by wildbow
“Good job, both of you,” I said. I held my breath as the wind brought heavy smoke past us, waited for it to dissipate. There were too many variables to cover, and I wasn’t sure enough about this squad to believe I’d accounted for all of them. “Can you move while carrying the plate?”
“Think so,” Golem said.
“Let’s go, then.”
“Starting to realize why all the capes are so fit, looking good in the skintight costumes,” Golem huffed, as we made our way towards Behemoth. “So much running around, the training, constantly going places, never time to have… decent meal…”
He trailed off, too out of breath to speak. I eyed him. The armor made it hard to tell, but he might have been somewhat overweight.
The hand rose into the air, a virtual tower, as we made our way towards the battlefield. Golem had to push his hand in gradually to achieve the effect, and it disappeared into the panel.
It was working, though. For better or worse, they’d created a spire, a replica of Golem’s hand, spearing more than fifty feet in the air, with more room to grow. Sixty feet, a hundred…
A lightning bolt lanced out from the midst of the cloud of smoke, striking the hand.
There were whoops and cheers from the Chicago Wards. I managed a smile.
Another lightning strike, curving in the air, hit the hand. Residual electricity danced between the two extended fingers.
It was working, and as much as it was a success in helping against the lightning, it was working to help morale. To contribute something, anything, it mattered.
“Air’s ionized now,” Tecton said, as if that was a sufficient explanation for everyone present. I got the gist of what he meant. The lightning would be more likely to strike there again. Lightning did strike the same place twice.
I took flight. The Wards took my cue and followed on foot.
We found the Undersiders at the very periphery of the battlefield. They had collected a group of wounded Indian capes and were draping them across the backs of one of the dogs. Two uninjured Indian capes were looking very concerned, staying at the dog’s side.
I landed beside Grue. He’d used his darkness to form a wall. I wasn’t sure what it was for, but the smoke didn’t seem as bad here.
“Skitter,” he said.
I didn’t correct him. You’ll always be Skitter to me, he’d written. Or something like that.
“Got a plan?” I asked.
“Dealing with the wounded,” he said. “Nothing else.”
I studied him. I could see how defensive his body language was, his glower, the way he moved with an agitation that didn’t suit him.
Was he not holding it together a hundred percent?
“Where’s Tattletale at?” I asked. “I kind of got distracted as everyone was moving out.”
“At the command center with Accord. She just contacted us through the Armbands. They’re waiting to talk to Chevalier, fine tune the defenses. Accord thinks he can layer the defenses to maximize the amount of time we buy. Scion was occupied with some flooded farmlands in New Zealand, flew towards South America, last they saw. Wrong direction.”
I nodded, my heart sinking. It didn’t seem we’d be able to count on him. Not any time in the immediate future. “And Parian, Foil? Citrine and Ligeia? With Accord and Tattletale?”
“No. Those four split off into another group. They can put out fires, and Citrine can protect them from lightning strikes so long as they aren’t moving around too much. Flechette’s using the opportunity to shoot him, for all the good it’s doing. Our group wouldn’t be any use to them, so we’re doing what we can here, a little further away.”
“Got it,” I said. “You have a way of communicating with them?”
He tapped his armband, then pressed a button. “Relay this message to Citrine. All well, Skitter and Chicago Wards just arrived. Inform as to status.”
There was a pause.
“Message from Citrine,” the armband reported, the voice crackling badly. Then the crackling redoubled as the voice stated, “Status is green.”
“Any objection if we assist your group?” I asked him.
Grue shook his head. He started to reply, but was cut off as Behemoth generated another shockwave. A rumble drowned everything out, as every building without something to protect it fell.
“No objection,” Grue said, when the rumble had dissipated. He echoed my question from earlier. “Got a plan?”
“I wish,” I said. “More lightning rods, maybe, if we get the opportunity.”
The smoke was clearing towards the battle’s epicenter. Legend and Eidolon were a part of that, as were the craft that supported them. The fires were dying out, extinguished or stamped out.
