by wildbow
It was too slow. The water turned crimson beneath him, and then the vapor began to rise, faster than Bentley was climbing.
“Tattletale,” I breathed.
I massed thick clusters of bugs between them and the vapor, while Regent and Shatterbird followed Sirius and the others.
It was enough to buy them time, but that meant precious little. No matter how much I pressed the bugs together into an airborne barrier, the vapor made its way through. Worse, the mist was rising to either side of them, approaching the top of the building.
They reached the rooftop and Bentley heaved himself over the edge. They hopped off his back as they reached solid ground, and Tattletale stepped over to the corner of the roof to watch the rise of the red vapor. It was only a floor beneath them.
Trickster pointed at the top of a building nearby, then looked up at me.
I gathered my bugs there, again, pressing them together. Trickster looked increasingly impatient as the bugs massed, and the vapor reached the edges of the roof.
I hurried over to the building, instead, then hopped off, sending Atlas over to the other rooftop. Trickster swapped me with Tattletale, and I hopped over to ferry myself to the roof again.
Didn’t trust my ability to use Atlas to carry someone else, when I had to struggle to process his sensory inputs. Add someone else’s shifting weight and movements, and I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t drop them.
I was on the building again when Trickster swapped me for Sundancer. It left him, myself and Bentley standing on the rooftop.
I was on top of Atlas a second later, flying. The red mist crept in from the outside edges of the rooftop. He got on top of Bentley, looking less than comfortable holding the reins, and Tattletale whistled. It wasn’t as good as Bitch’s whistles, but Bentley perked up and ran, leaping for the side of a nearby building.
He and Trickster reached the second rooftop quickly enough. The mist was still rising, not just below us, but up around buildings nearly as far as the eye could see.
“Shit,” Tattletale said. “Not good.”
“There’s a taller building over there,” I pointed. “We should head there before the mist gets up here.”
“I’d call it miasma,” Tattletale said. “And is there really any point?”
“It might stop rising,” I protested.
“It won’t.”
“Is that an educated guess or—”
“It’s not.”
I found myself at a loss for words.
“What does it do?” I asked. “Poison? Something else?”
“Probably something else. Or it’s poison, but it’s designed to do something besides kill us. How are the others doing?”
I looked for Grue and Regent using my swarm sense. Grue, Bitch, Ballistic and Sirius were on a rooftop lower than us, Regent directly above them. Cursory exploration with my bugs revealed a glass dome extending around the rooftop. My bugs could fit through gaps in the glass, which meant the miasma would as well. I did what I could to block up the holes, and I knew it was useless.
Brian. Rachel.
“I think they’re caught,” I said. “I—I don’t know what to do.”
“You have a gun. You have your bugs. If the Nine are going to let their guards down, it’s going to be now. All the ones who are still left are priority targets. Finish off Siberian and taking Jack and Bonesaw out of action will be doable.”
“You’re saying I should leave you.”
“Yeah.” She looked down at the rising mist.
“No. That’s ridiculous. Let’s get you to higher ground.”
“It’s futile. You’d be buying us a little time, but this is looking pretty inevitable. Your time is better spent going after the Nine. If you can’t find them, or if it’s too dangerous, find Panacea.”
“This isn’t negotiable. I—I can’t do anything for Grue and Rachel and Ballistic, Regent tried and he failed. Let me do this for you.”
Tattletale frowned. “Fine. But you’ll have to hurry. That’s a lot of distance to cover, and the miasma’s nearly here.”
Trickster cut in, “Gather bugs together like you were doing, remember that they’re not as dense as our bodies are, so we need more than you’d think if I’m going to swap them for one of us.”
I nodded and flew for the tallest building in the area. I turned around and waited for Trickster to swap me.
He didn’t. They stood at the roof’s edge, looking my way, and the dark red miasma climbed up the sides of the building around them.
It felt like my heart dropped out of my chest. Brian, Rachel, now Lisa?
I couldn’t afford to turn around and confront them—time was too short—so I focused on gathering my bugs. I clustered them together, pressing them into a largish human shape. How many was enough?
I felt a jarring sensation as Trickster swapped my bugs to his location. Sundancer appeared beside me.
“Why?” I asked.
She shook her head, “They didn’t say anything. They were both really quiet while you flew off, and then Tattletale said ‘It doesn’t look like her plan will work out. Tell her I’m sorry.’ Trickster teleported me here before I could say anything or ask what she meant.”
“Why isn’t he telporting Tattletale out? Or himself? There’s still time for…” I looked at the cloud. Not enough time to save both, now. “He could save one of them, and I could probably get Atlas there and get out of harm’s way before the miasma reached me.”
“His power gets slower with distance and difference in mass,” Sundancer hugged herself, “Maybe it’s too slow, and he doesn’t think you’d have time to run. Or—”
“Or.” I said. The sentence didn’t deserve to be finished. There was the other reason. The notion that he was deliberately avoiding using his power, because he knew I didn’t have the time to get back to them before the miasma reached them. “Are you going to be okay?”
“I don’t know. When you’ve left, I’ll use my power, and I guess I’ll wait here until—” she stopped.
