Her arms though… machinery had been crammed into the arms, and they’d been extended to nearly twice the length, the fingers drawn out long. Sparks flew as the woman moved one arm, and she winced.
The second individual skipped down the stairs, stopping at the bottom to admire the laboratory.
Her eyes fell on Rey.
“I know you!” she said.
“I know you too, Bonesaw,” he said. Without breaking eye contact, he tapped a key on the computer, prompting a flood of nutrients into the Morrígan’s solution.
“Nice lab.”
“It’s not mine.”
“Man, it’s… this is nice stuff. Being constantly on the move, you miss out on stuff like this.”
“My old lab wasn’t this good,” he said. Make small talk. ”Who’s that?”
“Damsel of Distress, with some modifications by yours truly. Damsel for short. Better at controlling her power now.”
“Hi Damsel.”
Damsel looked at him, spoke in a whisper he couldn’t make out.
“And who’s this?” Bonesaw asked. She approached the glass case with the Morrígan inside.
“Morrígan.”
“Looks like the Simurgh.”
“She is. In part. The other half of the genetic base is from Myrddin’s tissue. Everything that bridges the gap is a really complex fungus.”
“Cripes. How do you even manage something like that?”
“Trade secret,” he said. He watched as Damsel approached the widescreen TV, picked it up where it had fallen to the ground, and held it in front of her, staring at the image, no doubt some mention of what the other members of the Slaughterhouse Nine were up to in Boston.
“I’ll get the answer out of you, you know.”
“I know,” Rey admitted. ”But I wouldn’t be a self-respecting tinker if I didn’t at least pretend to protect my work.”
“True.”
Bonesaw turned her attention to the homunculus. She poked it in the stomach and it growled at her in response.
If he let the Morrígan out now… Bonesaw was staring at the homunculus, and Damsel was focused on the TV…
But it would die if he let it go now. It was too young. Every two or three seconds it sat in the high-nutrient solution would be a week of growth. He’d need it at least at four or five years of age before it was capable of moving and acting, and he’d still be depending on it having powers rather than a defunct corona pollentia.
He’d never experienced a stronger emotion than he did when he saw another set of feet appear at the top of the stairs. They made their way down, and each step brought more of the figure into view. If it was another member of the Slaughterhouse Nine, he’d die. If it was one of Accord’s ambassadors…
He’d probably still die. But there’d be a chance.
It was neither.
The man reached the bottom of the stairs, turned his head to survey the scene. He wore a visor that combined the movable visor of a knight’s helm with a high-tech equivalent, and the points where they met his helmet were shaped like a lizard’s frill or a dragon’s wing. He held out a rod in one hand, and it unfolded into a spear of ridiculous length.
The lizard theme… if the machines Rey had seen fighting the Slaughterhouse Nine were Dragon’s, was this one of her assistants? Someone working under her?
Or her?
Damsel wheeled around, extended one hand, but the man in armor was quick to step around a pillar for cover. Damsel’s power ripped into the pillar, warping and tearing space in a chaotic storm.
The man in armor ducked and rolled to reach the next piece of cover, one of the stainless steel desks. He arrested his momentum with one outstretched arm, then kicked the desk with both feet. It slammed into Damsel.
He hopped onto his feet in a single movement, slashing with the spear’s point. The tip struck Damsel across the eyes, blinding her. He reversed the spear and swung it, and the spear-butt caught her in the side of the head. She was knocked down onto all fours before she could direct her power at him again.
The man dug the spear’s point into the ground to help propel himself towards her. His leg flared with a gray blur as he reached her, and be brought it down onto her back from above.
It sheared through her as though she weren’t even there, cutting her in half. He kicked out to obliterate her head and one of her shoulders in a single movement, disabled the gray blur, and set his foot down with a thud that rang through the underground laboratory.
Bonesaw didn’t seem disturbed by the loss of her teammate. ”Don’t think I don’t recognize you. You were Mannequin’s pick. Armsman? Armsmaster?”