Behemoth wasn’t that tall, hard to make out above the buildings that still stood. I chanced a look, and flinched as another bolt of electricity made its way to the lightning rod.
The path of least resistance.
Behemoth had noticed that time, or he’d decided to do something about it, because he lashed out at Legend and Eidolon once more, driving them back, and then made a beeline for the structure. He threw electricity outward, two bolts, continuous in their arc, and they briefly made contact with the tower. A second later, they broke free of the tower’s draw. He was paying attention to where he was shooting now, not simply striking across a distance with the goal of setting indiscriminate fires.
Fire roared around Behemoth as he got away from the area that had already been scorched and blasted clear of any fuel sources. His dynakinesis fueled the flames, driving them to burn hotter, larger, and with more intensity. With a kind of intelligence, the fires spread to nearby buildings, ensuring that no place was safe, nor untouched.
I could see the blaze making its way closer to us. Not a concern in the next minute, maybe not even the next five, but we’d have to move soonish.
Legend and Eidolon hounded the Endbringer, Legend initially a blur that couldn’t even be pinned down long enough to strike, even with lightning. As the hero flew, he filled the sky with a series of lasers that raked Behemoth’s flesh and targeted open wounds to open them further. When Behemoth turned away to deal with Eidolon, Legend slowed, and the lasers grew in number and in scale.
“What’s with the hand shape?” Regent asked, as he poked his head out from cover enough to peek at the scene.
“A ‘v’,” Golem said, his voice small.
“I get it. You’re calling Behemoth a big vagina.”
“It’s for victory,” Cuff said, sounding annoyed.
“That’s lame,” Imp said.
“Really lame,” Regent echoed. “I prefer the vagina thing.”
“Way you dress,” Grace commented, “I wasn’t so sure.”
“Ohhhhh,” Imp cut in, she elbowed Regent, “Ohhhhh. You going to take that?”
Regent only laughed in response, shaking his head.
“Is the little princess feeling brave?” Grace taunted Regent. “Come on.”
“It’s for ‘victory’,” Cuff said, her feeble protest lost in the midst of the exchange, and in that instant, she sounded surprisingly young, vulnerable.
“No fighting,” I said, have to stop this before it escalates. “Regent, stand down. Grace, you too.”
Regent snickered under his breath.
“And no more banter,” Grue said. “There’s more people to help. Move. With luck, those guys can keep him busy long enough for us to clear out.”
“Team’s mommy and daddy, reunited,” Imp commented, adding an overdramatic sigh. “So awesome.”
“I’ll point you guys to the wounded,” I said, not taking the bait. “Go.”
“No saying or doing stuff that’ll get us killed, like saying goodbye or getting laid,” Regent commented. “There are rules.”
“Get us killed? What’s Weaver doing?” Cuff asked, sounded alarmed and confused.
Regent glanced at her, “I’m just saying, Grue’s already screwed, he’s not a virgin, he’s bl—”
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Grue struck Regent across the back of the head. The crown and attached mask were moved slightly askew, and Regent fixed them. He told Cuff, “Regent’s being an idiot. Ignore him. Now go.”
“This way,” Tecton said, setting a hand on Cuff’s shoulder, “Opposite direction from Regent.”
Imp started to turn around to follow the pair, grabbing Regent’s wrist to pull him after her. Grue stepped in her way and physically turned her back around.
“Sorry for our contribution to that,” Tecton said. “Grace gets hard to handle when she’s stressed.”
“I understand. Regent and Imp…” Grue started. “Really have no excuse. That’s pretty much the status quo. They’ve been a little worse lately, but things haven’t settled down since…”
He trailed off.
“Since I left,” I said.
Grue nodded.
Tecton nodded. “I get it. Bygones. We’ll be back. You okay watching the injured on your own, or—”
“We’re good,” Grue said.
