, separated in two groups in what used to be the school's auditorium. It had been at the center of the first floor, and the walls on two sides were still partially standing, while the second and third floors had been wiped by Leviathan.
My bugs tried to untie them, but the ropes were too thick, the knots too intricate. I didn't have the right kinds of bugs to see or hear, so I was limited touch. I tried to evaluate the people's silhouettes, to find the Undersiders amongst them, but couldn't. Several fit with Tattletale or Regent's shapes, but none fit with Bitch or Grue's. I would have to wait until we arrived to figure out what was going on.
Finally, we arrived where the entrance of my school used to be. Only a few feet remained of the outside walls, the doors gone.
Jack motioned for me to go in first.
I navigated the debris, taking my time so I wouldn't trip, and slowly made my way to the auditorium. We arrived to what used to be the side entrance to the stage, which was more or less intact.
"Go on," said Jack.
I pushed what remained of the door, entering the stage. A heavy curtain hid the audience. It appeared to have been installed after the disaster, held by a pole affixed to the crumbling walls.
"And, curtain!"
The mechanical beings pulled on ropes to open the center of the curtain, revealing the prisoners.
I immediately recognized about a third of the people, and finally understood what Jack had meant when he talked about my little friends.
It wasn't the Undersiders.
In the front row, in the group on the left, was Emma, tracks of mascara running down her cheeks where tears had fallen and were still falling. Left of her was Madison, also crying, her eyes widening in surprise and panic as the curtain opened. On the right, bound in fairy lights that ended in a small generator, was Sophia. She snarled when she saw me. Next to Sophia was Julia, looking alarmed, then in the second row were the more peripheral bullies: Heather, Nina, Caroline, Sarah and Eve. The ones who had been with the trio when they cornered me outside of class, when Mr. Gladly looked on and did nothing.
Completing that group were Principal Blackwell, Emma's dad, Mr. Quinlan, and Mr. Greene, my gym teacher.
Mr. Gladly wasn't there, and I was reminded of his presence at the shelter Leviathan had breached. I guessed he hadn't made it after all.
The group on the right was twice as big, and I didn't recognize anyone. They were of all genders and ages, with the youngest being a boy about Dinah's age, and the oldest, an elderly woman with white hair and wrinkled skin.
"Are you familiar with the Trolley problem?" Jack asked.
Despite Déjà Vu's insistence that the man would be harmless once sedated, none of us relaxed when he finally stopped moving. Revoke didn't let go of him, Flechette didn't lower her arbalest, and I kept my attention on the handful of bugs on his joints, ready to warn the others at the slightest movement.
"How are we even going to contain him?" I asked.
"For now, orders are to keep him sedated until Alexandria gets here," Revoke answered. "For the longer term, there are tinker devices that can create areas where powers don't work. Then again, I'm not sure what the higher-ups will decide. There's a kill order standing, after all."
I looked at the man. He was thin and dirty, with several layers of clothing in the way I usually associated with homeless people, and his truck had smelled like he'd been living in it and hadn't had a single shower in years.
That was it? The man behind the monster who'd terrorized the country for a decade? The one who would possibly be executed for his crimes? As shaken as I still was about my encounter with the Siberian, I almost pitied him.
Were the rest of the Nine even aware of his existence? If I had to guess, I would say no. I'd read about the infighting, the members killed by their own teammates. One of them would have tried to leverage his weakness, if they'd known.
A PRT van parked at the end of the alley, four agents coming out of the back to join us.
Revoke tentatively let go of the man, Flechette still aiming her arbalest at him, and nothing happened, so the uniforms grabbed him and brought him to the van as we followed.
We rode in silence to the PRT HQ. By the time we arrived, the word had spread, and a delegation was waiting for us in front of the boarded up doors.
The rest of the Wards, as well as Miss Militia, Armsmaster, Triumph and several PRT agents were there, gathered to see the man we'd captured as uniforms hauled him out of the van.
As we joined the rest of the Wards, Weld clapped Flechette and I on the back.
"Good work," he said.
"Now, if we can just get Shatterbird, Dragon will be able to step in," added Armsmaster.
"That would be a game changer," Miss Militia conceded.
"It's really him?" Asked Clockblocker as the uniforms carried the unconscious man into the building.
"Yes," Revoke confirmed.
"Is it really a good idea to put him in a cell just below our headquarters?" Asked Vista. "What if he wakes up and summons the Siberian here?"
"We'll keep him sedated until Alexandria can bring him to a more secure location to interrogate him," answered Miss Militia.
A slow clap sounded in the distance, and we whirled around in its direction.
The people I found there made me regret focusing my attention on the Siberian's maker rather than on my surroundings.
