by John McCrae
The dog growled and turned around, preparing to charge through us again.
“Hold,” Rachel said. She had to pull off her jacket to access the trilobite-parasite bastard thing that was crawling on the small of her back, heading south. Toggle struck it with her baton, and lights flared.
Imp stepped up just in front of Crucible, impaling the bug on his face with her own knife.
Progress, but we were still in the midst of a lot of dangerous enemies. Elusive ones. Of the six here, we’d only achieved two kills.
“Tattletale here.”
“In an ugly spot,” I said.
“Help’s on the way.“
“Help?”
“Eidolon. We tried to keep things quiet, keep everything off the radar, but he caught on. Legend’s at the other site with Pretender.“
“Turn them away!” I hissed the words.
“Um, not about to turn away help,” Imp said. She was benefiting as Crucible created his superheated forcefield dome to burn away the Breed-parasites too dumb to walk around.
“Turn them away,” I repeated myself. “All three.”
More of Breed’s bugs were starting to make their way to us, from above and below. One Murder Rat, one Mannequin, and the guy upstairs we still hadn’t even interacted with.
With his fucked up coffin.
“I can’t get in touch with them. Not like their number is in the phone book.”
“Contact Cauldron?” I used my swarm to attack the Breed-bugs, but it was slow going. Twenty bugs with strong mandibles could kill one, but it took a minute, maybe two, before they reached something resembling soft tissue.
“No go.”
I could sense him, now, approaching the building cautiously. He used a laser to pierce the roof. Ice blossomed out to fill the gap, a glacier in summer.
I began drawing from the bugs outside, forming a swarm-clone. Eidolon ignored it, firing again. Multiple blasts, multiple creations of ice. He swore under his breath.
Rachel’s dog leaped over us to attack the Murder Rat. She slipped to one side, and a wound at Toggle’s shoulder began blossoming with smoke.
The Murder Rat appeared in our midst. Clockblocker was quick enough to tag her this time.
It wasn’t the most ideal maneuver. Grue’s stolen power disappeared in that same instant. Bad timing – he was in the midst of fighting the Mannequins. One had been taken out by Bastard, but another had joined the fray as it brought the bugs down.
Grue reached out for another power. Mannequin’s power wasn’t useful, but the other-.
I felt my power fading, just as the swarm-decoy was gaining enough bulk.
I wasn’t the only one. Crucible’s forcefield shorted out. Clockblocker had been in the midst of reaching for Breed-bugs to lock down, and found himself only giving them easier access in climbing up his arms.
The Mannequin staggered back, tripping on the stairs. Just a little less coordinated.
Still, it wasn’t useful. One dog was entirely disabled, crawling with countless Breed-parasites. Only the fact that it clenched its jaw kept them from getting in its mouth, but its nose-
“Cancel it, Grue!” I shouted.
He didn’t. Instead, he reached down to grab Mannequin by the throat. He ascended the stairs three at a time, dragging two struggling Mannequins with him.
A bad situation was turning into a nightmare. My radius shrank to a mere hundred feet, then fifty.
Twenty.
The bugs were crawling on us, Crucible wasn’t the only one struggling to keep them from worming beneath his hands and into his mouth.
Then he was gone, the radius of his power nullification too small. If the Hatchet Face upstairs was a hybrid, Grue’s copy of his power was a fraction of a half of a power.
Still, he seemed to have Hatchet Face’s strength and durability.
Our powers began to return, and with the threats of the other capes dealt with, we were free to focus on stopping them.
Clockblocker paused the most dangerous ones, closest to mouths, anuses and private parts, to ears and nostrils. We backed away as he freed us of the worst of them, and Crucible barred the path with his superheated forcefield.
“I’m not… I’m not useful,” Toggle said.
“Different threats, you would be,” Crucible said. “Fuck, this stings.”
“Medical treatment after,” Clockblocker said. “One more to take down.”
We hurried up the stairs. Two flights to the penthouse floor.
“Eidolon,” my swarm-clone spoke.
“Weaver.” He had created a kind of portal and was widening it. It seemed slow, inefficient.
“Go home, Eidolon. You aren’t a help here.“
“I’m to take orders from the one who murdered Alexandria?”
“Yes. Leave. You’re more danger than help.“
“I can end this.”
“So can I. I will end this. Your choice as to how. Do I handle this situation myself, or do I have to kill you, then handle this myself?“
There was only silence from him. He stared at my swarm-clone.
“You dare make that threat, after killing my comrade-in-arms?”
“I do. If there’s a trace of doubt in your mind that I could do it-“
“Your bugs couldn’t touch me.”
Inside the building, we were approaching the penthouse floor.
“Your power is dying. It’s obvious enough that people are speculating on it online, in the media. How Eidolon isn’t as strong as he was in the early days. Why aren’t you inside already? Are you so sure that your power would stop me?“
“I’m here to help. That’s all. Attacking me now would be like the violation of the Endbringer Truce.”
“You’re one of the biggest dangers, Eidolon. Jack’s supposed to be the catalyst for an event, a great catastrophe. Are you honestly telling me that there’s no danger here? That you’re absolutely certain that you don’t have a weakness he could capitalize on?“
Eidolon didn’t speak.
