by wildbow
It wasn’t an epithet. The third entity was Bastard, the wolf cub. Grown large by the bizarre interaction of Lab Rat’s formula and then cosmetically altered by Panacea, given a handful of special effects. No doubt coordinated by Tattletale.
Scion’s mad sorrow was so thick on the air I could almost taste it.
I used Sifara to pull everyone and everything in the area away before Scion could retaliate. Scattering them to different worlds with portals. I used case fifty-threes to break the so-called scent trail to Tattletale and the others.
Scion shattered the shelf of land that New Brockton Bay stood on, and I watched in horror as the cracks moved radiated towards the cabin.
I moved Ziggurat out of a portal, and I used her power.
Sl-sl—
I shook my head before I could get caught up in another mental loop of failed, stuttered words.
A fissure opened up. The cracks stopped twenty feet short of the cabin.
Scion didn’t hold back, entering another world, dealing just as much damage, then moving to the next. It became all I could do to keep my swarm out of his way. Even with Sifara, even with the doors.
I couldn’t think straight, because I couldn’t really think. Not coherently.
But I knew, on an instinctual level, that we’d homed in on the weak point. We just needed to drive it home. I reached out to seize everyone, opening full-size doorways so I could move them all to one place.
It was when I was opening my door that the portals started winking out.
It was like watching a blackout take hold over a city. Lights going out, sections of apartments at the same time, then buildings. Not all even, not quite logical in flow, but close.
And with every other light that went out, I lost a member of my swarm.
The portals shut en masse, ten by ten, a hundred by a hundred, the furthest one first. The ones next to me would disappear in seconds.
I looked at Doormaker, who was staring into empty space.
The realization dawned on me.
I’d spent it all. Too much, pushing it too far. The well Doormaker drew from in using his power had just run dry.
Speck 30.6
I had a choice to make. Into the thick of things, or-r h-hang-hanging b-back?
What I’d done, taking control, using people like sacrificial pawns, I’d made enemies. I’d offended the pride of countless villains, of heroes, even. I was a kill-on-sight target.
I could sense the doorways closing. Only the ones close to me remained open. Though ‘close’ was a hard label to apply when talking about dimensions.
I turned to my old standby. I gathered my bugs, drawing them through the portals that remained, gathering them at my destination.
I stepped through into the cloud. A rooftop overlooking New York, Earth Bet. My New York.
It hadn’t been a conscious choice. An impulse, really. Maybe there were cities that were more fitting, but this was a city at the center of modern civilization. Or it had been. If this was going to be our final staging ground, then it was as fitting a choice as any. It was heavy with resources that every parahuman could use, unoccupied. Intact enough to still look like a city, damaged enough to remind us of what was at stake.
With the Clairvoyant, I could see the parahumans around us. They hadn’t scattered, and were still holding formation, more or less.
For the time being, we were holding fast. Scion was still engaged with the Endbringers in Gimel. We had seconds, a minute or two if we were lucky, to catch our breath, to think, plan and communicate.
If we were really unlucky, we’d have even longer. Long enough for people to talk themselves out of this. Long enough for trouble to find me, for the Birdcage capes I’d unleashed to cause trouble. The only reason things down there on the streets were quiet was because people were still reeling, trying to process, because they were in organized groups and breaking from that organization in times of stress was hard.
Cults and religions and frat— fratern— clubs, they held together because of the power of the group. We were social creatures in the end. Easier to be one tinker in a small army of tinkers than a tinker all alone.
Heads were turning my way, a few fingers pointing. Angry mutters. Clairvoyants, precogs, people with future sight, all of them finding me. If the lynch mob came for me, there wasn’t a lot I could do. Glaistig U— the Faerie Queen was among them, and she was mad.
If she turned her power on me, hit me with anything close to what she’d used while I was at the height of my power, I was a goner.
There were a lot of capes out there who didn’t like being made into puppets. I suspected that more than a few of them had been victim to it in the past. Yet others were used to being the ones in control. Lung, Teacher, the child surgeon.
I counted myself lucky that I’d made it even this far. That things hadn’t devolved into chaos the moment the leashes came off.
I’d set myself apart, a little distance away. The original plan had been to maintain a vantage point where I could watch the battle unfold. Now it was a refuge, as if capes who could bring cities to their knees hesitated to expend the time and energy to close the distance to me.
I dropped to my knees, still holding on to the Clairvoyant, much as I’d hold on to a life preserver while underwater.
Standing was hard. I needed a chance to rest, to think.
Except thinking was harder still. I was a husk, and things were rotting from the inside out. I’d hoped I’d recuperate some when I had less people in my control, but it didn’t seem like it worked out that way. Damage done was damage done. One section of my brain was swelling or creeping out to take over other sections, like it had overwritten dog-girl’s social perceptions.
If I could have talked, if I could have communicated, I could have told them. I could have explained how we could make it all work if we just worked together, if we coordinated. I would have offered myself up for them to do with as they saw fit, if they’d just cooperate now. I’d made the choice for others, sacrificing them rather than letting them choose to sacrifice themselves. If someone in that crowd was angry enough to give me a fate worse than death, it was probably deserved.