The man in armor pointed his spear at her. ”Defiant now.”
“You know I loaded myself with a mess of epidemics, Defiant,” Bonesaw said. ”You kill me like that and I’ll explode into a cloud of a bajillion plagues. It can’t be easy.”
“It is,” Defiant’s voice was distorted by his helmet, vaguely computerized. There was a processor at work somewhere there, Rey observed.
“What, you’ll unleash a thousand plagues on this world to finish me off? Me? A little girl?” Bonesaw smiled wide.
“Yes.”
“You’ll get sick.”
“Biohazard safe,” Defiant said. His spear shaft tapped against his armor.
“He’ll die in a hundred horrible ways,” Bonesaw said, pointing at Rey.
“Villain. Acceptable loss.”
“And the people in this neighborhood?”
“I scanned the area. There is zero air flow in or out of this lab. It’s quarantine-safe.”
“So you’ve got all this figured out, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
Bonesaw glanced over her shoulder at Rey, “You-”
Defiant moved so fast that Rey couldn’t follow the movement. The spear impaled the girl in the chest. The heart.
“Ugh, fuck me,” Bonesaw grunted.
Defiant swung the spear to one side and slammed her into the wall, knocking chemicals and vials off of every shelf unit she hit on the way.
“Why-” Bonesaw started.
Defiant raised the spear and her sentence was interrupted as her head cracked against the ceiling. He drove the spear toward the ground with just as much force.
“Why…” Bonesaw spat blood onto the ground. Being impaled in the heart hadn’t put her down. ”Ow. Bit my tongue. Why don’t you come closer, big man? Too scared to come here and finish me off?”
Defiant didn’t respond. Instead, he struck her against the wall again, then shoved the spear point into a set of stainless steel shelves. Pieces of the empty glass beakers rained onto the ground beneath her dangling feet.
“Coward!” she taunted him.
Rey glanced nervously toward the door. Would it be better to run or to stay?
The girl reached forward, clutching the shaft of the spear. She began pulling herself forward, hauling the spear’s shaft through the hole in her chest as she closed the distance inches at a time.
She smiled as she did it.
Blades sprung from the length of the shaft, and began spinning like propellers One caught her from behind, and she slid forward, only to find herself sandwiched between two such sets.
“That’s Mannequin’s trick! That’s so cute, that you’re copying-”
Defiant moved the spear, and Bonesaw was thrown back, her hair and back caught against the blades. She used her hands to pull herself forward so she was clear, maintaining a grip even as he swept the spear to one side again, keeping herself fixed at the same point on the pole’s length.
“Hey, plant geek!” Bonesaw had to raise her voice to be heard, “He kills me, you die! Think about that!”
Rey glanced at Defiant. There wasn’t an opening or anything that suggested at the man inside. Only armor, implacable, unrelenting, driven.
Then he looked at the girl, half-hidden behind the blur of the spinning blades.
“Okay,” Rey said.
He want
ed to live. Wanted nothing more than to go on to do his research, maybe one day find greatness, find a woman who could appreciate him. Have kids.
But he wanted her to live even less than he wanted any of that. Because he could well and truly believe that she would do more harm in her life than any good he could do in his.
“Okay,” he repeated. I can live with that.
There was a crunching sound, and Defiant snapped his head over to look at Bonesaw.
She spat, and smoke billowed where the spit came in contact with the blades.
One flew off and sailed across the room to strike a cage with animals inside. The mechanism that was keeping the blades in motion ceased.
With nothing impeding her line of sight to Defiant, Bonesaw crunched again. Smoke billowed from her mouth as acid ate away at her flesh, she leaned back as if she were preparing to spit a loogie-
And Defiant disabled the propeller behind her, swinging the weapon and flinging her free of the end.
She touched ground and spat out a mouthful of acid onto the floor. It smoked on contact with the concrete.
