by John McCrae
“Um,” Imp said. “You just leaped from the subject of talking about the Endbringers to talking about solutions.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I think we definitely need to think about solutions, Endbringer-wise.”
“Oh, well, of course,” Imp said. “This is doable. Something we’ve managed once in the last thirty years, taking down Endbringers.”
“Shh,” Tattletale said. She turned to me. “There’s more to this.”
“Dinah told me the defending forces would be divided into five groups. Armies, individuals, some of the biggest capes, and unknowns.”
“She said that to others. It’s on record in the PRT,” Defiant told me.
“Five groups in different places, and Dinah couldn’t see why they were there, she couldn’t see the particulars. She said there could be too many precogs there, but what if that’s not it? What if she’s blind about the particulars because the Endbringers are there?”
“A coordinated attack?” Narwhal asked.
I nodded. “It’s possible. Either it’s Leviathan, Simurgh, Tohu, Bohu and Khonsu, or Scion’s there and Tohu and Bohu are together, as usual.”
“I can’t imagine the defending forces would hold the line for very long, if at all,” Defiant said. “Not if we’re spread that thin.”
“A situation this dire brings out all of the people who might not otherwise fight,” I said. “Parian wasn’t a fighter, but when Leviathan hit Brockton Bay, she stepped up to the plate. As things get worse, we might see some people doing the same.”
“If it’s five Endbringers and Scion we’re up against, we might see people giving up altogether,” Narwhal pointed out.
I nodded. “Tattletale already said something like that. Yes. A lot hinges on whatever comes next, whether we can get people on board. Whether others are doing the same.”
“Alright,” Defiant said. “You have something in mind for the Endbringers?”
“A pre-emptive attack,” Narwhal said, her voice quiet. “If it provokes them to lash out, well, at least it’s not a coordinated attack, and at least it’s at a point in time when Scion’s busy elsewhere. The Simurgh is standing still. We could hit her with something like what we used in New Delhi or Los Angeles.”
“We could,” Defiant agreed.
“Let’s think on it?” I suggested. “We can’t do this without laying out the groundwork, and that means convincing people this isn’t hopeless, it means gathering information, getting resources together.”
“Then do your thinking as you get ready,” Defiant said. “Gear up. Gather anyone you think you need.”
“I’m set,” Tattletale said. Imp and Rachel nodded.
“I’ll need my spare costume pieces from the Dragonfly,” I said. “I parked it in Gimel before I left for the rig. Hoping my flight pack has enough of a charge.”
“Go,” Defiant said. “I’ll see to Saint.”
“And me?” Canary asked.
“We can get you a standard Protectorate costume. Spider silk,” Narwhal said. “Durable, flexible. No frills, nothing fancy, but it’ll be better than nothing.”
Canary frowned.
“What?” Narwhal asked.
“Just… skintight suits.”
“Got a bit of pudge there?” Imp asked. “Fat thighs? Cankles?”
“I don’t have cankles,” Canary said. “Or fat thighs. But it’s not…”
She trailed off.
Imp plucked the fabric of her own costume. ”I’ve been there. You think looking this good is easy? Skintight is a bitch to pull off. Diets, exercise, keeping up with the patrols and the life or death fights. Surprised you didn’t get that while you were in the slammer.”
“Not a lot of choice in food, or freedom of movement when you can get cut in half for setting one toe in the wrong spot,” Canary said. She was frowning, now.
“You can wear your clothes over it,” Narwhal suggested. “We can get you some tools. Nonlethal weapons. So you’re able to defend yourself.”
They’d work it out. I shook my head a little. Had to focus on my own thing.
“Doorway, please,” I murmured. “Gimel. By the Dragonfly, New Brockton Bay.”
The portal began to slide open.
“I’ll do you one better, Canary,” Saint said. “I’ll give you one of the spare Dragonslayer suits.”
“It’s… a good offer, but I think I’d feel like I was betraying Dragon if I took it.”
