She had this. A few weeks, one or two months at the most, she could be one of the most dangerous people in the world, barring the obvious exceptions like the Endbringers.
What Alec didn’t know was that her power did have long-term effects. Subtle, but they were there. Emotions were like drugs. People formed dependencies and tendencies. If she hit someone with a minute amount of dopamine every time they saw her, it would condition them until she didn’t even need to use her power to do it.
Just a little while longer, she told herself, and I’ll have the Nine wrapped around my little finger.
11.h
Amy sat on her bed, staring at the piece of paper in her hands. The header at the top was stylized, a silhouette of a superhero with a cape flowing, with a script reading ‘The Guild’ extending to the right.
Mrs. Carol Dallon. Brandish,
Let me open by stating my condolences for the loss of your brother-in-law, nephew, and your husband’s injury. I have heard New Wave is currently considering disbanding, and you have my best wishes, whatever route you end up taking. We have too few heroes and heroines to lose them, and even fewer of the truly good heroes and heroines who set the standard for everyone else, parahuman and human alike. If finances ever become a concern, know that all you need to do is ask, and we will find you employment among the Guild’s uncostumed staff.
Knowing what you have been through as of late, it is with a heavy heart that I send you this message with further bad news. Marquis, interred in the Baumann Parahuman Containment Center, confided to another inmate that he fears for his daughter’s life. I have checked the facts to the best of my ability, and the details I have been able to dig up match with his story. I must warn you that Allfather may have arranged for Amy Dallon to be murdered at some future date, in revenge for his own daughter’s death at Marquis’ hands.
She had to stop reading there. The paper had been on Carol’s bedside table, and Amy had found it while collecting a change of clothes for Mark a week ago. Carol had probably been reading it to him late the previous night, and maybe forgot to put it away due to a mixture of exhaustion and the distractions that came with waking up each morning to a disabled husband and a ten-year career in jeopardy.
Amy knew she shouldn’t have read it, but the header had caught her attention. With her family’s fate uncertain, she had found herself reading, to see if they were joining the Guild, if something else had happened that could distract them from this.
Now that door was open, and she could never shut it again. She didn’t care so much about the possible hit on her. No. What shook her was that she now knew who her father was. She even suspected that, like Tattletale had told her months ago, she’d always known. She just hadn’t dug for it, hadn’t put the pieces together.
Marquis had been an aspiring crime lord in the bad old days of Brockton Bay. It had been a time when the villains had been flocking to the city to profit off the booming tech and banking sectors, to recruit mooks and henchmen from the city’s unemployed dockworkers. It had been an era when the heroes hadn’t been properly established, and the villains had been confident enough that some didn’t give a second thought to murdering any heroes who got in their way. Marquis included.
The bad old days were how Carol and Mark referred to that time. There were more heroes now, and there was more balance between the good guys and the bad, but things were arguably worse now. Everything was in shambles.
Marquis had been an osteokinetic. A manipulator of both his own bone and, provided some was exposed, the bones of his enemies. He’d been notorious enough that she’d heard about him despite the fact that he’d been arrested more than a decade ago, that the city and the public had remembered him. He’d lived in the outskirts of the city, residing in a large house in the woods, just beneath the mountains.
She thought maybe there was something familiar about that idea. Was it imagination when the vague image of a house popped into her mind? The study with the black leather chair and countless bookshelves? Or was it memory, something recalled from her early childhood?
To all reports, the man had been heartless, callous. Wasn’t she? She couldn’t bring herself to care anymore when she went to the hospitals to heal the injured and sick. It was a chore, something she made herself do because people wouldn’t understand if she stopped. There were only so many people she could heal before she became desensitized to it.
What else did she know about Marquis? She vaguely recalled Uncle Neil talking about the man when he’d been talking to Laserdream about villain psychology. There were the unpredictable ones, the villains who were hard to stop because you couldn’t guess where they’d strike next, but who were less practiced in what they did and made mistakes you could leverage against them. There were also the orderly ones. The ones who were careful, who honed their methodology to perfection, but they repeated themselves, showed patterns that a smart hero could use to predict where they struck next, and often had rules or rituals a hero could turn against them.