“No,” Defiant said. He took two steps forward and swiped with the spear, cutting her in half.
Almost in half. Something like chainmail was wrapped around her spine, but the spear had cut through the matching mesh that had protected her abdominal organs.
Defiant turned to catch a mechanical spider that was making its way down the stairs. He impaled it and dashed it to pieces. Another thrust killed one that was hiding inside an air vent.
Bonesaw crawled forward, dragging her spine and ruined midsection apart from her legs. There wasn’t as much blood as there should have been. ”Not… done.”
She clawed into her apron for vials, threw them across the room. Defiant backed away as they exploded into clouds of white. As they spread, Defiant was reduced to a mere silhouette.
You’re in an augmented biohazard suit, Rey thought. He eyed Bonesaw as she clawed her way in his general direction. Come through!
But Defiant had other ideas. Maybe he had a degree of familiarity with the white powder, knew what it was and that it had to be avoided.
Maybe there was something else at play. Another member of the Slaughterhouse Nine in the area?
Bonesaw was getting closer. Rey backed away.
She looked up at him. Dark circles were already spreading around her eyes, her face paling. She looked gaunt. And she held a vial. She tried to claw the cork off and failed.
If he stepped closer, she’d do something to him, but if he didn’t try to stop her-
On the second try, the cork came free. She pushed it in Rey’s direction, and he was quick to kick it into the cloud of white to his right.
But the fluid that had trailed out as it rolled was smoking, just under his feet. He had nowhere to go.
He lunged, leaping onto one of the shelving units to keep from passing anywhere near Bonesaw.
Something snagged on his foot. He toppled to the ground.
Looking back, he could see her spine was prehensile, and that it had caught his foot, winding around the bridge of it. The sheath is hiding more machinery.
The white smoke was congealing into strands of gunk that cut off the end of the room closest to the stairwell. Defiant was caught in the midst of it, and was slowly tearing himself free.
No. No.
Rey tried to kick her off, but that only served to let her get a grip on his other foot. She began clawing her way up his legs.
He reached for the keyboard, pulled it down from the shelf it sat on. It dangled above his head, and he pressed it against the wall, tapped the keys to open the tube that held the Morrígan.
He hadn’t drained the water, and the fluid began to flow onto the ground as the glass sank into the floor.
Bonesaw had climbed up to his chest, and it was only his struggles that kept her from reaching any higher. He clawed at her hands, and she wasn’t that strong, but she was tenacious, and she used her prehensile spine to secure any progress she made.
Three limbs against his two. He tried to stand, failed. Too much weight in the wrong places, and he couldn’t use his hands.
The water finished pouring out, and the Morrígan took its first steps. Five or six years old in apparent age, a vague replica of the Simurgh. It would have some blend of her powers and Myrddin’s.
Too busy looking at his creation, he was caught off guard as Bonesaw got hold of his throat with one hand. She hauled herself up until her entire upper body was resting on his chest. The sheath that had been around her spine pressed up against his face as the bone and attached machinery passed into his open mouth and down his throat. His throat was scraped raw by the edges of it.
He choked, fought for breath, found none.
The Morrígan flopped to the ground. Dead. Dumb. Not viable.
Just as the crystalline feather and Leviathan’s blood had been, it wasn’t capable of sustaining life. A failed experiment.
Needles punched their way out of Bonesaw’s spine, found his own. In one instant, he lost all sensation below his neck.
In the next, she was making him move, pulling him to his feet. His head craned toward the ceiling, mouth forced open, blood trickling onto his face as the full weight of her upper body came to rest on his head.
“Just got a fresh pair of hands, and this happens,” she muttered. ”Do you know how long it’s going to take to find and transplant a good pair of legs?”
She bid his hands to move as though they were her own. At her will, he typed on the computer. At her bidding, he turned his body to give her a better look at Defiant’s progress, threw another vial at the man.
Back to the computer.
