by John McCrae
I opened portals. Every single ranged cape and every single cape with a gun that was at my disposal opened fire into the portals. The Number Man’s power coordinated their fire.
I sensed danger from my precogs. I parted the group.
Scion moved, and he fired a beam, striking down the center of the part.
Not one of the attacks had hit him. Though I’d been moving them to safety, the beam had taken out nearly thirty capes.
I counted Lady Photon among the dead, along with Revel.
As if Taylor Hebert were one of my puppets, distant, fractured and broken, I could sense the sick feeling in her gut. Revel had been someone she’d- someone I cared about. Lady Photon had been a familiar face.
Let’s go get that- Let’s go get him.
My voice, but not my own thoughts.
The Number Man had told me the attacks would hit. That they hadn’t meant it was Scion’s precognitive ability at work. The ability to win, to take the upper hand.
But there was a reason he couldn’t use it constantly. It cost him something, drained his reserves.
By all appearances, he’d parried my thrust and struck home… but I’d taken a piece out of him.
The rationalizing felt thin at best.
Have to do bett-er.
Scion was screaming, still. A roar, a kind of fury.
Tattletale had described him as human. That meant human weaknesses. Weaknesses he hadn’t learned to adapt to. When he got angry, it was the fury of someone who’d never learned to hold back.
I put targets in front of him, and he took the bait.
A front line of the hardiest capes, decoys and projections to draw him in. Then, while he was closer, I was free to move in the heavy hitters who weren’t upwardly mobile.
Lung, hulking out even before his power kicked in. Menja, Chevalier. A dozen capes I didn’t know.
Had to mix it up. Raw physical strength, then a cape who was strong because of a telekinetic bubble that surrounded them. More raw strength, then explosive power like Hoyden’s.
Move them in, then move them away. Use their powers and other powers to give them the mobility. I had two capes that could assign danger sense to protect things, alerting them when the subject was in danger, though the two powers were rather different in practice. It was a way around the fact that I couldn’t predict Scion himself, and I made the most of it, switching their targets of choice second by second.
I could feel the fear of the people I was sending into the fray. Hoyden’s fear was like the scared-little-girl fear I’d experienced while concussed, wracked with pain and helpless at Bakuda’s feet.
But she could hit Scion, and I needed people who could hit him. I needed every iota of strength I could squeeze out of these capes.
I watched the world through Defiant’s eyes, and I saw the combat analysis program drawing wireframe models over the battlefield, trying to take in all of the details of the capes I was sending into the fight, predicting Scion’s most likely actions.
I watched with the Number Man.
I watched with precogs.
Scion wasn’t inherently predictable, he wasn’t capable of being read, but I needed some cue that would let me guess what he’d do next.
Telekinetics stood by portals. The Blue Woman and Parian were among them. When I saw opportunities, I used them to move capes further, faster, to get them out of the way.
Scion’s rage was reaching a crescendo. The screaming was increasing in volume and intensity, the movements more aggressive, the attacks broader, less focused. A fist flew past Chevalier, followed by a blast that might have wiped out a neighborhood, if the capes had been in a city. He was grazing capes, failing to land a single heavy blow, and it was pissing him off.
It didn’t help that we were hurting him. He could adapt, but he couldn’t adapt when the same attack wasn’t used twice in a row. It put him on the defensive, keeping him on his toes, and every attempt he made to strike back failed to do more than clip people, injure and wound.
I knew it was coming. Retaliation. Even before the precogs gave me any forewarning, I was moving to react. Portals opened wider, telekinesis pulling the attacking capes through if they couldn’t move fast enough. Forcefields and other measures flew up to surround Scion, mitigating the damage.
He radiated light, and the light that escaped the barriers seared and melted the flesh of the offensive capes, as well as the telekinetics and defensive capes who happened to be standing in the wrong place. Translucent and transparent forcefields didn’t even slow the light down.
I began shutting the doors. Alexandria and various projections flew in to take Scion on. Ursa Aurora, expendable duplicates… just needed a second.
So much pain. I could tell how much damage that had been done even before I did any headcounts. People were suffering, and so long as they were under my control, they were helpless to express the fear and agony they felt.
Instead, they were quietly stoic as their wounds wept fluids and burned with traces of the golden light. I put the few healers I had to work.
They hadn’t even started when Scion used the real attack. I could see him move through Alexandria’s eyes. Through Pretender’s eyes, rather. Arms flew out to the sides, and then he clapped.
I only managed to shut Alexandria’s portal a fraction of a second before his hands made contact.
One strike of palm against palm, and the shockwave swept past us as if in slow motion, moving past every portal in the area that was still open. It passed through flesh, and it stilled.
It was the same effect he’d used to quiet Leviathan’s waves, the same effect that had frozen floodwaters in their tracks and the same ability that had given him so much presence.
Objects in motion stopped. Portals winked out, warm things plummeted in temperature, cell and neural activity was interrupted. Blood stopped in people’s veins.
Every cape that had been touched by this stillness dropped to the ground, lifeless.
