by wildbow
Not hard to pull the pieces together. She could remember how quickly Neil had dropped the subject when he realized she was listening. He hadn’t outright said that they’d caught Marquis, but she could imagine that the weaknesses that Neil had been outlining had been what they’d used. Send Lady Photon, Brandish and Fleur against the man. Add the fact that Amy had been there, a toddler, and Marquis had been too concerned about collateral damage to go all out.
It was him. She didn’t want it to, but it all fit together.
It was all so fucked up. She was so fucked up.
There was a knock on her door. She hurried to hide the paper.
“Come in,” she said, trying to compose herself in the span of one or two seconds.
Carol opened the door. She was pulling on the gloves for her costume. “Amy?”
“Yeah?”
Carol took a few seconds before she looked up from her gloves and met Amy’s eyes. When she did, the look was hard, accusatory.
“There’s word about some strange howling near the Trainyard. Glory Girl and I are going on a patrol to check on it.”
Amy nodded.
“Can you look after Mark?”
“Of course,” Amy said, her voice quiet. She stood from her bed and headed to the door. Carol didn’t move right away. Instead, Amy’s adoptive mother stayed where she was, staring at Amy. Amy reached the door and had to stop, waiting for Carol to speak.
But Carol didn’t. The woman turned and left the doorway, Amy meekly following.
They don’t understand.
Mark was in the living room, sitting on the couch. No longer able to don his costume and be Flashbang, Mark could barely move. He had a form of brain damage. It was technically amnesia, but it wasn’t the kind that afflicted someone in the movies and TV. What Mark had lost were the skills he’d learned over the course of his life. He’d lost the ability to walk, to speak full sentences, hold a pen and drive a car. He’d lost more—almost everything that let him function.
What little he regained came slowly and disappeared quickly. It was as though his brain was a shattered glass, and there was only so much he could hold in it before it spilled out once again. So they’d patiently worked with him, helping him to hobble between the bedroom, living room and bathroom. They’d worked with him until he could mostly feed himself, say what needed to be said, and they didn’t push him to do more.
Victoria was in costume as Glory Girl, but she was unclipping a bib from around his neck, something to ensure he didn’t stain his clothes while he ate. Amy’s adoptive father turned and smiled gently as he saw the other two members of his family. It was all Amy could do to maintain eye contact, smile back.
“Ready, mom?” Victoria asked.
“Almost ready,” Carol said. She bent down by Mark and kissed him, and he was smiling sadly as she pulled back. He mumbled something private and sweet that his daughters weren’t privy to, and Carol offered him a whispered reply. Carol stood, then nodded at Victoria, “Let’s go.”
They left without another word. There was no goodbye for Amy, no hug or kiss.
Victoria can’t even meet my eyes.
The slight hurt more than she’d expected. It wasn’t like it was something new. It had been going on for weeks. And it was fully deserved.
Amy felt her pulse pounding as she looked at Mark. Made herself sit on the couch next to him. Does he blame me?
It was all falling apart. This family had never fully accepted her. Being in the midst of a family that all worked together, it was hard to preserve secrets. Amy had learned a few years ago, overhearing a conversation between Carol and Aunt Sarah, that Carol had initially refused to take her in. Her adoptive mother had only accepted in the end because she’d had a job and Aunt Sarah didn’t. One kid to Aunt Sarah’s two. When she’d taken Amy in, it hadn’t been out of love or caring, but grudging obligation and a sense of duty.
Mark had tried to be a dad. He’d made her pancakes on the weekends, taken her places. But it had always been inconsistent. Some days he seemed to forget, others he got upset, or was just too distracted for the trips to the ice cream store or mall. Another secret that the family hadn’t kept—Mark was clinically depressed. He had been prescribed drugs to help him, but he didn’t always take them.
It had always been Victoria, only Victoria, who made her feel like she had a family here. Victoria was mad at her now. Except mad wasn’t the right word. Victoria was appalled, seething with anger, brimming with resentment, because Amy couldn’t, wouldn’t, heal their father.
