by John McCrae
Noelle’s flesh crept over them faster than they grew. The growth ceased the instant the flesh finished enveloping them, and their struggles slowed. It took long seconds for them to stop struggling, but each dog eventually went limp.
Tattletale and Rachel watched as two figures stepped out from behind Noelle. Regent and a Skitter. Me.
Regent whipped his head up in Tattletale’s direction, and she dropped her gun. As her good hand snapped up to her throat, gripping it, it became apparent that dropping the gun had been quite intentional. If she’d been holding it-
The perspective of the scene shifted abruptly as the Skitter bid every bug in the area, Noelle’s included, to turn toward Rachel.
Rachel clenched her fists.
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-and barely any responded. A hundred? If that? The heat of the furnaces killed many of the ones who were trying to approach. It left me with a mere thirty-nine bugs. I might as well have been unarmed.
Mannequin extended one arm with the blade outstretched, pointing at the crowd. His ‘eyes’ were on me as he did so, moving the blade slowly. Pointing at faces that were familiar, but who I couldn’t name.
Pointing at my dad.
And there was nothing I could do to save him. Not saving him wasn’t an option, either. I drew my gun, fired.
Only one bullet in the chamber. There was a sound as it hit Mannequin, but he barely reacted as he turned toward my father.
I drew my knife and baton, charging.
Futile. He ignored me completely, raising one hand and then stabbing down. I couldn’t even look at what was happening. Refused to look.
I struck Mannequin, aiming for the joints, the small of his back, his hips and knees. Nothing worked.
Without even looking, Mannequin reached over to one side and thrust one blade at me. His weapon penetrated my armor like it was Armsmaster’s special halberd.
I screamed, but it was more rage than pain. I howled like I might against a hurricane, a storm that was destroying everything I loved, that I was helpless to fight. I battered him, struck him with my weapons, gave everything I had and more, to no avail.
He folded his arms around me in a bear hug, squeezed, crushed.
More of him folded around me, pulling tight against my head, my throat, arms, chest and legs.
My life flashed before my eyes, every event, every memory and recalled feeling distilled into a single point.
When the crushing sensation passed, I was left standing, disoriented, in the middle of a flooded ruin.
The momentary relief faded swiftly.
All around me, desolation. Blasted buildings, bodies, flooded streets. Graffiti covered the walls around me, the letter-number combination ‘s9′ repeated in endless permutations and styles.
I flinched as an explosion took the top off a building two blocks away. Blue flames roared on the upper floors.
I couldn’t breathe. My skin prickled, burned, just on contact with the air. I felt nauseous, disoriented.
Radiation? Plague?
A fleet of cockroaches scurried over one of the nearby ruins, like cattle stampeding away.
They were fleeing from something. Multiple somethings.
I took cover.
“Where are you?”
The voice might have been sing-song if it weren’t for the filter that reduced it to a mechanical hiss.
“Where are you?” another voice echoed the first. Younger, female. A girl’s giggle followed.
“Hush, Bonesaw,” Jack’s voice reached me, like a sibilant whisper in my ear. The water that flooded the streets served as a surface for the sound to bounce off of, letting it carry throughout the area.
My costume was more tatters than actual fabric. It wasn’t like there were spiders anymore. Only cockroaches, and fewer than I might hope. The water that flooded the streets wasn’t so kind to them.
“What game shall we play today?” Bonesaw asked. “Did you make anything? Please tell me you made something.”
“I did,” Bakuda responded. “I borrowed from your work for this one.”
They were close. Nine of them. I couldn’t run without making noise.
The cockroaches, then. I reached for them-
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“Regent,” Noelle gasped out the word. She was far bigger than she had been before. “Come.”
Regent hesitated, gave her a sidelong glance.
“Come!” she roared.
He reluctantly obeyed. She raised one massive limb, slammed it into the wall where the walkway had once been attached. The mutant Regent clambered up her arm to the doorway.
That would be the doorway that leads to the corridor with the cells.
The same cells where Shatterbird was in sound proof containment.