Jack Slash, Bonesaw, and a pretty young woman with a stripe of red in her long, dark hair stood thirty feet to our side, at the corner of the building. Mechanical beings the size of a dog, with spidery hydraulic legs trailed behind them.
White smoke rolled around them. I tried tagging them with bugs, and the bugs died in contact with the smoke, like it was some kind of bug killer. I noticed they were each wearing a vial on a chain around their necks, which seemed to be the source.
"Bra-vo!" Jack said, stressing each syllable. "Truly didn't see it coming, that the Siberian would turn out to be some random homeless man."
Next to him, Bonesaw looked upset, frowning. He put his hand on her shoulder.
"Don't worry, poppet. There will be others. Soon enough, you might gain a new big sister. Now where's that smile?"
She smiled at him, but her eyes were still shiny and red.
"What are you doing here?" Asked Miss Militia, aiming a rifle at them and positioning herself in front of the rest of us along with Armsmaster. "Are you trying to break him out?"
"Worry not," he said with a dismissive hand gesture. "Now that the Siberian's mystique is gone, so is her appeal. No. We're here to invite one of your own to a game, a challenge, if you will. You see, we decided to do things a bit differently this time, to shake things up. Bonesaw insisted to nominate Panacea as our sole candidate, and in exchange for her participation in our tests, we promised her that we would focus our attention on the people she wanted us to target. Set up some games starring them."
Glory Girl's hand flew to her mouth at the mention of her sister.
Something twisted in my stomach at his words, the threats Panacea had made at the bank sounding through my mind, as well as her words when she healed me after Shadow Stalker's attack, about how switching sides changed nothing about her feelings about me.
"She's figured it out," said the girl with the red stripe. Something about her reminded me of someone, but I couldn't tell who. "Tell me, little worm, do you know how much everyone here resents you? Nobody wants you here. Kinda like at school."
I bristled at the mention of school, but there were hints about her power there. She could read emotions, it appeared.
She continued. "To the people in charge, you're just a burden, a headache, a bunch of trouble and a walking conflict of interest. They might placate you for appearances, but they all wish they didn't have to deal with you at all. Some of them have even wished for you to die."
It stung. To die? Really? I would have thought they would wish for me to transfer elsewhere, at most.
"What about your so-called teammates? The one in charge who finds that the team isn't working because of you? The one who might joke about it but still has nightmares about you? The heartbroken midget you constantly remind of the teammates she lost? The geek who's building somethings to keep bugs out of his room because he doesn't trust you? The lonely one who just wanted a friend and had to settle for you? The newbie who resents you for messing with her sister and being a villain?"
"That's enough," said Armsmaster. "I can tell that you're trying to mess with my emotions, and are surely messing with everyone else's. It won't work on me. I've set up psychic and empathic shielding to protect myself from Masters like you."
The girl shrugged. "Sure, but I could still read you when you took your helmet off, in the past few days. The arrogant geek. The worst of them all. So full of resentment. And what is that? Guilt? Shame? Why feel so guilty about her? Could it be—"
"You're lying to sow discord in the ranks," Armsmaster interrupted.
"Look who's lying now."
"That's quite enough, Cherish," Jack said. "As entertaining as this is, that's not what we came here for, and we're on a schedule." He turned toward me. "Apiary. Skitter. Whatever name you go by these days. We have your little friends. Come with us, play our game, and we won't touch your teammates. Refuse to play, and everyone here pays the price."
My little friends? Was he talking about the Undersiders? I tensed, cold seeping through my veins at the prospect.
"Nobody's playing your games," said Miss Militia, cocking her rifle.
Jack gave an exaggerated sigh. "A shame, really. Bonesaw?"
Bonesaw raised a hand, holding a vial. "These are special prions I made. Kinda like Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, infecting the brain and making a sponge out of it, but with an onset of three days between exposure and death. And it won't be a fun three days either. Personality changes, mood swings, hallucinations, paranoia, seizures, loss of motor control, then psychosis, and finally death. Completely and utterly incurable."
I swallowed, bracing myself.
If I had to choose between my death and the excruciating death of everyone present, it was an easy decision. An acceptable price to pay.
I stepped forward.
"Apiary," said Miss Militia, her tone a warning.
I took another step, then another, and kept going until I faced the trio.
"If I go, you won't hurt the rest of them?" I asked.
"I'm a man of my words," said Jack, which I noticed wasn't a confirmation. "As long as they don't attack us, we have no reason to attack them."
I nodded. "Then, I'm coming."
Jack smiled, holding his hand out to me. I took it.
"Heroes," he said with a bow, "we'll be on our way. Any attack, and we're going back on our deal."
