Worm

23.01

“Weaver,” the voice had a slight digital twang at the edges, to the point that I thought it was Bakuda for a second, even if the two voices were entirely different.

I lowered my book. Defiant stood in the doorway to my cell, flanked by two of the prison guards.

I swung my feet to the ground, simultaneously sitting up. “If you’d asked me a few weeks ago, I’m not sure I would have believed that I’d actually be happy to see you.”

“You’ll be coming back,” he warned me. “This is a temporary leave.”

“I know,” I said. I marked the page in my book, placing it in a corner, where it joined twelve others.

“And yes, I’m not surprised you had hard feelings. We weren’t on good terms then, and even now…”

He didn’t finish the sentence. Even now, we aren’t friends?

“A lot of books,” he noted the stack of prison library books. “You’ve read them all?”

“Yeah.”

“In seven days?”

“Lots of time to myself. I don’t have classes, but I have homework and self-study, and that cuts into reading time, or I’d have read more. But it’s kind of nice, if you ignore… pretty much everything else. I’ve had time to think for the first time in months.”

“I know what you mean,” Defiant said. “I remember worrying every day if that would be the day innocents were caught in a crossfire between Coil and Kaiser, or the day a member of Empire Eighty-Eight was initiated into the group, with the requisite assault of an ‘acceptable target’.”

I grimaced at that. He extended an arm, indicating I was free to leave the cell.

He continued as we walked, flanked by the guards. “…And then there was the team, handling the internal politics, Assault’s harassment of Battery, the Wards and their individual issues. The countless requests for appearances, for photo shoots, interviews, and demonstrations, figuring out which have to be accepted, which can be turned down, knowing that too many refusals in a row could mean a negative article. And then there were the threats, of course, dealing with powered criminals. Every team member becomes a resource, and those resources have to be allocated judiciously.”

“And in the midst of all that, you’re still trying to find time for you,” I said.

“Free time is the easiest thing to sacrifice,” Defiant said. “It costs you, to give it up, but there’s little guilt. Time to yourself is best spent preparing. Developing new technology, strategizing, adjusting equipment-”

“Weaving costumes, pre-preparing lines of silk,” I said.

Defiant nodded.

“I may have inadvertently screwed Miss Militia over,” I said.

Defiant shook his head. “She’s a natural leader. I wasn’t.”

“That might make it easier to handle,” I said, “But she’ll still be in a position where she has to worry, has to prioritize and make sacrifices, and I don’t know if she asked for it.”

“She’ll manage,” Defiant said, as if that was that. I couldn’t tell if it was trust in his teammate or if he wasn’t particularly empathetic on that front. Miss Militia was the one who’d supplanted him as team leader. Were there still hard feelings?

We stopped at the end of the hallway, and the guards stopped to check in at the control station that managed which doors opened and when. There were procedures for seeing a prisoner out, and it took some time.

I could see into cells near the gate. Prisoners glared at me. I was a villain to everyone who had a grudge against supervillains, a hero to everyone who had a grudge against ‘cops’. A traitor. A murderer. The person who’d killed one of the strongest heroes in the world. Who’d killed someone who had fought for decades to save the world, again and again, and who may have doomed us all.

The other prisoners were still trying to assess me, I was pretty sure. Nobody spoke to me or approached me when we filed off to get our meals or when I visited the library. The words printed on my uniform were probably daunting for the unpowered.

The judge had seen fit to assign me to a close security prison, a wing in a medium security facility. It was somewhat backwards, as rulings went, everything taken into consideration. I’d been charged as an adult, for one thing, so juvenile detention was out. Too many crimes under my belt. I was apparently too dangerous for a minimum security institution, but the PRT had asked for leniency, and this was the compromise they’d come to.

As far as I could figure it out, it was everything I might have expected from a medium security prison, complete with a station that controlled the opening and closing of cell doors, constant supervision, and escorts wherever we went. The only difference was the emphasis on programs. We were here to be rehabilitated, to find work, get an education and get therapy. All mandated.

I’d already started studying. Now, with Defiant here, I’d get okayed to start other projects. I hoped.

The warden was waiting for us in the ‘hub’, the room with benches where we’d waited to be assigned to our cells. She wasn’t what I’d expected from a person in charge of a prison. She made me think of a stern teacher, instead. She was old, pushing sixty if not well past it, and ramrod straight, and thin. Her graying hair was tied back into a short braid that didn’t quite reach the bottom of her neck. She was tough in a gnarled, craggy sort of way, like the veteran actors of cowboy movies, but female.