Though probably not equitable. I moved my hand to my face, the Clairvoyant holding my wrist. I’d taken my mask off at some point. When had I done that? My hand ran clumsily down past my eye, my cheekbone, nose, and mouth, every movement trembling. It didn’t feel real. Like it was a mask I was wearing.
I dug my fingernails in as I caught my lip and chin. Numb. I could feel, but it was so small a sensation compared to all of the people I’d been controlling. I saw it from a distance, to the point that I felt like I was barely there. I’d be willing to sacrifice myself if it meant saving everything, but that wasn’t much of an offer, when my life was already pretty much gone. I didn’t have anything left.
Not that I was free to suggest it, in any event.
I would have explained my strategy. A way to win, if we could get the pieces in motion. I would have rallied them, tried to get them on board. Even told them, knowing I’d be gunned down an instant later. But I was mute, incomprehensible.
There was only one option left to me. One I didn’t like in the slightest.
I shifted my position, and I sat on the edge of the roof, my bugs thick enough around me that a sniper would have a hard time taking a shot.
I waited.
The assembled capes below were getting more restless. They spoke different languages, finding others in their number who spoke the same. Voices were tight with anger and stress. Some of it would be directed at me. Others…
There was an advantage here. Another reason they hadn’t scattered. So much of our dwindling morale was due to the fact that we hadn’t been able to affect Scion. We hit him, and nothing seemed to work. At best, we had knocked him off balance.
They hadn’t seen me drop the bombs. They hadn’t been fully cognizant of what was going on with Scion expending power to view the future, or even that we were wearing him down
on a level. There was a limit to how much damage he could sustain.
The saving grace had been the psychological impact they’d witnessed. Scion hurting. Seeing his reaction to glimpsing the other being.
Maybe they didn’t understand it. Maybe they did. But I suspected it was a factor in morale. They’d seen a reaction.
It was key, that reaction.
Now I was in an awkward position. Unable to act, unable to access the specific capes I needed. I had far, far more enemies than allies. Beyond that fight from without, I had to wage a war within, struggling against my mind and body.
I was losing things. I struggled to find a point of reference.
I’m a monster, I thought. Not an anchor, but a recent memory, a realization that was still fresh in my memory. Something from just before I’d started losing memories.
Bullet ants.
Maggots in eyeballs. Necrotizing flesh. Strip— Stripping flesh from bone.
Hand or knee?
The images were so clear in my mind’s eye that I could almost see them around me. A hero in his civilian clothes, gasping for breath. I had the means to save him, and I was holding back.
I heard a voice, female, kind words, spoken haltingly, out of place in the midst of this. I had trouble placing the memory.
Then, more reassuring in a way, a return to the more violent thoughts. Me standing over a man, pulling a trigger and watching the aftermath, bits of skull, brain and blood painting the pavement beneath him.
The dance of bugs within a woman’s lungs, minimizing the surface area available, limiting oxygen.
A very different, very abstract way of killing.
Again, the voice interrupted. Patient, almost like I was overhearing something being said. It made for a kind of… what was the word? A conflict between two ideas. Dis— Dissonance.
I tried to pick it apart, and in the doing, I realized what was happening.
With the loss of the portals, I’d lost one more anchor. Pride, confidence, that reminder of who I’d been when I’d been a warlord, when I’d been at my most powerful, recent circumstances excepted… I’d inadvertently connected thoughts and memories to that, and now that the physical manifestation was gone, those thoughts were disappearing with it. My identity was degrading.
I couldn’t be sure that anything I was reaching for was real, or if I was taking something minor and exaggerating it in importance.
The Faerie Queen had been right. If she hadn’t warned me, if she hadn’t told me I needed something to hold on to, I wasn’t sure where I’d be right this instant.
I reached out, searching for other anchors.
The dog girl. Her pet wolf had been changed into the alien ‘garden’, and her view of it had been cut off when she’d retreated through a doorway. She was staring at the empty space where the doorway had been.
Her teammate—my teammate, had a phone out, and was talking and typing at the same time, while her eyes roved over the crowd.
She had only the two pairs of eyes, while I had limited, local omniscience. We were each seeing the same thing through very different perspectives. Unease, restlessness.
Here and there, people were breaking down. Tears, panic. The ones who had avoided the battle in the first place, the ones from distant Earths who had no conception of what was going on, the retirees.
Except they had support. They weren’t entirely alone.
I felt a measure of resentment. I tried to dismiss it, but it didn’t budge.
Alone. A freak. Crazy. Broken. Unhinged.
I had no fucking time, but I was paralyzed until someone else made the first move. If I stepped in now, I’d disturb the frail peace and tranquility that kept the group stable. They’d rally against me.
I watched the monsters and the lunatics. The tentacle girl was hanging back, hiding inside an apartment, trying to calm herself. There was a cape from the Birdcage who was pacing. When I’d picked him up, I dimly recalled, he’d been all alone, occupying one wing with two others.
