by John McCrae
“Paralyzed them, obviously. Living flesh is so much easier to work with.”
Paralyzed. I glanced at my teammates. Why couldn’t I have finished their costumes? Stupid. I’d spread myself too thin. I should have finished one costume, then moved on to the next. Maybe then I would have saved someone.
“Oh, and I dosed them with a little something extra. Because Jack said there’s no point in doing anything halfway.” She gave me a sage nod, as if sharing some universal truism.
“You’re going to give them an antidote to whatever you injected into them, then you’re going to go to Brian and you’re going to fix him.”
“Brian? Oh! You mean the boy we put in the freezer! I’m still trying to figure out where his power comes from. The darkness comes from inside him, but what’s the source? Besides the usual, I mean. So I took everything apart to see, but he wasn’t cooperating. I told him I’d make the pain stop forever if he would just show me, but he was so stubborn!” She stamped one foot.
I’d let Brian’s name slip. Dumb, dumb, dumb. I wasn’t thinking straight.
“But no, I’m not going to do that,” she said. ”I don’t censor my art because it offends people.”
“I could convince you,” I told her. My swarm flowed forward, and she backed away. Her eyes, one green and one blue, flashed as she took in the breadth of the swarm, the composition of it. She was probably already brainstorming some solution.
I wasn’t going to give her a chance. I drew my weapons, one in each hand, and charged through the swarm, straight for her.
My bugs served to give me a half-second of early warning as they felt her jam one hand into the side-pocket of her dress. I turned on my heel, the burn on my leg screaming in pain as I did it, and threw myself to the right as she brought one hand to her mouth and blew a billowing cloud of powder into the space I’d been occupying.
I got my feet under me and lunged forward again. I didn’t get two steps before I was tackled to the ground.
It was a mechanical spider the size of a large dog. It had been folded up inside one of the bodies. Its legs latched around me. There wasn’t much strength in them, and even with my less than fantastic upper body strength, I managed to pry the first two legs apart.
I had almost got the spider off me when another caught me from behind. A third and fourth caught me an instant later, seizing my head and shoulders and my legs, respectively.
Bonesaw exhaled a second cloud of dust into my face.
I held my breath for as long as I could, but there was a limit. When I did breathe, my chest seized up, and my ears immediately started ringing violently, a headache settling into place. The muscles in my arms and legs locked up.
She sprayed an aerosol around herself, killing my bugs. Not that it mattered. My facility with my power was getting clumsier and clumsier as the headache increased in intensity.
No, no, no, no, no, no.
“Bring them,” she said. The mechanical spiders leapt to obey. Within moments, me, Tattletale, Trickster, Sundancer and Ballistic were being dragged inch by inch towards the dining hall. Towards Grue.
No, no, no.
It took long minutes for us to get there. I could hear faint rumbles of the ongoing battle and Bonesaw’s humming. It was all I could do to keep breathing. It was like my body had forgotten how, and it demanded my constant attention to maintain that simple rhythm.
With the aid of her spiders, she stacked us like logs. Ballistic and Trickster went on the bottom.
I couldn’t even grunt as the spiders leveraged me onto the pile alongside Tattletale. I stared down at the mask of the third person below us.
Imp. She’d got Imp.
Bonesaw crouched so her face was level with mine. ”This is going to be fun.”
13.09
“With the shoulder bone connected to the,” she paused, “Hip bone…”
Bonesaw sang to herself as she drew a scalpel from her sleeve, investigated it, then laid it on the counter.
“And the hip bone connected to the… back bone.”
She drew a pair of forceps from beneath her dress, another two pairs of forceps were retrieved, joining the first.
“And the back bone connected to the… knee bone. And the knee bone connected to the… hand bone.”
I was scared. I could admit that. I could barely think straight, I couldn’t move, and whatever she’d dosed me with was rendering me unable to use my power. It was there, it wasn’t like what Panacea had done; it hadn’t shut it down entirely. I could sense what my bugs did, and I could maybe give them crude instructions, but I couldn’t do anything even remotely complicated or delicate.
