“Everything you have is mine already,” Tattletale cut in. ”You’ve been dethroned, C-man. I’m going to rule as the mastermind behind the scene in Brockton Bay, organize the territories, pay the bills. My partners will see to the territories themselves. I suppose I won’t be head of the PRT, but I’m suspicious we’ll be able to work out a truce of sorts with the good guys. Hopefully we’ll get someone more sensible than Piggot and less shady than you.”
“Trickster,” Calvert said. ”I can put you in touch with the woman who can cure her. Someone who knows as much or more about Parahumans than anyone on the planet. It won’t be free, but I can subsidize the costs. But I have to be alive to-”
Trickster collapsed to the ground. Sundancer and Genesis turned, confused, and Ballistic caught Genesis with a spray of pellets. She dissipated into gory wisps of whatever substance formed her body.
Sundancer was only just creating her sun when she collapsed as well. I could see Imp bending over, prodding the bodies. Über, Leet and Chariot backed away as guns turned to point at them.
“Anyone who shoots one of the Undersiders will receive one million dollars!” Calvert shouted.
I waited for the inevitable bullet. It didn’t come.
“Skitter and I had a little talk,” Tattletale said. ”Way back when the city had been freshly sieged by the Endbringer and rejoining the team wasn’t even a consideration. I raised the idea of going after you, of taking you down. We knew that if you were going to let down your guard, if you were going to slip up at all, it would be when you were closest to achieving your goals.”
Calvert only glared.
“If you made any one mistake, it was keeping me at your base towards the end of the fiasco with the Nine. The problem with keeping your friends close and your enemies closer? It puts your enemies in the midst of your friends, so they can discuss better means of payment with the right team captains. Or they can maybe arrange to put something in Noelle’s vault during one of the feeding times, a few fire alarms with a low battery, tucked in where the door meets the wall. Irritate her, so she’s awake that much more, and she then costs you sleep.”
“That metaphor fell apart,” Imp commented.
Tattletale shrugged. ”Not so much a metaphor, but I got off track.”
“Pettiness,” Calvert said.
“Strategic. Lots of little things add up. Seeding doubts. Making you second guess plans. Keep you up at night wondering, planning just a bit more, in both your realities. You were too focused on the big picture, on the thing I could find out, keeping me off-balance, that you missed out on my ability to see the little things, to exploit them. And it wore on you. You didn’t realize how much, but it did, and maybe that’s why you were that much more susceptible to making the critical mistake here.”
“Damn you,” Calvert said.
“But you made the mistake we needed you to make, using your power here, while you were talking to us. There’s no escape routes, now. The only loyalty you have is bought with coin, and I have more cash than you do.”
“Then send me to the Birdcage and be done with it,” Calvert said.
“To jail?” Tattletale asked. ”No, no no no. I know you have contingency plans. Arrangements. We send you to prison and someone breaks you out before you get there.”
I took a step forward, then made myself take another.
“It doesn’t have to be you,” Tattletale told me.
“No,” I told her. ”I think it does.”
Calvert turned my way, let his head sink back so it rested against the ground. ”So it comes down to this.”
I thought of the countless lives I’d put at risk, if not directly, then indirectly: the ABB blowing up parts of the city, the ensuing gang war, Purity leveling buildings because she blamed us for the loss of her daughter.
There was the fat superhero I’d left to die when the tidal wave was incoming. I recalled leaving the dying Merchant to bleed out when I’d rescued Bryce from the merchant’s festival of blood. There were the people in my territory, the old doctor who’d had her throat cut because I hadn’t realized Mannequin was close until it was too late. The gas attack that killed nearly twenty people and the fires Burnscar had set in my territory, both because I’d provoked them and failed to consider how readily they’d go after the vulnerable point that was all the people I’d been trying to protect.
I remembered trying to kill Mannequin with grenades, going all-out in attempting to end a man’s life. A madman, a monster, but it was what it was.
And, much more recently, there was the case of me bringing Triumph so close to death that he’d needed life support.
I’d come to terms with so much of that by telling myself it was leading to this. I’d known deep down it would happen. That my fight against Calvert would have to end here.
I walked forward until Calvert was beneath me. I drew my gun, checked there was ammo in the clip.
“You’re not a killer,” Calvert said.
“No…” I replied. I couldn’t see, so I screwed my eyes closed, felt the moisture of tears threatening to spill forth. I took in a deep breath.
“…But I suppose, in a roundabout way, you made me into one,” I finished. I aimed the gun and fired.
The gun dropped from my hand as the recoil jarred it. It clattered to the pavement. It was quiet enough that I could only hear the ocean water crashing against the shore, just off the beach.
As an afterthought, I kicked the gun a distance away from where Calvert lay. Not that there was much point. I tried to learn from my mistakes.
I felt Tattletale’s arm settle around my shoulders. ”We’re done. This is over.”
“The Travelers will be pissed. I can’t- we can’t kill them,” I said.
“We won’t. They’ll move on. They have no more reason to stay.”
