The thoughts were so sharp they were difficult to distinguish from reality. He shifted his hold on his cane, staring into her eyes. She still stood before him.
With just the fractional movement of his hands, there was a change in her body language. Muscles in her neck and shoulders grew more taut, her breathing changed. She said, “Sir-”
“Shh,” he said. She fell silent.
His left hand cupped her chin, his eyes never leaving hers. More of a reaction: her eyes flickered, moving mere milimeters as she strained to maintain eye contact. he could feel the warmth of her breath on his wrist as she exhaled slowly, the faintest of movements against his hand as she shifted her weight to stay absolutely still.
His thumb brushed against her cheek. Soft. He knew she dedicated an hour every morning to caring for her skin, another hour to her hair. Unlike hers, his gaze was unwavering, assured. In his peripheral vision, he could see her chest rise and fall. He wasn’t a sexual creature, not in the base, animal sense. The idea of intercourse, it didn’t appeal. The mess of it. But she was a thing of beauty, nonetheless. He could appreciate her from an aesthetic standpoint.
Citrine had shifted out of place, though. A square peg, just askew enough that it wouldn’t slide into the hole designated for it. It jarred, and it cast a pallor on everything else that was right about her.
As his fingers moved, tracing the line of her jaw, drifting to her chin, the idea of cutting her throat invaded his thoughts. A quick, clean severing of vital flows. He could see the lines of tension in her neck as she stretched it, striving to keep it absolutely still.
Again, though, the disorder, the disruption. Blood was so messy, and as much as he might relish the opportunity to take thirty minutes from his day and clean up back in a more secure area, others would see, and it would throw too many things out of balance.
There wasn’t a right answer here, and it bothered him.
Thinking rationally, he knew he was irritated. The location, even this city, they didn’t suit him. He couldn’t act on that, not yet, and the resulting dissatisfaction affected how he responded to the little things.
His fingers broke contact with her chin, one by one, as he contemplated his options. By the time his index finger had dropped away, he’d decided.
“You’re my best ambassador, Citrine,” he said.
She was breathing just a bit harder than she had been, as the tension that had drawn her entire body tight was released. A flush touched her cheeks as she responded, “Yes sir.”
“I don’t want to lose you.”
“Yes sir, I’ll do my utmost to ensure you don’t have cause to.”
“Please do,” he said. He noted that the flush had spread down to her decolletage. Not the result of fear or anger. Another base emotion. “Citrine?”
She glanced at him.
“Calm yourself.”
“Yes sir,” she breathed the words.
He glanced at Othello, who wore a black suit and a mask divided between alabaster white and jet black. The man hadn’t commented or flinched as Accord addressed Citrine.
Accord turned and started ascending the stairs again. “Quicken your paces. I refuse to be late.”
Intrusive thoughts continued to plague him. He’d once described it as being very similar to the sensation one experienced on a train platform, a ledge or while standing in front of fast moving traffic, that momentary urge to simply step forward, to see what might happen.
Except the thoughts were sharper, with more weight to them, more physical than ethereal. His power was problem solving, and every problem demanded to be addressed. The solutions were posited whether he wanted them or not, one step and hundred-step plans alike. And it never ended.
Every flaw needed correcting, every imbalance needed to be weighed again. Mediocrity could be raised to greatness.
The greater the problem, the faster he could solve it. He’d taken the time one afternoon to solve world hunger. Six hours and twenty-six minutes with the internet and a phone on hand, and he’d been able to wrap his head around the key elements of the problem. He’d drafted a document in the nine hours that followed, doing little more than typing and tracking down exact numbers. A hundred and fifty pages, formatted and clear, detailing who would need to do what, and the costs therein.
It had been bare bones, with room for further documents detailing the specifics, but the basic ideas were there. Simple, measured, undeniable. Every major country and ruler had been accounted for, in terms of the approaches necessary to get them on board, given their particular natures and the political climate of their area. Production, distribution, finance and logistics, all sketched out and outlined in clear, simple language. Eighteen years, three point one trillion dollars. Not so much money that it was impossible. A great many moderate sacrifices from a number of people.