“Taylor Hebert,” she said.

“Ma’am.”

“Every rule in my prison applies while you’re outside. You know this.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I know you capes are magnets for trouble. If a fight happened to erupt while you were en route and it came down to you fighting back or getting stabbed, I expect you to get stabbed and then graciously thank your attacker, you understand?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“That said, best if you don’t get hurt. Running would be preferrable, so long as you don’t run. Trying to escape would be the worst thing you could do, and it wouldn’t succeed.”

“You want me to stay out of trouble. I understand, ma’am.”

“It’s a cushy deal you have here, but one word from me, and that changes.”

“I get that, ma’am. Really, I do. I get that I did some sketchy things. I get that this is a kind of penance, probably not as harsh as I deserve, and I welcome it. I think, given a choice between walking away free right this second and continuing my sentence, I’d choose the latter.”

She studied me for long seconds.

“We have a no-tolerance policy on powers, Ms. Hebert.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“What appeared to be an emerging case of body lice in the main prison seems to have abruptly corrected itself, according to our physicians. The roach traps in the kitchen aren’t catching anything, either.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“There’s a part of me that would like to think you’re doing us a service, cleaning things up. Which would still be a violation of the zero-tolerance rules, but somewhat forgivable given the intent. Another part of me has to be concerned that you’re hoarding these in the same manner another prisoner might hoard makeshift weapons.”

“No, ma’am.”

“Which is it?”

“I sort of hoped to talk about it with my therapist, on our first meeting, and figure out the best way to approach it before talking to you.”

She made a ‘continue’ gesture with her hand, arms still folded, her gaze hard.

“My power is always on. It takes a conscious effort to block them out and let them act normally. I feel what they feel, sense what they sense, sort of. It’s… not fun with lice, crawling around in prisoner’s pubic hair, you know? Being aware of that, across eighteen, nineteen prisoners, twenty-four-seven?”

“My concern, Ms. Hebert, is what you’re doing with those bugs.”

“Nothing,” I said. “I- moved them away from the prisoners. I’ve mostly left them where they were, let them starve. I can’t leave them stationary like that where there are rodents, or they’ll only feed the rodent population and you’ll have a bigger problem. I could kill the rodents, but then you’d have dead rats in your walls, and-”

“This isn’t acceptable. You understand why this isn’t acceptable?”

“You have to protect other prisoners,” I said.

Even if it means letting them have lice? I didn’t say that last part.

“If bugs are your weapon of choice, I can’t let you have access to them.”

“What about a bucket?” I asked.

“Hm?”

“Set up a bucket in some back room, fill it with something caustic enough to kill them on contact. I’ll drown every bug I can reach in the bucket, and you’ll be able to see for yourself, by the volume of bugs that are in there.”

“Let’s postpone measures like that,” Defiant cut in. “Go change.”

I nodded, happy for the escape route. I made my way to the combination shower-and-change room area, pausing to collect my civilian clothes from the guard in the bulletproof glass enclosure that overlooked the hub.

I would have liked to shower in relative privacy, but I didn’t think anyone outside was planning on waiting. I stripped out of the prison uniform, a lightweight, gray one-size-fits-all cotton tunic and pants that felt more like pyjamas than real clothes. Mine weren’t as threadbare as the clothes the other prisoners wore. For one thing, I was a ‘small’. Sort of. It was a choice between either wearing a medium-sized tunic and have it hang around me like a tent, or wear a small and have it barely reach my beltline. I’d chosen the latter.

The other reason I got a uniform that hadn’t been worn a hundred times by a hundred other prisoners, was that I wore a special prison uniform with ‘Sp. Inmate’ printed across the shoulders and sleeve, informing everyone who saw me that I had powers.

After folding the garments, I donned my ‘Weaver’ costume. I’d have to update it. It wasn’t real, wasn’t fit for fighting. The underlying bodysuit was something generic they kept on hand, no doubt similar to what made up Clockblocker’s costume. Much in the same way his costume had been elaborated on with armor panels, mine had armor that Dragon had 3D-printed prior to arriving at the PRT headquarters.

It felt wrong, especially the way the straps fit into it, and I didn’t like knowing how flimsy it was.

I didn’t wear the mask or the armor panels, merely holding the bundle that contained them. Instead, I pulled on clothes over the bodysuit, rolling up the sleeves until they were midway up my biceps. The same short-sleeved, button-up shirt I’d changed into after we’d met with the judge, and jeans.