“You wouldn’t be able to pay her what you supposedly owe her if you died, either,” Saint said. “This is freely offered. No strings attached. I’ll give you the ability to fly, Canary. Better nonlethal weapons than the ones they have Masamune manufacturing.”
“I don’t know,” she said.
I hesitated in the doorway to listen. Tattletale, Rachel and Imp walked past me on their way through.
“Do it,” Defiant said, not looking at Canary or Saint. His eyes were on the laptop. “Saint? I’ll be looking over everything for tricks and backdoors.”
“Noted,” Saint said.
Defiant opened the door to Saint’s cell.
Saint stood, then rolled his head around, as if getting kinks out of his neck. He looked so small next to Defiant, but he wasn’t a small guy. His face was marked by lines of stress, but his gaze was hard.
“You don’t leave my sight,” Defiant said. “Any access you have to a system is routed through me. I double-check it.”
Saint nodded.
I passed through the portal, entering the field where I’d set down the Dragonfly. Some kids were climbing around the outside of the ship, but they ran the second they saw us, shouting.
The wind blew, making waves in the tall grass. I turned to face it so my hair wouldn’t blow into my face. I was left looking out over the water, while I moved bugs into the necessary channels and manipulated the switches, bidding the ramp to open.
“It doesn’t get said enough, but this is pretty damn cool,” Tattletale said. “Outclassed convenience-wise by the portals we’ve got access to, but yeah, nice.”
“Yeah,” I said. My mind was almost someplace else, considering everything that was in play, the threats, the necessities.
I paused, glancing out at New Brockton Bay. Brockton Bay Gimel. Tents and shelters were spread out everywhere, with ramshackle shelters dotting the landscape with little sense or organization. Here and there, there were paths forming, where the passage of hundreds of people were tramping down grass and disturbing the earth. Crews of people working in groups to erect basic shelters, bringing down trees and reducing them to basic components that they could form into shelters.
I felt a stirring, a mix of emotions, at seeing that.
Looking at them, I could almost sense that they were blissfully unaware. They didn’t know how badly we’d lost in our initial foray, or their attitudes would be different. There wasn’t anything like television or radio to spread the word. There would only be word of mouth.
Had someone told them, only for the masses to dismiss it as hearsay? Dismissing it because they didn’t want to believe we were well and truly fucked? Or had the word simply failed to spread, with enough people keeping quiet, believing that it wouldn’t do any good for people to know?
They were lucky, to be able to face the end of the world without full knowledge of what we were up against. Without the knowledge of what Scion was, or the looming, patient presence of the two Endbringers on Earth Bet.
It was arrogant, even condescending, but I felt a kind of warmth in the center of my chest when I looked at the people down there, like a parent might feel for a child, accompanying a sort of pity.
And somehow, when I pictured the people going to work, sweating, dirty, hungry and scared, getting eaten alive by flies, selflessly carrying out barn raisings to give shelter to the old, the infirm and the very young, I couldn’t help but picture my dad in their midst. It was the sort of thing he’d do.
Nobody had explicitly said he’d died, and I’d gone out of my way
not to ask. Still, I felt how wet my eyes were when I blinked. No tears, but my eyes were wet.
I could envision Charlotte down there. Sierra. Forrest. The kids, Ephraim, Mason, Aiden, Kathy and Mai, I imagined, would be bringing water to the people hard at work.
Except Sierra had other duties, and the orphan children from my territory were older. The kids would be doing basic jobs by now, overseeing new batches of kids with the errands, sweeping, and other stuff in that vein. Still, it was a mental picture that defied logic, like seeing my dad down there. I pictured them with the water bottles.
I shook my head a little to rid myself of the mental image, and in the doing, I stirred myself from the daydreaming entirely. I was still standing at the foot of the ramp.
“Lost in thought?” Tattletale asked.
“Sorry,” I said. I turned to make my way up the ramp, Tattletale keeping pace beside me. Rachel had already settled in, lying on a bench, Bastard lying on the ground just below her. Imp had settled outside in the grass, her head turned towards what would have been the south end of the city, if the city existed in this world.
