by John McCrae
He wanted me to quit. To exercise a measure of control over me, so he’d have something to leverage against me at a later date.
Six hours in, I’d left for three bathroom breaks, each between four and a half and five minutes in duration, and had relocated three times, as our target went out to lunch and then returned to check on the business. Wanton and Annex had both come to keep me company, until the Director had found something else for them to do.
Then Revel had come on shift, and I had an ally who wasn’t just ready to go to bat for me, but able to. She was working reduced hours after her head injury, deferring more tasks to Shuffle, but she was still the boss. She’d read the logs from the check-ins, called me to verify facts on the drugs and guns I’d noted moving through the apartment, and then reached out to the Director.
That had been two hours ago. Somewhere in the midst of her battle with the Director, she’d reached out to the police chief and mayor. She would be trying to sell them on our plan.
Or, it was easily possible, they were sold and they were trying to get the ducks in a row and favors pulled to make our plan a reality.
And with all the excitement that was no doubt happening over there, I was sitting here, a little cold, wishing I’d saved a little something from the lunch I’d packed into my plastic Alexandria lunchbox.
The lunchbox was a memento, really, an impulse I’d justified in the moment by telling me it fit with my general camouflage, that it was ironic. I hadn’t counted on how long I’d be left to stare at it, while my bugs tracked the target going about his day. It made for a long time spent ruminating on past events, debating just how the bureaucrats could sabotage me, intentionally or otherwise.
For several dangerous minutes, I’d seriously considered going back to the Undersiders if this mission got derailed. I’d stopped myself before I got too far into that line of thinking, knowing it was a trap that would lead to me compromising, giving up in a way. Playing into the Directors’ hands.
No, I wouldn’t go back. I missed them; scarcely an hour went by where I didn’t wonder how they were getting by, but I wasn’t allowed to contact them. I wanted to know how Imp had changed in response to Regent’s passing, if Grue was getting enough support, or if Rachel was managing in the cold on the other side of the Brockton Bay portal. Was Tattletale using her power too much, still? How was Sierra managing as a corporate magnate and front-man for a villainous organization?
Hell, how was the Boardwalk getting on?
They were questions I couldn’t ask or answer without raising red flags with the people who were watching me for the slightest excuse. I’d cheated and sent letters, written by my bugs, delivered to a mail box while I was hundreds of feet away, and I’d received ‘fan letters’ with coded messages from Tattletale. It wasn’t enough, didn’t have the details I craved.
“Five minute check-in,” Grace said, interrupting my train of thought.
“Situation unchanged,” I replied.
“Stuff’s happening over here. Revel is right beside me. She’ll fill you in.“
I perked up a little at that.
“Weaver. Revel here. I’ve talked it over with everyone that matters and too many people that don’t, and they’re saying it’s okay. Tecton and the rest of the Wards, minus Grace and Wanton, will be mobilizing shortly.”
“We’re good to go?”
“Shortly. PRT trucks are already en route and will be standing by, when they’re not actively transporting your teammates. Campanile, Brazier, Shuffle and Gauss will be a short distance away, but they won’t engage unless this goes belly-up. This is your show. You and the Wards. Quite a few people hoping you guys can pull this off. A handful hoping you fail.”
Like the Directors. ”Got it. Do me a favor and fill me in on everyone else’s status and locations until they’re within a twelve-hundred feet of me. Coordination is going to be key here.”
“Grace will handle it.“
Not a hundred percent necessary, but it would keep me sane. I suspected the remaining minutes of waiting would be as bad as the first three hours had been.
“We’re controlling traffic,” Grace said. I could hear others speaking in the background. ”Flow through the area should slow and eventually stop.“
“Good to know,” I said. My eyes roved over the face of the building opposite me, while my bugs tracked our quarry.
“Where do you want your team?” Revel asked.
My team?
“Keep them in the vehicles,” I answered. ”I’ll let them know where to set up when things are underway.”
I stood up from my perch, making sure that our target and his employees weren’t watching out the windows before I stretched. I was alternately cool and toasty warm, where different body parts had been closer to the vent, and my costume layers thicker. Not cold, though. Not so much that I’d be affected.
Snow slid off the top of my hood as I bent down, lifting the insulated box with my bugs inside and setting it on the roof’s edge. It was essentially a thermos, but as lightweight as the materials were in the case and the heating system, the bugs I’d packed inside made it heavy.
I worried it would be an issue in my plan. With roughly eight hours by myself to think, I’d considered various ways this could go. Tactics our enemies could employ, things that could trip us up, ways our supervisors could derail the plan, but this forty pound box was something that rested entirely on my shoulders.
“We’re close to the perimeter,” Tecton reported, his voice buzzing in my ear.
I pressed a finger to my earbud, “I’m going to get us started. Sound off from all corners, please.”
“Roger from HQ,” Grace said.
“Roger-roger from the field team,” Tecton said. ”Just reached perimeter. Sending Annex and Cuff your way. Golem and I will be working.”