Tattletale had descended to the ground floor and was backing up as two Skitters and a Grue approached, with Bentley advancing to her side. Rachel was prone, lying at the point where the wall met the floor, with Bastard on the ground and pressed up against her, as if he were using his bulk to keep the worst of the bugs from reaching her. Her other dogs were smaller. Big, but much smaller than they could be.
“You take fliers, I take ground?” one Skitter asked the other.
“Mm-hmm,” the other Skitter grunted her reply.
“Have to share, be smart about this one. Grue, hang back. She might try pulling something,” Skitter One ordered. “Harder to make a counter-plan against bugs.”
“Me? Pull something?” Tattletale asked. She was cradling one arm, and covered in vomit. Judging by the body parts that surrounded her, Bentley had taken apart the clones that Noelle had vomited at her.
“Yeah, you,” Skitter One said. “You’re the type, aren’t you? Awfully fond of keeping secrets for someone who calls themselves Tattletale. Keeping secrets from me, even at the best of times. Even though you knew what I’d gone through.”
“I’ve been pretty open,” Tattletale said. She retreated a step, and Bentley advanced. The swarm stirred around the two Skitters and the Grue.
“You haven’t mentioned your trigger event, have you? Perfectly happy to dig through other people’s sordid pasts, but you won’t get into your own darkest moment.”
“Really not that interesting,” Tattletale said.
Skitter One’s voice was thick with restrained emotion. “It’s still a betrayal, staying silent. How can we have a partnership, a friendship, without equity?”
“Maybe. I think you’re exaggerating. Does the other Skitter have any input? Awfully quiet.”
Skitter Two made a growling sound that might have sent a small dog running for cover. “I’m the quiet type.”
“That you are,” Tattletale said.
“No commentary? No manipulations?” Skitter One asked. “Nothing nasty to say, to throw us off-balance?”
“You’re already off-balance enough. Besides, I don’t think anything I had to say would get through. How can I target your weak points when you’re nothing but?”
“That so?” Skitter One asked. “Doesn’t happen often, does it? You’re not as cocky, now. Do you feel scared?”
“Just a bit,” Tattletale said. She’d backed up enough that she’d reached the wall. The mangled staircase stretched out beside her, almost entirely torn free of the wall.
“Why don’t we turn the tables, then? Let’s see how I do, trying to fuck with your head,” Skitter One suggested.
“I’ll pass. Bentley, attack!”
The dog hesitated, hearing the command from an unfamiliar person, but he did obey. Skitter Two ran towards him, surrounding herself with crawling bugs. At the last second, she took a sharp left, sending a mass of bugs flowing to the right.
Bentley managed to follow her, struck her with his front paws, and shattered her legs. Skitter One’s flying swarm flew over him, and began binding him with threads of silk. It was too little, a distraction at best.
Tattletale fired her gun, and Skitter One went down. The bullet didn’t make for an instant kill, and the
bugs continued doing their work. Tattletale thrashed as the bugs started to cluster on her, took aim again-
And the Grue swept darkness over Skitter One. She disintegrated, reappeared as the darkness sloshed against the far wall.
Teleporting things via his darkness. As divergences from the base powerset went, it was pretty extreme.
“Heroes are on their way!” Skitter One shouted to Noelle, one hand pressed to the flowing chest wound.
I could sense them, observing with the same bugs that Skitter One was using. Tattletale had left each of the doors unlocked as she’d made her way into the base, and Miss Militia was leading a squadron of Protectorate members and her Wards through the series of rooms and tunnels.
More bugs sought Rachel out, and she kicked her legs at the gap where they were flowing in beneath the left side of Bastard’s stomach.
Shatterbird appeared in the doorway at the end of the tunnel. She was holding the Regent-clone by the throat. She pushed him forward and let his limp body fall. It landed in the heaping mass of Noelle’s flesh.
Shatterbird panted, her face was beaded with sweat, and it wasn’t related to the scene she was looking at, not the underground base filled with flesh and bodies. Her hand shook as she pushed her hair out of her face. Emotion?
