I didn't know what to say when Bonesaw ran up and hugged me. I'd thought about this moment a lot, planned a lot of things that I would say and do. I hadn't thought there would be a truce on at the time though. That was unexpected.
Most of my smarter responses, which involved killing her quickly, were unavailable. For a while I just stood there, trying to figure out what to do, and frozen with indecision. Then I slowly crouched, and hugged my sister back.
"Riley. If you're still in there. If you want to escape, just tell me. We'll run. Leave. I can hide us both. Just you and me, Tinkering together on some isolated island." I said, softly, beside her ear.
She giggled.
"I don't want to leave silly." She said, squeezing me tighter.
I straightened up, and pushed her so she disengaged from her own hug.
"Then I'm sorry." I told her. "I'm sorry I let this go on so long. I should have come for you sooner."
I read a story once, a stupid kid's story about a girl who was kidnapped by trolls, and about her brother, who went to rescue her. Who tricked the trolls and got his sister back safe. I'd still been having panic attacks back then. I got in trouble with my foster family for throwing the book into the fire place. It was a library book.
Riley tilted her head on an angle, and then shook it.
"No, if I met you before you'd have been boring, and probably dead. But you're a Tinker now. If you can impress Jack, he'll let you join up, and we can be a family again." She said, almost giddy with glee.
I thought about it. Hey, it worked with the Empire. I probably wasn't going to be able to fool Cherish though, the PRT files did mention a sensory aspect to her powers, and while I could manipulate my emotions, the extremes to which I would have to go to fit in with the Nine might be hard to come back from. I'd almost joined the E88 in truth. I probably would have just stayed with them, if Kid Win hadn't tricked me.
"Can I kill Cherish first?" I asked.
"Sure!" Bonesaw said, smiling.
"No." Shatterbird and Cherish chorused. Burnscar was huddled in a corner, making a small ball of fire in her palm and gazing at it adoringly. She seemed pretty out of it.
Bonesaw turned to Shatterbird and stamped her foot.
"Meanie. Cherish got to kill Hatchet Face when she joined. Why can't Mayhem kill her?"
"Because if he's asking to kill the empath before joining the team, he plans to betray us." Shatterbird said reasonably.
Bonesaw shook her head, and gestured for me to bend over so she could whisper in my ear.
"Jack won't mind that. Cherish plans to betray us as well, and he likes having her around," Bonesaw said. "Don't tell her we know though. It's going to be a surprise," she added, in an even lower voice.
Well, that was a nice little tidbit. Perhaps I could use that? Obviously my sister had managed anti-master technology before I did. I wonder how? There was no way she would be able to build an atomic manipulation and reassembly engine, which is what I needed for a brain implant good enough to counter active use master effects. She'd obviously found a different way to go about it, which was annoying. Neural Augmentation was still the tree I'd unlocked the most in. I thought I'd be better than my sister at brains, at least. If not the rest of the body.
No obvious brain modifications on any of the other members I could see, but Riley could work subtly when she had to. There had been some very fine work in Murder Rat's body. The whole 'using staples to hold her skin together,' thing? It turned out that was mostly an aesthetic choice.
Shatterbird frowned at Bonesaw's conspiratorial whispering, but ignored it in favor of glaring at all the armed guards who had suddenly appeared around the inside of the tent. I don't know what they thought they were going to do with those guns, but they might make good human shields if necessary. Or act as a distraction.
I thought about it a bit more, and then shook my head.
"I'm sorry Riley. I can't join the Nine. I'm going to kill Jack. I'm going to kill you, and I think that, if there was anything left of the sister I knew, you'd be OK with that," I said.
Tears actually started to glisten in my sisters eyes.
"Really? You really won't join. It's all right if you try to kill us a little bit. Shatterbird does that sometimes. It's funny," Riley said, her voice starting to get choked up.
"I'm sure," I said.
Riley looked down at the ground, and a tear escaped her eye to trail down her cheek. She rubbed it away quickly, and then looked up again. That smile plastered back on her face.
"That's OK then. It's really hard to let Tinkers still use their powers after I reanimate them and install a control frame, but I'll solve it. Then we'll be a family again," she said, her voice back to being bright and cheerful.
"Is anyone else going to get any actual healing done?" Panacea asked.