Grue stepped around my left side, bent down, took Calvert’s cell phone from the man’s belt and then tossed it to Tattletale. As Tattletale withdrew her arm from my shoulders, he stepped forward to give me a hug. ”Let’s go.”
I nodded into his shoulder.
We turned away. With my swarm sense I was able to recognize Minor, Tattletale’s man, helmetless, opening the doors of one van for us. I took a seat.
It wasn’t Tattletale or Grue that sat down beside me, but Rachel. She took my hand in hers, held it fiercely. I wasn’t sure what to make of it, so I simply accepted it.
■
We stopped at Coil’s underground base. Tattletale’s underground base. It was a relief to escape the silence of the van, surreal to be in the dim noise of downtown again. Much of the area still lacked power, but there were the noises of the occasional car, of people clamoring on the bottom floor of an apartment building. City noises.
“You okay?” Grue asked.
“More bothered by the fact that I’m not bothered,” I said. I knew how little sense I was making, but I didn’t feel like elaborating.
“But you’re okay?”
I nodded, coughed fiercely for a few seconds.
“Our next stop after this is the hospital.”
“Okay,” I agreed.
As it had been at sunset, the base was empty. The metal walkway sang with my footsteps as I walked to the far end of the complex. I stopped at a door without a handle.
“Here,” Tattletale said. She held Calvert’s cell phone. Held it up and pressed a sequence of buttons.
The door clicked open. I forced my fingers into the gap and hauled it open. Heavy and metal.
There was one more door, one with a key lock. Tattletale stepped over to the desk and got the key, opened it.
Dinah was inside with an unassuming man in a turtleneck sweater and corduroy pants.
“Go,” Tattletale told the man. ”Your boss is dead. Just go.”
He fled.
“I’m going to get Regent,” she said. ”Think we’ll leave Shatterbird in her soundproof cage for now, just to be safe.”
I nodded absently. I was holding on to
Grue for support, watched as Dinah stood from the bed and slowly approached.
Her voice was barely above a whisper as she stared down at the ground between us, “I’ve been waiting for this for so very long.”
It didn’t sound like an accusation. More the words of someone who had been forced to watch the clock for days, weeks, months. Anticipating a possible moment that might never come.
“I’m sorry,” I said. ”I’m sorry it took so long.”
She shook her head, “I’m the one who’s sorry, you were trying hard and I set you up, so you’d go the way where your friends tried to kill you. I shouldn’t have-”
“Hey, it’s okay. It offered us the best chances in the end, right?”
She bobbed her head in a nod.
A second later, she was running to me, wrapping her arms around my midsection. I winced in pain as her forehead banged against my chest.
“Medical care,” Grue said.
“For both of us,” I replied. ”Dinah and me.”
“Yeah.”
As a trio, we stepped out onto the walkway, where Tattletale and Regent should have been waiting.
But I could see Regent at the end of the walkway, and Tattletale wasn’t with him. She was hurrying down the spiral stairs just to Regent’s left.
I leaned over the walkway, as much as I was able with the pain in my chest and Dinah clinging to my midsection. My eyes went wide. A moment later, I was hurrying after Tattletale, holding Dinah’s hand in one of my own and Grue’s elbow in the other.
We stopped when we reached Tattletale. She stood facing the vault door. The one that was used to seal Noelle within.
There were two vault doors, one set behind the other, and both were ruined, the one closest to us nearly folded in half, hanging by one hinge.
“A final act of spite,” Tattletale said. She looked at the phone in her hand. ”He made sure she heard our conversation.”
“You didn’t notice?”
“He was using his ability to create alternate worlds to throw my power for a bit of a loop. I was more focused on the possibility that he had a loyal soldier in the ranks or a sniper waiting in the distance, ready to take a shot at one of us.”
The odor that wafted from the open vault was like sweat and rotten meat. It was dark. Nothing about it gave the sense of a teenage girl’s living space.
“On a scale of one to ten,” I asked, “Just how bad is this?”
“Let me answer your question with another question,” Tattletale said. ”You think we could convince the PRT to turn on the air raid sirens?”
Arc 17: Migration
17.01
“Francis!” The word was an admonishment. “Where do you think you’re going with that?”
He hung his head. The luggage he was hauling behind him was on wheels, but he propped it up so it stood straight, sticking his hands into his coat pockets. He reluctantly turned to face his mother.
“We have family over. Your Uncle Felix came all the way from California. I think they might want to spend some time with you this Christmas.”
“You arranged that. I made these plans weeks ago, I told you about them.”
“Nothing that involved luggage,” she folded her arms. Olive skinned, with a hawkish expression, his mother managed to look intimidating even though she was an inch shorter than him.
He bent down and placed the luggage flat on the ground. He unzipped it and opened it for her to see.
She sighed. “It’s not a productive pastime.”
“I’d say it’s pretty productive. We stand to make a pretty decent amount, here.”
“You’re going to make money?”
“We already are. But the thing is, depending on how today goes, we could make a lot more.”
“You’re dissembling, Francis.”
He cringed, more at hearing his name than in response to the accusation. “I was going to save it for an announcement in front of the family tonight, after we see how it goes. We have stuff to hash out first, and it probably won’t be pretty.”