Which wasn’t to say that one was smarter than the other, or that one was better. Each posed problems for the local authorities and capes. Marquis had fit into the latter category, the perfectionists, the pattern killers. He’d had, as Neil explained, a warped sense of honor, underneath it all. He didn’t kill women or kids.
Not hard to pull the pieces together. She could remember how quickly Neil had dropped the subject when he realized she was listening. He hadn’t outright said that they’d caught Marquis, but she could imagine that the weaknesses that Neil had been outlining had been what they’d used. Send Lady Photon, Brandish and Fleur against the man. Add the fact that Amy had been there, a toddler, and Marquis had been too concerned about collateral damage to go all out.
It was him. She didn’t want it to, but it all fit together.
It was all so fucked up. She was so fucked up.
There was a knock on her door. She hurried to hide the paper.
“Come in,” she said, trying to compose herself in the span of one or two seconds.
Carol opened the door. She was pulling on the gloves for her costume. “Amy?”
“Yeah?”
Carol took a few seconds before she looked up from her gloves and met Amy’s eyes. When she did, the look was hard, accusatory.
“There’s word about some strange howling near the Trainyard. Glory Girl and I are going on a patrol to check on it.”
Amy nodded.
“Can you look after Mark?”
“Of course,” Amy said, her voice quiet. She stood from her bed and headed to the door. Carol didn’t move right away. Instead, Amy’s adoptive mother stayed where she was, staring at Amy. Amy reached the door and had to stop, waiting for Carol to speak.
But Carol didn’t. The woman turned and left the doorway, Amy meekly following.
They don’t understand.
Mark was in the living room, sitting on the couch. No longer able to don his costume and be Flashbang, Mark could barely move. He had a form of brain damage. It was technically amnesia, but it wasn’t the kind that afflicted someone in the movies and TV. What Mark had lost were the skills he’d learned over the course of his life. He’d lost the ability to walk, to speak full sentences, hold a pen and drive a car. He’d lost more – almost everything that let him function.
What little he regained came slowly and disappeared quickly. It was as though his brain was a shattered glass, and there was only so much he could hold in it before it spilled out once again. So they’d patiently worked with him, helping him to hobble between the bedroom, living room and bathroom. They’d worked with him until he could mostly feed himself, say what needed to be said, and they didn’t push him to do more.
Victoria was in costume as Glory Girl, but she was unclipping a bib from around his neck, something to ensure he didn’t stain his clothes while he ate. Amy’s adoptive father turned and smiled gently as he saw the other two members of his family. It was all Amy could do to maintain eye contact, smile bac
k.
“Ready, mom?” Victoria asked.
“Almost ready,” Carol said. She bent down by Mark and kissed him, and he was smiling sadly as she pulled back. He mumbled something private and sweet that his daughters weren’t privy to, and Carol offered him a whispered reply. Carol stood, then nodded at Victoria, “Let’s go.”
They left without another word. There was no goodbye for Amy, no hug or kiss.
Victoria can’t even meet my eyes.
The slight hurt more than she’d expected. It wasn’t like it was something new. It had been going on for weeks. And it was fully deserved.
Amy felt her pulse pounding as she looked at Mark. Made herself sit on the couch next to him. Does he blame me?
It was all falling apart. This family had never fully accepted her. Being in the midst of a family that all worked together, it was hard to preserve secrets. Amy had learned a few years ago, overhearing a conversation between Carol and Aunt Sarah, that Carol had initially refused to take her in. Her adoptive mother had only accepted in the end because she’d had a job and Aunt Sarah didn’t. One kid to Aunt Sarah’s two. When she’d taken Amy in, it hadn’t been out of love or caring, but grudging obligation and a sense of duty.