I stepped over to the rooftop’s edge. The streets had gone quiet. The unsteady evening traffic that had a way of continuing in the dead of night had stopped, leaving the area more or less isolated. I’d spent the better part of the day organizing bugs in the surrounding buildings, and I now moved them into position. Swarms formed into large ‘x’ marks on major exits, elevators and stairwells. In higher traffic spots where people were more likely to move, I drew out words with the swarm.
‘Cape fight in progress.’
I suspected this was a not-insignificant part of how Revel had managed to get the police chief and mayor on board with the plan, despite any protests or manipulations from the Director. The chance of bystanders getting caught up in this was minimal. As minimal as it was possible to get in the midst of a larger city, anyways.
I activated my flight pack and crossed the street, simultaneously making my way down to the ground. Not so hard, with the extra weight that made up my burden.
The doorway that led into the lobby of the apartment building required a keycard or a number punched into a resident’s phone upstairs. Not so difficult, after a day’s surveillance. My bugs were already prepared to knock a phone off the hook in an older woman’s apartment, a moment after I’d found her name on the board and dialed the number. Much as I’d done in Tagg’s office, I had my bugs punch the buttons.
The door buzzed. I walked backwards into it, carrying the insulated box, then dropped the box in the base of the lobby, opening the little door.
The bugs flowed out of the box and disappeared into the air vents. Slowly, they made their way up to the apartment of a local supervillain. A black market storehouse first, an apartment second, really. The only reason it seemed he slept here was convenience. The old adage of not shitting where one ate fell apart when ninety percent of the day was spent eating.
I knew how easy it was to fall into that trap. I thought of the Boardwalk and felt a trace of nostalgia.
The apartment was one of many detours in an extended distribution chain that saw guns and drugs making their way to the Folk, one of the rare criminal organizations that predated capes and still functioned in more or less
the same fashion today. Topsy and his underlings were guarantors, middlemen who made it possible for diehard enemies to do business. If a fight erupted, he and his minions would deal with the situation quickly, promptly and efficiently.
It was a simple job, and it was one he’d done for nearly a decade. In the process, he’d apparently grown exceedingly rich, and he had recently started to become more ambitious. Campanile and Shuffle had interfered with a deal, and Topsy had hired some mercenaries to seek out retaliation. If the escalation of the situation wasn’t bad enough, the mercenaries had crossed lines, and Topsy had been relocated to the heroes’ shit list as a consequence. He was an acceptable target.
The only thing that would make Campanile and Shuffle happier than us fucking up and giving them an excuse to step in would be a perfectly executed operation and a humiliating loss for Topsy. I’d do my best to oblige on that front.
Finding the way through the building’s ventilation system was a question of mapping the system. Once I knew the way, the bugs abandoned the map and made their way into the apartment.
I could have gone on the offensive right away, but this wasn’t a conventional attack. Every step of this had to be considered, measured, and plotted.
Minutes passed as I followed Topsy’s movements through the apartment. One by one, I collected his underling’s phones, as they put them down. A girl in the group said she needed to make a call, couldn’t find her phone, and borrowed one from someone else. The second she put it down and turned her back, cockroaches swept it into the space between the table and the wall, and then proceeded to nudge it well out of reach, beneath furniture.
Topsy’s phone was the only one left, and he wouldn’t put it down long enough for me to claim it. I focused on the front hall instead, bugs collecting around jackets, boots and the winterized costume pieces, complete with warm coverings.
I could sense Annex and Cuff through the bugs that were warm and safe in the folds of their costumes. They trudged through the two inches of snow that had accumulated on the plowed sidewalks. Cuff seemed oddly more comfortable compared to Annex, who clutched his cloak around his shoulders.
“Annex, Cuff, I’m half a block up and to your right,” I said, one finger on my earpiece. ”Look for me in the lobby.”
“Got it,” Annex reported.
Back to the preparations. The goal here wasn’t to defeat Topsy, but to break him. Part of the goal, anyways.
Silk lines tangled zippers and bound laces. Gloves, both the ones for costumes and the ones for regular winter wear, were knotted with more silk, or they became home to wasps, cockroaches and millipedes.
Bugs too large or too small to be crushed found their way into boots. Cockroaches bit and chewed at the finer straps that held the inner lining of jackets against the exterior. The bugs I’d laced with capsaicin were relatively few in number due to the fact that it would kill the bugs next to them in the box, but I didn’t need a lot of the stuff. I transferred some to scarves and balaclavas by rubbing their bodies against the fabrics.
Annex knocked on the glass door, then melded into it and passed through before I could approach to open the door. He rubbed at his upper arms as he opened the door for Cuff.
“You okay?” I asked.
Annex only nodded.
There. I snapped my head up to look in the direction of the upstairs apartment, as though I could see through the walls. Topsy had put his phone down on the kitchen counter to grab a beer, setting the thing to speaker mode while he looked for a bottle opener.
Bugs from the front hallway of the apartment flowed into the kitchen and swept the phone into the half-full sink. Topsy didn’t notice right away.
“Creepy when you do that,” Cuff said.
“Hm?”
“Zoning out.”
“I’ve disabled their communications,” I said. ”Let’s go.”