Tecton left, with Cuff at his side. Only Grue and Rachel remained, along with the Indian capes who were standing by the wounded. Rachel was giving water to the injured who were capable of receiving it, the conscious ones, people with broken legs and burned hands.
I made eye contact with Rachel. I wanted to ask how she was doing, knew she wouldn’t like the implications that she wasn’t peachy.
“I want to fuck this bastard up,” she said. “Last one killed my dogs. Killed Brutus, Judas, Kuro, Bullet, Milk and Stumpy and Axel and Ginger. When do we attack?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “We’ll try to find an opportunity.”
“And I get to do something,” she said.
“I…” I started to voice a refusal, then stopped myself. “Okay.”
“Bitch, it’ll be easier to collect the bodies if you take the dogs to them,” Grue said. “Why don’t you see to that?”
She glanced at me. I resisted the urge to nod. It would be an encouragement, without the complexities and ambiguities of speech, but it would also be supplanting Grue as leader, here.
Neither he nor she needed that.
“Sooner than later,” he added.
She nodded. Anyone else might have taken that as rude, but she accepted it without complaint. She led the dogs away, and the Indian capes followed, not wanting to part from people who might have been teammates or family members.
When everyone was gone, Grue approached me. I felt myself tense up. Despite the adrenaline that already pumped through me, my heart rate picked up as he closed the distance.
He held my arms just above the elbows, very nearly encircling his middle fingers and thumbs around them. Large hands, thin arms. I’d put on a little muscle mass over the past few months, or he’d be able to do it for real.
And he rested his forehead against mine, as if he were leaning against me, despite the fact that he was maybe half-again to twice my weight.
It had been a long time since I felt quite so insecure as I had this past week. As Skitter, I’d had a kind of confidence. As Weaver… I didn’t yet feel on steady ground.
But in this moment, somehow, I felt like I could be his rock.
I wanted nothing more than to reach up, to put my hands around his neck, remove his mask so I could tilt my head upward to kiss him. To give him succor in basic, uncomplicated human contact, at a time he was on unsteady footing and couldn’t even say it aloud. I stayed where I was, our foreheads touching, my back to the wall, arms to my sides. The masks stayed on.
The storm continued in the distance, and a detonation marked what might have been the destruction of one of Dragon’s craft. We didn’t move an inch.
“I miss you too,” I whispered.
He nodded in response, a hard part of his mask scraping against a part of mine.
I could sense the others gathering bodies, starting to make their way back here, to our rendezvous point.
“See,” Imp said, appearing right next to us, “This is exactly what Regent was talking about.”
“We weren’t doing anything,” I said. I pulled away from Grue, annoyed.
“You were being sweet. That’s probably a death sentence.”
“They were snuggling?” Regent asked, rounding a corner.
“Christ,” Grue said, under his breath. Firmer, he said, “Enough of that.”
Imp only cackled, and she kept cackling. I was pretty sure she prolonged it just to be annoying, stopping and starting again until Rachel and the last of the Wards returned.
“Let’s talk plans,” Grue said. “We’ve got a good roster here. Two teams. Almost three full teams, if we pick up Parian, Foil and the Ambassadors.”
He sounds more confident. A little more balanced. The agitation isn’t so obvious.
“There’s more wounded in the area,” I said. “And we’re running out of space. Each dog that’s loaded up with the injured is a dog you guys can’t ride. Fires are getting closer, so we pick up everyone we can, load them onto makeshift sleds, then hurry back to a place where we can get them medical care.”
“It’s a plan,” Grue said.
“And,” I said, “we need to find a better use for our strongest members. Citrine could be useful. Grue? If we get the sled going, you stay close to the wounded.”
He turned his head my way.
“We have about twenty here. Six or so capes. Maybe one’s got a power we can use.”
He nodded. “I already checked most. But I can use a power from the back of the sled without blinding anyone. It works.”
“There’s a joke there,” Regent said. “But—”
“Don’t,” Imp said.
