by John McCrae
We passed through the area the Pendragon had cleared. One small ship against what had to be thirty Yàngbǎn members. They didn’t move, but flickered, existing as scarce smudges and streaks of black and an odd midnight blue from the regions of their heads. They cast out more smudges in matching colors with their image generation powers, turned invisible for one or two seconds at a time when they saw opportunities to catch refugees off guard. Some merely killed. Others slashed at eyes or ears, removed hands. Butchered.
What would the C.U.I. want with scores of butchered people?
It wasn’t really the fault of the individual Yàngbǎn members. They were brainwashed, subsumed into this collective of shared powers, their identities erased.
But that didn’t make their actions forgivable.
The Simurgh followed behind the Dragonfly, moving each wing until it was pointed straight behind her as she sailed through the narrow, oddly-shaped portal.
When she unfolded her wings, extending each until a veritable halo of them surrounded her, a complete circle, I could feel my heart skip a beat.
“We need to give her orders,” Tattletale said.
I nodded, mustering my swarm into a group large enough to communicate.
But there was no need. She flew past us.
The singing had died down, but it welled up at full strength. I almost staggered.
Rubble began to peel away from the demolished settlement beneath us. Metal, bombs, pieces of structures.
As she reached less damaged areas, she picked up construction vehicles.
The fragments of metal around her were like a dense cloud, almost obscuring her, massive wings and all.
The singing increased in pitch.
A bomb detonated in the midst of the storm of debris, breaking up a bulldozer in the process.
Below her, the scene had gone still. Yàngbǎn raider and civilian alike had gone still. The smudges consolidated into forms.
Not the same Yàngbǎn I’d encountered before. These ones wore similar outfits, but there were bodysuits beneath, no bare skin. The multifaceted gem designs that covered their faces were dark blue, their costumes black.
Infiltrators. A sub-set. One of five sub-groups, apparently.
The debris settled into a single shape, drawing together. Nothing welded, nothing screwed in together. Merely a crude device, held together by telekinesis.
A fat, snub-nosed cannon, twice as long as she was tall. She fired it, and the resulting bullet was nearly ten feet across, a sphere of hot metal.
It crashed into a trio of Yàngbǎn.
She used her telekinesis to sweep it off to the right. The misshapen bullet was compressed into a rough sphere in the time it took to soar down a long road, smashing through two members of the Yàngbǎn. A bystander was clipped, spinning violently before collapsing in a heap. Shattered arm and ribs, if not dead.
I bit my lip.
“Don’t injure civilians,” I communicated through the swarm.
She gave no sign she’d listened. Her telekinesis grabbed four members of the Yàngbǎn who’d gotten too close, lifting them by their costumes or by some other debris that had surrounded them.
As if launched by catapults, they flew straight up, where they disappeared into the clouds above.
I winced as the screaming increased in intensity by another notch.
Did she have to do that?
I felt a touch of paranoia, not just at the idea, but at the fact that I’d been concerned. Paranoia over the fact I was feeling paranoid.
The Simurgh had crafted another gun. They floated around her like satellites, firing only in those intermittent moments when she’d formed and loaded the necessary ammunition.
“Those are my guns,” Kid Win reported over the comms. “Bigger, but mine.“
I didn’t like that she was screaming. It set an ugly tone to this whole venture.
I really didn’t like that we couldn’t direct her that well. We were ending this confrontation decisively, we were probably even doing it more cleanly and with less damage to civilians than there would be if we’d handled it ourselves.
But we’d brought the Simurgh here and people were getting hurt as collateral damage. That was on us, everything else aside.
“I… don’t know what to feel right now,” Imp said.
“It doesn’t feel good,” I said.
“I wish I knew what I’d said that got her on board,” Tattletale said. “I went with the shotgun approach, trying to see what stuck… and now I don’t know what to leverage if we need to do it again.”
