by John McCrae
I paused. I’d been thinking over the scenario, calculating Coil’s overarching goal. ”Is he Keith Grove?”
“No,” Lisa said. ”One sec.”
The car started up, and there was a shuffling sound as she dug through a container.
A recording played over the car’s sound system. Lisa shifted the car into gear and reversed out of her spot. I listened.
“A town meeting with hundreds of Brockton Bay residents was interrupted by a terrorist attack by a local villain just earlier today, an alleged assassination turned to even greater tragedy as a superhero-made piece of technology exploded unexpectedly.
“This tragedy joins countless others that have recently befallen Brockton Bay, a city that was recently the subject of national discussion, where the United States Senate debated condemning the city, evacuating the remaining citizens and abandoning it as a lost cause. A local crime lord headed a small group of supervillains in an attempt to assassinate Mayor Christner, Mayoral Candidate Keith Grove and Mayoral Candidate Carlene Padillo. When local heroes intervened, however, a device owned by local Wards member ‘Kid Win’ malfunctioned, ultimately exploding in the lobby of the building. While the number of casualties is yet unconfirmed, we can confirm that WCVN’s own on-site reporter and camera crew perished in the blast. More information will be forthcoming as we have it.
“First reports from the site report allegations of sabotage on the part of a known double agent within the group of junior heroes. No members of the Brockton Bay PRT, Protectorate or Wards teams were available for comment, but sources inside the organization report that Director Emily Piggot, manager of the city’s PRT and government sponsored hero teams, is being put on leave pending a full investigation.
“Filling in for the interim is Commander Thomas Calvert. When asked about this new placement, the PRT reported that Commander Calvert served as a PRT field agent before an honorable discharge. For the past several years he has offered his expertise to the PRT as a paid consultant in parahuman affairs for New York, Brockton Bay and Boston, later serving as a field commander for the PRT strike squads. The PRT expresses full confidence in Commander Calvert’s ability to handle the daunting task of Brockton Bay’s parahuman-“
The sound cut out. Lisa had stopped the recording.
“Thomas Calvert,” I said.
16.10
I pushed open the rusted metal door that marked the first real barrier to entry for Coil’s underground base. It was unassuming, if secure, easy to ignore for anyone who happened to find their way underground. It swung open without resistance; unlocked.
Every door was unlocked as I made my way through the series of checkpoints and gates. There were no guards, and the cameras in the final room before I entered the base proper didn’t move to track my movements.
I pushed on the final door and let it swing open. The base was empty. Except empty wasn’t exactly the right word. It had been cleared out.
The on-duty squads of soldiers were gone, as were the trucks, weapons, supplies and furniture. The entire ground floor was desolate, with clean patches in the dust where furniture and crates had been.
In groups big enough for me to get full coverage of the area, my swarms took turns roving over my surroundings. They couldn’t pass through closed doors, but they gave me a sense of my surroundings that my eyes couldn’t. The results were almost the inverse of what I might expect from my eyesight. There was no grasp of color, beyond what I could guess from the various clues I got from my other senses, but I had a keen sense of textures. Where my eyes would have been capable of focusing on one thing at a time, my swarm-sense gave me the ability to pull together complete mental pictures from a thousand different points of focus. I could ignore line of sight, sensing around objects, and even though my bugs’ senses translated poorly, the sum total of their awareness gave me a sense of the little things, in addition to the big picture. I could sense where the air currents were traveling and the force with which they moved, the thickness of the dust in one area versus another, and where temperatures where higher, if even by a fraction.
None of this was new, exactly. I’d always been aware of it to some small degree, but my core senses had always been there as regular, reliable fallback. I’d never researched the subject, but reports seemed conflicting when it came to the topic of blindness making other senses sharper. With only half of a day’s experience, I was beginning to think that maybe it didn’t improve my other senses, but seemed to free up the semi-conscious, semi-unconscious intake that my eyes typically used as my dominant sense. The brainpower that was usually allocated to idle glances, comparing and contrasting, or just taking in ambient sights while my thoughts were preoccupied with other things? It was freed up to be used for listening and my swarm-sense.