“Samples. Evidence,” Bonesaw murmured. He could feel the vibrations of her voice against his face. The air that was flowing from a tube by her spine and into his lungs was stagnant and foul, but she bid him to breathe and he breathed.
“Crawler,” she said. There was a whir. She used his hand to shatter the glass case that held the samples, and he groaned in pain as the shards cut it. She made him grab the sample from the robotic claw’s grip. ”Mannequin.”
She gathered the samples in her own hands while she used his hands to type and select the options.
“Burnscar, Shatterbird… surprising how much DNA we’ve left on crime scenes. Winter… Chuckles…”
Defiant roared. He growled words, as if speaking to himself.
“Nice Guy, Murder Rat, Hatchet Face. We’ve gone through a lot of members,” she said, while depositing each sample in a plastic case. ”Screamer, Harbinger, King.”
Rey choked, tried to choke. He could control his head, his mouth. If he passed out, would his body fail? Would she fail?
“Pity I can’t use this lab,” Bonesaw said. ”Make the cloning process that much easier. But I’ve seen your work. I think I can replicate it. Helps if I have this…”
She had him tap a key, and he could hear the water flowing as another of the glass cases started to move. The Regrowth tube. The seeds.
“Didn’t think we’d get this lucky,” she said. ”Jack said that since the world isn’t ending like it was supposed to, he wants to hurry it along. We did our research, and decided to track down some decent tinkers, and you were closest. Only problem with entering any metropolis like this is security cameras… Oooh! Gray Boy! He was one of Jack’s first teammates! You wouldn’t believe the stories Jack tells about him.”
Another sample was collected and deposited in the box.
She stopped, and turned toward the Morrígan. He could feel his blood run cold.
“Nah,” Bonesaw said. ”Even I’m not that crazy.”
She had him tap keys on the keyboard, and a laser fired from the top of the case that had held the Morrígan. He couldn’t see, but he could smell the burning flesh.
The box of samples tucked under one arm, she walked Rey to the door that led out of the back of the basement. The one Rey had been ordered to use when coming and going, out
of Accord’s sight.
He couldn’t lose hope. Defiant would have come on an armored suit. If that suit was positioned to survey the area, if Defiant had contacted Dragon, ordered an airstrike or even just reinforcements-
No. There was a ladder on the other side of the doorway, leading down into a pitch darkness.
She turned in Defiant’s direction, and Rey caught a glimpse of the hero. He was still caught, and though the blur around his leg was cutting him free, goop was streaming down from the ceiling to connect to his upper body, and he couldn’t destroy that with a ready kick.
She had Rey grip the rungs of the ladder, and they slid down into the pitch black.
■
“I failed,” Defiant said.
“You hurt her. If anyone failed, it was me,” Dragon replied. ”I couldn’t break away from the fight.”
Mist emanated from her robotic body, dissolving the strings of slime that had congealed around him. Her hand settled on the side of his face.
“Did we gain anything?”
“I’ll show you in a minute. Are you okay?”
“Need more tech. Nanomolecular thorns for my arms. It would have made the difference.”
“We can figure something out. But are you okay?”
“I suppose so. Where do we stand?”
“Two suits destroyed. And we don’t yet know what Bonesaw took with her. Jack escaped with some of his team. But we killed four of them, all together.”
“Four,” he said. ”We should mobilize now. There’s a limit to how fast and how far they can move, especially with the wounded. Bonesaw went into the subway system, and it will take time for her to get free, but if she gets in contact with their new teleporter-”
“We’ll mobilize as soon as I’ve freed you, Colin. If I don’t use this body, you’ll be left behind, and neither of us want that.”
“Better that you give chase.”
“We’re doing okay. We’re closing the gap. They showed up on camera, and we were ready to move on them within minutes. We’ll do it again.”
Colin nodded, but he didn’t respond.
She settled her arms around his shoulders, letting the spray do its work. The metal of her forehead touched his mask. ”Take it for what it is. A little lost, a lot gained.”
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