“You’re so whiny,” Rachel said. “You say we need her help, we got it. Good. Maybe now we can fight.”
“Mm,” Lung grunted. “This is true. But I’ve seen what happens if you do something like this, something big, and you fall. You fall hard.”
I nodded at that. “Wise words, Lung. Well said.”
“Do not talk to me,” he rumbled.
I only shook my head.
“Fuck me, you guys are serious?” Shadow Stalker murmured. “This is good? This is luck. There’s a reason I stick to my fists and my crossbow. They’re reliable. This Endbringer thing most definitely isn’t.”
“Of course it isn’t,” I said. “But you know that whole saying, finding a boyfriend? Young, smart, wealthy, pick two? We don’t get to pick two, here. Options at the end of the world: clean, safe, effective, pick one.”
“We got Bohu, but she doesn’t move fast at all,” Tattletale said. “Leviathan’s on his way to pay the Elite a visit. Collateral damage could be ugly there.”
“It isn’t sustainable,” I said. “Somehow, I don’t think they’re going to sit still if we ask them to. What happens if we run out of enemies to attack? If we need to put Leviathan to work and there aren’t any targets that don’t involve even more collateral damage than we’ll see when he attacks the Elite?”
“People are going to fall in line damn fast,” Tattletale said.
“Probably,” I said. “Or they’ll run for the hills.”
“Win-win,” Tattletale said. “We were saying we needed people to split up more.”
The Simurgh opened fire, striking out with three guns, striking a neighborhood that had already been reduced to dust and flame by a series of bomb blasts.
“Somehow,” Imp commented, “This doesn’t scream win-win to me.”
I nodded.
“Nothing saying this isn’t another clever plan, set up to fuck with us, destroy our last shreds of hope,” I said.
The Yàngbǎn were opening fire. Projectiles that moved slowly, splitting in the air until there was a virtual storm of them. Had they been aimed at the Dragonfly, we wouldn’t have been able to dodge. The Simurgh flew between the bullets like they weren’t even a concern. Debris blocked the shots.
In the midst of her maneuvering, she drew together a third gun from the storm of debris.
Then she somersaulted, heels over head as she rapidly shifted direction.
In the moment it took her to build acceleration, she looked directly at the camera.
Directly at me.
She’d heard me, she understood, and she had responded.
28.05
At least she’s stopped screaming.
The Simurgh floated in the air, remaining in a kind of stasis, much like she’d been in when we’d approached her, but there was an entire rig of devices surrounding her. A halo, almost, studded with guns and cannons at regular intervals. The sky behind her was overcast, clouds rolling past us with the strong winds, and mingled dust and smoke slowly shifting beneath her, brown-gray. The juxtaposition was eerie, the clouds of the sky moving faster than the smoke and dust, and the Simurgh between the two, utterly still.
On TV, back in the days when we’d had television, there had been the various talk shows, news segments and interviews where the Endbringers would come up. I’d listened, even though television wasn’t really my thing. I’d heard people theorize on the Simurgh’s scream, wondering out
loud about just how many of the disasters that followed in her wake were her, and how many were our own overblown paranoia.
It helped to remind myself that I wasn’t the only one who was debating the possibilities. I’d listened for too long. Was I tainted? If this was all a trap, then I might already be seeded with some destructive or disastrous impulse. Should I be hypervigilant? Should I not stress over it?
It was a debate millions of individuals had maintained amongst themselves, in the wake of the Simurgh’s attacks. Invariably, there wasn’t a right answer. If she wanted to fuck with me, there wasn’t anything I could do. Anything could and would fit into her game plan.
It wasn’t just me, either. I was very aware of Lung’s presence, and of Shadow Stalker’s.
The Yàngbǎn were dealt with. There were two major raiding parties, if we judged solely by the colors of their masks, and three or four other sub-groups tasked with different functions. One raiding party was annihilated, and I could hope the Endbringer’s presence would scare off the other group.
