by John McCrae
The vacuum extended roughly a hundred feet around him, the air condensing into threads that found him and flowed into his mask to sustain him. Even the clones on his side were suffering, falling to their hands and knees or running to get away. He was indiscriminate, and far more dangerous because of it.
He was approaching the battlefield where we’d engaged the clones, where many of our heroes had fallen. If the vacuum extended over them, they wouldn’t last long. I wasn’t sure what kind of effect it would have, but even the smallest push could mean the difference between life and death, and this wasn’t necessarily small.
“Rachel!” I shouted, but the wind kept my voice from reaching anyone. It didn’t matter. I could use my bugs, too, not as a collective effort, but with ten thousand voices in a hundred ears. “Rachel! Get over here and fetch the wounded! Everyone else! Get your teammates back! He’s surrounded by a vacuum!“
Heroes kicked into action, hurrying to collect the injured. Rachel was occupied trying to herd the clones at the far edges of the battlefield, but she heard my order and broke away from the skirmish.
We still had to manage those clones, though. A few Kudzu, and none of the forge-guys. If they got away-
I contacted the ice dispenser. She was trying to cover Echidna in more ice, but the wind was blowing the shards away. “Need your help to contain clones. This way.”
My bugs pointed the way. She hesitated, tried to shout something to Chevalier, but went unheard. She decided to follow my instruction, flying in the direction I’d indicated with the bugs.
Okay, so she was one of Chevalier’s people. I told Chevalier, “Your ice cape is dealing with clones.“
He only nodded. He at least knew she didn’t have his back, now.
People were moving too slowly as they dragged and carried teammates away. Worse, there were only so many able bodies. Only three or four out of every ten heroes were down, all in all, but some required two people to move, and there were those like Tecton that required enhanced strength to budge. Eidolon was getting dangerously close, now.
People screamed and shouted in alarm as Rachel reached the fallen. She barely paused as she stopped momentarily by each body, pointed, and screamed the name of one of her dogs.
“It’s okay,” I communicated, though it was getting harder with what Eidolon was doing with the air. “Rescue operation only.“
The dogs followed her instructions as much by mimicking Bentley as by anything else, it seemed. I knew they weren’t well trained, and there was a reason she didn’t bring these dogs on every excursion. It would look bad if we killed a hero in the process of rescuing them, but we were risking that simply by moving the wounded. It had been reinforced over and over in the first aid class I’d taken, never to risk moving anyone who was injured.
Then again, this wasn’t exactly a typical situation. Better to remove them from near-certain death.
With Rachel rescuing the wounded, the Eidolon-clone didn’t have any easy targets in reach. Instead, he turned and floated toward Echidna. Ice was chipped and whittled away by what must have been sharp blasts and currents of condensed wind, with fragments flying toward him, twisting in mid air and whipping back at the chunks of ice they’d come from, helping to chip away. Enough cracks formed that Echidna could use her two remaining limbs to leverage herself to her feet.
The meaty, frost-crusted ruins where her legs had been blown away by Chevalier were healing over, bulging where muscle and bone were growing within the stump. Bone penetrated the flesh where her claws and armor were.
And on top, Noelle was already more or less regrown, her arms wrapped around her upper body in a straightjacket of flesh, her eyes closed and face turned toward the sky.
Chevalier took aim and shot, and the cannonball veered in midair, slamming into Echidna instead of Eidolon’s clone. One of Echidna’s growing limbs was destroyed, but so was the glacier that had encased it.
The Eidolon hit Chevalier with a focused blast of wind, and the hero went flying, the air in the Eidolon’s range shifting to reduce resistance and carry him further.
Chevalier was out of my range before he hit ground.
Legend and Alexandria still fought above us. I could, when he passed into my range, note how he got faster the longer he flew, giving him the ability to put distance between himself and Alexandria, but he couldn’t stop to take aim and shoot without losing that acceleration and giving her a chance to close the gap.
