by John McCrae
Things were clicking into place. It made sense, now, how the situation had gotten out of control so quickly. How Rinke had seized the city so totally and absolutely. It wasn’t just that he was a master-class cape who could make monsters with abilities of their own. He could make monsters that bred, monsters that gave birth to more monsters.
“Flare!”
Holler fired another flare into the sky.
Evan reached for his radio, shouting at the top of his lungs to be heard over the gunfire, even his own gunfire. ”Squad two needs an evac, stat! We just sent a flare up! Where are those capes!?”
“Choppers one and two down, squad two. Your capes vacated the scene.“
“Damn them!” He pointed his gun to the sky to gun down an emaciated winged beast that was trying to swoop down on them from overhead. ”Get us chopper three, then!”
“Chopper three is giving squad three supporting fire while they all retreat to a viable landing point. You’ll have to get to them. They’re north of your position.“
“You heard the man. Move!”
They didn’t get two paces before the ground rumbled. A clawed hand speared up through the pavement to catch Tieu by the leg, crushing it as though it was paper. The pavement strained and cracked as whatever was beneath tried to break the surface.
Tieu looked up at his team, his expression hidden by the pane of his helmet, then stuck the end of his grenade launcher into a crack in the concrete.
They were already running, their backs to him, when the explosion marked the loss of another member of their team.
A grenade round cleared away one more crowd, and they hurried through the gap.
Three of us left.
Without Tieu or Coldiron, they didn’t have a grenade launcher, no way to deal with the massed crowds.
“Holler, need ammo!”
Lady directed a stream at the nearest crowd, aiming the spray at their heads, so any spray that missed would catch the ones who stood behind them. When one tipped forward, the expanding foam served to create a barrier that caught others.
Holler pulled off his bag, handing out clips. Evan tucked away the ammunition as fast as it entered his hand, pausing only to reload and shoot down the creatures closest to them.
He turned his head as he heard a voice.
“-Eat! Eat!”
“Go!”
They’d defaulted to a three-man squad, Lady covering the left and some of the rear, Holler watching the right and the rest of the rear, with Evan leading the way. The voice…
A laugh. Not the gibbering noise of the creatures, but all too human.
He spotted the culprit. A man, potbellied and hunchbacked. The style of dress was similar to the patchwork brute they’d fought first, with bright, contrasting colors that he couldn’t quite make out in the gloom. There were jarring patterns with stripes here and checkers there. He wore a cloth crown, and his cloth mask featured beads for eyes and a perpetual leer of a smile.
Rinke.
“Rinke!” he screamed the word. He took aim and fired.
He hit his mark. The man went down, and the creatures wheeled on him, screaming, squealing. If he’d had any doubt about his target, the reaction dispelled it.
Then he saw Rinke stand.
“You would shoot me!?” Rinke roared. If anything, his voice was all the more terrifying because it sounded so small, so human. ”I create life! I am a god, and this is my garden!”
Evan could see flesh billow into existence in the man’s hands, embryonic sacs with the shadows of something forming within them. They burst, and two struggling, childlike figures dropped to the ground to disappear in the midst of the stirring crowd.
Lady did what she could to suppress the enemy’s approach, laying down the foam, but there were too many, and their irregular sizes and shapes made it impossible to cover all of them with the foam. If she aimed high, she missed the little ones. If she aimed low the bigger ones leaped over and others walked on top of the ones who’d become stuck.
A spine caught him in the midsection. Before he could react, another struck home. They penetrated his armor to stab into his stomach like hot knives. He caught a glimpse at one of the bastards that was spitting the things at him, gunned it down before it could shoot again.
He could hear the helicopter’s approach, knew it was too late.
“Ring!” he gasped out the word. He could barely breathe, felt like a weight was sitting on his chest, every word he uttered came out thinner than the last. ”Circle us, make high.”
Lady did, laying down foam in a circle around the remnants of his squad. He couldn’t breathe at all, now. Had one of the spines caught him in the diaphragm?
He was blacking out, faster than he’d expected, saw the bastards making their way over the top of the wall of foam, getting stuck, others using their bodies as handholds to crawl forward, reaching, drooling, screaming, squealing.
Didn’t matter. He was dead anyways, knew it beyond a doubt.
One of his squad members collapsed on top of him, blood spraying out onto the front of his helmet.
The darkness took him.
■
‘Lady’ stirred, felt the weight of machinery and tubing that kept her from moving.
“You’re awake,” an unfamiliar voice called out.
She tried to speak, couldn’t. Her throat was raw, her tongue leaden.
“I don’t want to offend you, but I’m frankly surprised you made it,” the man spoke. She turned her head to one side to see a bed in the other corner of the room. A tall man lay there, hooked up only to a saline drip.
“I’m Thomas Calvert,” he introduced himself. ”Squad three. We’re the only ground forces that got out alive.”
The only ones… She shut her eyes.
“Your sister was here. She was talking to the doctor about your prognosis.”
“Pro-” she started, wincing at the pain speaking caused her, “Prognosis?”
“You might not want me to tell you. The doctors will be gentler than I will.”
“Tell me.”
