“Give him back and she won’t do any worse.” I sounded a lot steadier than I felt as he dragged himself toward me at a shambling crawl.
“Never,” he spat. “Never.”
He made a grab toward my ankle. He was still well out of range, but the sudden move made me leap back and my guts take a cold flip. I had to remember not to goad too much; he was still very dangerous.
He flung himself toward me again and this time hit a force field like a dog running into a sliding door it thinks has been left open. He snarled and flung himself away from the thin pane of superdense molecules. Quantum, recovered enough to be fully back in control of the situation, glared down at him.
“How dare you,” he said to her. “How dare you do this to me.”
“It’s not like you even need the leg,” I said conversationally. “Can’t you fucking fly or something?”
A profound ugliness took over his face and I saw Quantum’s shoulders tighten.
“No,” she said. “He can leap, but he can’t fly. He needs help . . . staying up.” She glowered at him. “Don’t you.”
“Oh shit.”
He was looking at Quantum as though he could bore a hole through her. I could feel his revolting sense of entitlement. She could use her powers for flight, and so she’d used them to support him. I’d read countless articles and reports that referenced flight as one of his superpowers, something that I had never seen questioned or challenged. But it had always been her, keeping him in the air.
He was glaring at her like he would rip the capacity for flight out of her body. Like he could pull it from her like a still-throbbing organ and swallow it down. She took a hard step back from that anger, from the terrible thought of what he might do to her if he could.
But I leaned in. Quietly, I said, “You don’t ever have to hold him up again. You don’t have to move him an inch if you don’t want to.”
The corner of her lip twitched and she bared her teeth. “Oh, I want to.”
And with that, she distorted the air around him and picked him up.
“You want to fly.” She lifted him higher. “Let me help.”
He struggled in her grip, but the force field around him held as she took him higher. Soon he was a dot, and she pushed him, right over the top of the main building of Dovecote. I thought I could hear him yelling something, but it was far too faint to make out any words.
She was sweating, and talking to herself again. “A little, just a little,” she murmured, over and over. Then, when she was content with his positioning above the prison, she dropped him. He made a sound like an incoming mortar, and when he hit the building I could feel the impact in my body as much as I heard it.
Keller was screaming gleefully into the comm in my ear. “That’s right, girls, tear that motherfucker apart.” He sounded so proud.
I expected Quantum to lift him straight up out of the crater his body had made in the building, but instead she dragged him forward. The walls gave before his body did, collapsing as he was pulled through plaster and drywall and rebar and concrete. She used his nearly indestructible flesh as a battering ram, blasting a wide hole in the front of the building. Once he cleared the walls, she threw him into the yard where we were standing once more, an explosion of dust and debris following him like the tail of a comet.
“That a big enough hole for you?” I asked Keller over the comm.
“Downright lovely, thanks,” he said.
“Go, then. Now. Find him.”
As soon as I gave that assent, the doors of the vans and armored command vehicle finally slid open. As the Meat piled out, they were met by the Draft security forces, who suddenly disgorged from the remaining vehicles that had followed us in.
Supercollider dragged himself up, chunks of half-frozen earth and construction debris falling from his body. At the same time, Dovecote began to evacuate. An awful siren took up, a deep squalling pulse, and the supermax prison’s staff fled out of emergency doors, a few climbing out of the hole in the main atrium itself. There were few people; one of the features of Dovecote was how automated it was. I noticed no one in leg irons or surrounded by containment fields being taken out under guard; they’d clearly left all of the prisoners behind.
“Keller, let most of these fools go,” I said. “But grab every security pass and key card that you can.”
Over the steady pulse of an energy weapon, he barked, “Bit busy, but I’ll see what I can do.”
My reply was cut off when Quantum grabbed my arm and pulled me behind her. Supercollider was stalking us down again, moving at a hobbled but inexorable crawl. The dust on his face and in his hair made him look almost demonic, just the wet pits of his eyes fixed on us.