He turned around, dragging me along. Bonesaw took my other hand.
I didn't look back.
Once we had turned the corner and were far enough not to hear, bugs coalesced in front of the heroes, forming a humanoid shape. The grasshoppers and jumping spiders in the mix allowed me to see and hear.
"That was by far the stupidest thing you've done," said Armsmaster, irate.
"Yeah?" Answered my bugs, "You can make it less stupid by taking down Shatterbird while I keep them busy, so Dragon can step in. Don't come after me, or the emotion-reading cape will know it."
He grumbled something I couldn't make out.
"Can Déjà Vu help us?" Triumph asked.
Revoke shook her head. "Her power will be out of service for at least a week after the stunt she pulled to find the Siberian's maker."
"Apiary," said Miss Militia, "be careful."
I dismissed the bugs.
I had no idea how to get out of my current predicament. The way I figured, the best I could do was stall them so they weren't doing damage elsewhere.
We walked for a long time, heading North of the PRT HQ.
Bonesaw was humming and skipping in the water, her yellow rain boots splashing it around.
"So," said Jack. "Why change teams if you're obviously not wanted?"
Did he really have to make conversation? It felt strange, exchanging small talk with someone like him. A serial killer.
"I had my reasons," I answered.
"Like?"
"The Undersiders and I had a disagreement, and I didn't want to be on my own."
"Not the most ambitious of answers."
"That's not all there is to it," said Cherish. "The heroes cornered you, tried to force you to make a deal. You accepted because you wanted to rescue someone. The drugged girl."
How did she know so much details?
"Perks of my power," she answered as if I'd spoken aloud.
"A damsel in distress," Jack said, grimacing. "How noble."
I didn't answer.
I was beginning to recognize my surroundings. My house wasn't too far. At first, I thought this was where we were headed, but we went past it and kept heading North-West.
We arrived to a part of town that had mostly been leveled by tidal waves, near Winslow High. That's when I felt them.
People were gathered in the remnants of the school, each person bound to a seat. One of the people was tied with something different, that I couldn't quite wrap my head around. Forty people or so in total, separated in two groups in what used to be the school's auditorium. It had been at the center of the first floor, and the walls on two sides were still partially standing, while the second and third floors had been wiped by Leviathan.
My bugs tried to untie them, but the ropes were too thick, the knots too intricate. I didn't have the right kinds of bugs to see or hear, so I was limited touch. I tried to evaluate the people's silhouettes, to find the Undersiders amongst them, but couldn't. Several fit with Tattletale or Regent's shapes, but none fit with Bitch or Grue's. I would have to wait until we arrived to figure out what was going on.
Finally, we arrived where the entrance of my school used to be. Only a few feet remained of the outside walls, the doors gone.
Jack motioned for me to go in first.
I navigated the debris, taking my time so I wouldn't trip, and slowly made my way to the auditorium. We arrived to what used to be the side entrance to the stage, which was more or less intact.
"Go on," said Jack.
I pushed what remained of the door, entering the stage. A heavy curtain hid the audience. It appeared to have been installed after the disaster, held by a pole affixed to the crumbling walls.
"And, curtain!"
The mechanical beings pulled on ropes to open the center of the curtain, revealing the prisoners.
I immediately recognized about a third of the people, and finally understood what Jack had meant when he talked about my little friends.
It wasn't the Undersiders.
In the front row, in the group on the left, was Emma, tracks of mascara running down her cheeks where tears had fallen and were still falling. Left of her was Madison, also crying, her eyes widening in surprise and panic as the curtain opened. On the right, bound in fairy lights that ended in a small generator, was Sophia. She snarled when she saw me. Next to Sophia was Julia, looking alarmed, then in the second row were the more peripheral bullies: Heather, Nina, Caroline, Sarah and Eve. The ones who had been with the trio when they cornered me outside of class, when Mr. Gladly looked on and did nothing.
Completing that group were Principal Blackwell, Emma's dad, Mr. Quinlan, and Mr. Greene, my gym teacher.
Mr. Gladly wasn't there, and I was reminded of his presence at the shelter Leviathan had breached. I guessed he hadn't made it after all.
The group on the right was twice as big, and I didn't recognize anyone. They were of all genders and ages, with the youngest being a boy about Dinah's age, and the oldest, an elderly woman with white hair and wrinkled skin.
"Are you familiar with the Trolley problem?" Jack asked.
Jack's just going to try to pretend the Siberian never happened as hard as possible to avoid questions of how he never noticed they were followed by a random guy for years on end, huh?
Well, Jack is appropriately to canon extremely exasperatingly edgelordy and in love with the sound of his own voice. *sigh*