by John McCrae
For an hour or so, she occupied herself by reading the pamphlets and the back covers of books. Reading a novel was too much.
Somewhere along the line, she nodded off. She was glad for the sunlight that streamed in through the window, the glare of the florescent bulbs overhead. Recent events had stirred her old fears of the dark.
It didn’t feel like hours had passed when she was woken by Dragon’s voice. “Carol.”
She walked over to the screen.
It was a surveillance camera image. The camera zoomed in on a door. An elevator door, perhaps. It whisked open.
“Would you like sound?”
“It doesn’t really matter. Yes.”
A second later, the sound cut in. An announcement across the prison PA system: “-one-two, Amy Dallon, AKA Amelia Lavere, AKA Panacea. Cell block E.“
Carol watched as the girl stepped out of the elevator. She pulled off a gas mask and let it drop to the floor. A small crowd was gathering around her, others from her cell block checking out the new resident.
How long would it take?
She would have asked Dragon, but her breath was caught in her throat.
He appeared two minutes later, as a woman who must have been the self-imposed leader of Cell block E was talking to Amy.
He looks older.
Somehow Carol had imagined Marquis had stayed as young and powerful as the day they’d last fought. The day she’d met Amy. But there were lines in his face. He looked more distinguished, even, but he looked older.
Not the bogeyman that had haunted her.
And that’s Lung behind him.
Was Lung an enforcer for Marquis? It was hard to imagine. Or were they friends? That was simultaneously easier and harder to picture. But it was somehow jarring, as if it instilled a sort of realism in an otherwise surreal picture.
Lung and Marquis moved forward, and the women of the cell block moved to block Lung’s advance, letting Marquis through.
Marquis stopped a few feet away from his daughter. Their hair was the same, as were their eyes.
The day I cease seeing her as his daughter and see how she could be mine, he takes her back, she thought.
“I’ve been waiting,” he spoke.
That was enough. She had the answer she’d wanted, even if she hadn’t consciously asked the question.
She left the office, stepping outside into the too-bright outdoors, leaving the reunion to play on the screen.
15.02
One thing at a time.
As much as I wanted to make it a focus, taking care of my territory was something I had to handle in my downtime. I felt guilty; I’d left my people to handle things on their own, I’d failed to arrange the cleanup of the bodies Mannequin and Burnscar had left behind. I hadn’t made arrangements for food, fresh water or accommodations. I wanted to make it up to the people who had stuck by me, or at least the people who hadn’t left, but this wasn’t one of the instances where I could let my emotions dictate my priorities.
We had a mess of things to do and a limited amount of time to work with.
After departing from our meeting, we’d taken the afternoon and evening to handle our personal affairs, agreeing to start on the major stuff in the morning. Bitch had to take care of her dogs, Regent was toying with gangs in his territory by puppeteering their leaders, and Tattletale had her various spies and scouts to keep in contact with. Things were a little less busy for myself, Grue and Imp: I’d tended to my territory, ensuring that the cleanup was going well and that the major concerns were being addressed. Grue and Imp had taken the afternoon and evening to try to catch up on sleep.
Except we hadn’t been able to break away from planning, and just going by his participation in our exchange of texts and calls, Grue hadn’t managed to rest much. We’d arranged plans, discussed priorities, sent messages to Coil, tracked down information from our various underlings, and in the doing, we’d managed to hash out a general game plan.
With a hundred problems we needed to handle, we’d agreed the most important thing was to deal with the most inevitable ones. There was no point in working out a complicated and involved attack plan against Coil if we didn’t wind up fighting him. There was a point in dealing with the Chosen; they were bound to attack us at some point, regardless of how future events unfolded. Better to take the fight to them.
“Whatcha thinking, dork?”
“You’re still calling me that?”
Regent chuckled. He was walking down the center of the street with Imp. I was keeping to the sidewalk out of habit, and because the raised concrete path was fractionally higher, so I wasn’t wading in quite so much water.
“Just thinking about priorities,” I told him.
“Yeah, Tattletale kept trying to rope me into the planning phase last night. Not my thing.”
“I wouldn’t have minded,” Imp said. “I wouldn’t have anything to contribute, but I’d like to follow along. And I can’t figure out my niche in the group with the trio being so… trio-ish.”
“Trio-ish?” I asked.
“Tattletale, you and my brother. Making all the plans, you’ve got the nemeses…” Imp paused. “Is nemeses a word?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“And you three have the brains, of course,” she stabbed a finger in my direction, as if it was an accusation, “Which leaves Regent, me and Bitch, following along, expected to obediently do as we’re told.”
“Let’s quit and start our own group!” Regent said, throwing one arm across Imp’s shoulders and gesturing dramatically with the other as he continued, “Regent, Imp, and Bitch, the Othersiders, a spin-off team. And we’ll stick with Coil while the others turn traitor, and we’ll have this epic fight…”
Imp took his cue, “And Brian and I will go head to head, and it’ll end in this dramatic moment where he says something pretentious-”
“Et tu, sis?”
“And then I’ll say ‘Yeah, it’s me’ and finish him! No mercy.”
They were playing off one another, joking.