I moved the empty box to a corner of the lobby, hidden in plain sight, then led the way out of the building, with Cuff and Tecton following me into the adjacent alleyway.
Topsy was swearing as he nearly dropped his beer in his haste to rush to the sink and push his sleeves up to dig for the smartphone in the mess of dishes and scummy water. I could taste how much old food was in the water. It wasn’t a sense that translated well, but I could detect a thin, strong scent permeating the kitchen, one a select few of my bugs were attracted to.
“Tecton, Grace,” I said, “Annex and Cuff are here, we’re standing aside while I engage. I’m not forcing this. Longer it takes them to catch on, the better the psychological effect.”
“Roger you,” Grace answered.
It was all about thinking a step ahead. I sent bugs into the room with the money and drugs and set them to destroying the plastic bags and eating through the paper bands of money. Wasps and other hostile bugs nestled in the gun cases and around handles. I didn’t have many bugs to spare, so I used the others from the building that I hadn’t deployed to make warning signs for the residents.
All in all, I managed about five or six minutes of quiet, steady destruction before one of the underlings walked in and saw what was happening. I rewarded him by flying two capsaicin-laced insects into his eyes.
“They’re sounding the alarm,” I said. The thug was hollering, and Topsy was shouting something about calling for the reinforcements, directing some swear words at the fact that nobody apparently had a working phone on hand.
That swearing swiftly became a stream of curses aimed at ‘that fucking bug bitch’.
“Annex, inside,” I said.
“Good,” Annex said. ”Because I just stepped outside, and now I’m going back in. It’s a pain to move through walls this cold. Sucks the heat out of me.”
“Warm up inside,” I said. ”Take your time, but try to move upstairs. Keep your head poked out so you can hear me. I’ll let you know what route they take.”
“Right,” he said, reaching into the wall. ”Fuck, that’s cold.”
Then he was gone.
My swarm continued to plague Topsy and his people. I slowly escalated the intensity of the attack, until Topsy gave the order to retreat.
“Get what you can and get the fuck out,” Topsy ordered, “Yeah, you too. I’m paying you, aren’t I? Go find the bitch.”
Not so cheery for a guy with a playful name like ‘Topsy’. Then again, I’d caught him at the end of his work day. By contrast, I’d woken up, donned my costume and started my stakeout. Eight hours, starting at four, watching and following as Topsy and his men conducted their business. He was more tired than I was, and he was both a little drunk and a little high.
It meant he was a little more likely to freak out when their outdoor clothing turned out to be festooned with stinging, biting insects, falling to pieces or too entangled in silk to use.
“Bitch! That bitch!” the girl in the group cussed.
They knew who I was, apparently. Fame had its disadvantages.
“Get downstairs, carry everything. I’ll bring the rest. We’ll take the trucks,” Topsy said.
I smiled a little, “Cuff, garage entrance. Spike strip.”
“On it,” she said, disappearing out the front door.
Once the majority of his underlings were out of the apartment, Topsy leveraged his power, reorienting gravity to shift the boxes and piles of stuff. They hit the wall, slid down the hallway, and finally tumbled through the open front door of the apartment in a heap. With money bands cut and bags chewed open, much of the merchandise in Topsy’s stock was scattered to the wind. My bugs could sense the clouds of powder filling the air. Evidence, if nothing else.
He wasn’t screaming, now, which I found odd. Now that his underlings had gone ahead, he’d settled into a grim and quiet attitude. He turned to the sole remaining underling. ”Anything?”
“Too far to see,” the man said.
“Keep looking as we head down.”
Topsy was tricky. Part of the reason for the surveillance had been to identify the other parahumans
in his group. He hired mercenaries, paying well, and there was no sure way to tell who he had with him, short of seeing them in costume. Trouble was, his people were defaulting to heavier clothing over their costumes, due to the cold weather. Identities were doubly hard to discern, and Topsy wasn’t one to blab over the phone about who was working for him.
“Annex,” I said, touching my earpiece, “They’re heading for the stairwell. Do what you can, but let them keep moving forward.”
“Got it.”
I sent bugs ahead of the group to check the way. Annex flowed up the stairs to intercept them. Some steps became slopes instead, others had the supports removed, so the stairs collapsed underfoot. Each of Topsy’s underlings fell at some point, their burdens thrown from their arms or crushed beneath them. An unlucky or clumsy few fell more than once.
“Annex,” I said. No use. He was inside the stair’s surface. An unfortunate side effect of his power was the fact that his senses were limited while he was inside an object. He was blind, deaf, and his ability to feel was limited by the material he occupied. He could sense heat as much as the object could hold heat, could sense vibrations as much as the material could receive them.
“Annex,” I tried again.
“I’m here.“
“Back off. They’re catching up to you, and Topsy’s on his way down with an avalanche of stuff.”
“Right.“
I could see Cuff returning. She saw my hand at my ear and didn’t speak, giving me a thumbs up instead.
Annex spoke, his voice low, “Okay. I’ll take a detour, fix the damage I did to the stairs, then rendezvous.“
Very calm. Assured. It wasn’t even something we’d plotted out beforehand, but there was no urgency here, no panic or distress.