“And the neck bone connected to the-” She rocked her head to either side as she finished, “Head bone.”
I could see the open door of the refrigerator out of the corner of my eye, but couldn’t turn my head to get a better look. Brian could see us from where he hung.
I didn’t want to go down without a fight. I couldn’t give specific directions to my bugs, but if I tried, maybe I could give one. Maybe, just maybe, I could rely on my subconscious to guide them, even if my conscious mind wasn’t up to it.
I controlled my breathing, in then out, and gave the order.
Attack!
If the commands could be analogous to words in my head, this was a shout. There was no control, no guidance or direction. I didn’t have the facility. Still, every bug in reach, within a range of five or so city blocks in every direction, began to converge on our location, veering towards Bonesaw.
She noticed almost immediately, drawing the can of aerosol spray she’d used to wipe out the first swarm I’d set on her. One hornet managed to sting her, and with my power as limited as it was, I couldn’t stop it from contracting its body in such a way as to inject its venom into her. I wouldn’t have if I could.
The rest of the bugs died on contact with the spray, their bodies shutting down.
Except my order was a continuous directive, much as my calling my bugs to me had been when I’d passed out while fighting Bakuda. It worked on its own, without my direction. It was eerie to track their movements, to see just how much initiative they took without my conscious mind guiding them. They spread out, navigated past obstacles, they organized into ranks and tried to attack her from behind, while she was spraying the ones in front of her. Some of the flying insects were even dropping spiders onto Bonesaw.
“This is annoying,” I heard Bonesaw comment. I couldn’t see her in my field of view, which was primarily limited to the floor, Imp’s mask and if I looked as far to my left as I could manage, the fridge that held Brian. Few of the bugs were getting past that spray, and even the droplets of the spray that had settled lingered on Bonesaw’s skin, hair and clothing were enough to kill or incapacitate them on contact.
I was unable to respond to her statement. I focused on breathing, and taking in every detail I could. My eyes could still move, my fingertips could twitch, but nothing else.
“Just so you know, I’ve rendered myself immune to all those pesky little venoms and allergens,” she said. ”And I can turn pain off like I’m flicking a switch. Don’t want to do that on a permanent basis, but it does make this easier to deal with.”
So I wasn’t even hurting her. Damn it.
“It’s still annoying.”
I could feel my bugs congregating on her as she put the aerosol down and fumbled around inside her pockets. Test tubes: I could feel the long, smooth glass. She dropped something into each, then stabbed the aerosol can. The smoke that plumed out killed most of the bugs in the area. I couldn’t follow what she did with the can and the test tubes.
“It’s interesting,” she said. I felt small hands on me, and she heaved me over so I was staring at the ceiling, and at her. Clouds of what looked like steam were rising around her. From the test tubes? It was having the same effect on my bugs that the aerosol had. She’d erected some kind of gaseous barrier.
“See, there’s this part of the brain that people who stud
y parahumans call the Corona Pollentia, not to be confused with the Corona Radiata. It’s a part of the brain that’s different in parahumans, and it’s the part that’s used to manage powers, when the powers can be managed. More specifically, there’s this part of the Corona they call the Gemma, that controls the active use of the power, the same way there are parts of the brain that allow us to coordinate and move our hands.”
She ran her fingers over my exposed scalp, massaging it, as if she were feeling the shape of my head. ”The size, shape and location of the Corona and the Gemma changes from parahuman to parahuman, but it tends to sit between the frontal and the parietal lobe. Beneath the ‘crown’ of the head, if you will. They can’t really lobotomize the Corona in criminals. Some of that’s because the location and shape of the Corona depends on the powers and how they work, and trial and error doesn’t work with the scary bad guys who can melt flesh or breathe lasers.”
