by John McCrae
A chance to sit, to catch my breath. Couldn’t deal with people, and I wasn’t up to any exertion at all, even talking. Talking meant navigating the politics of the group, of taking people into account.
I only wanted to distract myself from the pain of the burn, the rough, blackened wound where my arm should have been. I could push through it, but I was counting every second until I had some relief.
The feeds showed the three key outposts where the PRT had a presence. The largest settlements that remained, the most obvious targets. There was one in Zayin, but the Sleeper had followed the refugees in there. Even if it still stood after Scion’s visit, there was no helping any of the refugees there.
The C.U.I. had seized one settlement for themselves. A problem that needed dealing with, but our window of time for that sort of thing was past. The battle was on. Scion was pissed off. We were his target, and this time he wasn’t letting up.
Three settlements, and Earth He was under attack. Western Europe and Northern Africa, minus the English speakers. The Guild, the Suits, the Meisters, more teams I struggled to place in the chaos.
Khonsu and Leviathan, and capes I recognized as the ones Cauldron had taken. A whole army.
“Dragonfly,” I spoke, using my swarm. “Give the others a view of this.“
No response.
“Dragonfly,” I said, using my real voice. I hissed in a bit of breath between clenched teeth. “Put this feed on the other monitors.”
The other monitors lit up.
A cape flung Leviathan. Scion floated to one side to avoid the incoming Endbringer. Leviathan, in response, extended the fins the Simurgh had given him, arresting his forward momentum, and then swam through his own afterimage as it crashed into him, changing direction in mid-air.
He crashed into Scion, his fins tearing through the golden man. Golden mist billowed away as Leviathan found a grip on Scion and continued the assault.
Leviathan was blasted away, heaved into the ground with a force that made everyone present stumble. Scion then retaliated, striking first the cape that had thrown Leviathan, then Leviathan himself.
The Endbringer was clipped, losing a fin on one hand, but he got his feet under him and ran, trailing all of the disintegration fins on and inside the rocky ground beneath him. The mist billowed, Leviathan used it to mask himself from Scion’s view, changing direction the moment he was out of sight.
Scion hit him anyways. Leviathan disappeared out of the camera’s view.
Scion didn’t let up. His actions before had been slow, methodical. Now there was nothing of the sort. No pause, no break. The moment he couldn’t follow up on Leviathan, he struck others.
Capes erected defenses, Dragon’s Teeth dodged and opened fire with laser pistols. Some took shelter behind the pillar that Khonsu had erected. Whatever defensive effect Khonsu had used to wall people inside served to block Scion’s attack.
Scion maintained the attack, picking off anyone who wasn’t behind a good enough defense. Blasts, spheres, hundreds of narrow lasers, bigger lasers.
Several capes, it seemed, had the ability to transmit a power or a set of powers to others on an epidemic level. I could see how it spread through the crowd, from one cape to the nearest unaffected cape. Masses of individuals erecting forcefields, little circles no broader across than a large umbrella.
Alone, the shields were too weak. Together, the shields were still too weak. Scion’s golden lights ripped through the massed rank and file.
Two minutes, maybe three or four, Scion finally stopped. All around him, capes were broken. Any who had actually managed to get his attention by being strong enough or problematic enough had been obliterated. The rest had been taken to pieces. Wounded severely enough they were out of the fight, not so severely they would certainly die. Limbs removed, flesh burned, body parts broken by the damage to nearby ground, eyes or whole faces ruined.
Dragon’s ships were broken, with a number starting to rebuild and regenerate. The capes who remained were the ones who were behind defenses so secure they couldn’t also attack.
There was a pause in the assault. Most of the defending capes had been annihilated.
The camera afforded a glimpse of Scion’s face, tinted an orange-red by the forcefield between Scion and the camera. His eyebrows were drawn together, lips just a little tighter together. Lines standing out in his throat.
He hadn’t changed his expression once in the time we’d known him.