“No need to apologize. Constructive thought? Strategy?”
“No. Not constructive at all,” I said. “Thinking about the people.”
“The people?” Tattletale asked. “We keep telling them to split up, that we’ll give them portals to different spots around Gimel, or to other Earths. The ones down there are the ones that refuse to go. Sitting there, clustered into a massive target for Scion, the Endbringers, or the Yàngbǎn to take out.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Everything I’ve said in the past stands. Humans are idiots. They’re selfish and injust and unfair, they’re violent and clumsy and petty and shortsighted. Don’t get me wrong. Every part of that applies to me, too. I’m not setting myself above them on any level.”
“Mm,” Tattletale responded.
I began gathering the components for my suit. I’d wear the same thing I did to the fight against Scion. Just needed the individual parts.
“But at the end of the day, sometimes humanity isn’t so bad.”
“Sometimes,” she said. “Took me a while to realize that. The more you find out, the uglier things tend to look. But you keep looking, and it’s not all bad at the end.”
I nodded, reaching into my pocket to get the little tube of pepper spray I’d claimed from my ruined costume. I moved it into the belt of the new costume, then began stripping out of the casual clothes I wore.
I paused when I had my shirt off and my hair more or less in order, holding the bundle against my chest.
“I want to save them,” I said, surprising myself with the emotion in my voice.
“Scary thing is,” Tattletale said, “I know what you mean. Most times, I’m just not that fond of people. Seen enough ugliness in them that I don’t… care? No. That’s wrong. I care, I cared, past tense. But I didn’t… mind, if something happened to them. That’s closer to the mark.”
I nodded. I wasn’t surprised at that.
“But we’re getting to this point where I want to do something for them like I wanted to do something for you. Probably a bad omen.”
“No,” I said, quiet, as I strapped on armor. I looked at her. “Do you regret reaching out to me?”
“No,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean it was all right, know what I mean?”
I nodded.
Tattletale gave me a pat on the back before making her way to the bench opposite Rachel, grabbing a laptop and lying down with her head and shoulders resting against a bulkhead.
Belt on. I hesitated before donning my mask, but I pulled it on anyways, then clasped it behind the neck, unrolling the bit from the body-portion to bury the clasp.
Then I pulled on the spare flight pack.
Depending on how things went, I might not get the chance to charge it again, to refuel the Dragonfly or anything in that vein.
If Scion or the Endbringers didn’t kill us in the coming handful of days, we’d eventually run out of fuel. Communications would falter, and we’d run through stores of food, medicine and other amenities. There was no way to establish new supplies as fast as we needed them.
We’d only been able to evacuate with limited supplies. Then there were the supplies we’d brought over in advance. Gimel was one of the more fortunate Earths for that.
I checked my armor, then tightened the straps. Maybe a bit tighter than necessary, but I wasn’t going to stress over it.
I opened and closed my hand. It felt weird, still, but not so much that it would be debilitating.
“Doorway,” I said. “To Panacea.”
The doorway unfolded, and noise poured forth from the other side. I got Imp’s attention with a swirl of butterflies, then drew the other bugs in the area to me. Once Imp was inside the Dragonfly, I bid the ramp to close.
The rear door of the Dragonfly was still slowly shutting as we passed through the doorway and into the center of what looked like a makeshift hospital.
The walls seemed to be rough granite in varying colors, surprisingly thick and old. Bricks and blocks three feet across, some with cracks here and there. There were even tendrils of grass or occasional flowers growing in some of the deeper crevices. The ‘windows’ were openings five feet by ten feet wide, with glass set into frames that had clearly been added as a late addition.
The area was flooded with people, talking, shouting, whimpering, crying.
Patients.
People had been burned, cut, bruised, their limbs crushed, faces shattered. There were wounds I couldn’t imagine were anything but parahuman made. They were laid out on beds and sat on stone chairs, crammed so close together they were practically shoulder to shoulder.