I looked at her. Really, she actually wanted Riley to begin operating? I looked around, at a very tense Shatterbird and Cherish, and noticed them both looking at us, and the way that Shatterbird's glass armor was shifting, growing spikes and shards of glass.
Interesting, so Panacea probably wanted to prevent a fight. The problem was, the Nine were going to break the Truce at some point, and it was important that they didn't get the first attack in. Cherish could probably sense that Cricket was faking, and my sister would be able to tell, so I wasn't sure in the former Nazi's use as a trump card.
Sure, there were possible reasons for Cricket to be faking injury, and neither of them had mentioned it or so much as looked in her direction, but still, any hope we had of actually beating the four members of the Nine involved killing them in a sudden surprise attack.
"All right," I said, moving over to the next patient, who had been impaled through an eye with piece of re-bar. Poor fellow was going to lose a lot, the spike went quite deep into his brain. He did seem to have some sort of regeneration though, so perhaps he'd grow it back. It was hard to tell with capes.
The man who Bonesaw chose to operate on tried to get up and crawl away, but one of her spider bots chased him down and injected a sedative.
Damn, those things were surprisingly quiet. I hadn't heard any of them enter the tent, but I could see three now, prowling the wounded. They were actually helping though, injecting numbing agents, sedatives, stopping blood-flow in the people who were bleeding out.
I finished one patient, and moved onto the next before I decided to fill the awkward silence.
"So, Riley. What happened to your normal assistants, Hatchet Face and… the other new one, the one with the blood based regenerative abilities?" I asked.
He was made from a couple of her most recent cape captures, two regenerators, one who healed when bathed on blood, one who was now set up to be always bleeding. No word on if she'd named that combination yet.
"They're with Mannequin. The stupid PRT said I couldn't bring them in here. I guess this tent is a bit small for Hatchet Face, we'd have trouble using our powers properly," Riley said brightly. By all appearances, she was completely happy with me again.
"And where is Mannequin?" I asked.
"I don't know. He does his own thing sometimes," Riley informed me.
I nodded, opened up another head. Man, this work was starting to get really boring. At least when I was doing this for the Bakuda Bombing victims there were some interesting injuries to deal with, rather than all this mundane stuff.
I couldn't be truly bored of course, Riley was in the tent, and she was the center of my thoughts, but there was a fellow over there in the corner with glowing purple bite marks that looked interesting, probably the victim of a new Trigger. Or some sort of loss of control for one of the defending capes. I wonder if I could justify operating on him next?
"Done," Riley announced, rolling her current patient off the table, and having her spider bots drag the man I'd just been watching towards her.
Better for her to do it actually. She'd always had a slightly shorter attention span than I did. It probably came from being five years younger.
"Use anesthetic first!" Panacea yelled from across the room.
Well of course. He was a big man, and Riley would have trouble immobilizing him with just her spider-bots. Their legs were bladed, good for skittering across surfaces, and stabbing people, but bad for holding a patient still.
"Mayhem, you too. Anesthetize your patients first," Panacea said.
"Fine," Riley chirped, and the man fell still.
While she scanned the wounds, I found myself musing.
"You know, Riley, we have very similar powers," I said.
"Yep. We'd make a great team. I found one of the people you fixed during the bombing spree, and I had a look at your work. It's very good for a new Tinker, even if you weren't very inventive or artistic," Riley said.
"I think, in some ways I've done the opposite of you. Your body is your lab, and those spiders are a part of it. I use an external lab, and make my body my weapon. You use an internal lab, and make other bodies your weapons," I said.
"Hmm, maybe. You made your fingers tools though. It really helps doesn't it?" Riley said, popping open her palm and taking out a small rotary saw, which slotted into her forefinger.
"Yes. It does," I said.
Apparently the wounds weren't as interesting as I'd hoped. Riley only took a few samples, and then cut out the affected flesh before wrapping her patient up and declaring him done as well.
Panacea checked him, and nodded, then went back to her own work.
Cherish was typing something on her phone. Shatterbird was leaning back against a tent pole, keeping an eye on the room, and Burnscar was still absorbed in her flame, although it had now crept up her arms and was beginning to char her dress.
I looked back at Riley, noted the incision she was about to make, and was about to give some attention to my own patient when I released what my sister was about to do.
"Riley stop!" I yelled.
A dozen troopers cocked guns, and my sister looked puzzled.
"I only wanted to hold the baby?" she said.
