by wildbow
“Right,” I said. I thought of Charlotte and the kids.
Fuck, I didn’t want to fail here, to let them lose what they were building.
“And with luck, knowing who you are means not having to waste time and effort on putting up a facade. Maybe that extra time and effort you have at your disposal will make the difference.”
A portal opened behind me. A member of the New York Wards. A little bedraggled.
“Take care, Ms. Hebert,” Mr. Calle told me. Making it easier for me to take my leave, for the new arrival to step in.
“Goodbye,” I said. “Thanks again.”
“Goodbye, Taylor,” Glenn said. “You, Weaver, Skitter and the strategist all give him hell, understand? For all of us who can’t be on the front lines.”
I nodded.
“Doorway. To Miss Militia.”
* * *
The doorway opened, and a small crowd shifted from around me, their attention elsewhere.
It took me a minute to figure out what I was seeing. A hundred people, sitting on folding chairs or standing off in the grass to either side or behind the collection of chairs. They were watching a movie that was being projected onto a massive white sheet, some holding paper bowls with soup, others holding beers.
My bugs moved over the crowd, and I located my teammates.
Parian and Foil in their civilian clothes, sitting together, holding hands. I might have missed them, if not for the rapier that Foil was keeping close at hand.
Aisha, sitting next to Rachel, with the dogs under their seats where they’d be out of the way. The Heartbroken were filling the seats immediately around them. Eerie distortions of Alec, with different frames, hair colors, genders and fashion styles, but close enough for me to notice.
The movie showed a dog on screen, being chased by a group of kids. I could see Imp’s face in the dark, looking as pleased as Rachel appeared annoyed.
“It’s not the same dog,” Rachel hissed the words. “Why isn’t anyone seeing that? Same breed, but totally different dogs.”
“Pretend,” Aisha said, her smile not faltering in the slightest.
One of the younger Heartbroken shushed them.
I saw Miss Militia off to one side, with a group of kid capes. Crucible, Kid Win, Vista, two more I didn’t recognize, and Aiden. The kids were watching the screen, while Miss Militia watched the crowd for trouble, with a fair bit of her attention being aimed at Aisha and Rachel.
I didn’t want to interrupt, didn’t want to spoil this for the kids.
It was a distraction. A stupid movie, apparently, but a distraction. For the capes, it was a chance to not think about what came next. To not dwell on the fact that, a minute, an hour, a day or a week from now, we could be fighting with everything on the line.
I drew a small notepad from my belt, then a pen.
Miss Militia,
Once upon a time, I wanted to be a hero. On the night I changed my mind, the same night we attacked the fundraiser, I was going to write you a letter. I suppose it’s time I finish it…
It wasn’t an easy letter to write then, and it’s not any easier to write now, for very different reasons. I wasn’t a good hero, and I use the past tense there because I can’t genuinely call myself a hero at this point. I’ve been visiting people tonight, and I suspect I might visit others tomorrow if circumstances allow, thanking those who need thanking, making sure that maybe there’s a legacy, someone to remember me if we all make it through this.
When I was a hero, when I did it right, I think I was emulating you and Chevalier. Looking back, I can imagine that maybe things would have turned out okay if I’d joined the Wards, because you would have had my back. I can’t say I regret what I’ve done, but I can’t say I don’t, either…
Sorry. Don’t let me waste your time. All I wanted to say was thank you. Thank you for having my back when it counted.
—Taylor Hebert.
I folded it up and gave it to my swarm to deliver. I didn’t wait to see her reaction before whispering, “Doorway. Tattletale.”
* * *
Barely an hour spent, all in all, on running my errands, looking after people.
Not all of the people I should have contacted. I’d left out some of the most important ones.
The most important one. My dad.
Perhaps I was a coward after all. I knew the answer, I just didn’t want to hear it.
I couldn’t be absolutely positive I could hear it. I couldn’t take a gut punch like that so close to such a crucial fight.
I was nearly silent as I made my way through the building. Tattletale’s soldiers acknowledged me as I passed.
Not her place. Somewhere out of the way. A secure building, quite possibly one only Cauldron could access.
I found out why as I entered Tattletale’s room. She was asleep, curled up on a couch with a laptop that had a black screen, glowing lightly.
I heard a murmur. Mumbling in her sleep?
I bent over her, saw the track where the black makeup she’d used to color in her eye sockets had run. A tear, from the corner of one eye, down the side of her face. Crying a little in her sleep.
I found a blanket and draped it over her, then sat on the edge of the couch.
“Nobody really left for me but you guys,” I said. “Everyone else has moved on.”
Another murmur.
Not from Tattletale.
Not from any direction in particular.
I listened for it, and almost immediately wished I hadn’t.
Music. A lullaby, so quiet it was almost imperceptible.
I wasn’t hearing it with my ears.