When I emerged, Defiant and the warden were talking. She had enough presence that even Defiant, six feet tall and clad in armor, looked like he wanted to back down.

She tapped him in the center of his chest to punctuate her words, “…before lockdown. And I want all paperwork, as soon as you get it.”

“You’ll have it,” he responded.

“Hand out,” the warden said, turning to me.

I extended a hand.

She strapped a device to my wrist, like a pager, but with a coarse black strap attached. “So we know where you are.”

“Okay.”

The warden looked to the guard in the bulletproof glass enclosure. She gave him a hand signal, and he opened the front door to the prison.

We made our exit down a corridor of double-layered fences topped with barbed wire. We entered the parking lot, where a small crowd had gathered around Defiant’s ship, staring.

They parted to let us board, and then backed away as the jets started to thrum with life.

“We’re alike in some ways,” Defiant said, from his seat at the controls. I sat behind him, having belted myself in.

My response was cut short as we started moving, and inertia hit me like a pressure wave against the front of my entire body. I managed only a “Hm?”

“We’ve both been leaders. We’ve both made our mistakes, and we’ve faced a form of detention for it. You with your prison, me with my retirement.”

Oh, he was back to that? We’d been interrupted.

“Guess so,” I managed. “And Dragon?”

“Not a leader,” Defiant answered me. “Not unless you count the artificial intelligences that operate the other suits. But her prison? It remains worse than any you or I have faced.”

“Remains?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said, but he didn’t elaborate.

How could her prison be worse than jail? And how could she still be in it, unless… was she disabled? Cerebral palsy, partial or total paralysis, something else?

I wasn’t sure how that factored in with her current inability to communicate. If she relied on a computer to speak for her, maybe something in the program had broken?

The craft changed direction. Defiant tapped a button, then let go of the controls. Autopilot?

“Whatever happens,” he said, “You’re a member of the Wards. That’s done, but the nature of your membership is still very much in question, understand?”

“I’m not sure I do.”

“Before, I mentioned the tasks of being in charge of a Protectorate team.”

“Allocating people.”

“Yes. Today you’re going to meet some people who are going to play a very crucial role in deciding how you are allocated. Best case scenario, we put you on a team in the thick of something. Not the quiet you’ve been enjoying in your cell, but you’d be helping. Everyone benefits.”

“And the worst case?”

“The worst case is they say it’s a mistake, and you go to jail for the foreseeable future. I don’t see that happening. The second-to-worst case is more likely, where there are no team leaders willing to take you on board with all of the inherent risks.”

“You just said I was a member of the Wards.”

“I did. Miss Militia has your back, but there’s no way you could join the Brockton Bay Wards, under her. Conflict of interests, animosity…”

“I figured.”

“Chevalier’s interests are in restoring the PRT and Protectorate programs. We’ve committed to helping in any world-scale crisis events, which means participating in the next Endbringer program. He respects Miss Militia’s opinion, and your appearance before the media means we’ve committed to keeping you. That was partially intentional.”

“Intentional?”

“Because it throws a wrench in the plans of anyone who might want to maintain the status quo. But as much as Chevalier is on your side, if the capes directly under him in the command structure deem it necessary, he could easily send you to a place where you couldn’t do any damage and bring you out of hiding for media appearances and Class-S threats.”

“A place where I couldn’t do any harm? Like?”

“Guard duty at the quarantine area in Madison, perhaps, or a town without a cape presence, where you’d be doing little more than making appearances and talking to kids.”

“I’m… I don’t want to sound arrogant, but I’m better than that.”

“Mm hmm,” he said. “Let’s hope they think so.”

He pressed the button and took hold of the controls. “New York. The central headquarters of every Protectorate team in America.”

With Defiant beside me, my civilian clothes removed, costume donned, I entered the common room of the local Protectorate team.

The interior wasn’t dissimilar from the Wards’ headquarters in Brockton Bay. I’d visited that spot when we’d stolen the data from their server. The layout was similar, with what seemed to be interchangeable or connecting pieces defining the interior. The difference was in the quality of the pieces. Gold or faux-gold trim marked pillars and short walls. There wasn’t any brushed steel or ceramic. It was marble. This would be where they held the interviews and wowed the people who invested in the merchandising side of things.

Inspiring, in a way. Intimidating.

Equally intimidating, if not more so, was the crowd that waited for me. Eleven people, arranged across the room, most of them capes.

“In the lead, we have Prism, second in command of the New York team,” Defiant told me.