There was an upside of sorts, in that the Yàngbǎn didn’t have access to Cauldron’s doormaking parahuman. It meant they moved exclusively through the portals that dotted Earth Bet, the same portals the refugees had used, which some stragglers were still using. Various factions and governments were gathering small armies at each of the remaining portals. One Earth was already lost to us, destroyed by Scion in the first day he’d been traveling universes. The South American refugees who had fled through there would be either eradicated or reduced to such a small population that it barely mattered. Earth Zayin, too, was gone, subsumed by the Sleeper.
Still, a dozen Earths remained, with people scattered all over them. The C.U.I. had claimed one, and they’d be ready for retaliation, maintaining a defensive line.
I doubted that defensive line would hold if an Endbringer decided to march through. No, they would be gathering their forces in anticipation of a possible attack. Good.
I took in my surroundings. One ramshackle settlement, more than half of it obliterated by bombs. Relatively little in the way of collateral damage on the Simurgh’s part.
Psychological damage? Quite possible. The Simurgh was a terror weapon, her very presence enough to rout armies, and these refugees weren’t an army. Morale had been low to start with.
I sighed. We’d scared people off, and they’d fled to the hills, quite literally. In a movie, this would have been the moment that people slowly began returning, the orchestral music swelling as they overcame their fear.
Ridiculous, in context. They’d hide for days, and they’d flee the second they saw the Simurgh again.
This wasn’t a case where we’d be able to stop the imminent threat and then recruit a select few people from among the survivors.
“Yo,” Tattletale said. She had to run to get up the last stretch of the little hill that overlooked Tav’s primary settlement.
“Yo,” I responded.
“Total deadpan? You can be a little excited,” she said.
“I am. Quiet terror is a kind of excitement, isn’t it? Pulse pounding, heart in my throat, and I’m so tense I’m getting a headache, because I’m almost afraid to think.”
“You think I’m not? Fuck. There’s very few things that genuinely terrify me. One of them is hanging out right above us, building something, and I can’t even read her, which makes her one of the few things out there that surprise me.”
Building something? I looked up.
True enough, the Simurgh had her hands in front of her, and was manipulating debris in between her hands.
“What is she-”
‘I don’t know,” Tattletale said, interrupting me. “What do you want me to do? Ask her?”
I shook my head. “How are the Pendragon’s occupants doing?”
“Ship shape, but Defiant’s wanting to be careful. He’s demanding they get triple-checked. Kind of funny, seeing that from him.”
I shrugged. It would be a bigger leap for Tattletale to see the changes in him than for me to see it. I’d been acquainted with him over the past two years, while she only saw him here and there.
“They’ll be up for it if we have a fight?” I asked.
Tattletale shrugged. “For sure. Scratches, bruises, but that’s about it. We’re down to fight at a moment’s notice. Sad thing is, the worst thing Scion could do to us is wait a month or two before he comes back.”
“True,” I agreed.
Not a pleasant thought. If he took a leave of absence while we were trying to wrangle the Endbringers, odds were we’d get taken out by other factions or by the Endbringers themselves.
“I dunno,” Imp said. I managed to not be startled as she appeared. “Killing us all is pretty awful.”
“Awful, but not awful in the ‘let humanity destroy itself’ sort of way,” I pointed out. “Let us come up with a plan for fighting back, then disappearing? Letting that plan fester and fuck us over?”
Imp shrugged. “So? What do we do?”
“Handle what we can,” I said. “Let’s go talk to the others and hash out a plan of action.”
The three of us made our way down the hill to the settlement. In the doing, we passed through a darker patch where the Simurgh’s wingspan blocked out a portion of the sun. What little sunlight could pass through the cloud cover, anyways. I glanced up and saw her in shadow, the light behind her outlining her body, hair, feathers and the halo of improvised weapons.
