by John McCrae
I looked at Cuff, who was watching me intently. She looked even more intent and focused than Grace did.
Then again, she was a little more invested in how Golem was doing than most.
“Yeah,” I said. “Probably.”
“It’s shitty,” she said. “Both Golem and you, drifting away.”
“I know, and it feels shitty,” I said.
“Then that’s consolation enough, for me,” Grace said. She relaxed a little, then glanced at Cuff.
“I’m not really the type to nurse grudges,” Cuff said. “I just want Golem thinking straight again. He took it hard. So you’ll get my forgiveness if you go talk to him.”
“I think that’s something I can do,” I answered her.
She smiled. “He’s at the phone bank, near the station, if you want to find him.”
Now?
But Cuff was smiling, looking so intent.
Weaponized niceness.
“Right,” I said. I turned to go.
And I could see people moving, running.
I felt a pit swell in my stomach.
“No,” Imp said, following my line of sight. She could see squads getting into formation. In the distance, the aircraft that had been moving refugees were turning around, coming back to us. “No, no. We had such a good joke going, don’t you dare ruin it.”
Romp returned to us, breaking into a run to close the remainder of the distance. “Someone’s saying he’s hitting Samech. It’s one of the Earths Cauldron was going to watch over. There’s only Dragon, the Guild and some Protectorate guys there.”
“Let’s move,” I said. “Through the portal. We’ll use the Dragonfly. Faster than waiting for another ship. Rachel, look for doctor baby-talk, if we can grab something from him before we leave, great, but let’s not dawdle.”
There were nods all around.
I could see the other heroes. Miss Militia and Glaistig Uaine. Revel and Exalt. Protectorate teams, sub-teams of the Suits, including the non-combat teams of the Hearts and Cups.
People hurried to organize, pulling on costume pieces they’d left off and checking weapons, clearing out of the open spaces where shadows grew as the aircraft descended.
One by one, the ships began to take off, flying through the tall, narrow portal.
Three ships, then four.
But the fifth didn’t take off. I reached out with my swarm, trying to catch what people were talking about, to make sense of the situation, but everyone important was already on a ship.
King of Hearts was the only person of any meaningful rank who spoke the same language I did and who wasn’t mobilizing to leave. The leader of the Meisters, Vornehm, was giving orders in German. A scary-looking Master class cape with an army of clay men carrying tinker weapons was ordering other people around with the same harsh voice he was commanding his own troops.
But there was no explanation of why more ships weren’t taking off.
Had the fight already ended?
“Keep moving,” I said, ordering the teams forward. Tattletale will know.
As confusion descended, people started falling back into their previous state, gathering in clusters of familiar people. It almost seemed like we were the only group with direction, pushing against a milling crowd. We weren’t, but the illusion was there.
And that same effect made it possible to see when the crowd did find direction, a common, mutual interest. Heads turned, chins raised. People found postures where their feet were set apart, as if ready to move at a moment’s notice.
Scion. Here. Floating above the bay like he’d floated above the ocean in his first appearance.
He’s targeting us, I realized. Two of our organized settlements in as many minutes?
His hands hung at his sides. The golden light that radiated from him cleaned his clothes and hair, but there was enough blood on his costume that the light wasn’t rendering it as pristine as it should. His eye sockets were dark, with the way his forehead blocked the sun’s light. That same sunlight made the edges of his hair and body glow with the light that wasn’t completely blocked.
He didn’t even raise his hand before he fired. Lights no bigger than basketballs streaked forward, leaving trails glittering behind them.
Two of Dragon’s ships detonated violently. Occupants dead or grievously injured, people in the area of the craft wounded by the fallout.
By the time I’d turned my head to see his follow-up, Scion had closed the distance, moving right into our midst.
Capes with reflexes better than mine were already reacting, throwing a multitude of effects in his way. He plunged through the defenses like they weren’t even there.
Something got in his way, but he flew around it without a second thought. He stopped right in front of a cape. Quite possibly the cape that had stalled him momentarily. A dark-skinned man in gray.
A swirling gray effect swelled between him and the target. He struck it with a glowing hand, and the effect distorted, growing thin. Another strike, and the effect dissipated.
Other capes were hurling effects at him. Most glanced off.
He caught his target around the throat. Didn’t squeeze.
But the golden light began to eat into the target’s body and costume. Scion let the man drop.
Not a scream. Only twitching, frantic thrashing as the golden light continued to consume.
Foil raised her arbalest. I could see our entire group tense as she raised it, Parian’s hands going to her mouth.
A moment later, Parian’s cloth was unfurling from behind her back. Rachel was making her dogs grow, while Cuff was manipulating a shotput into a blade like the one from a circular saw.
For my part, I began drawing the bugs into decoys, sending them into the air.
Oblivious to it all, Foil took aim, then ran her hand along the bolt she’d loaded in place.
I could see her draw in a breath. I’d taken marksmanship classes. Squeeze the trigger as you exhale.
The shot flew through the air.
Scion wheeled around and caught it.