“Don’t tell me you don’t. That you aren’t potentially powerful enough to end the world if it came down to it. If he somehow opened that floodgate-“
“It won’t come to that. I control my powers.”
“Or played a head-game with you? Are you telling me your mind is a fortress? That you don’t have that capacity for great evil inside you?“
“I’m not evil.”
“You participated in business that people felt was so horrifying that they seceded from the Protectorate. How many thousands died or suffered gruesome transformations because of the atrocities Cauldron committed?“
Inside the building, we opened the door. Grue was staring down the last member of this particular group of Nine. Tall, muscular in the way that suggested he was in his physical prime, with a wild mop of dark hair. He was masculine in a way that exaggerated the qualities to a fault, with an overly square jaw, massive hands, an almost Neanderthal brow. It made him look like a bad guy from an old animated film about princesses. As if echoing that sentiment, a word was tattooed across his chest.
Tyrant.
I recognized the other half of the pair. Hatchet Face and King together.
Untouchable. King’s power took any physical harm he suffered and transferred it among his pawns. People he’d touched within the last twenty-four hours. Hatchet Face’s power meant we couldn’t even use abilities to circumvent it. Tyrant here had the enhanced strength each of the two had possessed, the enhanced durability.
“Are you saying you’re blameless, little murderer?” Eidolon asked, just above us. “That you don’t have a potential for evil?”
“No,” I answered. The hybrid crossed the room, and I could feel my powers fading. Grue’s darkness dissipated around the building, and light streamed in through the red windows, casting a tint over everything.
I shifted my bugs outside the building.
“No, I know I have some ugliness inside me,” I spoke through my swarm. My sw
arm was dissipating, my focus and control over my bugs failing. I had to maintain the formation.
“Then what qualifies you to be here when I can’t?”
“Maybe arrogant of me to say so,” I said. The swarm was quieter as my fine control swiftly dissolved. “But I’ve recognized that ugliness, and I’ve got it harnessed.“
I gave the signal, gesturing for emphasis. Tyrant paused. The swarms outside the building shifted in the same moment, uttering the word faintly.
Now.
Outside the building, Foil fired, and she used the line I’d drawn out with my bugs for guidance. Not perfect, not ungodly straight, but the thread I’d drawn out helped.
There was a concentrated explosion of ice at the edge of the penthouse as the shot punctured the wall, passed within a foot of Tyrant.
He advanced, and I stepped forward to meet him, my eyes on his. My power was almost entirely gone. Dampened to the point that it was just me and the bugs that crawled on me. Every step he took reduced it another fraction. Half a foot, then an inch away from my skin…
Another bolt, between us, closer to Tyrant than to me.
And then an explosion that seemed to shake the entire building. Everyone present was thrown to the ground.
Kid Win had blasted a hole in the side of the penthouse, firing what had to be every single weapon at the same time. Ice was swelling from the open area in fits and starts.
But it was enough of an opening for Foil to get a clear shot.
She shot Tyrant, and the bolt pierced his brain.
He collapsed onto his hands and knees, then staggered, starting to rise.
Another bolt through the spine.
A third through the heart.
He collapsed onto his face.
Foil’s bolts broke the rules. Apparently his power didn’t work on them.
I slowly climbed to my feet, then stared up through the closing hole in the building at Eidolon.
“Go home,” I called out.
He was still, hovering there. I didn’t break eye contact as he floated closer to me, until he stood only a few feet away.
“Sit this one out, for all of our sakes.”
He broke eye contact first. His eyes fell on Foil and Kid Win.
“Please,” I said.
He didn’t move, looking across the street at the others.
Then, as if the courtesy of the please had given him the ability, he spoke. His voice was quiet enough that I was probably the only one who could hear.
“I live for this,” he said. “It’s what I do.”
It was an admission of weakness, not a boast.
“I know,” I answered him. “But it’s not worth it. Even here, that coffin up there that Mannequin made… if it’s hiding Jack, keeping people from sensing him until the end of this lunatic game he set up, then he could say something. Do something, and you could become everything you’re trying to stop.”
No. I’d said something that was off the mark. I saw Eidolon hesitate, as if he was considering going ahead anyways.
“And you’re all so safe?” Eidolon asked me. “You’re not such a danger, with the right trigger event, the right saying? You couldn’t murder a town full of innocents as readily as you murdered Alexandria?”
“The difference between you and me,” I said, “Is if I go off the rails, if I somehow become an agent of the apocalypse, I can be stopped. I can be killed.”
He stared at me, the shadows of his eyes only barely visible behind the blue-green expanse of the concave mask he wore. The shadow cast by his hood didn’t help.
“There’s a quarantine, Eidolon. Everything we’re bringing to the table here, everyone who’s on the front lines, they’ve talked about this, they’ve agreed. We’re all willing to die if it comes down to it, for the sake of maintaining that quarantine, keeping the end of the world from coming to pass.”
He looked past me at the Undersiders and Brockton Bay Wards.