Defiant had his helmet off. His hair had grown in just a little, but wasn’t much more than a buzz cut, stubble on one side of his face was much the same. But for the lack of stubble on his cheek, I might not have noticed his face was partially a prosthetic. A gift from the Nine.
“It worked,” he said.
“More or less,” I responded. “One civilian death and seven civilian injuries in the fighting, the death and two of the injuries were the Simurgh’s fault.”
“Only that many,” Defiant said.
“She was letting us know she could,” Tattletale said. “Which is something we really should pay attention to, so long as we’re trying to make sense of Endbringer psychology. I’m wondering if you could say that they’re primarily a warped super-ego, devoid of any real ego or advanced id. Built in codes and rulesets, not human social rules, but still rules established by a creator.”
“Sigmund Freud,” Defiant said. “I remember being back in University. Second year psychology elective. The professor said one word, ‘Freud‘, and the entire auditorium of students exploded in laughter.”
Tattletale smiled. “You’re calling my analysis into question?”
“If you’re basing it on the Freudian structural model, yes.”
“Freud was big on the whole Oedipus, Electra thing. Mommy issues, daddy issues. I’d say if we have any understanding of the Endbringers at all, there’s definitely something going on there. Not sexual, but you get what I mean.”
“You’re way overstating my intelligence,” Imp said. “I don’t get what you mean at all.”
“The Endbringers have a fucked up connection with whoever made them,” I said. “Be it Eidolon or someone else.”
“I understand that.”
“So if they’re unmoored from whatever’s anchoring them to reality,” Tattletale said, “What’s motivating them now?”
“A better question,” I said, “Is… well, who the fuck is she following?”
“Us,” Imp said. “You guys are overthinking this.”
I sighed. “She is following us, probably. Leviathan was following the Azazel, Simurgh followed the Dragonfly. Both maintained consistent speeds, matching pace, keeping a short distance. What I’m asking is, which of us, exactly, does the Simurgh follow?”
“Who’s in control of her, for the time being?” Tattletale summed up the question.
“There’s an easy way to check that,” Defiant murmured. Odd, that his voice had a vaguely mechanical twang to it even with his helmet off. “Each person that was on
the Dragonfly walks in a different direction, and we see who she follows.”
I frowned, glancing skyward for a moment. No sign of any movement or response from the Simurgh.
“What?” Tattletale asked.
“I wouldn’t say anyone’s in control of her,” I said. “Because I don’t think anyone is in control of her except her, and-”
I stopped there.
“What?” Tattletale asked, again.
“When she was first attacking the settlement and I was musing aloud at the possibility of betrayal, she very deliberately looked at me. It was a communication, all on its lonesome. Letting me know the whole betrayal thing was a possibility, that she had some self-volition, and letting me know she was listening.”
“We know she hears. We know she’s aware of everything around her, present or future. Simurgh S.O.P.,” Tattletale said.
“I know,” I said. “But I’m not just saying she heard me. I’m saying she was listening. She’s hearing every word we say here and she’s paying attention to all of it, processing it, applying it, maybe.”
“You may be reading too much into a momentary eye contact,” Defiant said. “I’m watching the video footage in question right now… yes. I see what you’re talking about.”
“Right?” I asked. “So you agree?”
But he shook his head. “I suspect It’s a bad sign if you’re getting paranoid over this. It’s counterproductive, and the moment your fear or second-guessing is detrimental enough, you need to step down and walk away.”
I took a deep breath, then sighed. “I’m fine.”
“If there’s an issue…”
“No issue. All I’m saying, the only reason I brought this up, is because I don’t want to get on her bad side. I’d very much appreciate it if we treated her with due respect. Let’s not upset her by talking about her in a negative light. Electra complexes, talking about who’s controlling her, or experimenting on her. I don’t think it’s that easy to understand her, and we’re only going to upset her if we keep going down that road.”
“She doesn’t get upset,” Defiant said. “Didn’t we just spend an inordinate amount of time talking about how Endbringers don’t have conventional emotions?”