Prism’s lips flattened into a tight line as she looked at me. We’d met, at the Mayor’s house. She’d been one of Legend’s people. I supposed that Chevalier would have wanted someone who knew the city and the routines as his second in command.

“Rime, team leader of Los Angeles,” Defiant said.

Taking over for Alexandria, I thought. A cape with black hair in a blue skin-tight costume with fur. I recognized her from the Echidna event, the cape who made ice crystals. I remembered how she’d been following Chevalier’s orders. His second in command? It made sense he’d promote someone he knew to the second largest team in America.

“Revel, team leader of Chicago.”

Revel was a woman I hadn’t seen before, even in the background of the various Class-S fights. I was pretty sure I would have recognized her. She was clearly Japanese, with a painted mask covering her lower face, and a massive lantern on a stick that rested against one shoulder. She wore a white skin-tight outfit with straps at the shoulders, the legs ending mid-thigh, giving her a degree of modesty that the stylized crimson kimono didn’t. The kimono hung loose around her, held in place more by belts and what must have been wires in the fabric, elbow-length and just barely long enough to be modest. Her shoulders were bare and narrow, her expression… one eyebrow was raised as she studied me.

“Dispatch, the second in command of Houston.”

Prism at least had an apparent reason to dislike me, but Dispatch’s expression suggested he’d come to that conclusion all on his own. His costume was white, with steel points rising from his shoulders and either side of his brow. The mask that covered the upper half of his face was sculpted into a perpetual frown. I might not have given it a second thought, but his mouth… the frown left me little doubt he didn’t like me, right off the bat.

“You may recognize some of the captains of the respective Wards teams. Jouster from New York, Vantage from Los Angeles, Tecton from Chicago and Hoyden from Austin. You know Clockblocker.”

I nodded. Tecton, in what looked to be a fresh outfit of bulky rust-red power armor, gave me a salute. Jouster was playing up the medieval theme, a spear in hand, while Vantage was a black guy in forest green and silver… his costume looked a touch flamboyant, at a glance. Hoyden looked more like a desperado than a superhero, with a costume that incorporated a kerchief with eyeholes over the upper half of her face, her blond curls tumbling behind, and a jacket and jeans in what looked like black-painted chainmail.

Clockblocker leaned against a desk, unreadable.

“Mrs. Yamada, you’ve met, if the records are right.”

I nodded at the Japanese woman in a casual dress-suit who was standing beside Revel.

“And I’m Glenn Chambers. PRT head of Image,” a man spoke. He approached me to offer a fat hand for me to shake. He had a firm grip. Glenn didn’t look like someone who was particularly invested in image. He was obese, his clothes not flattering, his hair not quite cut into a mohawk, but gelled into something resembling one. He wore rectangle-framed glasses that made it easier to see how he seemed to perpetually squint – a result of long eyelashes.

“And I suppose I’m Weaver,” I said. Eleven sets of eyes, all on me, judging me. I hooked my thumbs into my pockets.

“I’m surprised Chevalier hasn’t shown up,” Defiant commented. He glanced at Prism.

It wasn’t Prism who answered. Dispatch, the Texan cape, spoke instead. “I asked the same question. He brings us all the way here, but he doesn’t show himself?”

“He’s handling a small crisis,” Prism said.

“We’re all handling crises,” Dispatch said. “Half of us have no experience as team leaders, we’re dealing with capes in mourning, with government capes auditing our team rosters for Cauldron capes-”

“Leave it be, Dispatch,” Rime interrupted him. “We should get down to business. The sooner this is settled, the sooner we can get back.”

Mrs. Yamada cleared her throat. “What are you thinking, Weaver?”

Suddenly put on the spot. “Honestly?”

“Honesty is good,” she said.

“I’m intimidated,” I said.

“How do you usually handle something like that?”

By being more intimidating in exchange, I thought. It wouldn’t do to say that out loud, to explain how I’d fallen back on being scary and ruthless for so long that I wasn’t sure how to approach something like this.

“I’m not so sure anymore,” I said. It was the truth, and it wasn’t self-incriminating.

Mrs. Yamada nodded.

Defiant spoke , “Let’s ensure we’re all familiar with what’s going on. We’ve had capes with criminal backgrounds join the Protectorate and Wards teams, though that has remained largely discreet, and Weaver’s civilian identity is public knowledge. We’ve had experienced capes join, as well, forcing us to adapt to their experience and retrain them where necessary. Weaver is both. She’s currently serving time in Gardener. Under the terms of her sentence, she’ll be continuing her high school studies independently, she’ll be getting therapy as soon as we’ve settled on a schedule, and she’ll be ferried out to various teams for testing and evaluation.”