The Travelers were here, I noted. I wasn’t startled to note their presence, but I was somewhat surprised. They’d gathered in one room above the vault that Noelle was presumably being kept in. They’d noticed the bugs and were venturing outside onto the walkway. I met them halfway between their apartment and the entrance.
They were in civilian wear. Trickster and Ballistic were in regular shirts, jeans and shoes, but Sundancer was wearing what I took to be pyjamas, her hair tied back in a bun. Genesis was in her chair, a blanket on her lap, with Oliver standing just behind her.
“Skitter,” Trickster said, “You’re here alone?”
“My teammates are upstairs. We wanted to have words with Coil, but he wasn’t free to talk until sundown, so we’ve been killing time and waiting around. There’s still a bit of time, I sensed some movement down here, I needed to stretch my legs to keep my injuries from earlier today from stiffening up, so I decided to take a bit of a walk.”
“And they’re staying put?” Ballistic asked.
“I can signal them in a heartbeat if I have to,” I responded.
“Just saying, but you know Coil’s dead, right?” Trickster asked.
“I saw it happen,” I answered him. I chose my words carefully, “So I have a very good idea of how dead the man is.”
“Fair enough.”
“And you guys?” I asked. “You’re keeping eyes on your teammate? Noelle?”
“Noelle’s fine,” Trickster said, “You don’t need to concern yourself over her.”
There was just a touch of hostility here. I turned my head to face the two girls, using my bugs to figure out the orientation so I could appear to be looking at Sundancer and Genesis. The two of them were, I figured, the closest thing to allies that I had among the Travelers. That wasn’t to say I was on good terms with them; Sundancer was especially wary of me and had been since I’d carved out Lung’s eyes, and Genesis had been a little weird in how she related to me when I’d delivered Trickster to her at the mayor’s house. Part of that might have been a reflection or a response to my own paranoia, where I’d thought they were planning to kill me. Either way, they hadn’t given me the impression of dislike or hostility to quite the same degree that I was seeing with Trickster and Ballistic right now.
This was where my current inability to see was hurting me. I couldn’t read their expressions or body language, and even though my bugs were giving me a sense of how they were standing and where their head, arm and legs were positioned, I didn’t have that innate human ability to instantaneously assess and process those details. Time and effort spent trying to figure it out was taken away from my ability to plan and follow the conversation. It was sort of like talking to an answering machine; I was left trying to hold up my end of a conversation without the ability to assess what the person on the other end was making of it. End result? I was left there, silent, while none of the Travelers were volunteering anything.
“If you’re done checking up on us, or visiting, whatever you want to call it,” Trickster said, “You could go. Your duty’s done, you’ve paid your respects to the other team while you’re in their territory.”
That’s something we’re supposed to do?
“I
don’t want us to be enemies,” I said.
“We’re not,” Trickster replied, but his tone was far from friendly. “We’re on the same side.”
“But?” I asked. “It sounds like there’s more to that.”
“We’re not friends, Skitter. Let’s not pretend like we are. You’ve got your goals, we have ours. You want to work together to tackle a situation like the Dragon thing? Fine. Great. You want to backdoor Ballistic, going to the boss to recruit that cape he was trying to take down? Hey, that’s fine too.”
Ballistic folded his arms.
Trickster went on, “Really. We’re doing what we have to do in order to make this thing work. I don’t love what you pulled, I’m not jumping for glee, but I get it.”
“So we’re business associates, but not friends.”
“Succinctly put.”
“There has to be more common ground there. We can’t meet, share a box of donuts and talk about ways to mutually benefit our territories?”
“The fact that you have to ask that is a pretty good indication of how clueless you are about this. Let’s count the ways. One, I don’t give a ratfuck about my territory or the people in it. None of us do.”