“If I have to use you like a fucking wrecking ball to get to him, I will,” I snarled.
“Never.” He spat out a gout of mucus and plaster dust. “I’m the only one who can get there. Rip it all down. He’ll rot down there.”
“This can be hard or easy.”
“You can’t make me. You can’t make me let you in.”
As soon as the words were out of his mouth, the energy between us shifted. Quantum changed her stance. I crossed my arms. He slowed; fear and confusion blotted out the anger in his eyes. With the building wailing behind him and Quantum and me staring him down, I think it finally occurred to him that maybe, in fact, we could.
“We choose to take that as a dare,” I said. A humorless smile pulled at my face.
Supercollider dragged himself up onto one knee and the gnarled stump of his leg, misplaced toes grotesquely convulsing. He raised his hands to Quantum, for the first time not threateningly, but pleading. His hands were up and open, showing his palms.
“Quantum,” he said. “Please.”
I groaned, suddenly overcome by nausea. The air around him started to get thick again, to hum even over the steady siren. My teeth hurt.
She started with his shoulders. She stretched one arm out, and for a moment it almost seemed to elongate before she bent his own arm back, dislocating it at the shoulder socket and folding it across his back. She pressed the arm into the flesh on top of his shoulder blades, the hand wrapped around the opposite shoulder, until it was completely under the surface, even the fingers submerged. His left arm was now buried inside him, a hump across his upper back. Then she went to work on the other arm, folding this one down and around, into his torso.
It was hard to watch. I wasn’t squeamish, but when she started to change his face I had to look away, gagging. It was the way his jaw stretched and popped, his grotesque babbling losing any resemblance to recognizable language. I could still hear the awful sound of the rearrangement, something like high-tension wires under impossible stress, and all the fleshy, oozing bodily sounds that came with it.
I could hear him crying. I couldn’t find it in myself to enjoy it.
IT WOULDN’T HAVE been nearly so bad if he were more fragile; someone without powers, or even just without his kind of invulnerability, would tear like a wet paper bag, be thrown into deep-shock trauma, then completely come apart. Supercollider was living through it, which made the process much worse.
She stopped when she got a nosebleed. She held the sleeve of her hoodie up to her nose, pinching the nostrils shut and breathing loudly and laboriously through her mouth. Her lungs had the reedy sound of someone who had just run a long distance.
On the ground in front of her was a pile of flesh that had once been shaped like a person. I kept my eyes away from him; glancing at him long enough to make sense of what I was looking at made me queasy.
“Don’t you dare barf,” she threatened. “I’m a sympathy puker and there is so much blood in my mouth already.”
I nodded and averted my eyes more sharply, fighting back the nausea.
With Supercollider undone, I started to pay attention to what was happening around us at Dovecote fully for the first time. Security forces from the escort cars and Dovecote itself were giving the Meat a problem, and while we wer
e meaner and prepared for a fight, they definitely had us outnumbered. I was taking stock of the situation, scowling, while Quantum managed to get her bleeding under control.
“What this situation needs,” I said, “is an old-fashioned head on a pike.”
“How about a floating flesh bag?” She gestured toward Supercollider, who had begun to make very upsetting noises.
“I think that will do nicely.”
Quantum obligingly floated the skin potato over to the center of the confrontation and dropped the sodden mess rather dramatically in front of the Dovecote security forces. One poor bastard puked into his riot mask. After Keller got on the loudspeaker and asked if anyone else was interested in being folded up into a “human asshole” (he always did have a way with words), everyone was suddenly much more reasonable.
With Dovecote’s security actively retreating, I was able to pull some resources for the rescue mission itself. I grabbed Vesper to help with the security measures and Ludmilla for sheer creative brutality, and a small team of Meat both to offer additional protection and to carry what was left of Supercollider. Whatever we were about to encounter, he was coming with us; I knew we weren’t going to be able to reach Leviathan without him.