I crossed the room, and my hand touched thick glass that was quite probably bulletproof. I could see men standing guard outside, their night-vision visors glowing.
The Simurgh was outside.
The lullaby continued as she worked on expanding her arsenal.
“Stop,” I whispered.
She stopped.
The silence was deafening. No noise in the area, no wind, no people.
It made me wonder if the lullaby had been louder than I’d thought. How was I supposed to gauge the volume of it when I had nothing to measure it against but my own thoughts?
I’m sorry.
The words crossed my mind. My voice.
Not my words.
The Simurgh turned, her hair flowing in the wind. Her hands were still held up as she worked her telekinesis on yet another weapon to add to her arsenal. Her eyes met mine.
I found my way back to the couch, sitting next to Tattletale.
I didn’t sleep at all that night.
Interlude 28
Study, analysis.
An impulse, something that couldn’t be tracked with any conventional devices, then a steady feedback. Pretercognition. Spread out over several targets at once, it serves as her primary sense. Each target is conceptualized in the context of twelve to eighty years of history. More time, more feedback from the steady feed of information, and the images clarify. Discard the useless elements, maintain the pivotal ones.
Deciphering, searching for the fulcrum points.
Focus on one target, and the decoding is faster, but this costs her the ability to sense other things in any detail. Necessary, in most cases, to form a distraction, or to strike hard enough that she can take advantage of the enemy’s preoccupation.
This was made easier by another sense. Another power extends in the other direction, and this is not one that can be sensed by most. Possibilities, as another jumble of images. These clarify as the others do, as eventualities are discarded, the targets around her coming into focus.
One target comes into full focus, and their existence is now visible, from the moment of their birth until the time they disappear from sight. Often, this is the point of their death. Other times, they disappear into darkness, obscured by another power.
Often, this is not a true obstacle, if she has had time to look. There are the fulcrum points. Crises, th
emes, decisions, fears and aspirations are clearly visible. The individual is understood well enough that their actions can be guessed after they disappear from view.
A stone is thrown into darkness. It can be safely assumed that it will continue traveling until it hits something.
Frame a situation to put a target under optimal fear and stress. Hormone secretions increase. Manipulate situation to a position where they will connect familiar visual, olfactory and auditory cues to their immediate environment. Place, smell, degree of stress, sights and sounds match fulcrum point. Hormone secretions increase further.
The result is hallucinations, momentary or sustained. Hearing sounds, seeing things, smelling something, where none truly exist. Fight or flight response feeds need for escapism. A hallucination serves as the first step into a daydream.
The stone is thrown.
She does this with people and the various secretions within their bodies, with machines and data, with the elements and simple cause and effect.
Her hibernation state serves to allow for collection of low-feedback information about the environment. Feedback that cannot be tracked or sensed, collecting information over a series of passes. The stone can be a series of billiard balls instead, one striking another, striking another in turn. Diminishing returns with each target struck.
With study and careful precision, each ball can find its pocket. Spheres of synthetic resin meet the furthest point of a ledge covered by woven wool, perching on the edge as they spend their momentum. Almost, they remain there, not enough energy to pass over the precipice. Then they fall. Three disappear into oblivion in perfect synchronicity.
She does not feel joy at this. This is the task. Means to ends.
She is utterly blind in the present, with no eyesight or other senses to perceive things in the now. No sight, no hearing, no touch or taste. Not a crippling flaw, and a difficult flaw for others to use against her. The present is only a fragment in a long span of time when one can see the past and future both.
But she faces an obstacle that she is utterly blind to, now. No apparent past or future. In interacting with it, she is limited to context. She sees not the obstacle, but she can see things that are set in motion around it. She cannot see it strike, but she can see the reaction, the aftermath.
She sees the stone fly out of the darkness, and she can determine where it was thrown from.
There is a task to be completed, but things must be set in place first.
An obstacle must be removed. This is critical, but she is blind to it. This is the greatest problem she faces.
She requires access to particular information. This can be arranged by positioning targets carefully.
She requires resources. This requires patience. She will have access to them soon enough, provided things aren’t cast into darkness by the obstacle.
She must be unmolested. This is given freely to her.
She operates alongside the subjects. This serves her aims on several fronts. She communicates when she can with the others. A current of water in a particular set of wavelengths, to her brother who sees the world as water—living things as balloons of meat largely made up of water, moisture in the air, moisture running over every available surface as he uses his abilities to move clouds and fog into place.
The younger siblings are harder to target, but their birthplace is studded with temporal anomalies. Holes in time, wells, echoes, slowed time and accelerated time, from confrontations that have occurred, even confrontations she participated in. She manipulates the wind as she affected the water. A stirring that prompts another stirring, and the temporal effects that can be affected are struck in a particular pattern, strained in a particular order, from the fastest to the slowest. Again, she repeats the process emphasizing the anomalies with individuals trapped within. As communications go, it is crude, but she knows her siblings like she knows any other target. Slow, calm, the subjects.
