by John McCrae
“Fair,” I said. No effect.
I let Satyr maintain the lead of the group and determine our pace as we moved forward. He had eyes on the other group with his duplicates, and he had Floret passing information to him with the subtle sign language the group had adopted. It worked; if we arrived too early, we’d be interrupting the Irregulars before they were through the steel barrier. If we arrived late, we’d be running the risk that the Doctor would be killed.
For now, I was happy to let them manage that aspect of the plan, while I focused on keeping an eye out for the inevitable stab in the back. It just didn’t flow, their attitude now, compared to how they’d tried to cover their tracks earlier. I knew who they were and I’d seen the records detailing whole strings of crimes, and I wasn’t willing to believe they were playing ball with us.
So I watched them, and Floret watched me, because her power was perfectly suited to following what my swarm was doing from moment to moment.
“I don’t like him,” Rachel murmured in my ear.
Imp leaned in to join the conversation, adding, “You do know that Leonid can hear everything that’s said in a certain area around him? There’s no point in whispering.” as if she hadn’t just found that out for herself.
“I don’t like him,” Rachel said, full volume.
“That’s not what I meant,” Imp said, a little off-guard.
“He’s arrogant, he talks too much, and he acts like Tattletale does when she’s trying to pretend she’s not in a really bad mood,” Rachel said.
“It’s a rare thing,” Satyr said, “for someone to leave me speechless. I can tell you that virtually everyone comes to like me when they get to know me.”
“Everyone likes the manipulative assholes after they’ve had a chance to do their manipulating,” Rachel said.
“I couldn’t extend that to Weaver, there, and suggest the same applies to her?”
“You could try,” Rachel said, “But then I’d have my dogs attack you.”
“Alright,” I said, stepping in. “No more of that.”
Rachel glowered at me.
“He’s a weasel,” Lung growled. “I have allied with a man who talked like he does, but it was a man of substance. Not sex and…”
“Subtlety?” Imp offered. “Scandal? Style? Sophistry?“
Where is she learning these words?
Lung only glowered at Imp.
“As substanceless a person as he might be,” I said, “Scion’s upstairs, and we have overlapping goals, so we’re allies, or as close to being allies as we’re going to get. No fighting.”
Rachel relaxed as though she’d flipped a mental switch. She snapped her fingers twice, getting her dog’s attention, and then made a gesture without moving her hand from her side, her palm facing the ground.
The dogs eased up just like she had.
I glanced at Satyr, who shrugged. His tone was light as he said, “My ego’s taking a bruising today, it seems.”
I could see the lines of his shoulders and chest, with him not wearing any armor on the upper body. Was he maybe just a bit less relaxed than Rachel at this point?
Maybe he wasn’t at ease around someone who blithely barreled past any attempts at manipulation with unbridled aggression. A point for us, maybe.
We’d reached the fourth floor. I stood by, watching for trouble from above, while the others filed through. I could see how Canary was ill-at-ease, while Shadow Stalker was impossible to read in her ghostly state, passing through the wall by the door. Cuff and Lung were both rigid, as if anticipating fights, but were confident enough to walk ahead of the rest. Golem, Rachel, and Imp seemed more in their element, hanging back while the Vegas capes passed through.
“You know what you’re doing?” Golem murmured, as he hung back with me.
I nodded. “Mostly. Just watch your back.”
“For Scion?”
“For them,” I said. “And yes, I know Leonid hears me. I know Satyr and the others are getting the cliff notes from Leonid. But they’ve got secondary goals here, and it’s worth watching out in case they try something. Even if they know we know they’re trying something.”
There were nods all around.
Four copies of the Custodian appeared before us as we made our way into the fourth floor. Each moved slightly out of sync with the others as they moved their heads. It was only when the third and fourth moved that I realized just how they were moving their heads – raising their chins to look up.
“I know, my dear,” Satyr said. “How close?”
They didn’t respond. Instead, they disappeared. First one pair, then the remaining pair.