The woman she was operating on was a civilian, one who had taken a chunk of ice to the shoulder and had a messed up collar bone. She was also pregnant, although the baby wasn't due for a while yet, and the bump was hard to distinguish from a bit of normal flab.
"Riley, you can't hold a four month old fetus," I told her.
"Yes you can. I've done it before. They're so cute and tiny. Don't worry, I'll put it back," she said.
"No. Bonesaw, if you touch that woman's stomach I will personally tell these troopers to open fire," Panacea said. "In fact, this whole thing isn't going to work. Out. Out now. I want you gone. This is a place of healing. Not the sort of sick things you do."
"But, but they're so adorable! I wasn't going to hurt it or anything!" Riley said.
"You're really going to break our agreement?" Shatterbird said menacingly, leaning away from the tent pole and breaking bits of her glass costume off to form floating daggers.
"It seems that you are incapable of abiding by it. So yes," Panacea said.
Cherish smiled, and every single PRT agent started to look afraid, confused, and fearful. One put his gun to his head and fired. Another followed. The rest looked like they were fighting the urge. None of them seemed able to point their weapons at the four members of the Nine in the building.
"Shatterbird, Bonesaw, Burnscar, I'll leave the capes, I shouldn't hog all the fun for myself," Cherish said.
Everything happened very quickly then.
First, Dragon crashed through the roof of the tent, and landed on Cherish, crushing her to death.
Second, Cricket did something that made Shatterbird's daggers fall, and her armor seize up, before leaping from her pallet and cutting the woman in half vertically with a single swing of her scythe.
Third, Panacea took a surprisingly large compact semi-automatic out from under her thick, concealing costume, and fired a stream of bullets at Burnscar, who stood there in shock for a second before the fire in her hands consumed her, and she was gone.
She could teleport through flame, but from what I'd read, her range was limited to city wide teleportation. It was still raining heavily, I wonder what fires would be lit on a day like today? Especially as she did need a fairly large fire, unless she was looking at it directly, and could cause it to flare up.
She'd taken a fair few bullets, but I hadn't had the chance to examine the damage that they did, she might live, she should die. Depended on what sort of modifications my sister may or may not have installed.
Which left only my sister.
Panacea turned her gun towards Riley, and I raised my palm and shot her with a blast of kinetic energy.
Not Riley. Panacea. I still don't know if it was because she was pointing a gun at my sister, or because of the dart that Riley had launched at Panacea a second before. H+ took the cue from what I wanted, and I moved without thinking. Either way, it was the right thing to do.
"I will deal with Riley," I said, locking eyes with my sister.
Pressurized air bladders in the arm propelled darts covered in deadly poison. There was some sort of spinal modification, for enhanced reflexes and survivability, you could tell by the way she moved. Not a full combat protocol. Her body was a laboratory, with a few hidden traps. It wasn't meant for real fighting. The Nine and her creations were her true weapons. I could do this.
Lethal mode on, I thought. My palms started to glow as a charge built. I didn't need to charge them for the sort of kinetic energy bullet that killed an ordinary person, but my sister wasn't ordinary.
Cricket put the scythe over her shoulder.
"Let them fight. With a bit of luck she lets out the real Mayhem," she said.
"How did you make Shatterbird freeze like that?" Panacea asked, getting back to her feet and sighting down the barrel on Bonesaw anyway. Her finger wasn't on the trigger, though it was hovering close, so I ignored her, as did my sister, who had frozen, one hand still holding a scalpel over the unconscious woman's belly.
"She was singing to her glass the whole time I was lying there. I could hear it. I can't sing like her, but I tried producing white noise on the same frequency. I thought it might do something. It did," Cricket said smugly. "How about you. Since when did you grow balls and a big ass gun?"
"Miss Militia's been training me in self defense," Panacea said.
Dragon had been busy using tiny jets of foam to disarm or restrain panicked PRT agents. Apparently Cherish's effects hadn't completely disappeared with her death, although most of the men did seem to be calming down slowly.
Now that was done, the worlds best Tinker turned her attention to the two of us.
"Mayhem, stand down. We believe Bonesaw has biological weapons placed as contingencies, to be deployed in the event of her death," Dragon said, launching a stream of containment foam at Riley.
My sister's arm flickered into her bag, and came out with a capsule that she threw into the containment foam as it splashed down around her. Whatever was in the capsule spread through the foam, making it melt off her as she turned and ran towards the side of the tent.