I could feel the horror that was experienced by the bystanders. I knew that, given the choice, most would be running.
But there was no reaction. Each and every one of them was grim, resolute, taking care of their injuries, getting to people who could tend to them or helping others.
Rank and file, a dozen capes with electricity powers entered the area with the capes who’d succumbed to the stillness.
They’d stopped, and an object at rest remained at rest. I just- I needed to get them moving again.
A jolt, the electricity controlled by the capes in question.
Nothing.
I pulled Bonesaw away from the tinker group. I couldn’t devote the focus necessary to use her power in any detail. I could have left her on autopilot, but I wasn’t sure that was much better.
I revoked my control over her, leaving in in the middle of the room with the capes Scion had stopped.
Then I turned my attention back to Scion.
I couldn’t dwell. Couldn’t let him turn the tables and put me on the defensive.
He was tearing into Alexandria. Literally. But she doggedly held on, delivering one crushing blow for every pound of flesh Scion ripped from her midsection. He was roaring as he did it, teeth bared, face contorted.
The nature of his attack, the stilling, it didn’t fit. Not in tune with the anger.
It had been another use of his ‘automatic victory’ power. Looking to the future, seeing how he could do the most damage, then following through. A feint, followed by the critical blow.
The good news was that it meant I was getting the upper hand, forcing him to take a shortcut to get out of it.
The bad news was that I was almost positive I couldn’t win if things continued in this vein. My precogs weren’t countering his precognition, and he was blocking all direct views of him, forcing me to emphasize indirect predictions where I focused on the damage he was doing and the people he was threatening to kill.
With each exchange, he was doing too much damage t
o our side. If I had five times the capes, if we’d been working together like this from the beginning, then maybe. But not like this.
Same strat- strat- same tactic as before, just to buy myself a little time to think.
My telekinetics, injured or otherwise, worked their magic through the portals I opened, this time focusing on the munitions that weren’t easily accessible. I moved ICBMs through a spatial-warping ‘lens’ that let it fit through a doorway, unloaded crates of grenades and TNT with telekinesis, and I watched it rain.
The explosives were halfway to ground when I had Alexandria use another dimension switch to force the portals closed.
I needed to consolidate my strength. I had capes gathering materials. Moord Nag was among them, one of the scariest warlords of Africa, now traveling between dimensions to scavenge from the dead, her pet shadow devouring mountains of flesh from mass graves and battlefields, swelling in size.
Lung was shrinking, keying down after I’d pulled him away from Scion, but he still had the raw strength from the dose of distilled brawn I’d given him.
Coordinate, I thought.
I couldn’t be moving capes with telekinesis. There had to be other assets.
Sifara. A chief member of the Thanda. I’d taken to thinking of him as ‘Orbit’.
But Orbit wasn’t quite it.
His power required him to have a strong reference for those he worked it on. Eyesight alone didn’t work so well, because eyesight was faulty. His preference, for a strong connection, was to touch individuals. Failing that, he worked by eyesight alone.
I didn’t need to go that far. I could see through a hundred pairs of eyes at this location alone.
A cape formed a ball out of stone. Roughly the size of a tennis ball.
One by one, Sifara connected the capes around us to the ball.
Sifara’s power maintained spatial relationships. He moved the ball, and every cape he’d connected to the ball moved a corresponding amount. When he turned the ball, the connected capes rotated around the ball by equal degree.
We’d used it against Khonsu in our first fight, anchoring ourselves to him so he couldn’t teleport away without bringing us with him.
Now we were going to use it for the opposite intent.
Labyrinth and Scrub, the same pair that had made the portal in Earth Gimel, made more portals. The dimension switches wouldn’t work forever, and I’d pretty much but there were options for future attacks. There were more explosives, but nothing big.
I needed a focus, a weak point I could capitalize on. To those ends, I needed to buy time to work and I needed to bait him into getting angry.
Between them, Labyrinth and Scrub began making paths to other worlds. I watched as they paged through the available options.
Scion emerged from the other world, having broken down the barrier we’d set. Fragments of Alexandria’s body tumbled to the ground, more like a statue than flesh. He had to flex his hand and use his power to free it of the left side of her skull.
He’d suffered for a few of the big hits we’d delivered. His flesh remained pristine, golden, but there were folds and scraps here and there where his damaged flesh had been stripped away and remained in place around the creases of his body after the replacement flesh had come in.
He came out swinging, obliterating two continents on two different worlds before he found us.
One rotation of Sifara’s ball, a row of doorways, and the capes were pulled backwards through the portals, which closed promptly after them.
The debris hadn’t even settled when I had Sifara move the ball again, erecting more portals to send my capes into the battlefield. Brute force, capes who could tie him down, capes who could take a hit or two. I kept Lung in the fight, holding him back for later, when he’d be exponentially stronger.
As strategies went, it would hold for at least a little while. Scion’s patience seemed to be getting shorter and shorter, and I was on guard for the next retaliatory strike.
My heart was pounding, my mouth dry. This was looking grim, each exchange hurting my side more than it hurt Scion. Was there an out? A chink in the armor?
