by wildbow
I was a puppeteer trying to make the puppet move by tugging the strings from some remote place. Something as complex as speech was beyond me.
I tried to form words with the swarm, to speak or to spell. I failed.
Far, far beyond me.
I could see Tattletale reacting too, her entire body going rigid. She took a half-step back.
I lowered my eyes to the cave floor. My fingers were moving, grasping, and it wasn’t me doing it.
“Ah,” Marquis said. “Shame. A communication problem makes it harder to gauge how much we can trust her.”
Trust her, he’d said, instead of trust you. Like there was no point to saying it to me directly. Marquis was talking to Tattletale to refer to me in the same way someone might talk to the family member or companion of a mentally disabled individual or small child, instead of the diminutive individual themselves.
As though I was so fucked up I apparently needed a guardian to act as a translator or advocate.
“I can tell you how she is,” Tattletale said.
“You’re biased, to be frank,” Marquis said. “I’m not willing to put myself, my family, or my underlings in a dangerous position because you have a sentimental spot for Weaver. And before you launch into a spiel, I should warn you that Amelia here has filled me in on you. I’m aware of how convincing you can be. Spruce, Cinderhands, Lung? You have my permission to mutiny if you think she’s gaming me. I even recommend it.”
“Hardly fair,” Tattletale said.
“It’s rather fair, all things considered,” Marquis said. “If you can convince all of us, then it must be a legitimate and sound argument.”
“I think you’re underestimating how eager Lung is for an excuse to hurt something,” Tattletale said.
“Maybe so,” Marquis said. He glanced at Lung.
“You are too soft with women and children,” Lung said. “If she starts something, I will break your rule for you and immolate her.”
“I suppose that’ll do,” Marquis said, sighing a little, he gave Tattletale a look, and she nodded a little.
There was another distant rumble. A sound like a thousand men screaming in unison. I felt a chill.
“Let’s put this issue to rest,” Marquis said. “A compromise.”
“Sure. I’m open to compromise,” Tattletale said. “Beats being immolated.”
Marquis turned. “Doormaker? Another portal, please. We’ll change locations and set up a triage unit somewhere else. We link it to Gimel, and we close all doors leading to and from this cave.”
“I’m not sure I like this compromise,” Tattletale said.
“Weaver is an unknown quantity. We’ll leave her here, as safe as anyone on any Earth is, and we conclude this fight against Scion, win or lose. When all’s said and done, we come back and we see what we can do for her.”
There was a long pause.
Stay here? Not participating?
I tensed. My bugs stirred.
Right. I still had my bugs. My control was down, but only just. Anything I touched or manipulated would be like I was using my left hand instead of my right.
Problem was, I didn’t exactly have a wealth of bugs to work with.
“It’s… sorta hard to argue with,” Tattletale said. “But I don’t like it.”
“Nature of a compromise is that it leaves everyone more or less equally unhappy,” Marquis said. “I’d feel happier if she was under secure restraints, but I’m content to break this rod and leave her free to forage and look after herself while we’re gone.”
No thread left. I’d used too much of it when we’d made the platform back at the Cauldron base.
There was a new dimension to my power, at a cost to everything else. Sixteen feet of range.
I just needed to figure out how to use it.
Tattletale shook her head. “If Doormaker dies, she’s stranded here, all alone, more than a little borked in the head and in the heart. Possibly for the rest of her life.”
“If Doormaker dies, I think we’re all in dire straits,” Marquis said. “This is the fairest solution. I think you realize that.”
I raised my hand, fingertips going vertical, moving my stump in that general direction, knowing she could draw the conclusion. Best I could do in terms of a pleading gesture, with only one hand to work with.
Tattletale stared. “…Yeah. Except for one thing.”
“There’s a snag,” Marquis concluded, sounding a little defeated.
“Sure. Life isn’t fair, and I’ve got a hell of a lot of faith in that girl. Besides, we agreed not so long ago that we wouldn’t leave each other behind.”