Melinda had to stay behind to be our getaway. I ordered Keller to stay with the rest of the Meat and take care of things outside. He half-heartedly protested even though he knew I was right.
“We can handle it,” I said, and then, more quietly, “she can handle it.”
“I know,” he said, too gruffly, and I realized that he felt left out.
“Besides, I need you to make sure we’ve fully secured the upper floors. It’s critical. The last thing I need is some fucking lingering Draft security assholes who stuck around trying to rappel down a goddamn airshaft or some nonsense at the eleventh hour, giving us headaches we don’t need.”
He was visibly mollified. “We can do that.”
“Besides, if—when—we walk out of here with Leviathan instead of this dickless lump, I want a clean, smooth extraction with no fuckery. I need you to make that happen.”
He nodded once. “Careful down there. Bring him back.”
“We got this,” Ludmilla said crisply, and I barked a laugh.
He grinned at that, turned sharply, and started ordering Meat around, once again back in his element. Quantum sidled over to me as we walked to the building, looking gray and close to spent but still smirking.
“If these tough-ass motherfuckers had any idea how much we take care of their dumb feelings, eh?” she said quietly.
I made a strangled noise and doubled over.
“He getting to you, ma’am?” one of the Meat asked, so concerned.
“I’ll live,” I said, hoping I sounded grave instead of choking on laughter. The Meat hefted Supercollider onto their shoulders, adjusting their grip, and we entered the shattered walls of Dovecote.
The steady wail of the evacuation alarm was muffled when we made our way through the main, working portion of Dovecote and descended to the lower floors. No one much cared if anyone down here could be evacuated in a timely manner or not. No one was going to risk as much as a singed eyebrow rescuing the supervillains locked in its bowels. The staff could get out quickly, the place would go on lockdown, and anyone trapped down there would be left to starve or smother. It made me furious, because it was so obviously part of the design.
We reached the floor that I had been held on during my several days of interrogation. When those doors closed behind us, any trace of the alarm disappeared. It was exceptionally soundproofed on that level; couldn’t have anyone overhear what might be going on in any of the interrogation rooms.
A strange, disembodied sensation came over me at the particular smell of that place, concrete and aggression and fear. It wasn’t really the look—if anything, it was much more drably corporate than I remembered, almost dingy. The lighting was sickly and the gray walls made the place feel like a neglected hospital. But the smell was exactly the same, and it shook me.
“This was the last place we spent time together,” I said to Supercollider, trusting that he was being dragged along close enough to be within earshot. “It’s almost romantic, isn’t it.”
There was no response. I didn’t turn my head to check if he’d heard me; I didn’t much like to look at him by then.
I turned to the Meat who were not presently carrying Supercollider. “Check each of the rooms down here. If anyone else is being held, let them out.” I looked over at Vesper. “Help them.”
A pair of enforcers and Vesper peeled away from the rest of us and started systematically dismantling the doors that led off the main corridor. I was disassociating at that point and feeling increasingly unreal and dreamlike. It didn’t feel like I was moved by compassion, but rather disgust, and a deep need to take apart absolutely everything that the Draft had built.
The sounds of the doors opening and the shouts or moans of relief elicited a kind of mournful slurping sound from Supercollider, which was satisfying.
We left that floor and made our way through one more security checkpoint before coming to a stark, imposing pair of elevator doors. Their featurelessness was particularly off-putting. The elevator wasn’t marked, had no LCD screen to display which floor the car was on. There was also no button to press to call it, just a flat panel of black sapphire glass set directly into the wall.
“Five bucks says it’s biometric,” I said.
Vesper came to stand next to me and tapped the side of one of his eye sockets. “Handprint and DNA signature, by the look of it.”
“What are the odds it’s geared to the flesh bag over there.”
“High enough to risk whatever terrible booby trap security measures are in place.”
“Is that elevator loaded with mustard gas?”