“Deep tissue damage. Your kidneys are gone, which means you may be on dialysis for the rest of your life. You suffered some muscle damage when they gnawed on your legs. There’s no future for you on the PRT teams.”
She shut her eyes. She’d lost her squad, her career, her health, all in a matter of an hour, if that. Half an hour? How long had the mission taken? Twenty minutes?
“You’re not alone. I won’t be joining any future missions either,” Thomas remarked.
“Rinke?”
“You mean Nilbog.”
“Huh?”
“That’s what he called himself. He’s alive and presumably well. I saw out the window as the chopper pulled us out, Nilbog retreating to hide in some building, his creatures were returning to their hiding places. I expect the man will be alive for some time.”
“Why?” She wheezed the question.
“Far as I could tell, he’s wearing one of his creations. Made him bulletproof, maybe fireproof. We won’t be able to bomb the area. He’s created beasts that multiply if you set them on fire. Did you see those?”
She shook her head.
“He may have other countermeasures for other courses of action. You’ll get your chance to talk to the Chief Director, but last I heard, they’re planning to wall the city off. They’ll let the motherfucker be the god of his own little town, so long as he doesn’t try to expand any further, which they’re saying he won’t. I almost envy him.”
“He… gets to live?”
“Yeah,” Thomas spoke, letting his head rest on the pillow. ”It is a perk of having power, that you get to decide which rules apply to you.”
She shook her head.
He sighed. ”I thought I might trigger, perhaps. Hoped. I suppose I don’t have the potential.”
She glanced at him in surprise.
“What?”
“I… I’m glad I don’t have powers. That I can’t have pow
ers.”
“Why?”
“They’re monsters. Freaks. Lunatics. They fight only because they have the impression that they’re stronger than their opponents, and when they aren’t they run.” She thought of the squad of capes that had accompanied them. “They abandon the rest of us.”
Thomas chuckled, and it sounded mean. Mocking.
“What?”
“I suggest you change your attitude,” he said.
“Why?”
“It’s ironic. When the doctor and the Chief Director were talking to your sister, the Chief Director assured her that you still had a position in the PRT. Some of it is probably to keep you quiet, a cushy desk job and fat paycheck to make up for the fact that they sent you into a deathtrap and killed your teammates.”
“A desk job?”
“Director. You’ll manage the local teams, handle the PR, convince everyone else that they aren’t freaks, monsters, lunatics and bullies. I suggest you fake it, pretend you really do believe it. You might start to believe your lies.”
“And you?”
“Oh, I did mention I wouldn’t be on the team in the future. Not because of any injuries, mind you. I’m facing a stay in prison. My captain and I were the only ones left,” Thomas knit his fingers together and rested them on his stomach, looking very calm. ”He grabbed the rope ladder first, but he didn’t climb fast enough. I shot him.”
Her face twisted in disgust.
“You would have done the same in my shoes.”
“Never.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter. A few years of my life. I don’t expect I’ll be there for too long. There were extenuating circumstances, and the PRT doesn’t want me talking to anyone about what happened.”
She shut her eyes, tried to shut her ears to his smooth voice prattling on with things she didn’t want to hear.
Monsters, freaks, lunatics and bullies… the labels didn’t belong to just the capes.
It’s like the world’s gone mad, and I’m the only sane person left.
16.03
Well, we’d gone up against Dragon, the Wards and the Protectorate at the same time, and our pains had earned us our hostage. I was worried the next part would be harder.
Trickster started fishing through the pockets of the Director’s suit-jacket.
“Looking for this?” Imp held up the Director’s phone.
“Yeah,” Trickster replied. He took the phone. “There’s a chance it’s not scrambled.”
“Bad idea,” I said. “If-”
I stopped when Grue reached over and blanketed the Director’s head in darkness.
“Don’t need her listening in if we’re talking strategy,” Grue explained. ”Go on.”
“If Dragon’s listening in on the call, and it sounded like she was, we might accidentally divulge some crucial info. Or we could be alerting those suits to our location. Or the location of whoever you’re calling.” I finished.
“Might be.” Trickster replied, “But it’s handy to be able to contact others, and that might be worth the chance that we’d have to run again.”
“Maybe.”
Trickster went on, “We could call Tattletale right now, hop in the truck Imp brought and have her meet us somewhere secluded, or we could split up, with one or more people going ahead to pass word on to her, then wait for her to meet us, wasting a hell of a lot of time in the process. Keep in mind the suits are still disabled.”
“There’s still the Protectorate and the Wards,” Grue said.
“The only ones capable of moving that fast are Assault and maybe Chariot,” I said.
“We’re short enough on time, and we need to know what happened to our other teammates,” Trickster said.
“It’s not a good idea.” Grue folded his arms.
“I’m making the call anyways. We can’t afford to wait.”
Grue stood there, literally fuming as the darkness roiled around him. After a few long seconds, his pose relaxed and he held his hand out, “Then let me talk to her. We have a password system. The rest of you, keep an eye on her, and don’t forget to watch out for incoming threats.”