“Unfortunate. Lung, Cinderhands? Make Tattletale leave. Drag her if you have to, but don’t hurt her.”
“You test my patience with this gentleness of yours,” Lung growled, but he took hold of Tattletale’s arm with one claw. Cinderhands took her other arm.
“Watch for her gun. If she gets a hand free, she’ll use it on one of us,” Panacea said. She followed the trio.
I struggled to reach my feet, but the ‘v’ of bone at my throat held me. I slumped back down to the ground, staring at the ones who remained.
“Stop struggling, Weaver,” Marquis said. “Please relax. You took a gamble and you lost. You sit this one out.”
I narrowed my eyes behind the lenses of my mask.
“Spruce? Can you use your power? Not too much. Enough she can break free before too long?”
The tidy man shook his head. He turned his hand over, and a little sphere swirled in it, looking like a cabbage made of stone. He closed his hand, and it winked out of existence. “Ten years ago? Sure. Right now? I don’t trust my accuracy. I’d be worried about the structure of the cave if my power touched anything to either side or behind her.”
Marquis nodded. “Go look after the others, then. Be ready to shut the door the moment I’m through.”
Spruce turned to leave, ushering Doormaker and the Clairvoyant out.
“I know you have tricks up your sleeve. You have bugs, you have the pepper spray. You have other tools I probably don’t know about. I’m going to assume you’re in a state of mind to use those tricks. I’m going to hope you’re in a state of mind to listen when I ask you not to use them. Stay here, pull yourself together, and we’ll come for you when we can. If we can. I give you my oath that I’ll do my utmost to keep Tattletale safe in the meantime.”
My hands were clenching and unclenching. Not by my own volition.
“Eeeeuunnh,” I growled.
“I’m very optimistically going to take that as a reluctant yes,” he said.
It took me a moment to get the motions in order, but I managed to shake my head very slowly from side to side.
“Alright,” he said. He put an arm on Canary’s armored shoulder. “Canary? Please step through. I’ll be right behind you.”
She started to obey, then stopped. “I… I really know how you feel, Weaver. Sort of. I took Cauldron’s stuff, it messed me up, physically. I felt horrible, I went a little crazy. And maybe three years after I picked myself up and pulled it all together, everything went to shit. Like life was reminding me of the mistake I made. So I—I know what you’re feeling. But you can make peace with it. So… don’t beat yourself up too hard? Take it from someone that’s done that too much.”
“It was kind of you to say that,” Marquis said. “Please step through?”
Canary nodded.
He was watching her go.
I heaved myself sideways, freeing my left arm to reach to my right hip. In the process, I managed to move the branch of bone a little to one side. Not enough to get my head free of it, but enough to get some elbow room.
“Heads up!” Marquis called out.
My hand fumbled for my gun, and I pulled it free. I raised it to the point where the branch split in two and fired. The thickest point.
Perhaps a little insane, to fire upwards, at something as hard as bone, inches from my face and throat.
But the bone shat
tered and splintered.
I was free, and Marquis was already taking action. Armor of bone surrounded him, ornate, decorative, but with enough coverage that the bugs near him were either crushed against his skin or they failed to find a way through. I didn’t have any bugs small enough to fit through the vertical slits around the eyes and mouth.
The spear of bone began branching out, becoming a veritable tree, filling the cave between myself and Marquis with forking and dividing limbs. He was backing away, creating more bone to stay connected to the base of the tree. He knew what I’d try to do next.
I didn’t stand. I couldn’t afford to take the time. I used the flight pack, extending the wings with the thrusters, and launched myself at the wall of the cave. I hit it a little harder than I might have liked, one wing bending, and then scraped against it, flying in Marquis’ general direction, moving along the cave ceiling where there were less branches.
The amount of space I had to maneuver in was rapidly closing. My dangling leg caught a branch, and I nearly lost all of my momentum. I was forced to put the thrusters away, but one didn’t fold away properly where it had bent in the collision.