“A lot of hassle for a little girl,” Jouster said.

A little girl? I kept my mouth shut, but it took some effort.

Clockblocker, however, was chuckling.

“What?” Jouster asked.

“She beat Alexandria,” Hoyden said, “He’s laughing because you’re putting down the girl who killed Alexandria.”

“Not a selling point,” Hoyden’s boss, Dispatch, cut in.

“She’s an absolute nightmare to fight,” Clockblocker said. “I’ve been on the receiving end enough times to know. So when Miss Militia told me she was in custody, I started asking questions, trying to get a sense of what was happening and when. I don’t even have to be here, and I’m picking up extra patrols later this week to make up for it, but I wanted to come and say this: I don’t like her, not really. But if my word counts for anything, as someone who’s only spent half the time dealing with the shit in Brockton Bay that she has? We want her on our side. Somehow, in some form. Because the alternative sucks.”

“Thank you,” I said, my voice so quiet I wasn’t sure everyone heard me. He was standing up for me, in a way, at a point in time I wasn’t sure how to voice those sorts of things myself.

I could see Jouster’s eyes behind his helmet, as he gave me a once-over.

“She killed Alexandria,” Hoyden said. “And, what, she was there for Leviathan, she was there for the Slaughterhouse Nine, for Echidna…”

“She went head to head with each of those,” Clockblocker said. He looked at me. “Right? Like, you weren’t just there. You were in the thick of it, exchanging blows?”

I nodded.

“Today is numbers,” Prism said. “Power evaluation, interviews.”

“No, no,” Dispatch said, shaking his head. “Ridiculous. You don’t invite us here, then make us sit through that nonsense.”

“We need to evaluate her abilities,” Defiant said.

“Do it on your own time. And skip the interview,” Dispatch said. “Your own notes, Defiant, say she’s a manipulator and a liar.”

“I’ve retracted those statements,” Defiant said.

“And who’s to say she hasn’t manipulated you? You and Chevalier were arguing for a cleaner, shinier Protectorate, didn’t you? Let’s not get off on the wrong foot. We vet her thoroughly, and if we don’t get a consensus that she’s an asset to the team, then that’s that.”

“What would you suggest, in place of testing and an interview?”

“We do what we’re doing with the Cauldron capes, run her by our thinkers,” Dispatch said. “We can get a more concrete assessment of her now, with a field exercise, than by any amount of talking. If I’m remembering right, a notice went out, didn’t it? A New York group of villains is poaching Wards and Protectorate members?”

“The Adepts,” Revel said.

“Two birds with one stone,” Dispatch said. He looked at the collected captains of the Wards. “We want to know how she functions in a team environment, let’s put her in the thick of it. If there’s trouble, or if the mission doesn’t look good, the rest of us can step in.”

Eyes turned my way.

“You’re serious,” I said.

“As cancer,” Dispatch told me.

“I don’t have any of my stuff, and the costume Dragon gave me isn’t my usual. Besides, you’ll be expecting me to follow different rules.”

“You’ve read the handbook, haven’t you?”

I nodded. But I haven’t completely thought of ways around the restrictions. I’d picked the name Weaver based on the idea that I’d be using thread more, but I didn’t have any prepared, not here, not yet.

“I’m sure Prism will let you have access to the New York teams’ supplies. Largest cape groups in America, they’ll have a little of everything.”

I frowned. If I said no, it’d be a black mark in my record, and some of these people were obviously not interested in giving me any slack, unless it was to hang myself with.

“Okay,” I said.

“The Adepts don’t kill,” he said. “If there’s a problem, it’s on you.”

There should be a rule against saying things like that, I thought. I didn’t care that he was putting me on the spot, or blaming me for stuff that hadn’t happened yet. He was implying this would be easy, practically ensuring this would be anything but.

“Adepts,” Jouster said. “I assume everyone’s up to date?”

Tecton was walking in front of our group, his tank of a suit giving us enough presence that the crowd parted before us. “Don’t be a jackass. You know Skit- Weaver hasn’t read the files. They’re in your city, you fill us in.”

“I know the basics,” I said. I’d read the file in Tattletale’s office. “They’re wizards, or they pretend to be, like Myrddin. Led by a time traveller.”