Miss Militia chose that moment to open the door. She, like Shatterbird, stared at the scene, but she was distracted as she was forced to grab the door frame to avoid stepping out onto the ruined walkway.
Tattletale’s voice was muffled by the bugs that were crawling on her face. To actually open her mouth, in the face of all that, I wasn’t sure I could have done it. I knew better than she did what the result might be, but… yeah.
But she did it. Tattletale opened her mouth and shouted, “Shut the door!”
Miss Militia moved to obey. Too late.
Shatterbird screamed, using her power of her own free will for the first time since we’d captured her.
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-and the cockroaches obeyed. They formed a rough human shape, then another. Swarm-clones, as close as I could get to making them, without a concealing costume for my real self.
And the Nine didn’t fall for it. Bakuda turned my way, and I belatedly remembered the heat-tracking goggles. She could follow me by my body heat.
I ran, and I knew it was futile.
Night caught up to me first. It would have been a simple matter for her to kill me right then, but she had different aims. Her claw cut at the back of my legs, and I fell, crippled. My fear pushed the pain into a distant second place on my priority list.
In a matter of moments, I was surrounded. Night at one side of me, Crawler on the other. Jack, Bonesaw, Siberian, Bakuda, Shatterbird, Burnscar and Panacea.
It was Weld who seized my wrists.
“Run,” I tried to warn him, but the words didn’t reach him. Fluid bubbled out of my lips, and it came out as a mumble. The radiation? Plague? Had Bonesaw or Panacea done something to me without my knowledge?
He said something I couldn’t make out. It sounded like I was underwater.
Then he pulled.
He wasn’t gentle about it. He threw me over one of his shoulders with enough force that bile rose in my throat and the sharper parts of his shoulders poked at my stomach. I tried to move my hand to raise my mask, so I wouldn’t choke if I threw up, but my arm didn’t respond.
My head swam, and half of my attempts to breathe were met with only chokes and wet coughs.
Was this another delusion? A dream? Could I afford to treat it as though it was?
I was still blind, but my power was waking up. I could feel the bugs in the area, and I was getting a greater picture of the surroundings as my range slowly extended.
Shatterbird was still perched in that doorway-turned window. Noelle was beneath her, and I had only the bug-sight to view her with. Her already grotesque form was distorted further by the three dogs she’d absorbed into herself.
Instinctively, I tried to move my bugs to get a better sense of the current situation. They didn’t budge.
Instead, I felt the pull of the other two Skitters, wresting control of my bugs from me as though they were taking a toy from a baby, ordering those bugs to hurt my teammates and allies.
Rachel and Tattletale were down, and Imp was crouched beside Tattletale. Imp had pulled up the spider-silk hood that I’d worked into her scarf, covering the back of her head, and cinched it tight. It wasn’t perfect, but it was leaving her almost totally protected.
Almost. Bugs had reached her scalp, and there were spiders working thread around her legs. I wasn’t sure if she was aware of the latter.
The Wards and Protectorate in the upstairs hallway- some were hurt. The fallen and the wounded were numerous enough that the heroes had lost any momentum they’d had. Their focus was in the hallway, now, in saving their teammates. Maybe they’d deemed the situation unsalvageable.
I exerted a greater effort, trying to reduce the impact the swarm was having on everyone present, but there was nothing. My doppelgangers had a complete and total override, and the pair definitely noticed my attempts. They turned my way.
What would I be doing in their shoes? They couldn’t hurt Weld, but they could hurt me.
Or they’d find another avenue for attack.
“Weld,” Skitter One spoke up. Her voice was quiet. “Surprised you’re here. Did Imp help you get close?”
Do I really sound like that? I wondered. And Imp?
Weld wasn’t replying.
“Really surprised you’re with her,” Skitter One said. She had one hand pressed to a chest wound.
Weld glanced over his other shoulder at her. The other Skitter was a distance away, with shattered legs.
“Did she tell you?” Skitter One said, “She set someone on fire. Maimed a minor, slicing his forehead open. She cut off Bakuda’s toes, carved out a helpless man’s eyes. I can keep going.”