He hit Khonsu’s group. The blast hit the edge of Khonsu’s time effect.
Scion threw another, and it passed through. The capes didn’t even have time to react. the light detonated like an artillery shell on impact, tearing through the group.
Another soon appeared, to follow. Khonsu teleported, taking the group with him.
A whole flight of Dragon’s craft were joining the fray, and reinforcements were arriving. A share of the capes from Gimel.
Scion left.
And he promptly appeared on another screen.
Catching our side off guard, tearing into us with a fresh kind of violence, not experimentally, but out of some form of impotent rage.
“He’s angry, like Golem said,” Imp observed. “You could see it on his face.”
Yes.
“Yes,” Number Man replied.
“But he’s not demolishing the continent,” she said. “We know he can. So… how come?”
“It’s a good question,” the Number Man said. “We can only guess.”
“I’m open to guesses,” Imp said.
“I prefer to deal with facts,” the Number Man said. “Let’s leave the guessing to your Tattletale.”
The other battle was unfolding. Much the same.
No, was he hitting harder, here? A little less forgiving?
If this was his first time feeling true grief or true anger, then it could be his first time exploring coping mechanisms.
Venting through anger. How long until he realized that this wasn’t enough and tried something more severe?
I closed my eyes. I wanted to focus, to take in any and all information about Scion that I could, but my body wasn’t up to it. If Panacea wasn’t available, then getting painkillers from the first aid kit onboard would only slow things down when I did get medical attention. Besides, they wouldn’t be strong enough to help here.
Had to weather this. Only a few minutes.
Deep breaths.
I could hear the Number Man with my bugs. “Can’t remember. Was it Bitch or Hellhound?”
“Bitch,” Rachel said.
“Bitch. Colorful. You know, it’s surprising the things you can survive, if you know the mechanics of movement, of physics and the structure of the human body… you hear about people surviving falls from seventeen thousand feet up in the air…”
“Are you threatening me?”
“No, no. Not at all.”
“Then what are you yammering on about?”
“I share Imp’s fears, on a level. We’re a good height above the water, and I can’t help but see a bit of our pilot’s reflection in the window. She looks a little peaked. Would you mind keeping an eye on her, making sure she doesn’t stop breathing?”
“I’m okay,” I said. I grit my teeth. “Four or so minutes and we’re there.”
“Very reassuring. But maybe-”
“She’s fine,” Rachel said.
But I could hear the distinct sound of her footsteps and the claw-on-metal-flooring racket as she and her dogs approached. She stood beside my chair, back to the window, and put one steel-toed boot up on my armrest.
“Not because of what he said,” Rachel said. Her body faced me, but her head was turned to look out the window. “Keeping you company.”
“Yeah,” I said.
It was appreciated.
■
The craft shuddered slightly as we set down on the roof of the restaurant that had been rendered a makeshift hospital. I was stirred from a daze I hadn’t realized I was in.
<
br /> My eyes roved over the screens, taking in one last glimpse as the ramp opened.
Things weren’t much different from before. The defense took a different form, they had Bohu and Tohu with them, and they were reshaping defenses to buy the defenders a little slack. But Dalet had taken heavy losses in an initial attack.
There were more people running for their lives than there were people fighting.
“The fight’s almost over,” I said.
“I said this a moment ago,” Lung said, his voice deep, almost accusatory.
Without my asking, Rachel gave me a hand in standing, putting one hand under my left armpit and helping bring me to my feet.
I pushed onward, ignoring Lung. “Okay. He attacks this settlement next, probably. Then we find out what his next move is.”
“Quite a few dead,” Alexandria said.
She was making a habit of surprising me when she spoke. It tended to sound unlike the Alexandria I’d gotten to know in the interrogation room back at the Brockton Bay PRT headquarters. Obviously because she was really Pretender, but that was a hard fact to keep in mind. It was hard to shake my mental image of Alexandria sitting across the table from me.
“Yes,” I said. We started making our way down the ramp.