Until when? There was nothing saying this miasma of Bonesaw’s would disappear or settle anytime soon.
“I hate being alone,” Sundancer said. She settled into a sitting position. “It’s like, I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve actually been on my own. When I was little, I was always with my mom, or always in school, always in afterschool activities. Ballet, violin, lyrical dance, voice lessons, acting lessons… never a moment to think for myself. Even after I stopped all that, I was with my friends. Always in a group.”
I stared at Tattletale and Trickster. I couldn’t make out their faces, but my bugs could make out the shapes of sounds that had to be words. They were having a conversation, just like we were.
“I remember you said it was lonely, being in the Travelers.”
“It was. It is. But I was still with them. Part of the group. The time I’ve spent in my territory is the longest I’ve spent on my own. Actually managing the territory, scaring off Hookwolf’s people, that was easy. Being all on my own was unfamiliar ground. Soul crushing. I wound up going back to Coil’s base and spending time with Noelle and Oliver. But being alone, agonizing over everything that’s been going on, no distractions…”
The miasma had reached the rooftop where Tattletale and Trickster stood. Trickster was pacing, while Tattletale stood with her back to me, her hand rubbing Bentley’s blunted snout.
It took only a few seconds for the mist to close in around them. There was no immediate reaction. The two teenagers and the dog simply stood, silhouettes in a stirring cloud of vapor that ranged from ruby-red to crimson in shade.
I swallowed past the growing lump in my throat.
“And now I’m alone,” Sundancer said. “You’re going to go after the Nine, and I’ll wait here, all on my own, going crazy as I wait and watch and see just what happens to them.”
“If I’ve picked up on anything over the last few months of wearing a costume, it’s that humans are stronger than you
’d expect,” I said. It was as much to myself as to Sundancer. “We can endure a hell of a lot of punishment before we break, and even after we’re broken, we tend to keep on going. Could be physical punishment: getting stabbed, getting scarred, broken bones. Could be mental: losing a loved one, being tortured, even the way I feel like breaking down and crying over the fact that just about every other member of my team is probably fucked, but I’m holding myself together? Humans can put up with a hell of a lot.”
“I don’t think this is the right time for optimism,” Sundancer said, bitter.
“Optimism?” I shook my head. “No. It’s a double-edged sword. If we weren’t so resilient, so tenacious as a species, I don’t think we’d be having this much trouble with Jack. I don’t think Mannequin or Siberian would even exist like they do now. I’d almost call it pessimistic. Almost.”
She didn’t reply.
“Speaking of Jack and Siberian—” I started.
“Go.”
I left, taking off and heading for the spot I’d left Legend. Looking over my shoulder, I could see Sundancer creating her orb and bringing it down on top of herself. As it had done back during our fight with Lung, it didn’t burn the area directly around her.
And Tattletale and Trickster… were still standing in the midst of the miasma. They weren’t reacting or doing anything, but they weren’t signaling for me to come back, either, and they weren’t hopping on top of Bentley to rejoin the action.
Something was up, I just had no idea what.
I consoled myself with the bittersweet idea that Bonesaw would want to draw this out. It wouldn’t be as simple as murdering my teammates. It wasn’t exactly reassuring, especially when I thought back to what had happened to Brian, but it gave me hope that this wasn’t the last time I’d see my teammates. My friends.
I rose higher as I approached the epicenter of the miasma. It had continued to rise, and the place she’d used the catalyst was the place where the vapor had spread the most. I could see how it was threaded through the streets like veins, surrounding buildings in a crimson embrace, spilling out into the ocean.
The water of the bay, I noticed, hadn’t changed. Was the salt killing whatever organisms she’d designed to spread this effect?
There were areas of high ground where the effect was diminished or gone. There were hills here and there where the area hadn’t flooded and miasma wasn’t reaching so far into those spots. Hopefully that meant the civilians wouldn’t be so affected; the high ground where flooding wasn’t an issue would also be the place where people congregated for shelter.
A series of bright flashes caught my attention. Between the distance and the cloud of red vapor, I could only barely make him out, but the staccato lasers let me identify him as Legend. He was fighting.
I sent my bugs down into the miasma, drawing them together into a swarm and placing them strategically, painting a mental picture of the area, the layout, and the positions of the combatants.
Just to be safe, I drew closer to a rooftop. It wasn’t safe to land, but I had hopes the building would offer me some cover against Jack. I held the bulk of my swarm at bay, waiting for the moment I could assist Legend in fighting the Nine.
He wasn’t fighting the Nine.
Legend was shooting at teammates. He shouted something, but neither my ears nor my bugs were able to pick out the words.
Really wished I could use my bugs to hear.
Had they gone berserk? Rage?
No. I could sense others hiding. In fact, it seemed to be the primary concern of the people in the miasma. Hiding, staying out of trouble, putting distance between themselves and the others. Even Legend was pulling his punches. His lasers were nonlethal, as far as I could see.
Paranoia?
