“Good dogs,” Rachel said, as they hurried to her side.
My eyes still didn’t leave Butcher. I watched, waited.
She didn’t understand what was going on, why we weren’t pressing the attack.
But she wasn’t confident either.
She strung her bow, as if testing us. She started to create an arrow out of sand, condensing it into a more solid form.
Then she gave up, stepped back. The hardened rod of sand crumbled.
“Stop it,” she said.
I shook my head.
She lashed out, hit us with raw pain.
In the agony, the feeling of fire running through my veins, I toppled from Bentley’s back.
I’d anticipated this, or something like it, knew it was temporary. I could only grit my teeth and tell myself it was almost the best case scenario, even when it didn’t quite feel like it.
Rachel’s dogs bristled, but the pain dissipated, and she found herself free to command them to stand down.
It didn’t matter. Butcher was on her knees now, face turned toward the ground.
“Don’t say anything,” I murmured.
With more focus than before, Butcher formed a spike out of hard sand.
She was murmuring to herself now. Conversing under her breath with the voices in her head. She sounded oddly insistent, plaintive in a very childish manner.
When the weapon was formed, she glanced skyward, murmured something indistinct.
Then teleported a distance into the air, directly above the spike.
There was a wet sound, a pause.
“Nothing?” I asked Rachel. “You… don’t feel her powers?”
She shook her head.
“Then let’s go.”
We began our long journey back to the others, leaving Butcher with a spike through her heart.
No rush. The fight was over. One more foe taken down.
If the PRT happened to wonder if any of the Undersiders or Ambassadors had acquired Butcher’s powers, all the better.
“Mind if I come by tonight?” I asked, my voice low.
Rachel shot me a glower over her shoulder, “Why?”
“To talk.”
“We can talk now.”
“And so I can see how you’re coping with your minions.”
“Whatever,” she said.
“Is that a yes?”
“It’s a whatever,” she said. “Do whatever you want.”
“Okay,” I said.
There was no more conversation as we closed the distance to the others.
They were more or less in ship-shape when we arrived. Regent was propped up against a wall, but he wasn’t pulverized. The only one we’d lost was Codex.
“Success?” Grue asked.
“Success,” I said.
The entire group, even the straight-backed Ambassadors, seemed to react with relief.
“Guess my sister has one more kill under her belt,” Regent commented. ”Fourteen voices in Cherish’s head to keep her company as she spends the next few centuries alone at the bottom of the bay.”
■
“Daddy!” a toddler squealed. No older than three, the small child waded past a pack of dogs to her father, the tall, large-bellied man who I’d seen handling some of Rachel’s dogs.
Rachel ignored the reunion, greeted the dogs who milled around her, barking and whining in joy as their master returned.
“Food?” she asked me, almost as if it were an afterthought.
“Sure.”
“Someone make food,” she declared.
“I will!” a darker-skinned teenage girl declared. She looked to be of mixed race, with brilliant blue eyes that didn’t match up with her brown, coarse hair and skin.
“Hamburger,” Rachel said.
“Okay,” the kid said. “Anything else?”
“No.”
“Vegetables,” I cut in. “Something healthier.”
Rachel shrugged. “That grilled crap you made before, with the… long green vegetables.”
“The asparagus?”
“Yeah. That was good.”
The kid looked like she’d just won the lottery, almost bursting with joy.
Barker, Biter and the veterinarian all set to basic chores around the place, as if it were routine. No one seemed to begrudge the fact that Bitch was taking it easy while they worked, not even Barker, who had been somewhat prickly the last time I’d run across him.
Either she’d earned their respect, or they’d learned how stubborn she was.
“I wanted to talk to you about the future,” I said.
“Mm,” Rachel said, reclining. The dogs were clustered around her feet, the larger ones laying their heads in her lap.
“It’s… problematic, having you patrolling the area out here, scaring the locals. You know that, right?”
Rachel shrugged, apparently unconcerned.