It wasn’t just his costume, I could see. All the lines of his body, his hands, lines that made it so he didn’t look wholly artificial, they were filled with the detritus of smoke and blood and other grit, and the golden light had only washed the surface clean. The deepest cracks held the remainder. It made fine lines look more like crags.
I was almost glad that it took away from his human appearance.
He let the arbalest’s bolt drop to the ground.
His eyes were on Foil.
A golden light swelled in his hand.
We spread out, but Foil didn’t even flinch. Even as Cuff backed away, Foil reached out to touch the sawblade, imbuing it with power.
Scion reached out, and Parian used her power, encircling Foil with the end of a length of cloth. Not an animal, only an arm.
In the instant Scion loosed the bolt of light, Parian flung Foil away. Not a simple throw, but a reckless, inhumanly strong one.
Foil was removed from the battle. Sent beyond what would have been the outskirts of the city, if we were in Bet, cast out in the direction of the Bay itself, until she was only a speck.
The bolt hit ground, fifty or sixty feet behind us. Other people died instead. People I didn’t know.
No longer interested in Foil, Scion turned to the nearest cape, lunging.
Cuff threw her circular blade. Without even looking, Scion batted it aside, striking an unaffected part towards the middle. His attention was on a cape, and he swiped a glowing hand through the cape’s abdomen.
What didn’t burn spilled forth. His screams were joined by that of a friend, another cape who screamed in horror over what had happened to him. Scion very deliberately walked past this other cape to attack someone else.
Picking us off, choosing targets.
Maximizing pain and suffering over raw destruction.
Experimenting.
And there was precious little we could do about it.
The Simurgh was passing through the portal, and people who’d been trying to flee to Earth Bet were now scattering, trying to flee both the Endbringer and Scion at the same time.
Horribly timed, as entrances went. Our best hope was that he’d keep toying with us, that enough time would pass that capes stationed at the other major portals could use the fast-travel routes to get to us.
Something like an Endbringer was all too likely to change his mind.
It’s the beginning of the end.
29.02
Oh, how small we were, in the grand scheme of it all.
Our planet was but a speck in the midst of the milky way galaxy, which was a speck in the midst of the known universe. We were fighting to save it, and yet it could disappear without anyone in the nearest solar system even noticing.
Small, insignificant. Little more than ants before a giant.
A pencil-thin beam lanced out from his fingertips. A sweep of his hand, waist-level, and it cut through the crowd. Cut through thighs, knees, calves, feet.
Swept towards us.
No time to act, to save anyone. Only to get out of the way. I jumped, activating the flight pack. I looked to my teammates, my breath trapped in my throat as I waited to see who was hit.
Parian still had the ‘stuffed’ arm connected to a nearby building. A sweep of the arm caught a solid twenty people, catching them in the bend of the cloth and lifting them off the ground as the beam passed by. Rachel, mounted, wasn’t so lucky. The beam caught three of the dog’s legs.
Rachel fell, tumbling to the ground. The people Parian had tossed aside, Parian included, fell in heaps, landing awkwardly.
But alive, all but one of them untouched.
In the chaos that followed, I could see the blood. This wasn’t a beam that seared, like some lasers did, and it didn’t cauterize as it cut. It disintegrated, leaving arteries free to pump blood out onto the grass and dirt.
A number were laying there in shock, but there were some who were fighting, even as they bled out. Scion was momentarily caught up in a storm of shards that seemed to give him pause.
The Suits were among the injured, and King of Cups was patching up the damage. Limbs were replaced with pitch black simulacrums that caught the light in odd ways that only highlighted the very edges.
I saw Lung among the artificial limb recipients. He’d stayed in Brockton Bay in the company of Miss Militia while the rest of us had said goodbyes and made arrangements, so it wasn’t puzzling that he was here. No, the confusing bit was that the fight had only been going for two or so minutes, and he was already transformed halfway to the state he’d been in when the Undersiders had first rescued me on the rooftop. Transforming five or ten times as fast?
He’d been in the company of Panacea… had she done something?
Canary had said Lung had avoided picking fights during his stay in the Birdcage, relying only on his reputation. Maybe this was a one-shot deal.
It didn’t take the capes King of Cups had healed very long to get their bearings, scrambling to get away, or backing away as they used their abilities. A cape with deep black skin and an overly tall white helmet was sliding groups around like a chess player slid a piece into position. Another cape, just beside him, was altering the battlefield, getting obstacles out of the way. The ground swallowed walls, supplies and vehicles like it was suddenly water, rippling as they dropped beneath the surface, then changing, becoming solid once more.
Cover didn’t work as a concept, I supposed, when his attacks cut through it so easily. Still, I wasn’t sure it was the brightest move. There had to be a more optimal way of rearranging the battlefield. Putting some people on higher ground and some on lower, without limiting their ability to dodge.
A glance over my shoulder showed the Simurgh standing by the portal, wings folded so the ends were aimed at Scion. She had reconfigured her halo, and every single one of the guns were pointed in the same direction.
But she didn’t shoot. She waited.