“They’re led by Epoch,” Jouster said, without looking at me. “Group is very organized. Thing you gotta know about New York is it’s bigger. Everything is. So these guys, there’s a lot of them. They’re organized into tiers, and they compete with one another for placement in the tiers, challenging ones in higher tiers, paying a penalty if they fail the challenge. There’s one tier one, two tier twos, three tier threes… all the way down to the tier fives.”

“Fifteen in total,” I said.

He gave me a hard look, then fell silent.

Am I not allowed to talk?

“This city sucks to move around in,” Hoyden said. “Crowds, traffic… how do you get anywhere?”

“We have different sub-teams for different roles,” Jouster said. “Lancer group for fast response, those of us who can fly or move over rooftops. Another group of heavier hitters who’re old enough to ride the bikes and licensed to travel the tracks.”

“Tracks?” Hoyden asked.

“Subways. You use a computer to help know which tracks you can stay on and when, so you don’t get hit by a train.”

“And the ones who aren’t old enough, or aren’t naturally mobile?” Tecton asked.

“Foot patrol, or sidekick duty with a Protectorate member,” Jouster said.

“Loads of fun,” Hoyden said.

“Am I the only one who likes doing the ride-along thing?” Vantage asked.

“Yes,” Hoyden said. “Definitely.”

Jouster shook his head. “It’s the job. They grumble, sure, but it’s a few years at most before they get to do the bike thing.”

“I’m guessing you’re one of the ‘lancers’,” I said.

Jouster gave me a dirty look, “What of it?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Just made sense.”

“Flechette was one too,” he said. “She was going to lead the squad when I moved up to the Protectorate, with Shelter taking over as Wards captain.”

“I believe it,” I said.

“Seem to recall that she’d defected, joined your old team.”

“I don’t know anything about that, honestly,” I said. “Only that she had romantic interests towards one of us Undersiders, and-”

“The doll girl,” Jouster said.

Vantage punched him in the shoulder.

“I didn’t know if she was ‘out’, so I didn’t want to say,” I said, feeling lame.

“That’s right,” Vantage said. “That’s how you’re supposed to act.”

The earbud I’d been supplied with buzzed with a woman’s voice. Prism? “They own the building up ahead. Cut the banter and focus on the job.”

A male voice. “Talk us through everything you’re doing, Weaver.“

“Focusing on my bugs,” I said.

“Tap the earbud twice to start the feed,” Tecton said.

I tapped it twice, and it beeped faintly. “Focusing on my bugs. I’ve been collecting them as we moved from the headquarters to this spot, so I have quite a few.”

“Lethal and venomous bugs aren’t allowed, you know that.”

Tying my hands. It was fine. “I didn’t plan on using them anyways. I’m selecting the smallest and most discreet, and sending them out. It’ll take a minute at most, but I’ll be able to track their movements.”

“The Adepts?”

“Everyone. I mean, the area’s dense, but once I have tabs on the Adepts, I’ll have an idea of where the civilians are, too. It means we can keep them out of danger, and we’ll know if anyone runs into the line of fire.”

There was silence on the line in response. Were they talking about me? Discussing the particulars? Hell, was I already breaking rules by violating people’s privacy?

I spoke, hoping that I was interrupting them if they were saying something along those lines. “I have other bugs on the periphery, drawing out cords of silk.”

“Show us. We have a camera in Tecton’s suit.“

Okay, this was getting borderline annoying. Second guessed every step of the way.

My swarm moved in front of Tecton, swirling.

“Image, Weaver,” it was a different man who spoke. The fat one… I couldn’t remember his name. “We need to do something about appearances, here.”

“Appearances?”

“The black, amorphous swarm. It conveys the wrong ideas. It’s disturbing to any onlookers, and if photos of you using your power on any greater scale made the rounds, it could be fodder for some ugly articles. You already face an uphill battle, with your reputation as an ex-supervillain.“

“You’re serious,” I said. I tapped my ear to shut off the channel, looking at the others, “Is he serious?”

“Glenn is always serious,” Clockblocker said. “When I first picked my name, Clockblocker, and announced it in front of a live camera so they couldn’t retract it, they punished me with intensive lessons with Glenn.”

“They do that any time you screw up on the PR front, like swearing on camera,” Hoyden said. “And in the sessions, he talks to you about your hair, about redesigning your costume…”

“How to talk so you command attention,” Vantage said, over-enunciating his words.

“How to hold yourself,” Jouster said, straightening his back, squaring his shoulders and raising his chin a touch.