I could feel Sundancer turning slightly away from him. Was there disagreement there?
“Two,” he continued, “We don’t plan to be here much longer anyways. Either Coil fulfills his end of the bargain and we’re out of this hellhole, or he doesn’t and we take a hike anyways. Take our chances elsewhere.”
I could remember how Ballistic had talked about his frustration with the group, the idea that he might stick with this gig regardless of what Trickster and the others did. If I brought it up, would it refocus the discussion to the point that Trickster wasn’t opposing me, in an abstract sense, or would it derail it with the ensuing drama?
I kept my mouth shut, and I was sort of glad that I couldn’t see, or I might have given in to my impulse to glance at Ballistic and give something away.
Maybe it wasn’t worth worrying about. I was wearing my full costume, including the additional pieces I’d accumulated over time; I wore the tattered cape, the ragged semi-dress over my leggings, and a heavy carpet of bugs clung to the black fabric and armor panels. My goggles would hide my eyes. Nobody would see any tell, if I could see, and I doubted they’d notice I was essentially blind.
Trickster took my silence for an excuse to go on, “Three, again, there’s no common ground to be found, and I’m not interested in hunting for it. There’s two things I want in this world, and being part of Coil’s thing was my way to get those things. You were useful only as far as you helped make Coil’s thing work, and that’s over now. To put it bluntly, you don’t have anything to offer me.”
“I get the picture,” I told him, cutting him off before he could continue. “Okay. Friendship’s off the table. Even a friendly business relationship would be pushing it.”
He nodded once.
I sighed a little. “Okay. That said, as one local warlord to another, I’d like to extend an invitation. We’re going to talk to Coil, and I’m saying you’re free to come.”
“Coil’s dead,” Ballistic made the words a drawl.
That was getting old fast. “Do we really have to maintain this charade?”
“Coil went to a lot of effort in putting together his grand plan. He died in a blaze of glory and violence, just like he wanted. Do you really want to spoil that by going on about how he’s still alive?”
“Like you said,” I retorted, “We’re on the same side. If you didn’t know, you’d be more upset than you are now. Why pretend he’s dead when he’s alive? Especially when it’s getting in the way of the larger conversation about the man and my invitation to come hear what he has to say?”
Trickster leaned against a wall and fumbled in one pocket for a cigarette. “You mean outside of the possibility that you’re wired and my saying the wrong thing could out him? Whatever. I don’t have anything to say to him that I haven’t already said. Maybe you aren’t getting the point. We went out of our way to help you once, rescuing Grue, and it nearly got us carved up by Bonesaw.”
Your plan, I thought.
He went on, “I don’t care about the Undersiders. I don’t care if you get a hundred trillion dollars and wind up kings of the planet, and I don’t care if Coil kills you. We’ve wrapped up our business with Coil, and that’s as far as my interest goes.”
“Alright,” I said, raising my hands, “Point taken. Listen, I get that maybe we haven’t gotten along so fantastically, but I really do wish you guys luck with your circumstances, whatever they are. I hope you get what you’ve been looking for.”
“Sure,” Trickster said. He turned to leave, making his way to the doorway that led to the pseudo-apartment they stayed in when they weren’t in their individual headquarters. He beckoned for his teammates to follow, and they did.
Only Genesis lagged behind, her hands on the wheels of her chair. After Trickster had rounded the corner, she said, “He’s tense. Too much comes down to what happens in the next forty-eight hours.”
“Believe me,” I replied, “I get that.”
“Then good luck with your thing,” she said. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I hope I never see you again.”
How the hell am I supposed to take that?
I didn’t respond as she wheeled herself to the corridor.
Okay, I thought, learned what I needed to.
Whatever the terms between Coil and the Travelers were, he hadn’t seen fit to invite them to the meeting place. I’d had to think for some time before making the offer to join us for the meeting. I knew that whatever Coil had planned, inviting the Travelers wouldn’t hurt.