The result was that he was flying in loops and circles, using the turns to find opportunities to take aim and fire on her. She dodged most, but the hits that did land bought him distance and time to stop and laser down clones who were attempting to escape.
If any of them slipped away, it could be disastrous. One clone could track down their original self’s family and murder them, or even go after innocent civilians. My bugs were blinding them, finding weak points, but there were some that my bugs couldn’t touch that Legend was succeeding in taking out, like the forge-man.
Myrddin was below Legend and Alexandria, recuperating from holding Echidna at bay. He took to the air, flying up to Echidna and the Eidolon-clone from behind.
He pointed his staff at the Eidolon, and his target disappeared.
The air the Psycho-Eidolon had compressed expanded all at once, sending Myrddin flying off course and Echidna rolling sideways, over a line of parked cars. For the moment, the vacuum was gone.
Myrddin set himself down on the ground. He wasn’t using his power against Echidna or the clones, which suggested that his reserves were low.
The Eidolon-clone reappeared. He turned and spotted Myrddin. The two started fighting, the Eidolon trying to close the gap and trap Myrddin in his vacuum, which was considerably smaller in area than before, but growing every second. He hampered the self-professed wizard’s flying with headwinds and gusts, and sharp blasts of wind that Myrddin deflected or dodged. Myrddin, for his part, attacked relentlessly, pummeling the Eidolon with explosions of energy alternating with scattered releases of whatever he managed to suck in while close to the ground.
Echidna was mending, and with Chevalier down and our heavy hitters more or less out of the running, I wasn’t sure we could stop her.
We needed to stall.
One tinker had machines rigged on the ground, with forcefields erected in layers, one behind the other, five between himself and Echidna. I’d glimpsed him at work before, knew it wouldn’t hold if she really hit the things. They were dangerous or lethal to the touch, if the experiences of my swarm was any indication, but little more than an annoyance for Echidna.
The ice cape was back, having dealt with the clones. She began laying down more glaciers around Echidna, but with the monster being more able-bodied than before, it was only a temporary barrier.
We needed something more effective.
My eyes roved over the fallen, both those that had been rescued and the ones that still lay on the ground, injured or dead. Weld had Kid Win and Scapegoat, and I recognized Browbeat dragging Tecton behind him. He must have joined another team in another city, only to find himself accompanying them in a return trip to Brockton Bay.
No. This wasn’t a case where we needed brute force. Echidna was liable to win any case of hand-to-hand combat that wasn’t against a full-on Endbringer.
Maybe she could even come out ahead in a close-quarters fight against the likes of Leviathan or the Simurgh, if she was capable of absorbing them.
Scary thought.
I recognized so few of the capes around me. There was a girl who was emanating red lightning that wasn’t harming the allies she struck, apparently accelerating them to a faster speed instead. I had seen her somewhere, but had no idea who she was. A boy was fading in and out of reality, grabbing capes and then disappearing with his rescuee in tow. He’d reappear a moment later, a few paces away, before fading out of existence. He wasn’t teleporting, he merely wasn’t here when he was walking, some of the time.
Rachel arrived with a n
umber of fallen capes in tow. I flew low to the ground and helped lower them to the nearest solid surface. One dog had bitten too firmly, not knowing its own strength, cracking body armor and maybe a rib. I didn’t mention it – it was obvious enough that people would catch on before he was in terminal danger, but we didn’t need people turning on Rachel or getting distracted from the matter at hand. The man was alive, and that was better than if he’d been caught in the vacuum.
Psycho-Eidolon went on the offensive against Myrddin, shoving the hero against a wall and then holding him there by pummeling him with repeated blasts of wind. The Eidolon got close enough to catch Myrddin in the vacuum, and the bugs I had on Myrddin started to perish with surprising speed.
Myrddin, for his part, stopped fighting entirely, trying only to escape. The Eidolon caught him and knocked the staff from his hand, then pinned him against the wall, choking him with the vacuum. I knew it was supposed to take around two minutes to suffocate, but that presumed one was able to hold some air in their lungs.