“Second floor basement,” Satyr said. “Scion is taking his time making his way down.”
“Why?” I asked. It was too quiet. “If Scion wanted, he could have torn his way through here in a heartbeat.”
Satyr was on point as we made our way across the fourth floor. The cells here were reinforced several times over, each standalone, separated by tracts of empty space that eighteen wheeler trucks could have turned around in. Spotlights served as the only light in the area, and they were focused on the individual cells, leaving the empty space between the cells dark. Without my relay bugs, my power still didn’t quite reach the far end. A third of a mile across by a third of a mile across, maybe, with ceilings that were fifteen feet high.
The lights flickered more violently than it had upstairs or in the stairwells, but these cells seemed to be drawing on a backup power source. The lights flickered, went out, only to be turned back on, glowing a dim red, before the regular power was restored. The lighting cycled between the three states, with no rhyme or reason.
“Why?” Satyr echoed my question. I turned my attention back to him. “Why do you think he’s taking his time?”
“That’s not helpful,” I said.
“Basic reasoning,” Satyr said. “What do we have in abundance, here?”
“Capes?” Golem asked.
“Capes? Yes. But there were capes at the other battlefields. It’s very possible he’s idling because he’s taking them all to pieces, but… for however many minutes? No. What else is in abundance? Or, to phrase it better, what particular kind of cape is in abundance here, that you didn’t have at the battlefield?”
“I get the feeling you already know the answer,” I said.
He nodded, the goat-horned helm dipping low, then rising. The lights went out, then went red for a moment.
“Case fifty-threes,” Golem answered the question.
“There we go,” Satyr said. “And if you care to, you can infer further. Why? Scion is the supposed source of powers, yes? Then what are the deviants to him? If we see them as distorted people, then he sees them as…”
“Distorted powers?” Cuff answered. “Or… whatever they are to him. Distorted spawn?”
“Something foul,” Shadow Stalker spoke for the first time since we’d split up to escape the cell. “Broken, wrong, loathsome. Damaged. And no parent wants to face the fact that their kids came out less than perfect.”
The sphere Imp had tucked under one shoulder jerked a little.
“Woah,” Cuff said. “Generalizations much?”
“Tell me I’m wrong,” Shadow Stalker said. She glanced at Satyr, “I’m right. Cauldron created these deviants as a kind of psychological warfare.”
“Most definitely part of it,” Satyr said, and there was an approving note in his voice. “It’s psychological warfare… Shadow Stalker, was it?”
Shadow Stalker nodded.
“Yes, I’ve heard of you. There are other elements at play. Prey species have been known to spread their scent through an area, to confuse predators.”
“I like that analogy,” Shadow Stalker said.
“Mm hmm,” he responded, nonchalant. “So Cauldron uses these deviants as a particularly strong source of our metaphorical ‘smell’. They scatter them across the world where Cauldron is most active, the world Scion occupies, and he loses the abili
ty to sniff them out. Of course, this only works when the deviant isn’t going to draw undue attention. Either they’re calm and inclined to keep to their own, by nature, or so dangerous that they remove witnesses by default.”
My eyes moved to the sphere Imp carried. I was inclined to think she fit in the latter category.
“It makes sense,” I said. My eyes were on Shadow Stalker. She was playing into Satyr’s hands. I’d made a note to watch out for it, but this wasn’t even subtle.
They were fucking blatant about this shit, relentless. Which probably worked for them, because it eventually worked. They found a hook, an angle, maybe played it in a more subtle way, or they’d just take it and run with it.
And it was all controlled, all managed, keeping it at a level where I couldn’t call them out on it without looking like I wasn’t willing to play ball. That was fine on its own, but it put us on a bad footing. I didn’t want to be in the middle of a brawl if and when Scion made a sudden appearance.