I’d collected all of the tinkers in one place and I’d put them on autopilot, a vague, nebulous goal in mind. To get them working together, I’d used Zero of the Yàngbǎn to tie them together as a group, splitting their powers.
A few hundred tinkers, each with a mix of tinker powers, all working on a singular project.
I could sense it, using the Clairvoyant and Doormaker both, using Labyrinth and Scrub. The solid space between worlds. A space that Scion had altered somehow, blocking off.
Facing off against that, I’d had them build something roughly the size of a house. There was a gun build into the construction, but it was snub nosed, stocky and unimpressive.
I gave Defiant the honor of pulling the switch.
The machine whirred to life.
Through the Clairvoyant, through Labyrinth and Doormaker, I could sense the machine reaching through every available world.
The energy was focused on a single space, but it filled that same space in each of the worlds. A pressure of sorts started to form.
It would take a minute.
I sent Moord Nag in with the other heavy hitters, relieving the force that Scion was fighting.
Sifara moved the ball, moving Moord Nag a distance forward. Her pet shadow Scavenger loomed, as large as it had ever been.
And Moord Nag promptly had a stroke. I watched as Scavenger dissipated into smoke.
Wha- what? Why?
I reached out to Moord Nag, and I could feel the damage being done. I moved her back just as I’d moved her forward, shifting more capes onto the battlefield to deliver some ranged fire.
Why? I was stunned, and putting my thoughts together in regards to this was like trying to swim in molasses.
Had to act, instead of thinking. Investigate.
I used my ability to read the physical states of the creatures I controlled, reading my swarm much as I’d check a spider’s level of hunger, its health, fertility or the amount of venom available.
Almost across my entire swarm, people were threatening to lose their minds. Literally.
It was stress, a factor I hadn’t taken into account. I controlled their bodies, but I didn’t control their minds. They were bystanders, watching this all unfold, and even though I regulated their heartbeats, kept their breathing level, the mental stress accumulated.
There were exceptions in every category, but I could assess my gathered army with broad strokes of the brush. The thinkers were coping best, the tinkers nearly as well. The masters struggled the most, followed by the shakers and breakers. The rest fell in some middle ground. Moord Nag… my control over her had apparently tapped into some kind of trauma or phobia she had, so she’d been the first to reach some kind of fever pitch in terms of the buildup of stress-induced chemicals and reactions.
I was killing my own minions.
I moved quickly, scrambling to get measures in place before I lost any more.
An open portal and a telekinetic let me move Moord Nag to the only available, capable healer I had available.
I sent her to Panacea, still in the company of Tattletale and the Undersiders. Panacea bent down to help her.
I brought Canary to me, and she began singing, a high, sweet song, almost like a lullaby, her voice carrying through the same portals that connected me to my underlings.
I was halfway to my next step, managing the tinkers, when Panacea reacted, backing away from the dying woman, shaking her head.
You still- you still don’t use your p-power on brains? I thought.
She’d had a setback, creating me. Now the old fear was back in full, at the most inconvenient time.
Tattletale was speaking. Her voice was gentle, soft.
It was awfully nice to listen to. Reassuring, even if I didn’t understand the words.
Then, breaking me from the spell, Scion moved his hands, readying for a
clap, and I shifted everyone out of the way.
Scion flew instead, flying into one world, just as easily as a plane might fly left, forward or down.
I could track his movements with the clairvoyant. As multidimensional as it was, I could trace a trajectory.
He’d used his ‘automatic victory’ power again, and he’d targeted me.
If he’d used it to find me, there was no escape. If he’d used it to find and kill me, it was all over.
Was he that complex? Did he think forward to that degree?
I ran anyways, turning my attention to the tinker’s machine.
The gibberish text on the screen had turned red. Failure. The combined strength of all of the tinkers who remained, Bonesaw excepted, and it had failed. There was no way to get to the space Scion had sealed off, no way to his ‘well’, where he drew all of his resources from.
My heart sank.
That was my best guess, I thought. The mental stutter wasn’t there, but the stutter only tended to hit me when I thought about nice things, about peace and familiar people and all the rest of that stuff.
The best means of attack was to go for the weak point. To cut the jugular, to stab the heart, to go for the eyes, damn it. Scion’s well was the closest thing to a weak point that I could imagine, but he’d secured it.
I’d told myself I’d know the strategy when I saw it. Targeting the well hadn’t been that strategy, but it had been a piece of it.
I moved capes away, stepping through the portal Labyrinth had made, then having her change the channel, masking our ‘scent’, so to speak. I moved Case fifty-threes into the area to mess with Scion’s ability to sense things.
He still pursued. I couldn’t move fast enough, even as each limping step moved me to another universe. Something about the way the portals opened, even if I closed them, it was like I was breaking ground for him to travel.
This- this is the trouble with being on top.
You’re all alo- alone when it counts.
I put capes in his way. He swatted them aside, flew out of the way, and closed the distance.
I felt sick. The shaking was as bad as it had ever been, and there was a coldness inside of me that made me wonder if I was in shock. My thoughts were barely coherent.