“No, because it isn’t the First World War. The system just goes on lockdown, and then we’re not getting any deeper in this building without mining equipment.”
“While that’s not impossible to arrange it’s an inconvenience I would rather avoid.” I turned behind me to look toward Quantum, trying to keep my eyes fixed on her and not the gibbering mess two of the Meat were dragging behind her. “Do you think you can get one of his hands free?”
She frowned like she was doing long division in her head. “I think so.”
“We need intact fingerprints.”
“I’ll try.”
She turned to Supercollider, who made a panicked sound and wriggled at her approach. I was not so ashamed of losing face that I turned my back completely so I didn’t have to watch whatever process happened behind me. There was a weird keening sound from the felled hero and one of the Meat coughed and gagged through it.
“You don’t need anything above the elbow?” Quantum asked me, her voice shaking a little with effort.
“No, just the flat of the hand, I think.”
“Okay, good, one was mostly free. I got it, I think.”
I heard a horrible, wet popping sound. I looked to see what she’d done and immediately regretted it; it was like a hand stuck to a plate of undercooked ham. I ordered the two Meat who had been on Supercollider duty to take a break and two fresh pairs of arms and gag reflexes came forward. They picked up the mass of flesh and carried Supercollider over to the elevator doors to position his hand against the glass panel. I took the opportunity to close my eyes and rub the bridge of my nose; Vesper put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed. I rested one hand on top of his metal fingers; the cold was comforting.
“He won’t touch it!” one of the Meat complained. I reluctantly opened my eyes to see them struggling with Supercollider, who was shaking convulsively.
“What do you mean? Make him.”
“He’s made a fist. He won’t put his hand down. I can’t—eeeeeiiiiiiiiii!” The Meat shrieked and let go of Supercollider, causing his compatriot to also lose a grip on the undulating flesh sack they held between them. He was screaming because two of his fingers had been cru
shed by Supercollider’s one freed hand.
“Goddamn it, get him out of here,” I said, my voice raw and more frustrated than I expected. “Get him help,” I added, trying to gentle my annoyance. The Meat’s buddy took that to mean he should take his injured friend back upstairs and in the vicinity of some gauze and a tourniquet. The bleeding Meat kicked Supercollider as the two of them left. I appreciated it for the sentiment even if it was entirely ineffectual.
Supercollider’s one free hand was clenching at the air rapidly, at once absurd and grotesque, but even so profoundly limited as he was, he was still dangerous. I ordered everyone to step away from him. On the bare concrete he looked a bit like an action figure melted into a pool of plastic in a microwave. I pushed down the wave of hysterical laughter that threatened to bubble up at the image, smothering it with irritation.
“I can put a force field in the palm of his hand to keep the fingers open,” Quantum suggested, “but that will only do so much good.”
“Sink his arm back in,” I said.
“But that’ll—”
“Leave his palm and the underside of his fingers on the surface, but submerge the rest.”
She frowned for a moment, trying to picture it, then slowly nodded. She flattened his flailing hand, bending it back at the wrist and splaying his fingers out, then sunk his arm all the way down into the lumpen wreck of his body, like burying a knife up to the hilt. When she let go, the back of his hand was fused into his flesh, but the palm and fingers were still at the surface on a flat plane of flesh. It might have once been his shoulder.
The Meat left with us lifted his body and held his hand, as it was, against the glass. He was shaped so awkwardly and had so few handholds now. One of the Meat complained aloud, as they shifted and struggled and tried for a long time to get his hand positioned correctly, that he was wet all over. I wished I didn’t have to think about that.
After several laborious minutes, they finally got his hand pressed against the glass; the elevator rewarded us with a deep, uncomfortable hum as the handprint was registered and the car began to move toward us. The Meat sighed with relief, eager to drop Supercollider if they could or at least adjust his weight in a way that was easier to carry. I heard one of them mumble about needing multiple showers, which made me notice how sticky and abject I felt.
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