The Number Man mused, “It’s very possible he’ll go back to Earth H, start the cycle anew. Or he hits a world or two we’re not in touch with and then hits Earth H.”
“Or,” I said, “he realizes that this isn’t serving to vent his anger over what happened to his partner, and he steps up the aggression some.”
Gimel was entirely different. Nilbog had been hard at work, creating a horde of minions. Buildings had been reinforced, shored up with shelves of what looked to be obsidian. Capes were gathered in bands, and all were at attention, ready for an attack at any moment.
The dead and the wounded, I noted, had been cleared away.
The Number Man opened the door leading to the stairwell and the back of the restaurant-turned field hospital.
“You’re back, Lung,” Panacea said. “Ah. You’ve got wounded with you.”
“Yes,” Lung said.
I could see Panacea’s entourage. Marquis, Bonesaw, and Marquis’ followers, minus a few members. A man so tidy he beat out the Number Man in neatness, one with arms black from fingertip to elbow and dyed blond hair teased into spikes. A man so covered in chains and black tattered cloth I couldn’t make out his actual features. They had sandwiches in hand, no doubt put together from supplies that had been shipped in.
“Any priorities?” she asked.
“Skitter,” Imp said, at the same time I said, “Doormaker.”
“Don’t be dumb,” Imp told me.
Panacea shrugged, “We can look after two at a time. I can see what happened to Skitter. What’s Doormaker’s wound?”
“Traumatic damage to the cranium,” Alexandria-Pretender said. “He’s never been all there, mentally, but we need his brain in one piece.”
“The Cauldron capes are tougher,” Panacea said. “Bonesaw? Can you give it a shot?”
“Will do,” Bonesaw said. She sounded tired. None of the perkiness or endless cheer that had defined her as a villain.
Well, being a good guy was harder, really.
I used my flight pack to raise up, then laid flat on the countertop.
“Pain relief and essentials only, please,” I said. “Then the others. The Doormaker’s partner, then Gully and Canary. I’ll go last.”
Panacea glanced over her shoulder, as if checking that was okay.
“Ignore her,” Imp said. “She’s being dumb.”
“Most of the others can do more in a fight than I can. They need everything in working order. I can function without an arm.”
“Whatever,” Panacea said. “Works for me, actually.”
Then she touched me, and the pain went away. I relaxed so suddenly I felt like I’d suddenly become part liquid. I’d been so tense my head wasn’t even touching the countertop, my legs and shoulders tense.
“Thank you,” I said. “Thanks.”
“You have a high pain tolerance,” she said.
“One of Bakuda’s bombs, way back when,” I said. “I think it messed with my head, as far as my perception of pain. I found out what it’s really like to feel pain, real ten-out-of-ten pain. A part of me knew it was too much to be true, and other stuff’s affected me more because I knew it was tied with something real. Case in point, a burn is still a motherfucker.”
“Well, we’ll fix it,” she said.
I nodded. I was happy to be able to nod. I watched her face while she worked, because there wasn’t much else to look at. A young woman now, not attractive but not unattractive, her face still covered from forehead to chin in freckles, frizzy brown hair tied back with bandanna to keep the hair out of her face. Her shirt had the sleeves rolled up to the shoulders, and I could see blood and smears of black here and there.
I felt a pang of envy.
She’d been just as lost as me. Maybe more lost, maybe not. I’d had friends, but that didn’t necessarily mean I’d had a rudder. But she’d found herself. She’d found a path and she’d found something she could do. She had a role in this.
I looked away.
My bugs were stirring throughout the area, as I gathered my forces and replenished my supply. I could sense people outside. Tattletale was among them, laptop tucked under one arm. She reached the door and paused, glancing up at the sky.
For an instant, I thought it was because Scion was here. He was due.
But she pulled the door open and walked inside.
Panacea looked up. I could see her eyes narrow a bit. “You weren’t invited, Tattletale.”
“Business,” Tattletale said, waltzing in anyways. “Someone camera me.”