And he calls me the dork?
I ignored them up until we met up with Tattletale.
“No Grue?” she asked.
“He’s tired,” Imp said, shrugging free of Regent’s arm, which had stayed in place since they began their play-acting. “Not sleeping these days.”
“We should address that soon,” Tattletale said. “We’ve seen how mistakes happen when some of us get too fatigued. With the way things are stacked against us, we could wind up with another few days of concentrated activity, and running on empty from the start could spell bad things.”
She glanced at me. Fine, I’d own up to it. I’d fallen into that trap. I nodded an agreement.
“And you?” she asked me. “You’re good?”
“Guilty about leaving my people to their own devices,” I admitted, “But I’m glad we’re working through this stuff.”
“Speaking of,” she said. “We’ve got the mayoral elections coming up in a week and a half. They were thinking about canceling them, but with the Nine gone, they’re apparently wanting to get things closer to normal.”
“What does this mean for us?” I asked.
I caught a glimpse of Imp nudging Regent, in a ‘see, see?’ kind of way. She muttered something about the trio.
“On the upside, Coil has two agents as mayoral candidates, so he’ll be focused on that. On the downside, it’s another thing we have to take into consideration. We could throw a wrench into that situation, to slow him down in his takeover and buy ourselves time to leverage the situation to our advantage, but I’m wondering if it’s really worth it with our other time constraints.”
“The primary one being Dinah getting her powers back,” I said. I turned to the other two, “Are you wanting to chime in instead of poking fun?”
“I’m good,” Imp said. Regent chuckled a little.
Tattletale said, “I’ve been trying to figure out what’s been happening with the Chosen and Purity�
�s group. The white supremacists keep losing leaders. Kaiser got offed by Leviathan, now we’ve got a brainwashed Hookwolf running off with the Nine. The natural thing for the group to do would be to fall in under Purity, but there’s some snags.”
“Some Chosen thinking they want to be leaders?” I asked.
“There’s that. Stormtiger and Cricket have been Hookwolf’s followers for a while. I could see how they might feel that it was their due to get a turn. There’s also the fact that Hookwolf was probably engaging in some propaganda against Purity, in case she tried poaching from his team. So you’ve got the overall group split between the Chosen and the Pure we’ve had for a few weeks now. Then you’ve got another split within the Chosen, with the loyal and the brainwashed, and the, um. Not sure what to call them.”
“The free thinkers?” I offered.
“If you can call a neo-nazi a free thinker,” Tattletale conceded.
“So it’s a prime opportunity to strike, then,” I concluded.
“Maybe. Or maybe they’re in the same straits as us. They could be feeling the same kind of pressure from multiple directions.”
“Something to keep in mind,” I said.
“Something to exploit?”
I glanced at her in surprise, and she shrugged.
“Elaborate? You’re not suggesting we ally with them, are you?”
“Fuck yes!” Imp skipped halfway across the road to join us. “Finally, an argument I can get into. No way are we allying with the skinheads.”
“Are you taking this seriously?” I asked her.
“Totally one-hundred-percent serious. I’m not cool with working with them on any level. I’ve put up with their racist asshole kids giving me a hard time at school, I put up with their racist asshole adults throwing slurs and swear words at me when I’m walking down the street.”
“I’m not talking about working with them,” Tattletale said. “I’m talking about a ceasefire. We broker a deal, agree to leave them alone if they leave us alone, they can hold their own territory without worrying about us, and they extend the same civility to us. It gives us a chance to do what we need to do.”
“Still not cool,” Imp protested. “It gives them a chance to do what they want to do, which is making life hell on anyone that isn’t straight, white and Christian. Or whatever you call people that worship those viking gods. They like naming themselves after those guys.”
I looked at Tattletale, “I can’t argue with her point. The first part.”
Tattletale frowned. “I’m trying to think about what’s easiest to achieve while clearing up the most problems. I already got in touch with New Wave and got them to chill out for a bit.”
“How’d you pull that?” Regent asked.
“Lady Photon was wondering where her nieces went. I told her that Panacea was healing Glory Girl but she still wanted her space.”
“Hmm,” I offered, to give an indication I was listening.
“It isn’t true, or I should say it isn’t the whole truth, but we tried to reach Panacea and she turned us down again and again. It’s a shame, but what can you do?”
Amy had crossed my mind as I’d reflected on the various encounters with the Nine, and I’d thought about going to look for her. Having her in the group would be invaluable, no question. Even touching base with her could leave us options if someone got hurt or if we needed resources. That said, the major issue was that I couldn’t be sure she’d actually join or even listen, and we were trying to operate with certainties. I couldn’t afford to go when it meant potentially wasted time.
Better to be in my territory, for morale, for organization, and to keep working on the costume bits. It also let me eat, sleep and take care of Atlas – stuff I tended to forget about.
Thinking about Atlas reminded me of one thought I’d had during our downtime. ”It’d be fantastic if we could get a tinker in the group,” I said. “Between Bakuda, Armsmaster, Mannequin and Bonesaw, I’m sort of starting to appreciate what they bring to the table.”
“What you see there are the end results,” Tattletale said, “You have to realize how much time they’re spending building stuff, or time spent building tools to build better stuff.”