“Cauldron capes have, according to reports, gotten responses from Scion. A pause, a momentary break in pattern, even, some say, a feeling of aversion. Powerful Cauldron capes achieve better results, deviants even more so… and if the effect scales up as Cauldron thinks it might, the extreme deviants will get an even greater result, while having powers that may have some effect on him.”
“Which makes a lot of sense,” I said, “They’re a smokescreen, maybe. Except there’s a hole in that theory.”
“There is,” Satyr said.
“He could wipe them out with one shot,” Golem said, the first to connect the dots. “He could shoot them and shoot through the floor, if he wanted to.”
“Exactly right,” Satyr said.
“Do you know why he isn’t?” I asked.
“I have guesses, nothing more,” Satyr said. “Hm. They just found a way of combining their powers. They’re breaking through the column more quickly than I thought they would. We don’t have to run, but maybe hurry a bit.”
We stepped up our pace.
“He’s on the third floor,” Satyr said. “Floor above us.”
“How do you know?” Shadow Stalker asked.
“Custodian. We’ve crossed paths, as my group ran some errands for the good Doctor. I think she likes me, even.”
I hadn’t noticed the Custodian, but I wasn’t positive I would have seen her if the appearance was brief enough.
“What’s on the third floor?” Floret asked. “I haven’t been down here.”
“The ones with names. Any cape they deemed interesting enough to keep and research. Not many left. I think they scaled down on those to focus on other things.”
Not many left. Meaning there wasn’t much standing in the way between us and Scion.
If Satyr’s group wasn’t playing us. I was less sure than I had been.
Supposedly Scion above. Who’s below?
“Who’s with the Doctor?” I asked.
“Ask her,” he said, pointing at Imp.
I glanced at Imp, who shrugged.
“In the sphere,” Satyr said.
“There’s a button on the bottom. If you depress it, you can rotate hemispheres. Counter-clockwise, please. Clockwise opens it, and I’d rather not die.”
Imp looked my way.
“Go for it,” I said.
Imp turned the sphere.
“Finally. Fresh air,” the girl inside said. She had a quiet voice. More the type of voice I’d connect to a shy librarian at a party or a sheltered preacher’s daughter in the company of boys.
“Sveta?” I asked. “We met on the oil rig.”
“She also goes by Garotte,” Satyr said. “The only reason the PRT didn’t put her down was because she’s rather hard to kill. She has quite the impressive body count.”
“Don’t say that.”
“She was part of the original invading party,” Satyr went on, ignoring her. “They attacked the Doctor, setting this whole mess in motion.”
“I could hear everything you guys were saying,” the girl said. It was only when she said the longer word ‘everything’ that I noticed the rasp to her voice. It would be part of the reason for her being quiet.
“Who’s with the Doctor?” I asked. The other stairwell was in view.
“When things went bad, it was Weld, me, Brickhaus, Gentle Giant and six others who turned around and protected her. I wasn’t very useful…”
She trailed off. A second passed.
“Need a bit more information,” Satyr said.
“I’m hurt,” she said, and there was a plaintive note in her voice. She sounded more like a Canary than a Shadow Stalker. Not quite the voice of a killer.
“Suck it up,” Satyr said. “Scion’s coming, and we need to know what we’re walking into.”
“Brick took the guy Blesk brained against the wall, um. It was the clairvoyant, the doormaker, hurt, the Doctor. Brickhaus, Magnaat, Munstro, they made it inside. The others got shot down in the stairwell. Um. There was a guy with glasses, and five teenagers who looked a lot like him, only without glasses. Ordinary looking, pretty much. Alexandria…”
“Hm,” Satyr made a noise. He looked up.
In that same moment, the lights flickered out for the umpteenth time.
The emergency lights didn’t come on.
I could sense my teammates, Shadow Stalker, Canary and Lung closing ranks.
“Weaver?” Satyr asked.
He split in two. A slow, oozing process, a lump swelling, pulling free, then forming features. The arms and legs were quick enough, and the details followed, but the new him had no helmet, but slowly reshaped his exterior to match the original Satyr’s costume.