I watched as the man with the three year old girl joined one of Bitch’s other followers, a woman who had apparently been babysitting the child. He fished in one pocket for money, then handed it over.
His voice was quiet, a mumble, “When some’dy helps you out, what d’you say?”
“Thank you!” the toddler chirped.
The woman only scowled. I saw Rachel out of the corner of one eye, watching.
The man made his way past the kitchen, nearly running into the darker-skinned girl who was already cooking, past Barker and Biter, before finding a place to sit with his child.
Despite his size, his presence, the man with the child didn’t make eye contact with anyone. Almost flinched at it, even in the face of a hundred-pound girl.
Mentally disabled? Developmentally delayed? Or had he suffered a trauma?
Between the way the girl had been so overjoyed at the slightest praise, and this man’s attitude, I was wondering if maybe Rachel’s people were somehow just as damaged as she was.
“There’s one possibility,” I said to Rachel. “A role you could play in this. You don’t have to. Just putting it out there.”
“What’s that?”
“The portal, it sounds like it’s going to be a thing. There’s a whole world out there with nobody around. People will be settling there, establishing a society. I’m imagining there’ll be something of a society popping up around the portal, a mirror city to Brockton Bay. But there’ll be pioneers as well. People striking out on their own. And some of the Undersider’s enemies are going to try to slip through, control things on the other side.”
“And?”
“If you’re willing, maybe you could serve as an aide to the Undersiders, but you patrol for trouble, track down troublemakers and fugitives. That could be your territory, more than just the fringes of this city.”
She frowned.
“It’s just an idea.”
“It’d be hard to feed my dogs.”
“Manageable,” I said. “Tattletale aims to control one of the fleets that brings supplies to the other side. We don’t know how restrictive the government will be with the portal, or where ownership will lie, but… I don’t imagine getting dog food to you will be a problem. And as the area gets settled, maybe you could supply trained dogs to pioneers or hunters looking to capitalize on the area.”
She didn’t reply, focusing on her adoring dogs, instead. Two hands, no less than twenty ears to scratch in her reach.
“Think about it,” I said.
“Mm,” she grunted.
The man was playing with his daughter, who was squealing and reaching out to pet the dogs who were standing by, almost protective.
“They’re okay?” I asked. “The dogs won’t hurt the kid?”
“None of the dogs at this shelter,” Rachel said. “Picked them carefully.”
I was a little stunned at that. To give that much thought to something like that… it wasn’t in her character.
“Why?” I asked.
“You said I should think about what people need from dogs. If I’m going to find
them homes, the dogs need to be able to live with families.”
I nodded. There were more questions I wanted to ask, but I didn’t want to spoil the quiet relief I felt at hearing her say that.
We sat for ten more minutes before Bitch rose and began playing with dogs. She incorporated training into the play, dividing dogs into teams and having them fetch in shifts, among other things. I stood, joining her, and she handed me a ball.
There wasn’t much more conversation beyond that. Most of the talking was reserved for the dogs.
Time passed quickly enough that I was surprised that Rachel’s henchperson announced that the food was ready. Not everyone collected some. Barker and Biter held off. The vet had her hands full. Rachel loaded up a plate with two burgers and a pile of grilled vegetables. I took about half the portions she did.
It wasn’t very good, but the kid seemed so pleased with herself that I couldn’t say anything to that effect. Rachel didn’t seem to care, nor did the big man and his daughter.
“Thank you,” the toddler piped up, sing-song, when she was done eating the bits of crumbled up hamburger and bun.
Rachel, for her part, only stood to grab a soda. She mussed up the cook’s hair on the way back, as if she were petting a dog.
…Not quite a leadership style I might have suggested, but the kid looked happy.
I finished what I could, considered throwing the rest to the dogs, then decided it was best not to risk angering Rachel.
It was late at night, now, but I didn’t return to my lair. We tended to the dogs, grooming them, cleaning their ears and brushing their teeth. Certain dogs were due pills, and Rachel saw to it that they got the pills.