Tree branches of bone closed around me. I activated the thruster on the remaining wing, and I opened fire, blind, in the hopes of clearing a route.
Marquis moved to the side, creating a shield of bone in front of himself and Canary. The bullets weren’t really on course for them, but it worked out in my favor. He’d broken the shaft of bone to free himself to move, and the ‘tree’ was no longer growing. I flew through the biggest available gaps, snapping the thinner spears and spines of bone on my way through.
Twenty feet away from Marquis. He moved back, and then grabbed the ‘tree’.
A disc of bone unfolded in front of me, as though the tree were a parasol. A wall, a barrier.
I shot at the edge, and a chunk broke off.
But more flowed free before I could wedge myself into the resulting gap. It sealed the cave off. I shot again, but it was too thick. The trigger clicked as I pulled it again and again, fruitlessly. The movement was so frantic and jerky that the gun fell from my clumsy grip.
“Terribly sorry,” Marquis murmured.
Panic and fear welled up inside me.
I don’t want to stay behind. I can’t. You don’t understand. I’ll lose my mind, more than it already feels a little lost.
“Gorrugh,” I hissed. The armor of my mask clicked against the bone as I rested my head against it.
The fear, the panic, no…
I felt it, but it wasn’t mine. Neither was the fear and paralysis I’d felt before, or the anger.
I was so used to my power being automatic, I wasn’t used to having to exert any kind of will.
I tapped into the feeling, I focused all of my attention on my ability.
Sixteen feet. Marquis was out of my range, but Canary had been slower to move, her reflexes not as good. She’d been caught up in watching, maybe not wanting to turn her back on a fight in progress, and she hadn’t moved as quickly.
I was touching the wall of bone, and Canary was fifteen or so feet away, on the other side.
Now that I was taking the time to look, to sense, I was aware of Canary’s body in the same way I’d been aware of Lung’s. As Panacea’s, to a lesser degree. Her steady, measured breathing, the complete lack of movement.
Just like Lung and Panacea had been frozen.
Waiting for instructions.
I couldn’t move her closer to Marquis without putting her outside of my range. Instead, I turned her around.
“Ah… damnation,” Marquis said.
Her movements weren’t much more fluid than my own ones here. A drawback, among many. She marched towards me and the wall Marquis had created.
He snared her, throwing out shafts of bone and surrounding her upper body with a cage of the stuff, interlocking the two pieces.
But she wore the Dragonslayer’s armored suit. She bent her legs at my order, and then lunged forward. She broke the bone that surrounded her, and with her fist free she struck the wall of bone.
Two, three, four times.
Marquis stepped forward, very carefully, and planted a foot on the base of the shaft of bone. The wall began to thicken, faster than Canary could smash it.
Her power…
I looked, and I had enough of a sense of her inner workings to get a sense of her general state of well being, where she was sore, her fitness, and her power.
She began to sing.
Bring him closer. Bring him in.
The song changed. The relentless, almost machinelike drum against the wall of bone continued, cracking it with the power of the suit, and I could sense Marquis wavering. He lowered his foot from the shaft of bone and began to approach Canary.
I was so used to a buzzing, to a dull roar of power in my ears. This was so much more complex. Complex and seductive, the emotions I was tapping into. Linking myself to Canary on some level.
I could remember being in Dragon and Defiant’s grip, being hauled along on the way to the roof, so soon after killing Alexandria and Director Tagg. Struggling, futile, hopeless.
I could look beyond that surface memory, and I could see what was beneath it, a general sensation, a recollection of a feeling. Canary, struggling, helpless and bound, terrified and panicking, with a dull sense of guilt over what she’d done, a reality that she hadn’t quite processed and might not fully process for weeks or months.
She was me and I was her. Shared experience. She was an extension of myself.
There was no way to know if that was a good thing. I was starting to feel a little unhinged again. A little disconnected from me.