“If you keep doing that, I’m going to have to attack,” I said.
“What’s he doing?” Canary asked. There was a note of panic in her voice.
“Splitting up,” I said. I willed Canary to pull it together. Satyr bulged, clearly preparing to make another double. I called out, “Satyr, I might need to rephrase. If you finish making that copy, I’m going to attack you.”
“He can’t stop once he’s started,” Floret said. “It’s a drawback.”
“I don’t buy that at all,” I said. “So either you need to be more convincing, or I’m wrong, and Satyr has to learn how to cancel a copy in progress in the next five seconds.”
The bulge stopped growing more parts. It began retreating into Satyr.
“We need to talk, Weaver,” Satyr said, still distorted, withdrawing the mass into himself.
Imp spoke up, “Why is it always Weaver you need to talk to? Never, we need to talk, Rachel.”
“Shut up, you idiot,” Satyr snarled the words. “There’s no time for foolishness.”
“Idiot? Foolishness?”
“What is it, Satyr?” I asked.
“I’ve got to ask about your goals.”
“Ah,” I said. “Nothing complicated. Saving the doctor, getting answers, stopping Scion.”
I found my knife, beneath the staircase, suspended by threads I’d tied to the surrounding area. I set my swarm to retrieving it. We couldn’t see, but Floret shouldn’t be able to either.
“I always had a hard time trusting anyone who doesn’t have ulterior motives,” Satyr said. “And now, here, I dearly wish you had some.”
“Sorry,” I said. “If you haven’t noticed, a lot of us are pretty blunt here, straightforward. Our goals are what they appear to be. I really wish you could trust us.”
“And I wish I couldn’t,” he said. “Funny how that works.”
I sensed Blowout pacing a bit to our left. Floret had her hand cupped, like she was ready to throw one of her things. I gathered the swarm, sensed her tilt her head a fraction.
Listening?
How much noise could thirty bugs make? Or, rather, how much noise could thirty bugs make in the audible spectrum?
No. That didn’t make sense. Floret sensed details without even trying.
She was faking me out, no doubt. D
istracting so someone else could pull something.
Leonid was utterly still, no doubt focusing on the various sounds. On heartbeats and breathing, the creaks of our muscles moving and joints shifting. He was the one to watch. He’d said it himself. He was the hand that drew attention so the others could pull their tricks.
Which didn’t make him any less threatening.
Secondary powers of sound detection and sound manipulation, adjusting select things to be up to twice as loud or absolutely silent. It gave him a stranger classification, a thinker classification.
His third power was a mover power.
“Don’t do this, Satyr. It’s insanity,” I said.
“Your being here fucks it all up, Weaver. There’s too much danger that you’d agree with us, that we’d have the same objectives, regarding the Doctor.”
There a distant detonation, a rumbling passed through the complex.
“What are your motives?” I asked. “Do you want to help her or hurt her?”
“Yes,” Satyr said.
“That’s not an answer. I thought you said there’s no time.”
“There isn’t,” he said.
“Satyr, I don’t know what’s going on, but you’ve been playing this game of tricks and subterfuge so long you’ve all forgotten how to walk a straight line.”
“Oh, I remember,” he said. “We remember.”
“So you’re just going to stand here, idly threatening us, until Scion attacks? That can’t be right. You’ve lost your mind. Something with your power, messing with your heads…”
“You’ve got it wrong. Powers from a bottle, they mess with your body. Subtle things, but stuff you notice. Heh, the last straight conversation I had with Pretender, he brought it up, joked…”
“Time,” I told him.
“Ah well. It’s you natural triggers who get a little bent in the head, here and there. Isn’t that right, Ms. Lindt?”
My heart dropped out of my chest. I closed my eyes.
“Yeah,” Rachel said, her voice quiet.
I clenched my teeth.
“That’s right,” she went on, a little louder.
“Shadow Stalker. You too, believe it or not. I’ve seen your record. Your attitude, it’s not wholly your own.”