They’d fought, and Amy hadn’t been able to defend her position, but still she’d refused. Every second that Victoria and Carol spent taking care of Mark was a second Amy felt the distance between her and the family grow. So she took care of Mark as much as she could, only taking breaks to visit the hospitals to tend to the sick there. She’d also needed a few to process the letter she’d received.
The letter. Carol wasn’t angry in the same way Victoria was. What Amy felt from her ‘mother’ was a chill. She knew that she was only justifying the darker suspicions Carol had harbored towards her since she was first brought into the family. It was doubly crushing now, because Amy knew about Marquis. Amy knew that Carol was thinking the same thing she was.
Marquis was one of the organized killers. He had his rules, he had his code, and so did Amy. Amy wouldn’t use her power to affect people’s minds. Like father, like daughter.
“Do you need anything?” she asked Mark, when the next ad break came up.
“Water,” he mumbled.
“Okay.”
She headed into the kitchen, grateful for the excuse to leave the room. She searched the dishwasher for his cup, a plastic glass with a textured outside, light enough for him to lift without having to struggle with muscle control, easy enough to grip. She filled it halfway so it wouldn’t be as heavy.
Tears filled her eyes, and she bent over the sink to wash her face.
She was going to lose them. Lose her family, no matter what happened.
Which meant she had to go. She was old enough to fend for herself. She would leave of her own volition, and she would help Mark as a parting gift to her family. She just had to work up the courage.
Drying her face with her shirt, she carried the mug into the living room.
The TV was off.
Had Mark turned it off because he’d wanted to sleep? Amy was careful to be quiet, stepping on the floorboards at the far sides of the hallway so they wouldn’t creak.
A girl stood in the living room, five or so years younger than Amy. Her blond hair had been curled into ringlets with painstaking care, but the rest of her was unkempt, filthy. She stared at Mark, who was struggling and failing to stand from the couch.
The girl turned to look at Amy, and Amy saw that some of the dirt that covered the girl wasn’t dirt, but crusted blood. The girl wore a stained apron that was too large for her, and the scalpels and tools in the pocket gleamed, catching the light from the lamps in the corner of the room.
Amy recognized the girl from the pictures that were hung up in the office.
“Bonesaw.”
“Hi,” Bonesaw gave a little wave of her hand. A wide smile was spread across her face.
“What—What are you doing here?”
“I wanted to see you. Obviously.”
Amy swallowed. “Obviously.” Was it possible that Allfather had arranged for a member of the Slaughterhouse Nine to murder her?
Amy’s eyes roved over the room, looking for Bonesaw’s work. Nothing. She looked over her shoulder and a shriek escaped through her lips. A man was not two feet behind her, tall and brutish, his face badly scarred and battered to the point that it was barely recognizable as human. A long-handled axe sat in one of his massive, calloused hands, the head resting on the floor. Hatchet Face.
“Runnn,” Mark moaned, urging her. She didn’t give it a second thought. She dashed for the front door, threw it open with enough force that a picture fell from the wall.
> Hatchet Face stood on the other side, blocking the doorway.
“No,” she gasped, as she backed towards the living room, “No, please.”
How? How had he gotten there so fast? She turned around and saw he was still there, still in the hallway.
There were two Hatchet Faces?
Then the first one exploded into a cloud of white dust and blood spatters, momentarily filling the room. Amy could hear Bonesaw’s giggling, felt her heart sink.
“Get it? You figure out what I did? Turn around, Hack Job.”
Amy had figured it out, but Bonesaw’s creation demonstrated anyways. He turned his back to Amy, and she saw what looked like a tumorous growth on the back of his head, shoulders and arms. Except the growth had a face, vaguely Asian in features, and the lumps inside the growth each roughly corresponded with organs and skeletal structure. The jaw of the figure that was attached to the back of Hatchet Face’s body was working open and closed like a fish gasping for air. The stitches were still fresh.
“You mashed them together. Oni Lee and Hatchet Face.”