She gestured for him to go on.
He frowned. “We’re on the verge of getting a sponsorship. It’s pretty generous, too, even split between the five members of the team. And it’s in addition to what we already make. Contract’s just for one year, and if we prove ourselves, show we can hold our own, we could get a bigger, better contract when we renew the terms next year.”
“This sounds a little too good to be true.”
“We’re good, mom. Ridiculously good. The sponsors have been talking about us being on the international stage.”
“And just who is us?”
“This is starting to feel like an interrogation.”
“It should. Who’s on the team?”
“Well, there’s two answers to that question-”
“Francis,” she made it sound like a warning.
“You don’t know all of them.”
“Mm hmm. Is your alleged girlfriend in this group?”
He nodded. “Yeah. Her, Ms. Newland’s daughter-”
“Oh, lovely.”
“No, she’s cool. Then there’s this girl named Jess, there’s Cody, and Luke.”
“You left yourself out.”
He smiled sheepishly.
“You’re not in the group.”
“Yet. Like I said, we have stuff to hash out,” he said. He tried to force the smile from his face and failed.
“It’s dangerous to mix business and friendship.”
“I’m being careful.”
She gave him a sharp look.
“Really!”
“Go. Be back by two.”
“Can’t. Going to take all day. I’ll be back seven-thirty-ish.”
“Seven. If you’re late for dinner I’m taking your biggest present back to the store for a refund.”
“I don’t know how long it’ll take. I can’t make any promises, and all of this is kind of important to me.”
“Then decide if it’s worth losing the present.”
He rolled his eyes. “I guess it is. Love you, mom.”
“Go. Get lost.” She smiled as she said it.
He zipped up his luggage and headed outside.
It was crisp. Fat snowflakes drifted down from above. He tugged his scarf tighter and headed out, the bottom edge of the luggage wiping out his footprints behind him, the wheels serving as the only trace of his passing.
His breath fogged up in the air, making his scarf damp around his mouth. This moisture, in turn, froze, making the fabric of his scarf stiff.
It wasn’t a short walk to the bus stop, and getting the luggage onto the bus was a chore. It didn’t help that it was crowded, packed with men, women and children eager to finish their Christmas shopping. He should have felt bad about the awkwardness of having his luggage there, getting in people’s way as they got on the bus, but he didn’t. A part of him thrived on being annoying. He liked to think it nourished him.
He even felt a little smug. He’d finished his shopping in September. Half of his motivation had been to avoid the hassle. Half was so he could lord it over friends and family.
Getting off the bus with his luggage was twice as hard as getting on. He made his way into the coffee shop and scanned the crowd.
He saw her, but he didn’t hurry to her side. Instead, he spent a moment standing by the door, watching as she stood at the end of the short line. Her cheeks were red from the cold, and the snowflakes had melted into droplets on her eyelashes. Some flakes still clung persistently to her straight brown hair. She made her way to the front, and ordered. While she waited, she dabbed at the snow, wiping her eyes and hair, and then tucked her hat into her pocket.
Seeing her rub her cheeks to warm them, he felt an urge to hold her as tight as she could bear, to feel her cold cheek against his, to warm her with his body, and to let her warm him in turn. It caught him off guard in its suddenness and intensity.
He took a deep breath and crossed the coffee shop to wai
t by the far end of the counter. He jammed one hand in his pocket, as if that could keep him from following through on the impulse. After a few seconds, he pulled it out again. He did have self control.
Her face lit up as she saw him. He, in turn, snapped a smart salute. “Captain Noelle, ma’am!”
“Don’t!” She blushed. “People are going to stare.”
“I don’t mind.”
“I do!”
He smiled and led the way to the nearest empty table. He used one foot to slide the luggage bag against the wall and then pulled her chair out for her.
“I can’t tell if you’re being a gentleman or if you’re trying to sweeten me up for this talk of ours.”
“I’ll take that as a good thing. It means I still get the brownie points, but you won’t be hard on me to make up for the fact that I’m being conniving.”
“I should.”
“Besides, it’s my prerogative to treat you well, right?”
She smiled a little and took another sip of coffee.
“We are boyfriend and girlfriend?” he asked. He could see the smile fall from her face. He hurried to speak before she could protest. “Probationary boyfriend and girlfriend. You know you can still break this off any time, right? Don’t give a second thought to my feelings.”
“That’s not it. I like you, Krouse.”
Francis Krouse felt something jolt inside him. It was like surprise but not. He already knew she liked him, but hearing it said… he felt his face warming up, and distracted himself by untucking and folding his scarf.
Finding himself unable to look directly at her, as embarrassed at his own embarrassment as anything else, he replied, “I like you too.”
“I just- I worry I’m not being fair. We don’t actually-”
“We do what we want to do, right? We enjoy each other’s company?”
“Yeah.” She sipped at her coffee again, then put it down to rub her hands for a second. “I enjoy your company.”
Tentatively, he reached out and placed his hand over hers. Cold. He reached out with his other hand and placed it under hers to help warm it.
“Look at this. Krouse is being sweet,” a girl said.
Worm Page 253