My swarm-decoys massed in the air around Scion, some dividing into further copies. He continued to ignore them, targeting specific capes. A sphere of light was tossed in Glaistig Uaine’s direction. She didn’t move or fight back. Instead, she was saved by the guy with the tall helmet, shifted out of the way. Bishop, Chessmaster, Curling-guy?
Unruffled, she called three spirits forth, then took flight, positioning herself high in the sky, entirely out of the fight.
Running?
Scion attacked again, picking different targets. King of Cups created more phantom limbs, an array of twelve or so arms of varying size that spread out from his shoulders, and caught a teammate’s hand. He was pulled out of the way, but the sphere swerved in the air, drifting his way. It crashed into one of his shoulders, and dashed the arms to smithereens.
King of Cups tumbled, then used his power to patch up the damage.
I wasn’t sure how that worked. The lines of pain on his face seemed to ease as his power replaced the injured parts. Was there some sort of interaction there? A connection of nerves, arteries and veins?
Queen of Swords had a shortsword in hand, stepping forward as if to shield King of Cups with her own body. Her sword seemed more ceremonial than useful. I’d seen capes that used props to focus their powers, and she appeared to be one of them. As she swung the sword, lines of light were cast out around her, connecting to various capes in the crowd.
Chaos, really. So much going on, so many capes, all trying to focus on a single target. A sphere of darkness made contact with series of ribbons that spiraled around one another, and they were both consumed in a spiral of intermingled effects well before reaching Scion.
Someone was taking my cue, filling the sky with what looked like stone statues of capes, stiff with arms at their sides. The battlefield, the crowd, the sky, it was impossible to keep track of it all. Even if I sacrificed decoys, I still had to think about what was going on. I’d be able to sense that bugs were dying here, that something was moving from one point to the next, but I wouldn’t necessarily know who was doing what. What did the ribbons do? What was Queen of Swords doing with her power, connecting capes?
Worst of all, for everything we were doing, Scion wasn’t reacting. He wasn’t getting seriously hurt, and he wasn’t taking any of the bait.
I dropped out of the sky, landing beside Rachel with a little more force than was maybe smart. Conserved fuel, and got me out of Scion’s line of sight, but I felt a twang in my new right leg that suggested maybe it wasn’t as flexible as it should have been.
“He’s bleeding out,” Rachel said.
It was Bastard, wounded, three of his massive legs severed, blood forming a ridiculously large puddle beneath us.
“He’s safe inside, isn’t he? The smaller, real version of Bastard?”
“Same blood in both of them. The outside won’t fall apart before he loses too much blood,” she said. “I think.”
“Then leave him,” I said. “Go look for babytalk. Get one of the Lab Rat doses, bring it back.”
I could see the stress on her expression.
“Go,” I said. “I’ll look after him.”
Rachel bolted. I turned, saw a cape lying on the ground with her eyes open, staring at the sky.
Paradoxical, stupid, selfish, arrogant, and short-sighted, to even think about giving my attention to a dog -to a wolf- before trying to revive the woman. Still, I took my knife to her cloak and wadded it up to stop the blood loss. When I couldn’t cover enough space with my hands, I used my body to press it against the site of the injury.
I told myself she was beyond saving, that other injured capes were being helped by King of Cups, and that Bastard wasn’t getting the same treatment, that he wouldn’t.
But the reality was that I’d cast aside the
strict ideas of right and wrong, that I’d told myself I’d be Taylor instead of Weaver or Skitter, and this was what I wanted to do.
Because I was a hypocrite, I was selfish, arrogant, short-sighted and even stupid at times. Because I could only face this situation with what I knew, and I knew that Bitch wouldn’t fight any further if we just let Bastard die, and if our team started falling apart, I wouldn’t know what to do at all.
Lung limped forward, not to fight Scion, but to shout something. His voice was nearly drowned out in the noise. Not entirely, it was too loud to be entirely masked, but nearly. “Remove it.”
I didn’t follow his meaning until bugs moved past his legs, touching the hard surface of the artificial leg. Unchanged, unaltered by his power. His regular leg was almost a foot longer.
The tall-helm cape slid some of the Suits out of the way. They started shouting, asking to be moved back. He responded in French.
Disorganization, a lack of coherency. A lack of organization. I clenched my jaw and did what I could to stop the blood from welling out of the stumps of Bastard’s legs.
This wasn’t a monster that was four or five stories tall. It was a single individual in a crowd, with capes using powers that would inevitably cause more harm to any bystander they accidentally struck than they could possibly deal to the intended target.
Queen of Swords touched the tip of her sword to one of the main lines of the diagram she’d created. A circular blob expanded from the point like blood welling from a prick from the blade, two-dimensional, dark blue and translucent.
She drew a gun from her hip with her free hand, aimed it at the blob and fired.
The bullet hit the blob and pushed against it, slowing down with every fraction of an inch it traveled. It came to a complete stop, the previously flat surface of the blob-portal-thing now more of a cone, poked out of shape by the bullet’s movement. For a half-second, I thought it would be like a trampoline, sending the bullet back to sender.
Then it punched through, and I could see ribbons, fire, darkness and innumerable other effects trailing behind it as it resumed normal speed.