Even when he’d handed over the binder with the sum total of his work, his employer had been more concerned with the fact that he’d shown up late to work for his job. His boss had barely looked at the binder before calling it impossible, then demanded Accord return to work. A mind like his, in an office handling economic oversight within the PRT, looking for the precogs and thinkers who were trying to manipulate the markets to their own ends.
It was only one imbalance, one irregularity, but it had been an important one. It had nagged at him, demanded resolution. He had to prove it was possible.
So he’d siphoned the very funds that his department was managing. It hadn’t been hard to redistribute some of the wealth that the villains and rogues were trying to manipulate. One ambiguous evil for the sake of an undeniable good. He covered his tracks flawlessly.
In the process, he failed to account for the full breadth of his newest coworker’s talents. Thinker powers interfered with one another, and despite his ability to work with that particular drawback, even help them to work in concert, the clairvoyant had found him out. He’d been caught, jailed, and subsequently freed by the jailbreak specialist he’d contacted well in advance.
Here he was, years later. Nobody he’d contacted had taken to his ideas, and government after government had failed to thoroughly read the documents he sent them. Nobody raised the subject of his work to the United Nations or any major political body. They were too interested in maintaining the status quo.
His plans weren’t observably closer to fruition, but he had contacts and he had wealth, and that went a long way. He would take the slow, steady path to victory. The binder relating to world hunger had been expanded on, with the addition of further binders to detailing the specifics. Other sets of binders had joined it, each relating to a major issue: disease, population, government, energy, and climate. He spent an hour and a half every morning ensuring that everything was up to date with recent changes to the economy and international politics.
The recent altercation with the Slaughterhouse Nine in Boston had been a setback, but he remained confident. Twenty-three years to see it all through. Twenty-three years to bring the world into order. Everything was a step towards those ends.
Even this, as much as the setting and the people grated.
They reached the top floor and came face to face with the Teeth. Seven parahumans, wearing costumes that bristled with blades, spikes and spines. They managed to wear the trophies of their defeated enemies without looking primitive. Teeth, eyes, dessicated body parts and bones were worked into their costumes, a collective theme that promised aggression and violent retaliation for any slight.
Accord tightened his grip on his cane. He itched to end them. His mind burned with hundreds of ideas on how to do it. Traps, ploys, ways to set them against one another, or ways to use the other people in the room against them.
The Teeth didn’t get in his way as he led his two ambassadors around the periphery of their group. There were no windows, and the wind sent minuscule shards of glass dancing over the tiled floor, periodically glinting as they caught the light from the flood-lamps that were set around the room.
“Welcome, Accord,” Tattletale greeted them.
He surveyed the group at the end of the long table. They weren’t holding back, in making a show of power. No less than six dogs were chained in place behind them, each mutated and grown to massive size by Bitch’s power. Their number was bolstered by the addition of a massive spider and a scorpion, both wrought of black cloth. Silk? Skitter’s silk?
Regent stood by Imp, a costume of predominant white contrasted by a costume of black. They seemed to be exchanging murmured words.
Bitch wore a mask that looked much like her dogs did, bearing a black jacket with thick, shaggy fur around the edges of the hood and collar. She didn’t flinch, even as one of her larger mutants growled and gnashed its teeth inches from her head. The creature’s ire was directed at Accord, not her.
Parian’s style of dress had changed from the images Accord had seen in his research. Her hair was no longer blonde, but black, her frock matching. The white mask she wore had a crack running down one side. She was very diminutive compared to the others, almost demure with the way she sat at one side of the table, hands folded, as though she didn’t want to be a part of this.
Tattletale, by contrast, was seated on the cloth scorpion, just beside a large monitor. She was cavalier, her hair wind-tousled, disrespectful by her very body language, sitting askew.