Panacea appeared. She was rubbing wet hands as though she’d just washed them. Long sleeves were rolled up, her hair tied back. Unlike what Canary had suggested, she was leaner as a result of her stay in the Birdcage. She was followed by a man with hair that had been combed into a sharp part, a needle-thin mustache and heavy bags under his eyes. Something in his bearing… he was a cape.
She walked by a row of people, and they extended hands. Her fingers touched each of theirs for only a moment, while she didn’t give them even a glance.
“Dad,” she said, stopping.
A man at the side of the room stood straighter. Marquis. His hair was long enough to drape over his shoulders, his face clean-shaven by contrast. He had a fancy-looking jacket folded over one arm, and a white dress shirt that had fine lines of black lace at the collar and the sleeves he’d rolled up his arms. Two ostentatious rings dangled from a fine chain around his neck; the chain had a locket on it, suggesting he’d added the rings as an afterthought. To keep them out of the way while he worked, perhaps.
“What is it, Amelia?”
For another man, the combination of physical traits and the style of dress might have led to someone mistaking them for a woman. They might have come across as effeminate.
Marquis didn’t. Not really. When he’d spoken, his voice had been masculine, deep, confident. The cut of his shoulders and chin, his narrow hips, was enough that I couldn’t expect anyone to mistake him for a woman. I wasn’t the type to go for older guys, I wasn’t even the type to go for effeminate guys. But I could see where women would go for Marquis.
“Broken bones here. Shattered femur. Some bone is exposed. Are you occupied?”
“Nothing critical,” Marquis said. “It won’t be comfortable, fixing that.”
Panacea touched the patient’s hand again. “He’ll be pain-free for twenty minutes.”
“That’s enough time. Thank you, my dear.”
Marquis crossed paths with Panacea on his way to the patient. He laid a hand on her shoulder in passing.
I watched her reach one hand up to her upper arm, touching a tattoo. She took in a deep breath, exhaled, and then moved on.
She got two paces before she finally noticed us, stopping in her tracks.
“Yo,” Tattlet
ale said.
“Is there a problem?” the tidy man beside Panacea asked.
“Old acquaintances,” Panacea said, her stare hard.
“Enemies?”
“One enemy,” she said, her voice soft. “I wasn’t exactly looking forward to seeing you again, Tattletale.”
“Sorry,” Tattletale said.
“I can deal with this, if it’s what you require,” the tidy man said.
“No, Spruce. You probably couldn’t. Don’t worry about it. Think you could double-check on things in the back? The equipment?”
“I will,” the tidy man said. He turned and strode from the lobby of the makeshift hospital.
Panacea closed the distance.
“You do the talking,” Tattletale whispered. I nodded a fraction by way of response.
“So?” Panacea asked. Her eyes roved over us, taking in details.
“I wanted to thank you for the fix,” I said. I raised a hand.
“You tried to help me at a bad time. It didn’t take, but you tried,” she said.
“Ah.”
“A lot of people invested in your survival. Caught me off guard. Used to be I was the golden child, but I wasn’t lucky enough to have anyone there to catch me when I fell.”
“Looks like Marquis caught you,” Tattletale said.
Panacea glanced at her dad, who was looking at us with one eyebrow slightly raised.
“Maybe,” she said. “I thought you were a hero now. You’re running with the old gang?”
“Gang is such an outmoded word,” Imp said. “So small. There’s gotta be a better way to put it. Ruling the roost with the old warlords again, back atop Mount Olympus once more.”
“Shh,” Tattletale hushed her. Then, after a pause, she whispered “Olympus? Where are you getting this?“
“Not a hero, not a villain. Just trying to get by,” I said. “Sticking with the people I know best. People I trust.”
“I see. We’re trying to get by, too. Twelve doctors, twenty nurses, me, my father and what remains of my father’s old gang. They were sending the worst of the wounded our way while we tried to get set up to accommodate larger numbers. Then the Yàngbǎn hit a settlement. We’ve been flooded ever since.”