Myrddin’s struggles were getting weaker by the second, almost from the instant he was in the Eidolon’s range.
The Eidolon’s grip slipped from Myrddin’s neck and he careened into the ground, hard. Again, air billowed out around him, thrusting Myrddin into the wall once more, but supplying him with much needed air.
I could see Regent, turned towards that particular bout of fighting. Had he been responsible?
It wasn’t enough to revive Myrddin. He fell to the ground, only a short distance from the Eidolon, and slumped down into a prone position. One hand pressed against his chest, and he went limp.
The Psycho-Eidolon stood, and Miss Militia opened fire, joined by several other capes. The Eidolon was driven back, forced to flicker to recover from the blasts. Again, his armor was absorbing the impacts. It would be the best stuff money could buy, if it was a functional copy of what his other self wore, and it was healing every time he did.
Then, as before, he found a way to divert the incoming fire away from himself. The bullets and laser blasts stopped, no doubt because the heroes didn’t want the Eidolon redirecting any of their fire towards Myrddin.
My bugs flowed in, carrying a length of cord. I bound the Eidolon’s neck as he walked up to Myrddin’s unconscious form, but there wasn’t anything significant to tie the cord to. I chose a car’s side-mirror.
He stopped short, a pace away from the fallen hero, then flickered. The cord came free of his neck as though he weren’t even there, and he bent down over Myrddin. I swore under my breath and tried to bind him again, knowing how ineffectual it would be at this point.
It was Wanton who moved to stop the Eidolon, turning into a virtual poltergeist, with debris and dust flying around him. He barely slowed as Eidolon directed a blast of wind his way.
The Eidolon flickered, and a knife with a wavy blade appeared in his hand. Before Wanton could reach him, he gripped Myrddin’s mask, raised the hero’s chin towards the sky, knife held ready.
His hand convulsed, and he dropped the knife. Regent.
An instant later, he flickered, rendering his hand untouched, the knife back in position. He thrust it into the soft underside of Myrddin’s chin.
Wanton hit him a moment later, tearing the dagger from the Eidolon’s hand and using it to cut and bludgeon the clone.
Myrddin was dead or dying, I couldn’t even guess if Chevalier was okay or not, and two of the three members of the Triumvirate had been turned against us. We were swiftly running out of big guns.
The red lightning girl hurried past me, helping mobilize a group of heroes with more wounded. We had maybe forty to fifty capes on our side, with twenty that were no longer in any shape to fight.
I saw Gully with two heroes cradled against her body with one arm, the other arm holding her shovel, planting it in the pavement like it was a walking stick.
One of the heroes was Clockblocker. The face of his mask had been shattered, revealing the softer padding beneath. I didn’t recognize the other cape, a guy with green dyed hair and a domino mask.
“Stop,” I told her. “Is he okay?”
“Ramus is, but I think the clock boy is going to die,” she said. She glanced over her shoulder at the Psycho-Eidolon. He’d broken away from Wanton, and was working on mending the damage, one part of his body at a time.
If there was a limitation to his self-heailng, it was that. It was healing by degrees, weaker against all-around damage. If my bugs could have gotten to him, that might have done some damage, but they’d have to get past his armor, which looked like the all-concealing sort, and there was the not-insignificant matter of the vacuum.
“Clockblocker,” I said. “You there?”
He turned his head toward me. I could barely make him out over the wind. “You’re still here.”
What did he mean by that? Was he surprised that I was still alive? That I hadn’t run? I wasn’t sure how to respond.
“Craved a fight,” the words reached me despite the winds that were tearing across the battlefield. It wasn’t my bugs speaking, either. “I hoped you’d challenge me.“
Eidolon. He was echoing his sentiment from earlier, that had driven him to fight Echidna alone, except it was twisted, warped, the original reasoning forgotten.
“Do I need to get you angrier? Do I need to push you harder? I could torment you, inflict pain on your teammates until you’re forced to throw all caution to the wind and come at me with everything you’ve got. Or I could attack you on another level. Would you like me to tell you a story?“
Echidna belched out another set of clones.