More communications, to get the point across.
The younger sister needs only a tremor, the very same wavelength their oldest living brother received. She responds in kind.
The youngest sister needs only an expression of any power. By the time the others are alerted, the youngest is prepared.
And so they have fallen into place. They obey, they remain calm.
When given permission, they attack designated targets. They cooperate with the subjects.
Her attention turns to the object she is making. She cannot see it, cannot even feel where her physical aesthetic is in contact with it, but she can understand its state in the past and in the future, view it through the perceptions of the subjects she has studied.
A glass tube, three feet across, seven and a half feet long, capped in metal at either end.
This will be step six in a nine step process. For now, she puts it aside, buries it in a larger weapon, forming a decorative gun barrel around the glass. The weapon will fire through other means.
The ones who observe her through cameras and with their own eyes will not report this. They lack the background to know what this tube might be, and this event will be dismissed as unimportant or they will leave it to someone else to report. The events are entered into a log, and the subjects overseeing the logs are either asleep or preoccupied.
She can see the events as they would unfold, and carries out her activities in plain sight. Another subject, having left earlier, is going to finish her routine. Most likely sequence of events, accounting for future-viewers obscuring possibilities, is that she finishes her journey in the ensuing ten minutes. Unclear whether she finishes her note or writes something lengthier.
The tube is fully encapsulated, hidden.
Cradled.
She sings, and subjects stationed here are immediately on guard.
Adjusting the song, then. Something else. She looks forward to see what she’ll need. Something that will encourage rest.
The subject in charge of this small colony will wake—
The girl wakes.
—only to ask—
“What in the motherfucking hell are you doing?
The song continues.
The girl approaches the window.
The girl will state—
“Jeez louise. You’re terrifying, you know that?”
—and then fatigue overcomes the girl. She draws on her power, searching for clues, for information, but everything telling has been set aside, hidden away. Other things are made a focus, to draw attention.
The Simurgh stands tall. The line of her body, the wings set out of the way and angled to draw shadow. Only one wing catches the light, drawing a straight line from the back of her neck towards the sky. A pale line, stretching directly up. She cocks her head to one side, studying the gun she is crafting.
The bent head, the body drawn straight, toes only barely touching the ground. It will invoke a memory. Not blatant, but the memory is framed all the same.
No need to draw on the full force of her feedback when she already has the key elements deciphered.
The girl staggers back to the couch she has been resting on, attempting to focus on her work, on details that need to be tracked. The song helps her on her way to sleep, and she mutters a swear word before her eyes drift closed. The seeds of her dreams have already been planted.
It paves the way for more work.
Two more subjects to deal with.
The portal opens some time later. The girl had chosen the longer letter. Now she approaches, taking her time. Insect life scouts the area around her.
Tension, fatigue, a lowered guard. An auditory hallucination was easy enough. Just one. Tap into a critical memory.
Best to deal with the other subject first. Three minutes before the girl with her bugs arrive here.
Objects are set down in a specific order, evoking different ideas. A different posture is adopted, wings raised high, stretching.
Shackle. Syringe. Scalpel. Lens. Lens.
Some are taking notes, but nothing can co
me of this. As with the glass case, the subjects here don’t have the right frame of reference to understand.
The intended target is far, far away.
It’s too much.
Hey, are you okay?
What happened?
Nosebleed.
Can you hear me? You need to tell the kid to change targets. Aim it somewhere else.
Things were getting blurry, indistinct.
Change targets—
* * *
A city. A metropolis. It spanned the landscape as far as the eye could see, horizon to horizon.
Awareness, having just been so focused on one target, extended over the area, seeing how the city simply extended without cease. It wasn’t hard to refocus, to take it all in as a series of countless details, all at once.
Every building and every balcony had a farm, every vertical surface had a black panel with wires running from it, or trees that were rooted in the building structure. Every individual family had a means of sustaining themselves, of producing an abundance so they could trade any excess.
Are they okay?
I don’t know.
Oh my god. It’s amazing. Look at all this.
Focus, do as we were told.
The awareness continued to extend. A whole planet. Not perfect, but the civilized world, largely below the equator, had a different attitude, prizing self-sufficiency. The rest of the world was war-torn.
It was in one of the war-torn regions that it first appeared. A streak of golden light.
Destruction. Tearing through a region, then a whole continent.
His presence blinded, dark. Blurring the images.
Can’t see. Can’t—
Moving on.
* * *
The expansion of awareness continued. Almost as background noise, there were people speaking, echoes of the same word over and over again.
Not a focus.
Not their focus.
Hey, the nosebleed stopped.
There’s nothing happening here. Shouldn’t we focus on something else?
Let them rest.