The only thing scarier than that fact was the knowledge that it was only going to get worse. This was my tool. This was what I’d sacrificed my mind, body, range, and control to obtain. Sixteen paltry feet of range. Sixteen feet of range that, according to Panacea, I wouldn’t be able to increase through my emotions.
I made myself climb to my feet, pushing my way through the smaller branches of bone, reaching up with my hand to grab a larger branch for balance. My legs were shaky beneath me, my head a little lopsided, and if I hadn’t been holding on to something, I suspected my arm would have hung utterly limp at my side. I couldn’t… I couldn’t dig for that knowledge of how my body was supposed to be in a resting state.
I saw the first crack spread on my side of the wall.
Better yet, Marquis was getting closer. One or two more reluctant steps our way, and—
—And I never got to find out if I’d be able to leverage his power. Lung stepped into the hallway, and he filled it with fire.
Canary was armored, though her hair was set on fire where it flowed beneath the helmet. Marquis, too, was armored. Neither was positioned to be turned into a crisp.
But the fire drowned out the singing. The fire stopped, and Canary could hear Marquis’ footsteps as he ran, hands pressed to where his ears were covered by his helmet.
I had Canary punch through the wall. She reached through the wall and grabbed me by the straps of my flight pack, hauling me through.
The doorway was closing. Canary, it seemed, was being left behind.
I had her throw me, and I used my flight pack to get extra speed.
I slid through the doorway two seconds before it was too narrow to pass through. I lay there, the group staring down at me.
“Coohugggah,” I mumbled, with more than a little anger in my voice, as I slowly made my way to my feet. Nobody offered me a hand, but that was my choice, not theirs.
My stump of an arm was throbbing, and the rest of me felt alien. My movements weren’t all my own choice, with the passenger apparently doing something to help me manage.
I looked through the other portal, beside us. Gimel.
I left the others alone, not controlling them. When Spruce was in my way, I pushed him aside with physical strength.
I’m fighting, I thought. I’m fighting Scion. Someho
w.
I could see myself through their eyes. Each image was slightly distorted, just different enough to be uncanny and out of sync. I had more awareness of myself through them than I had with my own eyes.
I stepped into the damaged fast food restaurant, and over the rubble at the front where one attack or another had clipped the building. As I made my way to the front, the others behind me found themselves out of my reach, free to move of their own volition again.
Free to attack me if they wanted.
Marquis, Panacea, Bonesaw… not so dangerous.
Lung? No. If he was going to kill me, he’d let me know just before he did it.
Spruce? Cinderhands? They were maybe the type to attack me, because of pride and the fact that I’d momentarily seized control of them.
Tattletale was freed. She dashed forward, hopping over rubble and debris to get closer to me. She stopped three or four paces from me.
A fraction more than sixteen feet away.
But she didn’t say a word.
Scion was there. Tearing through people with a ferocity, this time. People were scrambling for cover that did so very little against Scion, trying to erect defenses, hiding and fleeing.
Had we already lost?
A collection of capes, many carrying wounded, headed our way. Rachel, Imp and Bastard were among them.
I moved to the side, but I failed to anticipate their path. I’d expected them to head into the sandwich-place-turned-hospital, but they moved straight towards me.
I backed away, taking flight, while Tattletale rushed forward, her footfalls tracing a curved path around a bubble that only she seemed to be conscious of. She stopped in their way, arms outstretched, shouting, “Go around! Dangerous power!”
Most of them listened. Only one, looking over his shoulder at Scion, stumbled past Tattletale, into my range. I was looking for it this time, and I could feel his being snap into my mind’s eye. He froze in place.
No sooner did I have control than Tattletale grabbed the guy by the back of the collar and hauled him out.
“The fuck?” Imp asked.
Tattletale let the guy go, and he fled.
I couldn’t reply, so I focused on gathering my bugs. No use dismissing a resource that had once been vital.