“I don’t care,” Weld said. He wasn’t moving. Why? He was waist deep in Noelle’s belly, holding me… it dawned on me that he couldn’t throw me to some point clear of Noelle without giving me to the Skitter.
“You should care. I could tell you about the critically injured man she left to bleed out and die. She stood by and let people get attacked by Mannequin so she could buy herself time to think of a plan to make a counterattack.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but I couldn’t draw in enough breath to manage more than a hoarse whisper, and Weld wouldn’t have heard me.
“I don’t care,” Weld said. “I know she’s done bad things. After this is over, we’ll find her, beat her and take her into custody.”
“You don’t care?” Skitter One asked. “She murdered your boss. Shot Thomas Calvert in cold blood, not that long ago.”
Weld froze. Or he went more still than usual.
“Whoopsie,” Imp said. She’d appeared behind Skitter One. A slash of her knife ended Skitter One’s contributions to the discussion. “Sorry to interrupt.”
I couldn’t say whether Skitter One’s feedback had done anything to change his behavior, but Weld wasn’t gentle when he grabbed me and flung me overhand. My legs tore free of Noelle, where her flesh had closed firmly around my legs, and I was sent flying.
Unable to move to protect myself or react to the landing, I sprawled where I landed, fifteen or so feet from Noelle.
Weld turned back to Noelle. His left hand changed to become a blade, and he used it to hack and slash his way through Noelle’s side. His other hand dug and scraped for purchase as he deliberately and intentionally submerged himself.
My bugs found their way to the others. I did what I could with my bugs to drive Shatterbird away from the doorway and put her out of reach of Noelle’s tongue. Once she’d started staggering back, I set about finding and destroying the bug clones who were attacking people and ignoring my powers.
The door where the Wards and Protectorate had been lurking opened. Miss Militia tested her weight on the staircase, then leaped down
to ground level.
She trained a gun on Imp as she noticed the girl crouching over Skitter Two, the taciturn Skitter with the broken legs. Imp executed the girl, glanced at Miss Militia and shrugged.
I tried to speak, coughed. I pulled my bugs away from Rachel and Tattletale.
Miss Militia stared at Noelle, her eyes adjusting to the poor lighting.
“You fed her!?” Miss Militia asked.
“Rachel,” Tattletale said, “Come on!”
There was a clapping or slapping noise, and Bastard lurched to his feet. Rachel stood, and the other three dogs spread out around her.
“You fed Echidna?” Miss Militia asked, disbelieving.
Echidna? Right. They’d coined a name for her, then.
“And we’ll feed her more,” Tattletale said. “Rachel! All of the spare dogs! Try not to get in Weld’s way!”
The dogs began to grow, flesh splitting, bone spurs growing, and muscles swelling to greater size.
Rachel hesitated.
“Do it!” Tattletale shouted.
Rachel gave the orders, shouting, “All of you, hold! Malcolm, go left!”
She slapped one dog on the shoulder, and he bolted.
“Coco, go right! Twinkie, go right!”
The other two dogs gave chase, stampeding past me as they ran along the right side of the room.
“Hurt!” Rachel gave the order.
The dogs attacked the closet target – Noelle. They got stuck in her like she was tar.
But, I realized, that the converse was also true. Noelle was absorbing them, but she was unable to move so freely as long as this much extra mass was stuck to her. It was like the way we’d fought Weld, sticking metal to him.
The problem would be when she spat out the dogs.
I tried to move, but I felt like I had fifty pound weights strapped each of my arms and legs. My face burned hot, and my vision swam.
It wasn’t an entirely unfamiliar feeling. I felt sick.
With that thought, it dawned on me. Noelle absorbed living things, and that apparently extended to bacteria. Where others had bacteria in their digestive systems to help them digest food, Noelle, Echidna, had no need for such. When she absorbed the ambient bacteria and molds from her surroundings, she was storing them, weaponizing them like she did with rats and insects. They were used to debilitate her victims, render them unable to fight back while her clones got the upper hand.