Weld, who I identified by his lack of a costume and the metal growths on his shoulders, was standing with his back to a wall. His hands were blunt weapons, and he was swinging them through the air to threaten anyone who approached. A small figure who could only be Vista was backing away from two adults. She got too close to Legend, and he fired a spray of laser blasts at her. None hurt her or penetrated her costume, but she staggered and fell.
I could sense the ground bulge, spearing up in a pillar. As the ground beneath them stretched in the pillar’s vicinity, others staggered or got disoriented. At the pillar’s top, a roughed-up Vista bent the growth she’d created to place herself close to the rooftop and hopped down onto solid ground. She coughed.
Okay, at least she wasn’t someone who could kill me if this went the wrong way. I called out, “Vista!”
She whirled on the spot to look at me, then swiftly began backing away.
I raised my hands to show her I meant no harm, “Hold on! I’m safe!”
“That’s just what they would say!” She retorted.
They?
“Who? The Nine? In what universe would I be a member of the Nine?”
“Shut up! Don’t try to convince me! Just… just back off! Leave me alone until all this stops!”
She was breathing so hard I could see her shoulders rising and falling through the protective suit she wore.
A thought struck me. It was working through the suit? The mask had to have filters for smoke, why hadn’t it worked against this miasma?
“I just want to help.”
“Leave!”
She used her power, extending the pillar she had used to ascend to the rooftop. It missed me by a wide margin, but the threat was clear enough.
I regretted it the instant I did it, but I moved forward to avoid any further movements from the shaft of asphalt. If I was going to fall, I wanted to land on the roof, instead of the alleyway a dozen stories below.
“No!” The word was as much a scream as anything else. She extended the shaft well over my head and then pinched it off so the top part fell.
I’d seen her fight Leviathan, and she’d done the same thing then, if on a somewhat bigger scale. I had Atlas carry me out of the way and watched the teardrop shaped piece of asphalt crash to the floor of the alley.
That, apparently, was enough to get Legend’s attention. He rose from the street level and surveyed the scene. He’d taken off the hazmat-style mask and filter, and what little I could see of his expression was drawn. His eyes were narrowed, a vein stood out on his forehead, and he furtively looked from Vista to me and back again.
“Legend,” I started. How was I supposed to address him when he was like this? When I didn’t even know what was going on with them?
Not that it mattered. He raised one hand in my direction, and I veered away, taking evasive maneuvers. It missed me by a foot, circled around and struck me off of Atlas before I could cancel out his momentum and change direction.
Legend had clearly set his lasers to ‘stun’, but it still hurt. Hitting the rooftop hurt more. I could feel a piece of armor crack beneath my weight, hear my things spilling to the ground.
I coughed out half a lungful of air and involuntarily sucked in another breath to cough again. It was humid, tasting slightly off, almost stagnant.
When I opened my eyes, I was seeing red, and not in the metaphorical sense. I was in the midst of the miasma.
Still coughing, I struggled to my feet. The back compartment of my armor had cracked as my weight had come down on the lip of the roof. My weapons, the epipens, the cell phone and the changepurse lay on the ground.
“Stay down!” the junior heroine screamed.
If I hadn’t still been reeling from my fall, I might have been able to avoid it. As it was, the section of rooftop behind me bulged up into a wall and then folded down over on top of me. It bent to accommodate my shape rather than crush me, leaving only my head and shoulders sticking out.
“If you try that trick on me, little girl, I’ll shoot you,” I heard the threat from the air above us.
This was going south, fast.
“I’m going to turn my back and run,” she responded. “If you try shooting me in the back, I’ll show y
ou what I can really do.”
There was anger in the threat that caught me off guard. Was it this miasma that had pushed her to that level of anger? I wasn’t feeling anything like that. Had something about the way he had talked provoked her? Or was that the norm for her?
I tried to think back to my prior experiences with her and found nothing.
What was her name?
Was I suffering from brain damage? Another concussion?
I did a series of multiplication, addition and subtraction in my head and found no problems on that front. Not general brain damage, apparently.
Amnesia?
My name is Skitter, I thought, Taylor Anne Hebert. Sixteen. Born in Brockton Bay. Student at Winslow High. Ex-student. Member of the Undersiders.
No problems on that front.
My line of thought continued absently, as if I wanted to reassure myself that I was mentally intact. My parents are Dan Hebert and Annette Rose Hebert.
I struggled, wiggling to try and free myself from the hump of solid concrete. I could inch myself out.
What would my mom think to see me now?
I tried to picture her expression.
Again, that gap, the chasm. Nothing.
I could have been hit by five more of those laser blasts on ‘stun’ and it wouldn’t have hit me as hard as the realization that I couldn’t remember my mother. Couldn’t remember her face, the details, her mannerisms. Even the happy memories we’d shared, the little moments I’d clung to over the past two years, they were gone. There was only an empty void where they should have been.
I couldn’t remember my dad, either.
The other Undersiders, their faces, their costumes, their personalities and mannerisms, all gone. I could remember what we’d done: the bank robbery, fighting Purity’s group, lazing around in the old loft, even the general progression of events from the moment I’d met them. But the people were blanks waiting to be filled in, and I couldn’t go from thinking about one name to thinking about the events that were related to it.