If Coil fully expected to cooperate, to give us the answers we needed and hand Dinah over, then it didn’t matter if the Travelers were there. If he was expecting conflict and he had planned to invite them, then we only gained the benefit of knowing in advance that they’d be there. Finally, if he’d expected trouble but he hadn’t invited them, there was probably a reason, and that reason would be something we could exploit in a pinch.
They hadn’t accepted my invitation anyways, and I hadn’t sensed anything sinister when Trickster had rejected the offer. He’d been too self-centered.
Funny, as I thought on it, how easily he seemed to slip between talking about ‘I’ as in himself to talking about ‘we’, the group. It was as if he assumed everyone in the Travelers was on the same page as him, and my discussions with Sundancer and Ballistic had suggested anything but. Even Cherish’s taunts had pointed to some strife within the ranks.
The second major piece of data that I’d gleaned from my detour was that Dinah wasn’t here. There were a handful of locked doors my bugs hadn’t been able to slip past, but the room Dinah had been in when we’d first visited was empty. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure that Dinah wasn’t still in Coil’s underground base, but I had a hard time believing that Coil would leave her there with no armed guards. She was too valuable to risk losing her to one of his enemies or losing his bargaining chip he had in his dealings with me.
We’d agreed that if I could prove myself as a valuable asset, he’d accept my fealty in exchange for Dinah’s freedom. I hadn’t earned him any money, not directly, but that had never really been his goal. He had money, and he could get more by exercising his power in some high-risk, high-reward ventures. I had gathered more followers under my wing than all of the others put together, with the possible exception of Tattletale. I’d put life and limb at risk, partially for his benefit. I’d proved myself as a leader, a soldier and a problem solver. I’d put up with every challenge he’d set in my way: the false death threat he’d put on my head, convincing the mayor, dealing with Dragon and going up against the Nine. Hell, I’d tended to my territory while my dad lay bleeding in the hospital.
I couldn’t say for sure whether Coil would actually follow through with his end of the deal. In his shoes, ignoring what the right thing to do woul
d be, if only because it was pretty fucking obvious he didn’t put much stock in right and wrong, I wasn’t sure I’d give Dinah up. For a guy like Coil, who did things from behind the scenes, playing the long game and orchestrating events to get the best possible results, Dinah’s power was invaluable.
Trickster had used a chess metaphor, back when the thing with the Nine was just beginning. Would I be considered a bishop? Hell, even if I thought of myself as a queen, I wasn’t sure Coil would value having me on his side of the board over having Dinah.
Dinah let him rig the game.
I ventured outside and made my way to the flights of stairs for the building that was still in progress. It had proceeded nicely in recent days, and the outside was partially complete. The sun was setting, and my bugs could see and feel the warm light that streamed in through the openings in the outside, where tarps had come free. The thick dust of concrete and shorn wood layered the area and formed clouds wherever the wind made its way inside.
I’d climbed the stairs to the meeting place only an hour ago, and I’d ventured all the way to the bottom to investigate Coil’s base. That made this my third trip over the twenty flights of stairs, accessing the roof. On my third trip, my aches and pains from being tossed around by Coil’s explosion were most definitely making themselves felt.
In a way, I didn’t mind. I felt restless, and moving made me feel better. Nervous wasn’t the right word. Nervousness implied there was uncertainty, and I was pretty sure this wouldn’t go the way I hoped. Trepidation wasn’t right either. I might have settled on ‘a sense of encroaching doom’ but that felt over the top.
Then again, this was someone’s life on the line. Maybe our lives too. Was it possible to be over the top when the stakes were this high?
The others had arranged themselves around the roof. Bitch was in a half-sitting, half-lying down position, leaning back against Bentley’s side, Bastard sleeping on her lap. Tattletale and Regent were having a discussion at the top of the stairwell, while Grue and Imp were at the edge of the building. Imp sat with her legs dangling off the side of the building, while Grue showed more caution, standing a distance behind her.