It was an endless sequence of those little tasks I’d always found frustrating. Cleaning up, doing jobs that would only be undone by the next day, if not within minutes. I’d always found them frustrating, found it tolerable only now that I could delegate bugs to many of them.
Rachel reveled in it. It seemed to calm her, center her.
The others found their way to their beds, or made their way out the front door to head back to wherever they lived. Many dogs retreated to the kennels that were set out for each of them, and Rachel took the time to lock them in.
The night was creeping on, and I wasn’t leaving. I knew why, didn’t want to admit it to myself.
Exhaustion overtook me eventually, though I would have been hard pressed to say exactly when.
I woke in the middle of the evening, found myself slumped on a couch with a crick in my neck, a blanket over me.
Rachel was on another couch, and the blue-eyed girl, the cook, was lying beside her, her back pressed to Rachel’s front.
I stood, stretched, winced at the knot at the muscle where my neck met my shoulder. The movement seemed to stir Rachel. She started to extricate herself from behind the girl.
“Don’t let me disturb you,” I murmured, keeping my voice quiet enough that it wouldn’t disturb anyone.
She shifted position, keeping herself propped up, “You leaving?”
I frowned, “Yeah.”
“Okay.” She settled back down, and the kid curled up against her. Kid. The teenager was probably older than Aisha or Vista. I couldn’t help but see her as younger, because there was something about her that screamed ‘lost’.
Maybe that was the role that Rachel filled, here. Forming a screwed up, antisocial family with those who had nobody else. Damaged people.
I was okay with that. I could believe that, even if she didn’t heal them or help them get better in any explicit way, she wouldn’t make them worse.
I felt like I should say something more, but I was tired, my thoughts increasingly occupied by greater matters. “Bye.”
“Bye,” she said.
I headed to the door. I was already gathering bugs to me, just to ensure I had a safe walk back. A walk home in the dark would be nice. Time to think.
“Thanks.”
I stopped in my tracks, looked back.
Rachel had her head down against the armrest of the couch. I couldn’t see her through the other girl’s head.
But it had been her voice.
I revised my opinion. Maybe they could heal each other, in their own ways.
It helped, as I stepped outside and started my long, quiet trek home. I was riddled with doubts, with countless worries, but knowing that Rachel was in a better place was a light in the darkness.
I had let two days pass since my conversation with Miss Militia. Dealt with the Teeth. They weren’t all gone. Hemorrhagia had slipped away, as had Reaver, and there were rank and file troops. Parian still had some cleaning up to do, at the very least, but the Teeth weren’t the presence they had been.
Now I had to face everything I’d been dreading. I’d spent time here because I was procrastinating. Putting off the inevitable. I couldn’t put it off any longer: if I didn’t bring myself to do it soon, it would only get harder to bring myself to do it.
Tomorrow morning, I thought. I face off with Tagg and the rest of the PRT.
21.07
I eased the door closed, then paused to let my eyes adjust.
Every window had the blinds closed and curtains shut over it. The room was dusty, and needle-thin rays of light caught the flurries of specks, making them glow.
I grew aware of my surroundings, distinguishing dark gray shapes from an oppressive darkness. A desk sat in the middle of the room, shaped like a ‘c’, with a cushy computer chair in the middle. Four monitors were arranged at even intervals across the desk. Beyond them, three widescreen televisions were mounted on tripods. The walls and open spaces beyond the televisions, in turn, were filled with bulletin boards and whiteboards.
I glanced at my phone. The last text I’d received was still displayed on the main screen:
the nearest keyboard to entrance. don’ wander and don’t turn monitor on. type WQtksDH2.
I followed the instructions, making my way to the desk, carefully angling my body so I wouldn’t touch any of the bulletin boards, and so that I didn’t bump anything with the loose fabric of my running pants or my backpack. I didn’t want to risk using my bugs to check for obstacles, so I was forced to rely on my eyes alone, in this near-total darkness.