“I’m willing to die if I have to,” he said, in his eerie chorus of a voice. “I’ve proven that enough times… but it doesn’t matter, does it?”
“There’s no guarantee we could stop you before it was too late.”
“I see.”
He cast a glance over our assembled ranks, then took off.
I waited long moments before turning my attention to the crowd at the far end of the room. They were already moving, running like they could make their way downstairs and escape out the front doors.
I drew my knife, stepping into their path.
“Weaver?”
My bugs flowed past them. I could see, hear, smell, taste.
The swarm went on the attack. People in the crowd screamed and ran.
Of the three I’d targeted in their midst, I saw one open his mouth wide. Four small trilobite parasites crawled out, dropping to the ground.
His nostril bulged, and one crawled from his nasal cavity. One crawled from each of his ears.
His pants bulged, a great deal in the back, then a little in front. They fell out of the bottom of his pant legs.
The others were producing some now too.
Crucible caught the first in his forcefield. He paused a second, then turned it on full burn. The forcefield dissipated, and man, parasites and a circular section of floor were scorched black.
The other two were still fighting off the bugs when Crucible burned them as well.
Silence reigned. The crowd, I think, was a little too horrified to cheer for us.
“First kill?” Imp asked, quiet.
“Yeah”
“How the fuck did you get to be a hero with a power like that?”
“Kept it a secret from you guys, kept it a secret from the public. You can do a lot with a solid forcefield bubble.”
Grue and Clockblocker joined me as we approached the coffin.
It opened easily, and we stepped back, as Crucible surrounded it in a bubble.
Jack?
He lay inside, opened his eyes, and frowned.
“This didn’t go according to plan,” he said.
I could see the forcefield start to change hues, ready to bake before Jack could say anything devastating.
“Stop,” I said.
“But the idea was-”
“Just stop. It’s not him. Doesn’t fit.”
Jack only smiled. “That so? Well, it’s the bug girl. I can’t even remember your name.”
I could see the tension in the other’s bodies.
He stepped forward, staggered a little, then poked at the forcefield bubble with his knife.
“Shall we put an end to all of this? You got me. Victory is yours. Murder me, and they all go off leash.”
“It’s not Jack,” I repeated myself. “It’s Nyx’s power.”
Jack’s expression became a frown. Then he dissipated.
It was only a teenager, trapped inside. He was in the middle of asking a question. “-you let me out?”
“Holy fuck. I almost burned him,” Crucible said.
The boy pounded one hand on the forcefield. “Please!”
“I’ll let him out,” Crucible said.
I hesitated, holding up a hand.
No. Not enough grounding to say for sure. I let my hand drop.
“Weaver?”
I was about to give the go-ahead, but Tattletale’s voice came over the comm. “That’s Nyx you’re looking at. Her range is too short, she’d have to be in the building, and she’s too distinctive looking to pass in a crowd.“
I stared at the teenage boy. I’d almost said he could leave.
“Last chance, Nyx,” I told the ‘boy’. “Last words? Share a juicy tidbit?”
The ‘boy’ faded away. An illusion in an illusion. It was only a woman with pale red skin, overlarge black eyes and vents along her hairline, the back of her neck and down the backs of her arms. A fog seeped out from the holes. A small Cauldron emblem was tattooed on her face like a beauty mark.
“No way I can convince you to let me go?
”
“You could,” I said.
“Hey,” Grue said. “She’s too dangerous.”
“For good enough information? I’m willing to risk it.”
“I agree,” Clockblocker said.
“Good information?”
“Tell us where Jack is,” I told her.
She smiled. “And I get to go free?”
“My word as a hero,” Clockblocker answered her.
“He’s on his way to visit Nilbog.”
“It’s true,” Tattletale said.
“Now let me go,” Nyx said. She rolled her shoulders, “Take me into custody, if you have to. All I want is to live.”
“No,” Grue said. “We can’t let her go.”
“No,” Clockblocker agreed. “Crucible?”
Nyx snarled, and the fog blasted out of the vents along her body, forming into a shape.
She didn’t get any further before the orb flared. Her scream was high, loud, and exceedingly brief.
“Nilbog,” I said.
26.x (Donation Interlude; Saint)
“Three Mannequins, three Murder Rats, three Breeds, a Nyx and a Tyrant taken out of action. Fifty hostages rescued. Jack’s reported as being on a route to visit Nilbog. Information confirmed by Tattletale, but doesn’t guarantee the clone wasn’t misinformed.“
“Thank you, Weaver.“
Dragon’s systems were already taking in the data. Two hundred and sixty-four individual maps that marked the possible locations of the Nine with colored highlights shifted. Eleven feeds went dark, their engines taking over calculations in other departments.
Overlays scrolled with the various calculations, the last known location, the speed they were capable of traveling, resources available to them, their personalities and willingness to hitch a ride with one of the more mobile members, their focus and most likely targets.
No one variable decided anything for certain, but every variable came together to guide, to nudge and hint at possible locations. There was no guarantee they wouldn’t use Dodge’s technology to visit the United Kingdom or Africa or even shattered, half-sunken Kyushu. Still, the chances were slim, not even a full percentage point, by Dragon’s estimation.