Mark had tried to be a dad. He’d made her pancakes on the weekends, taken her places. But it had always been inconsistent. Some days he seemed to forget, others he got upset, or was just too distracted for the trips to the ice cream store or mall. Another secret that the family hadn’t kept – Mark was clinically depressed. He had been prescribed drugs to help him, but he didn’t always take them.
It had always been Victoria, only Victoria, who made her feel like she had a family here. Victoria was mad at her now. Except mad wasn’t the right word. Victoria was appalled, seething with anger, brimming with resentment, because Amy couldn’t, wouldn’t, heal their father.
They’d fought, and Amy hadn’t been able to defend her position, but still she’d refused. Every second that Victoria and Carol spent taking care of Mark was a second Amy felt the distance between her and the family grow. So she took care of Mark as much as she could, only taking breaks to visit the hospitals to tend to the sick there. She’d also needed a few to process the letter she’d received.
The letter. Carol wasn’t angry in the same way Victoria was. What Amy felt from her ‘mother’ was a chill. She knew that she was only justifying the darker suspicions Carol had harbored towards her since she was first brought into the family. It was doubly crushing now, because Amy knew about Marquis. Amy knew that Carol was thinking the same thing she was.
Marquis was one of the organized killers. He had his rules, he had his code, and so did Amy. Amy wouldn’t use her power to affect people’s minds. Like father, like daughter.
“Do you need anything?” she asked Mark, when the next ad break came up.
“Water,” he mumbled.
“Okay.”
She headed into the kitchen, grateful for the excuse to leave the room. She searched the dishwasher for his cup, a plastic glass with a textured outside, light enough for him to lift without having to struggle with muscle control, easy enough to grip. She filled it halfway so it wouldn’t be as heavy.
Tears filled her eyes, and she bent over the sink to wash her face.
She was going to lose them. Lose her family, no matter what happened.
Which meant she had to go. She was old enough to fend for herself. She would leave of her own volition, and she would help Mark as a parting gift to her family. She just had to work up the courage.
Drying her face with her shirt, she carried the mug into the living room.
The TV was off.
Had Mark turned it off because he’d wanted to sleep? Amy was careful to be quiet, stepping on the floorboards at the far sides of the hallway so they wouldn’t creak.
A girl stood in the living room, five or so years younger than Amy. Her blond hair had been curled into ringlets with painstaking care, but the rest of her was unkempt, filthy. She stared at Mark, who was struggling and failing to stand from the couch.
The girl turned to look at Amy, and Amy saw that some of the dirt that covered the girl wasn’t dirt, but crusted blood. The girl wore a stained apron that was too large for her, and the scalpels and tools in the pocket gleamed, catching the light from the lamps in the corner of the room.
Amy recognized the girl from the pictures that were hung up in the office.
“Bonesaw.”
“Hi,” Bonesaw gave a little wave of her hand. A wide smile was spread across her face.
“What- What are you doing here?”
“I wanted to see you. Obviously.”
Amy swallowed. “Obviously.” Was it possible that Allfather had arranged for a member of the Slaughterhouse Nine to murder her?
Amy’s eyes roved over the room, looking for Bonesaw’s work. Nothing. She looked over her shoulder and a shriek escaped through her lips. A man was not two feet behind her, tall and brutish, his face badly scarred and battered to the point that it was barely recognizable as human. A long-handled axe sat in one of his massive, calloused hands, the head resting on the floor. Hatchet Face.
“Runnn,” Mark moaned, urging her. She didn’t give it a second thought. She dashed for the front door, threw it open with enough force that a picture fell from the wall.
Hatchet Face stood on the other side, blocking the doorway.
“No,” she gasped, as she backed towards the living room, “No, please.”
How? How had he gotten there so fast? She turned around and saw he was still there, still in the hallway.
There were two Hatchet Faces?
Then the first one exploded into a cloud of white dust and blood spatters, momentarily filling the room. Amy could hear Bonesaw’s giggling, felt her heart sink.