She tilted my head back and felt around the edges of my mask, trying to find the part where she could pull it off. “I’m really good at figuring out where the Corona and the Gemma are. I can even guess most of the time, if I know what powers the person has. And I can pry it wide open, make it so the powers can’t be turned off, or I can temporarily disable it, or modify it. The powder I blew into your face? It has the same prions I put in the darts I shot your friends with. Cripples the Gemma, but it leaves your powers intact. Can’t experiment with your abilities if I’ve fried your whole Corona Pollentia, right? Right.”
She angled my head and stared into my goggles with her mismatched eyes. ”Dealio is, the Corona’s way too small to be doing what it’s doing. As parahumans, our brains are doing these amazing things. The framework, all the details our minds are using to decide what works and what doesn’t, the sheer potential, even the energy we’re using, it’s too much for our brains to process, and it’s waaaay too much for a growth that’s no bigger than a kiwi. All of that? It’s got to come from somewhere. And the other reason you can’t just carve out the Corona? If you do, the powers still work on their own. The person just can’t control them. It becomes instinctive, instead.”
She began feeling around my mask for a seam, buckle or zipper, searching. She talked as she grabbed the part of my mask that bordered my scalp and tried to peel my mask down towards my chin. ”So you can see why I find it very interesting that you still have the ability to control bugs, even when your Gemma is out of order.”
She gave up on pulling my mask down. The armor panels made it too difficult, and the fabric wouldn’t tear. She snapped her fingers, and one of her mechanical spiders stepped close. She removed one of the tools at the tip of the spider’s leg – a small mechanical circular saw. It buzzed like a dentist’s drill as she turned it on. She began taking my mask apart, thread by thread.
“I’m ten times as excited to take your brain apart, now! You might give me a clue about the passenger. See, I think it’s something that’s hooked into your brain. It was alive up until your powers kicked in, it helped form the Corona, then it broke down. I’ve seen it at work when I’ve provoked and recorded trigger events, seen it die after. But I’m pretty sure some kind of trace is still there, linked in, cooperating with us and tapping into all those outside forces you and I can’t even comprehend, to make our power work.”
Breathe in, breathe out. I was having to consciously maintain my breathing. Whatever her dust had done to me, it had also jammed up the part that handled the more automatic things. My pounding heart wasn’t in sync with the speed of my breathing, and I was beginning to feel dizzy and disoriented. Or maybe that was the powder. Or fear.
“But I haven’t been able to find it. It’s not physically there, or it’s so small that I haven’t been able to track it down. If your ‘passenger’ is strong enough to let you work around a disabled Gemma, if your powers work without your say-so, maybe it’ll be easier to spot.”
Her progress through the fabric of my mask was slow. She stopped to clear loose material from around the tool.
“Don’t worry. I’ll put your skull’s contents back when I’m done looking. Then we can get to the real fun.”
She peeled my mask off.
Breathe in, breathe out. Don’t want to pass out. Or maybe I should? Maybe I didn’t want to be conscious for what came next.
Her scalpel slid across my forehead, so fast and precise that it barely hurt. I caught a glimpse of her untangling her fingers and her scalpel from my long hair before the first dribbles of blood flooded down into my eyes. It stung, and I was momentarily blind before I managed to blink the worst of it away. I wanted to blink more, faster, but the response was sluggish at best. I couldn’t tell if my contacts were helping or hurting matters.
I was put in mind of the incident just days before I’d gone out in costume. The bathroom stall, the showering in juice. It had started with cranberry juice in my eyes and hair. How had I gotten from there to here?
“I can’t tell you how excited I am. It’s like Christmas, opening a present! Thank you!” She bent down and kissed me squarely in the center of the forehead. When she sat up, there was crimson all over her lips and chin. She wiped most of it away with the back of her hand, uncaring.
She glanced at the circular saw, and it started up with that high-pitched whine.
Then it stopped.