There was one forge-man, two identical to the one I’d seen flinging stones at Chevalier. And an Alexandria. They lurched to their feet, but they didn’t attack. They were letting Eidolon speak.
“We founded Cauldron. The Triumvirate. The Number Man. William Manton. The Doctor. We sold people powers.“
“No,” Clockblocker said. Other murmurs came from the crowd.
“It meant more people with powers to fight the Endbringers, that was the lie we told ourselves. But we created the Siberian and Shatterbird, in a roundabout way. We created the Gray Boy, selling him powers, finding ourselves unable to stop him when he went out of bounds. There were countless others. Echidna is just the latest in a long series of grave mistakes.”
Nobody moved. I suspected that if anyone attacked him, they’d be seen as a Cauldron sympathizer, trying to shut him up. I could see Noelle: her arms had separated from her torso, but she left them limp at her sides, her long hair in her face as she stared up at him.
“We made the PRT, pretended to let ourselves be run by the unpowered, but we put Alexandria in charge. We manipulated media, manipulated nations, in the interest of power. We ventured into alternate worlds to kidnap people, experimented on them to refine our formulas. And the failed tests? The people who turned out wrong? We cast them out, tossed them out as a bonus to anyone willing to pay a little more for an enemy that was guaranteed to lose against them.”
The Eidolon moved, facing one of the monstrous parahumans I didn’t know. A boy with crimson skin and hair. The clone spoke, “That’s all you were, monsters. Little more than the cheap towels that are on offer for a few extra dollars when you buy something on a shopping channel.“
Legend shouted something, but the wind kept his voice from reaching us. He had to fly to avoid the Alexandria-clone’s unending pursuit.
The other, naked Alexandria took flight and went after him.
It said a lot that nobody moved to help.
I glanced at Gully, saw her already disfigured face contorted with emotion.
“He’s lying,” I said, to her. “Twisting the truth to make it sound worse than it is.”
Gully only made a small noise in response.
“He couldn’t make all that up,” Clockblocker said. Were it not for the bugs I had near his mouth, I wasn’t sure I would have caught what he was saying in the face of the wind. “… kernel of truth.
”
“It’s all been a ploy from the start,” the Eidolon-clone said, his aerokinesis carrying his words to our ears, “Every single one of you were deceived. For every one of you that bought your powers, there were innocents who died or became monsters for the sake of that formula’s research. No matter what good you might do, it will never make up for that. And the rest of you? Conned, brought in with promises of ideals and saving the world. You’re fools.“
And with that, he let the wind die down. There was a crunching noise as Echidna shifted her weight, but that was followed only by silence, the sound of murmurs.
“We just lost,” Clockblocker said.
I looked at him, saw Gully hanging her head.
He wasn’t wrong. We were suffering losses, and we hadn’t achieved anything. Echidna was as strong as she’d ever been, stronger than she’d been at the outset of the fight, and she kept on acquiring clones that cost more than we could afford to put down. Alexandria and Eidolon were only the tips of the iceberg.
“It’s a big hit to morale, but-”
“No,” Clockblocker cut me off. “We lost. Not this fight. Maybe we can still win it, won’t deny it’s possible, with Scion maybe showing up. But the big picture? There’s no coming back from this. Without the Protectorate, without all the work that it does to organize heroes around the world, there’s no getting everyone working together. The amount of anger? The suspicion, wondering if a teammate took the formula or not? How can we go up against the next Endbringer that shows up?”
“We’ll manage,” I said. “We’ll find a way.”
He barked out a cough, groaned. “Fuck, don’t make me laugh.”
“Laugh?”
“Never took you for an optimist.”
Was I? Or was it just that the heroes were reeling just a little more in the wake of these revelations. I wasn’t surprised, and I was betting the other Undersiders weren’t either.
Advantage: us. We villains were the only ones who could really think straight in the wake of all this. Except Tattletale, Grue and Imp were elsewhere, and Regent and Rachel weren’t really in a position to do anything major here.