He had to work to ignore her. He turned his attention to the figures at the head of the table. Grue stood behind the chair, one hand set on the backrest, a demonic visage wreathed in absolute darkness. Skitter sat at the end, backed by her forces, looking over the room. Bugs swarmed her from the shoulders down, but Accord could note a shawl and hints of protective armor. Neither the yellow lenses of her mask or the expanse of black cloth that covered her face gave any indication of her mood or expression. Either the images that he’d seen had been misleading, or she’d done some work to her mask, making the mandible-like sections of armor that ran forward from her jawline sharper and more pronounced.
Dismissing Tattletale’s greeting, Accord spoke to Skitter, “We finally meet. Good evening.”
“Good evening,” she said, her voice augmented by the accompanying buzzes and drones of countless bugs in the area. “Have a seat.”
He took a seat midway down the length of the twelve-foot table, and his ambassadors sat on either side of him.
The Fallen must not have been terribly far behind him, as they arrived less than a minute after he did. Valefor and Eligos.
Valefor wore a delicate-looking mask without eye-holes: a woman’s upper face with closed eyes. Beneath the mask, he had a sly, perpetual smirk with tattoos that colored his lips black and extended from the corners. The ink depicted fangs poking from thin lips that nearly reached his jaw, the points alternating up and down. His costume was almost effeminate, with white and silver feathers featuring heavily on flowing white clothes that clung to his narrow body, including a corset that drew his waist in.
The costume was meant to invoke images of the Simurgh, no doubt. Crass. Eligos’ costume wasn’t so fine, suited more for a brawl, but it, too, conjured up thoughts of an Endbringer: the Behemoth. Obsidian horns that swooped back over his head, heavy armor that resembled rhino hide in texture and claws built into his gloves.
“Valefor, Eligos, members of the Teeth, now that we’re all here, I’ll ask that you take a seat,” Skitter said.
“Why should we listen to you?” Valefor asked, his voice was incongruous with his outfit, bearing a slight southern twang. He leaned over one chair, his arms folded over the backrest, taunting.
“It’s customary for there to be violent retaliation if someone causes trouble at a meeting like this,” Skitter said. ”Usually involving every other party that’s present.”
“I’m not saying I’m intending to cause trouble,” Valefor said. “I’m wondering why we should follow the schoolgirl. I’m sure everyone here saw the news. Did you see the news, Butcher?”
“Yes,” the leader of the Teeth answered. A woman stepped out of the midst of the group of Teeth. She was elegant, long necked and long-limbed, with her hair tied up in a high ponytail. Her mask and armor had an Asian style to it, though the costume were studded and trimmed with a number of wickedly barbed blades. More incongruous, there were three bleached skulls strung to one another and hanging around one shoulder.
The costume, it was asymmetrical, lacking harmony, trying to do too many things at once. The samurai, the headhunter, the bloodletter. None of it fit the title she wore: Butcher.
Images flickered through Accord’s mind. Ways to obliterate both costume and wearer. More difficult than it seemed, given just who she was.
As if to punctuate Accord’s line of thinking, she effortlessly lifted a gatling gun and set it down on the end of the table. The sheer mass of the weapon was imposing enough that Accord momentarily wondered if the other end of the long wooden table would lift off the ground.
The woman very deliberately refused the offer to sit. She’d spoken only one word, but managed to convey a great deal with her actions.
“Very embarrassing,” Valefor mused aloud. “Really, I don’t see why you should get to sit at the head of the table. A sixteen year old girl, a victim of bullying, it doesn’t conjure up the most imposing image, does it?”
“If everyone agreed to suspend the usual rules, I would be more than happy to go head to head with your group,” Skitter replied.
“Of course you would. You outnumber us.”
“Just me,” Skitter answered him.
“That so?” Valefor smiled, considering.