“Clogged up with teensy-weensy bits of silk and whatever that armor’s made of, too slow. But don’t worry! I have a bigger saw somewhere else. I was using it for one of the other surgeries I did earlier. Let me see if I can find it.” She stood, then stepped out of my field of vision. My bugs couldn’t feel her, but I could tell that she was carrying one of the steaming, smoking vials with her, as bugs died on the other side of the room, then the hallway, then a nearby room.
I tried to move and failed. My fingertips twitched, I could blink if I focused on it to the exclusion of everything else. My eyes, at least, moved readily enough.
I couldn’t do anything. Even an instruction as basic as ‘find Bitch’ was beyond my abilities at present.
Bonesaw had talked about this ‘passenger’. My ally, my partner, after a fashion. Was there some way to use it? To put more power in its hands?
Help! I tried, putting every iota of willpower into the command that I could.
Nothing. Too vague. Whatever aid my ‘passenger’ provided, it wouldn’t think of something I couldn’t. My bugs didn’t respond.
It was the perfect time for a rescuer to show up. My bugs had stopped going after Bonesaw because we weren’t aware about her current location, so they hovered in place, clinging to walls and feeling around for people who might be their target. There was a chance that they would bump into someone else. If a rescuer was coming, my bugs would see them.
There was nobody. No people on their way.
None of my teammates were moving, either.
If I had the ability to use my power properly, I might have done something with the smoking vials that Bonesaw had left behind. Used loops of silk to drag them away, perhaps. I didn’t. My power was clumsy, now, a brute force weapon at best.
And hell, I was just so tired. Physically, mentally, emotionally. So many burdens on my shoulders, so many failures that had cost so much. We had fucked up here, had underestimated Bonesaw. I’d gone with Trickster’s plan to set Hookwolf’s contingent against the Nine and buy us the chance to infiltrate and rescue Brian, even though I’d known the strategy had too many holes, too many unpredictable variables. I’d been too tired to think of something else, too preoccupied and impatient because Brian was in enemy hands.
I would have resigned myself to a fate worse than death, but how did one do that? How was I supposed to convince myself to give up? It would be so easy, on a level. It was alluring, the idea that I could stop worrying, stop caring, after so much pressure for so many weeks and months. After so many years, if I counted the bullying. I wanted to give up, but a bigger, more stubborn, stupider part of my brain refused to let me.
Bo
nesaw returned all too soon. ”Threads, Skitter? These yours, or leftovers from before?”
Threads? I hadn’t set any tripwires. I should have, but I’d been more focused on a quick rescue mission than preparations for a potential fight.
My bugs felt movement. Except nobody had entered the building, to the best of my knowledge. It was in one of the hallways. Big.
The huge stuffed animal I’d noted in the hallway.
Of course. Parian’s creations had deflated without her power to sustain them, hadn’t they? The stuffed thing was inflated, heavy, so she was here. My bugs couldn’t detect her, but she was here.
“Outlet, outlet, need an outlet. You’d think there’d be more in a kitchen, but nooooo,” Bonesaw muttered. She passed through my field of view, holding a saw twice the size of the one she’d held before.
The stuffed animal moved forward clumsily. My swarm’s contact with it was intermittent as it made its way towards us, then past us, venturing into a hallway.
“Gonna have to cut a hole in your skull, Skitter. Unavoidable. I’d go up through your nose, but I couldn’t reach the top of your brain with the equipment I have. Going to make a little window. Just big enough to get my hand through.”
She turned on the saw, and it screamed, a shrill whine on par with nails on a blackboard, but unending, ceaseless.
The stuffed animal was turning around, coming back down the hallway, towards us.
Have to stall her.
I looked up at her, then deliberately blinked three times in a row.
The saw stopped.
“Trying to say something?”
I blinked once, hard.
“Is that one blink for yes, two for no?”
I blinked twice. Just to confuse matters.
“That’s confusing. You’re not just trying to delay the part where I carve up your brain, are you?”
I blinked twice.
“Not getting what you’re trying to say. One blink for yes, two for no, okay? Now, do you actually have something meaningful to communicate?”
I blinked once, hard.