“We can hear you, you know,” a woman said through the earbud. Rime?

“Maybe we need lessons in decorum,” Glenn’s voice buzzed in our ears.

Hoyden made a pained expression. She glanced at Tecton, then ducked low, avoiding the camera, while she walked around to Tecton’s back. She pushed at his shoulder, urging him to turn around. He rolled his eyes and sighed as he obeyed, and Hoyden prodded him forward until he was standing right in front of a wall.

“I really don’t know what you expect,” I said. “It’s my power.”

“By all reports, you’re a clever girl,” Glenn said “Surely there’s a way to present your power in a less threatening way.“

I opened my mouth, but the sheer number of protests that came to mind all jumbled together. I looked at the Wards, trying to see if I was the butt of a joke.

“Lucky, lucky you,” Clockblocker whispered to me, covering his ear with his hand, “You get his attention right from the start, and I’m willing to bet he’s not going to leave you alone. It almost makes me feel better about the time you crammed those bugs into my mouth and ears.”

Vantage made a face at that.

“So worth the extra shifts I’m pulling this week,” Clockblocker commented to Jouster. “Just to see this.”

“I’m not sure what you want, Glenn,” I said, after tapping my earbud, “I could send my bugs in one at a time. That’s not threatening, right?”

“Your sarcasm isn’t appreciated, Weaver,” Defiant informed me.

“I’m willing to play ball,” I said. “I just want to figure out what the he- heck you want, first. Do you want, like, ladybugs? There’s color there, a nice red cloud. There’s only, um, two hundred and twelve ladybugs in my range. But I could use them. Or… butterflies? There’s more butterflies than ladybugs.”

I accessed the butterflies in my swarm, drawing them to me.

“Tekky,” Hoyden said, “Turn around. They’ll love this.”

“Tecton,” he mumbled, stressing the word. “I hate ‘techy’, ‘tech geek’ and all those names. Just like I hate being the camera guy, the guy who the PRT gets to fix the vans when they want to cut work early…”

I drew the butterflies into formation, a stream of them following after one another.

“I just want you to realize that this is what you’d be asking me to-”

“Yes,” Glenn said, cutting me off. “Excellent! They did say you were smart.“

“You’re serious,” I said.

Clockblocker was laughing silently, his shoulders shaking.

“Serious as cancer,” Hoyden mimicked her superior. “All Glenn cares about is the image, the PR. Up to you to figure out how to hold yourself like a ‘lady’ while you’re dealing with street thugs with guns.”

“You would know, Hoyden,” Glenn said. “I’d hoped something would sink in for you, with you having more meetings with me than anyone has in the past year.“

“Stick to business, please. Where did you get all those butterflies, anyways?” I think it was Rime, on the comms.

“Rooftop gardens,” I said. “There was a whole block with older buildings and a garden on every roof, while we were heading this way. Lots of balcony-mounted flower troughs, too.”

“We’d need to get you a steady supply,” Glenn said. “I wonder how we arrange that.“

“They’re really going to make me the butterfly girl?” I asked.

Clockblocker only laughed harder. I was pretty sure he was faking it, at this point. He couldn’t find it that funny.

“If this is a problem,” Defiant said, the earbud’s digital sound only compounding the faint digital note of Defiant’s voice, “We can cancel the job, take a few days to discuss the tools you need to do the job effectively.”

The worst of both worlds. I’d be backing down, they’d probably argue for this as a way to keep me ‘tame’, and I’d look disobedient.

“No,” I said. “You want me to use butterflies, let’s do that.”

“For real?” Hoyden asked.

I nodded. “We’re picking a fight with the Adepts?”

“This is only a branch,” Prism said, over the comm, “They have three primary properties. They don’t hold territory, so the local gangs leave them be. The idea is to discourage them. Fight only so long as you’re confident you’ll win. Communicate what’s going on, and we’ll step in if need be. With luck, this will be a setback for them, and cause to stop headhunting from our side.“

“Okay,” I said. “Who’s in charge?”

“Me,” Jouster said.

It would be weird to not be the leader, after heading the Undersiders. “You okay with me as recon?”

“Suppose you have to be, if you’re limiting yourself to butterflies,” he said.

“I wasn’t going to limit myself to recon,” I said.

“You’ll tear them to shreds with butterfly bites,” Vantage said. “Do butterflies bite?”

“They don’t have mouthparts that can bite,” I told him. “They have proboscises.”

“So are you like, super smart or something?” Hoyden asked.