I found the keyboard, found the little nibs on the ‘f’ and ‘j’ keys so I could center my hand, and very carefully typed out the password.
A series of barely-audible ‘beeps’ sounded throughout the room. What had I just disabled? Claymores?
Did I really want to know?
Free of whatever safeguards that had been set in place, I turned on the monitor. The faint glow lit up one half of the room, casting light on Tattletale’s costume in one corner, and the heavy metal door leading to her bedroom.
I found a dimmer switch on the wall and turned the lights up just enough that I could see. The details on the bulletin boards became clear. They were color coded by subject, but there were threads connecting elements, pieces of yarn tacked into place or held in spots with magnets.
I approached the nearest boards. The set furthest to the left were each headed ‘Cauldron’, with subheadings, and had either green construction paper or words in green marker. The board closest to me had photos of various capes, organized into forty rows and twenty-five columns, headed ‘Cauldron, unconfirmed’. One-and-a-half inch by one inch images of various masks, their names penned in underneath. Here and there, portraits were missing, presumably where Tattletale had found better spots for them.
So many capes. It was startling really, and I was suspicious it was incomplete. Was she planning on expanding that?
The upper half had sections marked for ‘likely’ and ‘confirmed’. Many of the ‘likely’ capes had a series of letters and numbers by their name, five digits long: reference numbers.
There were only three ‘confirmed’ capes on the board. Capes that had been more or less verified, through a combination of admission and Tattletale’s powers: Eidolon, Alexandria, Legend.
&
nbsp; Lines were drawn on the construction paper behind them, pointing to one portrait-sized rectangle of paper at the top, as though indicating a hierarchy. It was blank, and the ‘name’ at the very bottom was only ‘Cauldron?’.
The back of the same bulletin board had ‘confirmed trigger’ capes and ‘Case 53′. Each ‘trigger’ cape had a trigger event marked in pen below the name, along with the same series of letters and numbers by their name: Jadeite: Post-brainwashing dissonance HSPuT. Gethsemane: Lost family in war H2UXa. Skitter: Bullying 9Zw3t.
The rest of the Undersiders were on that section of the board as well, but the trigger events had been left off. Chances were good that she didn’t want prying eyes to dig up details, while my information was presumably public knowledge.
I walked across her setup, my hand trailing across the index cards and pictures as I walked, as though I could take in the information through touch.
Lengths of yarn connected the ‘Cauldron’ board to the PRT board, which was a whiteboard, magnets affixing index cards to specific areas. A black piece of yarn extended from Alexandria on the ‘Cauldron’ board to the recently retired Chief Director on the ‘PRT’ board. Black for a direct connection? Yellow yarn extended from the Cauldron board to index cards regarding PRT funds.
The whiteboard held scrawlings of notes, musings and possibilities, some half-erased. Degree of involvement with Cauldron? Funding: is PRT siphoning official funds to pay for powers? Agenda?
It wasn’t reassuring. The number of questions, the idea that the PRT might be far larger than I’d conceived.
I moved on to boards of a different color. The red bulletin boards and whiteboards with red writing: Brockton Bay. Potential threats: the Teeth, Red Handed, Heartbreaker, Lost Garden, Adepts, the Orchard, The Fallen.
Each was labeled with a code, much like the trigger events had been, and a letter-number combination after that.
It took me only a minute to find what they were referring to. Things were organized beyond the initial veneer of chaos. A small bookshelf, knee-high, held file folders with the same letter-number pairings as I saw on the bulletin board. I picked one out at random.
Adepts. Self professed magic users. One page of information, listing names and powers. Another page with the PRT’s information on them: a series of codes and symbols I didn’t quite follow, numbers inside colored circles, squares and diamonds. From what I could gather, they had a low threat level, moderate crime rate, moderate ‘engagement’ level, low activity level. Led by Epoch, a time traveler.
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