“Good man. The two of us will be over there,” Trickster said, pointing to one area where sand and debris had been bulldozed into a small hill. ”Need to talk with ‘Dancer for a second. Shout if you need a hand.”
I nodded. Grue, Trickster and Sundancer all stepped away, leaving Regent, Shatterbird, Imp and I to watch over our hostage.
A minute passed, and she shifted position, her head leaving Grue’s darkness.
“Back up,” Regent warned.
“I have bad knees,” the Director said. ”I will if you make me, but it’s painful. I suppose that could be a way of easing into torture, if that’s your style.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Regent said, uncharacteristically cheery.
“No,” I told him. To her, I said, “Sit however you want. We’ll cover you again if we start talking work.”
She gave me a curt nod.
“Maybe we should get her to command the suits?” Regent asked.
“Won’t work,” the Director replied.
“Why’s that?” Regent asked.
“I can send them in, I can tell them where to go or when to stand by, but they do what they’re programmed to, and they’re programmed to avoid attacking civilians and local heroes.”
“That didn’t stop the foam-spraying-” Regent started.
“The Cawthorne model,” the Director interrupted.
“Sure. That didn’t stop the Cawthorne thing from shooting Trickster when he had Kid Win hostage.”
“I expect Dragon accounted for the fact that you might take hostages and use the nonlethality restrictions of the A.I. against it. She would have given the machines tools or strategies to work around it.”
“And you’re just volunteering this information?” I asked.
“I said it earlier, I think, but you’re not a stupid girl, Skitter. Reckless, shortsighted, capricious, violent, even vicious… but not stupid. I’m hoping you have the sense to realize how dangerous your current position is. There will be more mechanical suits coming. There will be heroes coming to Brockton Bay to assist us. You can’t afford to hold this city, and we can’t afford to let you. Not in the grand scheme of things.”
“She likes to jabber,” Imp said. ”Should we gag her? Or make her stick her head back in the dark?”
“Might be better,” Regent answered, looking down at the Director.
“Need a cloth. I could pull off a sock, jam in her mouth, maybe we tie it in there with Skitter’s silk. My feet are sweating like crazy in these boots, so it’d be really gross.”
“No,” I said. ”We’re not going to humiliate her. We get the information we need from her, see if we can’t use her as a hostage to leverage for peace. That’s all.”
The Director shook her head.
“What?”
“Extorting for peace when you started the war.”
“When are you saying we started the war? When the ABB came after us and we fought back? When we ambushed the fundraiser to embarrass you? When we fought Leviathan and the Slaughterhouse Nine and then picked up the pieces ourselves, clearing our territories of the low-level threats while leaving the civilians more or less alone?”
“Except for Bitch.”
“We adjusted Bitch’s territory so she wouldn’t have as much cause to harass the locals, not so long ago.”
“I suppose that’s a consolation to the people she injured.”
“I’m not saying we’re perfect. We aren’t. But we’re doing something.“
“So are we.”
“You’re not doing enough.”
“And when you subtract the blood you’ve spilled and the pain you’ve caused, have you really done that much more, Skitter? That’s oversimplifying, obviously. Right and wrong aren’t a matter of adding the good deeds and subtracting the bad.”
“I’m bad at math anyways,” Regent said.
&
nbsp; The Director ignored him, her eyes on me. ”I presume you’ve been paying for the supplies and materials you’ve been importing to your territory with your own money? You’ve been paying your people, I know.”
“Yeah.”
“How much damage was done in the course of earning that money? I see the repercussions you don’t. Things pass my desk: hospital bills, property damage, psychiatrist’s notes. People lose their jobs, lose precious belongings. Parents are woken in the middle of the night because their children are seriously injured. I see the details from detectives in narcotics who track the drug trade-”
“I-”
She interrupted me before I could protest. ”I know you don’t sell drugs, Skitter. But you’re interacting with people who do. If you buy a favor from someone who does, the Merchants, Coil, the Chosen, then you’re indirectly supporting that trade. Just like you’re supporting any number of evils every time you help a fellow villain. I’ve talked to homicide detectives who have dealt with the bodies in the wake of your shenanigans.”
“We don’t kill.”
“People die when you start feuds. Bakuda was injured by you in one altercation, and she attacked the city over the course of several days. Do you know how many people were harmed, then? Because you set her off? I could show you photos. People with flesh melted off, frozen, burned, turned to glass. When I don’t see these things in person, I see them on my desk, in high-definition glossy photos. I could arrange for you to see the photos if you don’t believe me, or if you want to see the damage you’ve done for yourself.”
“No. I don’t need to see them.”
She looked up at me, one eye half closed, both eyes bloodshot. ”Why is that, Skitter? Are you afraid facing that reality would shatter this nice little delusion you’re living under?”
“I’m not to blame for whatever crimes Bakuda committed.”
“You played a role.”
“Anything she did is on her head, just like anything the Nine did is on them.”
“Where do you draw the line? When do you start taking responsibility? Or will you explain away every evil you’ve done and count only the actions you want?”
I could have protested, argued that I did take the blame for some things, I did blame myself for Dinah, for not seeing the bigger picture, for acting when I’d known Coil needed a distraction for something bigger.