“Get it? You figure out what I did? Turn around, Hack Job.”
Amy had figured it out, but Bonesaw’s creation demonstrated anyways. He turned his back to Amy, and she saw what looked like a tumorous growth on the back of his head, shoulders and arms. Except the growth had a face, vaguely Asian in features, and the lumps inside the growth each roughly corresponded with organs and skeletal structure. The jaw of the figure that was attached to the back of Hatchet Face’s body was working open and closed like a fish gasping for air. The stitches were still fresh.
“You mashed them together. Oni Lee and Hatchet Face.”
“Yes! I can’t even begin to tell you how hard it was. I mean, I had to conduct the operation from a remote location, using robots, because I would lose my Tinker powers if I got too close to the big lug. And I had to fit their bodies and nervous systems together so that they could use their powers without messing up the other.”
“Oh god,” Amy mumbled. Is this what she’s going to do to me?
“Had to add in a control frame and perform a spot lobotomy so Hatchet would obey me, you know. He didn’t lose much. Was never very bright.”
“And Oni Lee?” Amy was almost afraid to ask.
“Oh, I barely touched his brain. He suffered some moderate brain damage from his close brush with death, but I revived him. His brain’s more or less intact, even. He can’t control his body, but he’s alert and aware, and he feels everything Hatchet does,” Bonesaw smiled wider.
“That’s horrifying.”
“It’s not a perfect mesh. I only just started doing these mash-ups. Still practicing. Hatchet’s power isn’t working as well anymore, and I’m worried about physical wear and tear as they teleport, but it’s still one of my better works. Took me four whole hours.” Bonesaw clasped her hands in front of her, shifting her weight from foot to foot, waiting expectantly.
Amy swallowed. She didn’t have words.
Bonesaw smiled. “I thought you’d appreciate this more than anyone.”
“Appreciate this.”
“You’re the only other person who works with meat. I mean, we’re different in some ways, but we’re also really similar, aren’t we? You manipula
te people’s biology, and I tinker with it. The human body’s only a really intricate, wet machine, isn’t it?”
Others were entering the room now. From the kitchen, a woman, the structure of her face altered into something that was more rat-like than human, conelike, ending in a squashed black nose that had staples around it. Bonesaw had added a second set of teeth, all canines, so that the woman would have enough as her jaw was stretched forward. Drool constantly leaked between her teeth in loops and tendrils. She was pale, except for her face and patches all down her body, where patches of ebon black skin were stapled in place. Her hair was long, dark, and unwashed, but most unnerving of all were her fingers, which had been replaced by what looked like machetes. The clawtips dragged on the hardwood as she stumped forward on feet that had been modified in a similar way, no longer fit for conventional walking.
The third was another Frankenstein hodgepodge of two individuals, emerging from the hallway where the amalgamation of Oni Lee and Hatchet Face -Hack Job- had exploded. The lower half was a man who must have been built like a gorilla in life, rippling with muscles, walking forward on his knuckles. His upper body grew up from the point the other body’s neck should have begun, an emaciated man with greasy brown hair and beard, grown long. He was not unlike a centaur, but the lower half was a brutish man.
Then there were the other things. They weren’t alive. Spidery contraptions of scrap metal, they lacked heads, only consisting of a box half the size of a toaster and spindly legs that moved on hydraulics, each ending in a syringe or scalpel. A dozen of them, climbing onto the walls and floor.
“Murder Rat used to be a heroine, called herself the Mouse Protector. One of those capes who plays up the cheese, no pun intended. Camped it up, acted dorky, used bad puns, so her enemies would be embarrassed to lose to her. Ravager decided she’d had enough, asked the Nine to take Mouse Protector down. So we took the job. Beat Mouse Protector, and I took her to the operating table. The other Nine tracked down Ravager and collected her, too. Just to make it clear that we don’t take orders. We aren’t errand boys or errand girls either. Now Ravager gets to spend the rest of her life with the woman she hated, making up.”
Worm Page 137