“Yes! I can’t even begin to tell you how hard it was. I mean, I had to conduct the operation from a remote location, using robots, because I would lose my tinker powers if I got too close to the big lug. And I had to fit their bodies and nervous systems together so that they could use their powers without messing up the other.”
“Oh god,” Amy mumbled. Is this what she’s going to do to me?
“Had to add in a control frame and perform a spot lobotomy so Hatchet would obey me, you know. He didn’t lose much. Was never very bright.”
“And Oni Lee?” Amy was almost afraid to ask.
“Oh, I barely touched his brain. He suffered some moderate brain damage from his close brush with death, but I revived him. His brain’s more or less intact, even. He can’t control his body, but he’s alert and aware, and he feels everything Hatchet does,” Bonesaw smiled wider.
“That’s horrifying.”
“It’s not a perfect mesh. I only just started doing these mash-ups. Still practicing. Hatchet’s power isn’t working as well anymore, and I’m worried about physical wear and tear as they teleport, but it’s still one of my better works. Took me four whole hours.” Bonesaw clasped her hands in front of her, shifting her weight from foot to foot, waiting expectantly.
Amy swallowed. She didn’t have words.
Bonesaw smiled. “I thought you’d appreciate this more than anyone.”
“Appreciate this.”
“You’re the only other person who works with meat. I mean, we’re different in some ways, but we’re also really similar, aren’t we? You manipulate people’s biology, and I tinker with it. The human body’s only a really intricate, wet machine, isn’t it?”
Others were entering the room now. From the kitchen, a woman, the structure of her face altered into something that was more rat-like than human, conelike, ending in a squashed black nose that had staples around it. Bonesaw had added a second set of teeth, all canines, so that the woman would have enough as her jaw was stretched forward. Drool constantly leaked between her teeth in loops and tendrils. She was pale, except for her face and patches all down her body, where patches of ebon black skin were stapled in place. Her hair was long, dark, and unwashed, but most unnerving of all were her fingers, which had been replaced by what looked like machetes. The clawtips dragged on the hardwood as she stumped forward on feet that had been modified in a similar way, no longer fit for conventional walking.
The third was another Frankenstein hodgepodge of two individuals, emerging from the hallway where the amalgamation of Oni Lee and Hatchet Face—Hack Job—had exploded. The lower half was a man who must have been built like a gorilla in life, rippling with muscles, walking forward on his knuckles. His upper body grew up from the point the other body’s neck should have begun, an emaciated man with greasy brown hair and beard, grown long. He was not unlike a centaur, but the lower half was a brutish man.
Then there were the other things. They weren’t alive. Spidery contraptions of scrap metal, they lacked heads, only consisting of a box half the size of a toaster and spindly legs that moved on hydraulics, each ending in a syringe or scalpel. A dozen of them, climbing onto the walls and floor.
“Murder Rat used to be a heroine, called herself the Mouse Protector. One of those capes who plays up the cheese, no pun intended. Camped it up, acted dorky, used bad puns, so her enemies would be embarrassed to lose to her. Ravager decided she’d had enough, asked the Nine to take Mouse Protector down. So we took the job. Beat Mouse Protector, and I took her to the operating table. The other Nine tracked down Ravager and collected her, too. Just to make it clear that we don’t take orders. We aren’t errand boys or errand girls either. Now Ravager gets to spend the rest of her life with the woman she hated, making up.”
Amy swallowed, looking at the woman.
“The other, I’m trying to figure out a name. The one on the bottom was Carnal. Healer, tough, and healed more by bathing himself in blood. Thought he had a place on our team, failed the tests. The one on the top was Prophet. Convinced he was Jesus reborn. What do you call a mix of people like that? I’ve got a name in mind, but I can’t quite figure it out.”
“I don’t know.”
“So you’re bad at names too?” Bonesaw grinned. “I’m thinking something like shrine, temple… but one with multiple floors. Um.”
“Pagoda?”
“Pagoda! Yes!” Bonesaw skipped over to her creation, wrapped her arms around one of his, “Pagoda! That’s your name, now!”