Accord surveyed the situation. Valefor was a stranger, less in terms of his ability to hide, and more in his ability to engage in subterfuge. He had only to look on a target with his naked eye, and the fight was over. It was no small wonder, really, that he’d styled himself after the Simurgh. The effect was all too similar, in how the victim was often unaware of what had happened until it was too late.
Yet Skitter didn’t seem to mind. Was it a decoy? An empty costume? No.
A trap?
Accord studied the area around Valefor. What would he do, with her abilities?
He saw it: almost invisible, except where the light caught it at the right angle. Threads, surrounding Valefor, trailing from his corset, his elbows and knees.
They were all trailing in the direction of the window. If they were pulled taut, Valefor would be dragged outside. Depending on how well they held, he’d either dangle or fall to the street below.
“Valefor,” Accord spoke, the layers of his mask shifting to emulate his smile, “Trust me when I say you already lost the fight.”
“Is that so?”
“I won’t spoil the conclusion if you’re eager to see this through. One less threat to worry about. But if I may offer my own opinion, I think the response she gave, given the situation, was eminently reasonable. I gained respect for her, seeing how it unfolded.”
“Then you’re a fool.”
“Regardless, I won’t condone fighting here. It sets a bad precedent.”
“Yes,” Butcher said.
Valefor frowned.
“That’s that, then,” Skitter said.
Accord studied her. He could see her swarm in the shadows behind the floodlights, moving in anticipation of a fight, no doubt. Their presence nettled him almost as badly as if they’d been physically crawling on him. They were all of the issues he’d had with the glass, but they were alive. He knew he could make them stop, make them go away, simply by giving an order to his ambassadors. Not that it was a possibility.
He glanced at Skitter. ”I think you and I both know you’d win the fight. But how final would the outcome be? You’re in the seat of power. More villains will arrive with every passing day. Are you prepared to kill?”
“Is this some kind of head game?” Valefor asked.
“It isn’t any manner of head game,” Accord responded. ”I’m curious. Her response would shed a great deal of light on the discussion toni
ght.”
“Yes,” Skitter gave her belated response. ”But I’d like to keep to the unwritten rules, as abused as they have been, lately. Killing should be a last resort.”
“I see.” She has some other trap on hand? The bugs at the edge of the room? ”Can I ask if- no, wait. Don’t tell me. I’ll enjoy it more if I discover it for myself.”
“Very well. Now, if everyone would be seated, we can begin,” Skitter said, resting both elbows on the table.
It wasn’t quite straight, Accord noted. The table was askew, in relation to the rest of the room. Solutions flickered through his mind’s eye, ranging from ones as simple as standing to push the table into a proper position to a flat-faced wrecking ball that could slam into the building’s side.
No, he had to focus. He could distract himself by figuring out Skitter’s contingency plans.
Butcher seemed to come to a decision, but that was normal for her, to take some time, ruminate. To discuss, for lack of a better word. She sat at the end of the table opposite Skitter. She was tall enough to be seen head and shoulders over the massive gun. Her followers didn’t sit, but stood in a half-circle around her, a mirror to Skitter’s own group.
“Valefor,” Skitter spoke, and her voice was more ominous, hinting at the sheer number of bugs lurking at the edges of the room, “Either take a seat or leave.”
Valefor glanced over the room, then shrugged, as if he didn’t care anymore, sitting. Eligos followed his cue.
And Accord realized Skitter’s contingency plan in the next instant. Silk wasn’t just attached to Valefor, to him, even. She’d connected silk to the furniture.
The table. She could drag the table with the silk lines, each laid out to fit in the gaps between tiles, nearly invisible. In doing so, she’d sandwich any one group between the table and a wall, or leave them clinging for a grip, almost falling.
How would she drag it? Another mutant dog? Some counterweight?
Regardless of the answer, Accord felt oddly pleased with himself. The danger posed by this trap didn’t even concern him.
“Let’s talk business,” Skitter said. “Whether you like it or not, the Undersiders have prior claim on this city.”
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