Dragon launched a net, but a spider bot jumped in the way. Another spider bot crouched over the head of the woman Riley had been working on, and Dragon spared a second to shoot it with one of the guns mounted on her frame before the leg of the spider could go through the woman's eye and into her brain.
Riley swiped with a scalpel-finger at the thick plastic wall of the tent, and ran through the hole. Dragon shot her in the leg, quite a large bullet, it went right through the bone, Riley didn't slow down. She must have internal reinforcement structures.
I ran after her. The third spider bot jumped towards my back, and H+ triggered, making me turn and shoot it with the built up kinetic force in my right arm. The thing broke, but between twisting suddenly and there being an injured man lying between me and Riley's tent flap, I missed a step, stumbled, and fell.
I rolled, got back to my feet, and burst out of the flap, but Riley had a decent lead now.
I started running after my sister. Dragon didn't follow. The drone she was using had jet power as it's primary thrust source, and taking off inside a tent crowded with wounded would kill the closest of them. I think she had softer propulsion methods on other craft, but those were fast jets, and that was an anti-Endbringer model. Very little in the way of non-lethal, low collateral ordinance. Cherish had been in a small clear area, simply because she was a member of the Slaughterhouse Nine, and no one wanted to put injured down beside her, but if Dragon wanted to walk that drone out of the tent, she'd have to ask that some of the wounded be moved, and then carefully pick her way towards the main flaps.
Also I think I'd noticed some sort of bomb around Cherish's neck, and Dragon had still been standing on her corpse, the Tinker would probably disarm it before moving on.
We had a little bit of time.
The rain had been getting lighter, but there was a brief golden glow in the distance, and then suddenly the rain came back, just as heavy. I ignored it. If Scion 'helped…' well there was nothing I could do either way.
Panacea naturally stayed as well. There were injured for her to treat. When my mask showed me someone following me, it was Cricket.
"I have this. Go help Skitter!" I yelled.
"You really want to kill your own sister?" Cricket said.
"Yes!" I yelled back, activating my jetpack.
My sister didn't have much of a lead, and with my mask I could see fairly well, despite the pouring rain.
One of my kinetic emitters immediately died. A defect in the wax waterproofing, that had let a few drops get in during my last flight. Didn't matter, I had three other emitters, I could compensate.
Riley turned and shot at me with her dart launcher, and I twisted to get out of the line of fire. Nothing came my way, of course, I was well out of range. It was a bluff to let her push through the door of a house, one of those big ones rich people have, nearly a mansion. Outdoor pool, that sort of thing. It had only been a couple of blocks from the tent.
I ran a quick scan. Four warm bodies inside. None of them looked like they could be Mannequin.
I fired a kinetic burst into a window, and flew through it. I hadn't been flying for long. Not long enough to leave Cricket behind, and she had her own enhanced senses to see thought this damned rain. She vaulted for the window, but I turned and planted a sedative scalpel in her arm as she tried to pull herself up.
"My sister. My fight," I told her. It was only a one story drop. She'd be fine.
I turned to look around the room. It was a girls room. Very pink. Lots of frills.
"Cricket was the last of them. Dragon and Panacea have other priories. Scion will deal with Jack, Crawler and the Siberian. Mannequin will be hunted down and killed. You have no one left Riley, and I have no one holding me back," I said.
I looked at a bloodstain on the wall. Judging by the height, and the amount of blood that had made it to the floor before the body had slumped, it was a child who'd been stabbed through the heart. The blood was about a day and a half old. Bonesaw had been here a while before she came to the tent. There were probably traps I'd have to look out for then.
"Last chance Riley. I can produce a corpse that will pass for your own. We can leave, together. All you have to do is promise you don't make anything without my approval, and that you'll come with me somewhere remote. We can experiment on animals, we can build our own lab, we can fix things," I said.
A dozen spider bots moved out of hiding, from under the bed, under the very frilly chair, out of the closet, out of the toy box, out of the dresser. Their tiny camera eyes lit up red.
"I'm sorry Drew, but I have a new family," Riley said.
My old name sounded weird now. I'd thrown it aside long ago.
I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, unclipped my lightsabre and a kinetic grenade from my belt, and turned off all my emotions except rage. Rage was a good motivator.
"I know," I hissed.