None of the three monsters moved or reacted. Each stared dumbly forward, Murder Rat drooling, the others appearing to be in a daze.
“That’s good!” Bonesaw smiled at Amy, “I knew we’d make a good team!”
“Team?” What could she say or do to escape? Failing that, was there anything she could use to kill herself, so Bonesaw couldn’t get her hands on them, turn them into something like those things? In the worst case scenario, she could use her power on Mark before finishing herself off.
Except she wasn’t sure it would matter. Amy was incapable, but there was nothing saying Bonesaw couldn’t raise the recently dead.
“Yes, team! I want you to be my teammate!” Bonesaw was almost gushing.
“I don’t—” Amy stopped herself, “Why?”
“Because I always wanted a big sister,” Bonesaw replied, as if that was answer enough.
Amy blinked. Sister. She thought of Victoria. “I make a pretty shitty sister.”
“Language!” Bonesaw admonished, with surprising fierceness.
“I’m sorry. I—I’m not a very good sister, I don’t think.”
“You could learn.”
“I’ve tried, but… I’ve only gotten worse at it as time passed.”
Bonesaw pouted a little. “But think of the stuff we could do together. I do the kludge, the big stuff, you smooth it over. Imagine how Murder Rat would look without the scars and staples.”
Amy looked at the onetime heroine, tried to picture it. It wasn’t any better. Worse, if anything.
“That’s only the beginning. Can you even imagine the things we could make? There’s no upper limit.”
There was a beep from the answering machine. It began playing a message. “Amy, pick up! We’re looking at dealing with Hellhound, and there’s injured. Call Aunt Sarah or Uncle Neil over to look after dad and get over to the—”
The message cut off, and there was the sound of a clatter, a distant barking sound.
“I don’t think I have it in me to do stuff like that,” Amy said. If nothing else, I can’t disappoint Victoria any further.
“Oh. Oh!” Bonesaw smiled. “That’s okay. We can work through that.”
“I—I don’t think we really can.”
“No, really,” Bonesaw said. Then she snapped her fingers.
Hack Job flickered into existence just in front of Amy, and there was little she could do to escape. She cr
ied out as the man’s massive hand smashed her down onto her back, a few feet from Mark.
Mark struggled to stand, but Murder Rat darted across the room to light atop the back of the couch and press one of her three-foot long claws against his throat.
Amy was pinned. She tried to use her power on Hack Job through the contact he was making with her chest and neck, only to find it wasn’t available. She couldn’t sense his body, the blood flowing in his veins, or any of that. Even her own skin felt quiet, where she normally felt the pinprick sensations of innumerable, microscopic airborne lifeforms touching her. She’d barely even realized that was happening until it stopped.
“Jack’s taken me on as his protegé. Teaching me the finer points of being an artist. What he’s been saying is that I’m too focused on the external. Skin, bone, flesh, bodies, the stuff we see and hear. He’s told me to practice with the internal, and this seems like a great time to do that.”
“Internal?” Amy replied.
“It’s easy to break people’s bodies. Easy to scar them and hurt them that way. But the true art is what you do inside their heads. Do you have a breaking point, Amy? Maybe if we find your limits and push past them, you’ll find yourself in a place where you’ll want to join us.” A wide smile spread across Bonesaw’s face as she settled into a cross-legged position on the floor, facing Amy.
“I—no. Please.”
“You’re a healer, but you can do so much more. Why don’t you go out in costume?”
Amy didn’t respond. There was no right answer here.
“Are you afraid to hurt someone? That could be our first exercise.”
Amy shook her head.
“Murder rat, come here. Hack Job, back off.”
Hack Job let go of her, and she tried to scramble away, but Murder Rat pounced on her, pressing her down against the ground. The woman smelled rank, like a homeless person.
“So here’s the lesson,” Bonesaw said. “Hurt her, take her apart. If you go easy on her, or if you leave her in a state where she can move, she’ll cut you, and then she’ll cut a body part off that man on the couch there.”
Murder Rat placed a blade against her cheek, scraped it down toward her chin, as if giving Amy a close shave.