“Bonesaw did plastic surgery on seven people, performed brain surgery on Cherish and then trapped her inside a pod that could keep her alive for years or decades, and as far as I figure it, even if they got their hands on an all-terrain vehicle, they can’t have had five or ten minutes to do it in. That doesn’t amount to much prep time.”
“Some to build and program her mechanical spiders, but yeah. She probably wouldn’t need as much time as you’d think. Probably didn’t even have to put Cherish’s head back together after doing what she needed to for the surgery, for example, if she was going in the pod.”
“You’re almost a tinker,” Regent told me.
“Not really.”
“You made these rags,” he pulled down his collar to show me the skintight costume beneath.
“Rags? If you don’t want them, I can use the material.”
He laughed.
“I don’t think I’m anything like a tinker, though. I just realize my power’s not that strong, so I wrack my brain to think of ways to expand it. I make the most of the possibilities available to me, while a tinker creates possibilities.”
“I’m getting what you’re saying,” Tattletale smiled. “You liked having Panacea around as a pseudo-tinker, huh? The way it expanded your options?”
I shrugged, “Goes without saying, doesn’t it?”
“But you especially, given how you think. It’s a shame that there’s not really any tinkers around that aren’t already committed. Unless you want to make a point out of recruiting Leet?”
There was a bit of a pause as we all considered the idea.
We simultaneously broke into laughter.
“Come on,” Tattletale said, “Let’s get down to business.”
Beyond our short detour to meet up with Tattletale, we’d primarily been focused on heading towards Regent’s territory.
As if they knew Regent didn’t have the forces to retaliate or respond in kind, the Chosen had decided on an underhanded means of attack. If you could call it that. The Chosen’s wolf-head gang tag and swastikas marked every available surface.
A snub, an insult.
Shatterbird descended from some distant point high above us, landing in the middle of the College, Regent’s territory. It was the middle ground between Downtown and the Docks, and the buildings were a mix of quaint housing and stone buildings. Or they had been. Most were ruins now.
Dust and sand stirred around us. It coiled around Shatterbird, then streamed against the offending pieces of artwork. Housepaint and whitewash peeled and disappeared, flecks of spray paint were gradually worn away, and concrete was chipped.
In less than a minute, the area was clean. Not only was it free of the spray paint, but walls were left looking cleaner and newer than they had in years, maybe decades.
“Nifty,” Imp commented.
“Why spend a few hundred bucks on a sandblaster when you have a Shatterbird? Who’s a good little power tool?” Regent gave Shatterbird a pat on the cheek. “You are. Yes you are.”
“Stop that,” I said.
“What?”
“That’s uncalled for.”
“It’s totally called for. Are you bothered I’m calling her a tool, or are you bothered I’m mocking her? Because she is a tool, you know. In more than one sense.”
“You don’t have to mock her.”
“Why? Because we should be respectful of the poor widdle mass murderer’s feelings?” He snapped his fingers, and Shatterbird covered her ears, shutting her eyes. “There’s a reason I’m doing this, believe it or not. You aren’t the only one who can have ideas about finding some special angle in your power. Her best bet at breaking free is if she has a strong enough emotional reaction while being far enough away from me. I’m irritating her because I want to keep her
emotionally drained. That way she won’t be able to put up a good fight when she does get a chance.”
“There’s got to be a better way of doing that.”
“Sure. Tell you what. Next chance I’ll get, I’ll take her to my lair, sit her down and torture her until her mind breaks. Heck, it wouldn’t even be that hard.”
“You-” I started.
“He’s being facetious,” Tattletale interrupted.
Regent rolled his eyes.
“The alternative is killing her,” he said. “But that seems awfully wasteful when she’s giving us some much-needed firepower and deterrence.”
“I’m not saying torture her, and I’m not saying kill her. I’m just asking you to treat her with respect.”
Shatterbird spoke, startling me. “Hi! I’ve killed hundreds of people and maimed thousands.”
“I get your point, Regent. Stop that.”
Shatterbird smiled wide, the expression so fake and cheery it was disturbing to see. I tried to ignore her as she continued staring at me.
As an idle thought, I noted that her teeth were in surprisingly good shape. It made me wonder how the Nine took care of their teeth. Did they threaten some dentist and force him to do fillings and whitenings? Or did Bonesaw handle that? It was odd to think about.
“Okay, we’ve got Shatterbird for some firepower, you’ve got a swarm, Skitter?”
My bugs weren’t condensed into a swarm, but I had a good number. “I’m set.”
“Can you find them?”
My bugs searched our surroundings. “There’s people, I’m just not sure they’re Chosen.”
“Where?”
I pointed. “Six there, belowground. Eight there, on the far side of the building where it isn’t caved in. Five there, front room, drinking alcohol, I think.”
“That group,” she gestured to the first one I’d indicated, where people were gathered in a basement or cellar. Some stone building with sandbags around it to keep the floodwater at bay. “Ages, genders?”
“I can’t say about ages, but two are below average in height, smaller across the shoulders. So probably younger. Two female, one male.”
“Are they agitated, busy?”