I saw the trio of furies, on the fringes. Pale, and somehow not even remotely human. They reveled in chaos, and so long as one lived, the others would come back. Over and over. As allies, they’d be useful, as enemies, they could and would deliver the critical, crippling blow that spoiled all our efforts.
The Faerie Queen was being very quiet and very still, but one of her puppets was tracking my location. The most dangerous one of all. Dangerous to all of us, not just me. I scarcely mattered at this point.
There was only the message I needed to communicate. I’d seen it all, I’d seen what worked and what didn’t. I had an idea of what we needed to do.
I bit my lip, hard, as if the pain could help me focus, bring me closer to being me.
Watch, observe, wait.
Scion was killing the serpent-Endbringer… Leviathan. Pummeling his chest, shattering it. Cracks radiated from the wound, glowing gold. Scion’s face was twisted in fury, his fury was that of a berserker. The blows were heavy enough that they drove Leviathan into the shattered earth below. Water was flowing in around them, Leviathan’s element, but the attack continued, the glowing wounds creating mountains of steam around them.
Leviathan managed to get one fin to make contact with Scion, and the resulting disintegration created nearly as much mist, redoubling the effect.
The winged Endbringer advanced through the steam and golden-crimson mist, moving the one gun she still carried through the air until it was aimed at the two.
She fired, and it blasted a gust of wind at them, strong enough to push them and clear the wind.
The smallest Endbringer, flying in the air, unloaded a laser, three of its shadow pets’ attacks and two more ranged powers on the golden man. The resulting blast sent the ruined fragments of the settlement and the remains of the surrounding terrain spraying into the air.
The resulting crater compared with the one Leviathan had made in the real Brockton Bay.
The blast had separated the two, leaving Leviathan hunched over, one arm intact and braced against the ground, head hanging, his chest peeled open.
Scion merely shifted his orientation in the air. Not even shaking himself, not pausing to find his balance. He was roaring, screaming, and in his thrashing movements, his blind fury, I nearly missed it. In the moment he returned to an upright position, he flung out a sphere of golden light.
The light curved in the air, and punched into Leviathan’s open chest cavity.
The Endbringer fell. The color went out of Leviathan, his flesh breaking up, like clay overbaked in a kiln. The fins were the first thing to crumble, the rest of his body following suit.
We’d taunted him. Teased him with the one thing he wanted most in the world, then we’d taken it away.
He turned his attention to the winged Endbringer and her smaller companion. The towering Endbringer was already so damaged that she could only pull herself together. The fat Endbringer was gone.
No, he was alive. He’d created a time field around himself, and was healing in a more distant location.
Scion was doing too much damage to them. They wouldn’t win this fight for us.
No, it was the least of us, the smallest of us, which could have the biggest impact. Capes I’d overlooked entirely.
I blinked. No, even more than that, individuals I was thinking of as useless, even now.
I knew what I had to do.
In the crowd, people were getting more outspoken. Arguments had broken out. Harsh words, criticisms. Divisions were forming in the squads. Almost all of them were divisions centered around certain individuals. Virtually all of those individuals were ones who didn’t play well with others.
It was a man in gold and black armor who stepped to the fore, a sultry looking woman following right behind him. He shouted out, and his voice echoed, drawing attention from the majority of the crowd.
That would have to do.
With so little time to spare, I’d settle for a distraction.
One floor
below me, a chute had been deployed. Reaching twenty stories to the ground, it was arranged to let people on the upper floors evacuate quickly. People would slide down, and the natural curve of the chute as it was pulled away from the building would keep them from being turned into a paste.
I used my relay bugs to extend my range, sent my swarm out, and then began securing it myself, tying the end to nearby architecture. It was set up by the time we’d made our way inside the building and to the far end of the hall.
The faerie woman had noticed I was moving, but her attention was partially on the man in armor. She was holding back.
I was preparing to go down with the Clairvoyant, making sure we wouldn’t break contact even if we had a hard landing, when I heard that voice again, small and afraid.
I couldn’t place the recollection.
I couldn’t use my flight pack with a passenger, so I made my way down the chute, and I hoped the material of the chute would hold. I wasn’t worried about the threads, thin as they were. I knew spider thread.
It was nice, knowing something, but I hesitated to claim it as an anchor. It could be another misleading thing.
And if I ended up with one thing tying me to reality, I didn’t want that one thing to be an obsession with bugs.
Images crossed my mind, possibilities. If I still controlled people, but I’d gone down some ugly path like that…
I saw myself, haggard, thin, with minions in a similar state. Eating bugs, wearing bugs and their materials, barely human, my mind more like an insect’s.
I focused on my friends instead. Dog-girl and the girl with the phone.
They were moving my way. Calling out to a girl who was getting her ruined hand stitched up by her partner.
The pair raised their heads, but they hesitated to follow.
A harsh word from the girl with the dogs got them into action. It would have made me move, and I didn’t understand what it meant.
I’d reached the end of the ramp. Perhaps not so gentle a landing as I’d hoped for, but it hadn’t injured me. I picked myself up and got moving in their direction.
I was losing track of who people were. How were they supposed to be anchors when I couldn’t remember who they are, or why they meant something to me?