There was a clatter as Tattletale unceremoniously dropped the laptop down on a table.
Imp was the first to get the camera off her mask and throw it to Tattletale. Tattletale set about extracting a chip. “So. Harbinger zero.”
The Number Man made a pained face. “You couldn’t call me Harbinger Ten? Or even Number Man?”
“I could. I hope you’ve got some good, juicy tidbits for us to work with, H-zero.”
“Very little that’s concrete. This is all very much guesswork.”
“Then let’s talk hypotheses,” she said. “Educated guesses.”
“Scion’s upset,” I said.
“Yeah,” Tattletale said. “His buddy died, I gather?”
“Yeah,” Imp said. “And we threw bits of his dead buddy at him to distract him before dropping a skyscraper on him. But I dunno how much that did.”
“You accomplish your goal, in the middle of all that?” Tattletale asked.
“We found out second triggers aren’t a real possibility,” I said. “Formulas either. But if we want to do the second trigger thing, Contessa should be able to point the way. It could mean extra firepower, or buying time.”
“She wasn’t there?” Tattletale asked.
“I assumed she was with Khonsu.”
“According to the attackers, she died,” the Number Man said. “Mantellum’s power was the rock to her scissors.”
“You failed,” Shadow Stalker said.
I frowned. She wasn’t entirely wrong. “Our best bet was a special kind of Cauldron formula, and he nuked them. Cauldron let Mantellum slip past their radar, so maybe there’s a chance there’s another Cauldron cape out there who got that special kind of formula, with a game-breaking power. Something that isn’t in Scion’s model.”
“Unlikely,” the Number Man said. “Mantellum slipped by us because he had a power that countered perception powers. The sort of power we’d need against Scion would be an offensive one, and I doubt we’d let things slip so badly in vetting those powers.”
“You’re a real downer, you know that?” Imp asked.
Panacea let go of my stump and walked over to where the Doormaker’s partner was lying. I supposed t
he essential fixes were done. I checked my stump, and found the burned skin was sloughing off.
“Don’t touch,” Panacea ordered, looking at me out of the corner of one eye.
I let my hand drop, then sat up.
“The biggest thing,” I said, “Was that Scion was wrong. He can see the path to victory, and from the vision we saw, we know that he can make mistakes. He plotted for a future that would be sure to reunite him and his partner… and he got his wish. It was just that his partner was brain-dead, gutted, useless.”
“Sooo,” Imp said. “We help him reach a future where he eradicates humanity, trick him, he waltzes away.”
“His goal isn’t to eradicate humanity,” Tattletale said. “It’s to destroy most of it. Remember? Dinah never said he’d destroy all of us.”
“If you destroy ninety-nine point nine percent of humanity,” the Number Man said, “We’ll die out.”
“Probably,” Tattletale agreed. “But he’s not going that far. He’s leaving options open. He’s got one singular purpose. To continue his species’ life cycle. To do that, he needs a partner.”
“Can we give him one?” I asked.
Tattletale smirked. “Kind of hard to pull off. A lot of bases to cover, and a lot of areas where we don’t have enough info.”
“But I’m asking if we can give him one. Can we fake him out, give him what he wants and buy ourselves some breathing room?”
Marquis stepped away from the back of the kitchen. He watched as Bonesaw dug through Doormaker’s skull cavity. “It could upset him, more than he’s already been upset. Speaking as someone who recently recovered the thing I want most in the world, the only thing scarier than the idea of losing that thing is the reality of what I’d do for revenge.”
“Upsetting him is good,” Imp said. “Right?”
“Right,” I said. “He can be affected emotionally. Not by emotion-affecting powers, I don’t think, but he’s influenced by his feelings. That’s good. That’s something we can use.”
“You want to irritate the world-destroying alien god,” one of Marquis’ men said.
“I want to get him to a point where he might make a mistake,” I said. My eyes moved to Shadow Stalker. It’s how we captured her in the first place. “It’s a starting point.”