“I wasn’t going to. It’s crass, totally inappropriate, and I’m better than that.”
“You’re going to,” Imp said, stabbing a finger at Regent’s chest. “You were going to say something about Grue going to the back of the bus, and you can’t let it go. It’d be lame and really tasteless and too far, and it’ll start the sort of fight that isn’t fun or funny. I’m calling it: you’ll hold it in until you can’t help but say it.”
“Well I’m definitely not going to say it now that you’ve spoiled it,” Regent said. “No shock value, no people feeling bad because they inadvertently laughed at something fucked up.”
“You two go squabble somewhere else,” Grue said. He glanced at me. “There’s more bodies to collect?”
“Too many bodies,” I said, my voice sober, “Not many injured left who haven’t already been carried away by friends, family and neighbors, or who aren’t in such bad shape that they can’t move. Maybe six more we could load up, if we’re going to get out of here in time.”
“Go,” Grue said. “She’ll show you the way.”
“Run,” I said. They didn’t have to run, but it got rid of them sooner.
“Children,” Grue muttered under his breath.
“Wards,” I said. “If you aren’t making the sled, go get the rest. I’ll help.”
My team left Annex and Cuff behind while we collected the wounded.
The one I was helping was a child, burned. She wasn’t any older than ten.
She said something incomprehensible. Another language.
“English?” I asked.
She only stared at me, unable to understand me any more than I understood her. Her eyes were a little glazed over, but the pain in her expression and the fear suggested that the benefits of being in shock were receding.
A part of me felt like I should have helped her sooner, but it wasn’t a logical part of me. There was so little I could do, and it didn’t matter if I did it before or now. And maybe a small part of me was putting it off because it wasn’t going to be pretty.
“I’m not that scary,” I said. “Okay?”
I pulled off my mask. “See? Ordinary person.”
Her expression didn’t change.
“I’m going to have to move you,” I said, and the words were for me as much as they were for her. I kept
my voice gentle, “It’s going to hurt, but it’ll mean we can get you help.”
She didn’t react. I studied her. Blisters stood out on her arms and neck, and on the upper part of her chest.
I could maybe understand a little of Rachel’s anger at the loss of her dogs, seeing this. Behemoth probably hadn’t even given a coherent thought to the pain he’d inflicted on this girl, on countless others, just like Leviathan had mindlessly torn through Rachel’s dogs.
Why?
Why did the Endbringers do this? Were they part of the passenger’s grand plan? Cauldron’s monsters, taken to an extreme? Tattletale had said they were never human, but she’d been wrong before.
Or maybe I hoped they had been human because it was an answer, because the alternative meant I didn’t have enough data points to explain it.
With as much gentleness as I could manage, I moved bugs over the girl’s body. She reacted with alarm rather than pain, and I shushed her. The bugs were spreading possible infection, no doubt, but I suspected infection was inevitable, given circumstance. Using the bugs let me know where the blisters were, where the skin was mottled with burns.
I took off my flight pack and flipped it over.
Like ripping off a bandaid, I thought, only it’s at someone else’s expense.
I lifted her, and she shrieked at the physical contact, at the movement of burned flesh against clothing and the ground. I set her down on the flight pack, placing a hand on her unburned stomach to stabilize her. I activated the left and right panels, gently, so it had a general lift without any particular direction, and I led her to the sled in progress.
Golem had already returned, and the three of them were combining powers to make the sled. Cuff was feeding the chain Rachel had provided into loops at the front.
With Grue’s help, I eased the girl down from the flight pack, setting her with the other wounded.
“We’re going to hurt him,” I said, retrieving the flight pack.
“Behemoth?” Cuff asked me.
“We’re going to find a way,” I said, and that was all. I met the little girl’s eyes.
Cuff followed my gaze. “I guess I”m on board with that.”
“Why did you come?” I asked. “I mean, I get why we all came, on a level, but… no offense, you’re in a totally different headspace.”