“No,” I answered her.

“Don’t get distracted by the new member,” Jouster said.

I noted what my bugs were telling me. “There’s three of them inside. Two men, one woman. The men have groupies with them, I think. In their bedrooms. There might be more, but they don’t have costumes on.”

“They should have numbers on their sleeves. Roman numerals.”

“I can’t really see through the bug’s eyes,” I said. “One second…”

I found the woman, sitting on the couch, a laptop on a coffee table in front of her. The bugs traced her sleeve.

“It’s not embroidered, I can’t sense anything raised, and the bug’s eyes can’t make out the letters. Sorry.”

“Check the surroundings,” Jouster said. “Tools? The group’s practices involve using tools, ritual, rites, chants, and all that crap to try to achieve better control over their abilites.”

“Kind of makes sense,” I said. “Abilities get stronger when you’re in a mental state closer to how you were thinking before your trigger event, so-”

“Wait, what?” Clockblocker cut me off.

“Yeah,” I said. “I triggered while I was in a locker. I’ve been thinking, I get just a little stronger when I feel trapped, or when I despair, or when I feel betrayed. My range extends.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Jouster said. “Three of them. No tools?”

“Sort of a tool. A rod, short, barely a foot long, and blunt, no barrel or anything. Carved, I think.”

“Not sure,” Jouster said. “Doesn’t ring any bells.”

“Um. But if you look,” I pointed. “There’s birds. Usually they’ll pick off a few bugs that get too close, but they aren’t moving.”

“And there’s some inside?” Jouster asked.

“Three… five birds in cages inside the apartment,” I said.

“Felix Swoop, tier three member of the group,” Jouster said. “Master-blaster hybrid. Controls birds, but not as much control as you seem to have. Thing is, he applies fire immunity and pyrokinesis to the birds, programs them with movements. You said he’s distracted?”

I noted Swoop’s presence in the bedroom, tried not to pay too much attention to the particulars of what was happening inside. “Definitely occupied.”

“Let’s move,” Jouster said. He began striding across the street. He raised his voice, “Back away from the building!”

No reaction from the men in the bedroom or the woman on the sofa. They couldn’t hear it.

I directed my swarm. Bugs moved through the crowd, and I organized the swarm so it was surrounded by butterflies, masking the core of the ‘disturbing’ black swarm within.

Cheating, maybe, but I’d do what I had to. The irritating part of this was that I had to look at the swarm to make sure everything was in place. It’d become natural sooner or later, but I really didn’t need more handicaps.

“Back away from the building. You can watch the fight, but watch from the other end of the street,” I spoke through my swarm.

So weird, to be doing this with a veneer of legitimacy.

“What are you doing, Weaver,” one of the capes asked me, through the earbud.

“Warning the crowd. I can mimic my voice by using the sounds my swarm produces, only I’m using mainly butterflies.”

A bit of a fib, but it would fit what Tecton was seeing by way of his camera.

“Keep us updated on your thought process and strategies.“

Jouster led the way into the building.

“I’m using the silk cords I prepared earlier to hamper the birds on the balconies,” I said. “There’s a pigeon roost above, but I’m covering the door, so hopefully Swoop won’t have access to all of those pigeons. And I’ve got other bugs surreptitiously gathering in the clothing that Swoop and the other male discarded. I’m assuming I can use the scarier bugs if the public isn’t about to see?”

“That goes against the spirit of what I was talking about,” Glenn told me.

“Yeah,” Hoyden said, from just behind me, “You should want to use butterflies and butterflies only.”

Tecton pushed the door open, splintering the lock and snapping the chain with just the strength of his power armor.

“Tecton in last,” Prism said. “We’ll want eyes on the scene.”

“I’m the toughest of us,” Tecton protested.

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Hoyden said, patting his chest as she walked by.

“Two upstairs there, with two more that might be initiates, might be civilians,” I said, raising my voice a fraction. I pointed in the direction of the two men. I moved one hand to point at another point. “One woman there. All two floors up.”

I hung back as the heroes ascended the stairs, and got to see as Tecton placed his hands against the frame of the door.

“Let me know when,” he said. “And brace yourselves.”

We’d gone over the powers in this particular group before we left. I knew what Tecton and Clockblocker were capable of, obviously. That left Vantage, Jouster and Hoyden. I could track them as they broke into the apartment.

Jouster’s blaster-striker hybrid power involved his lance, a power that conducted along the usual channels, only the form it took varied. He speared through the computer, then swung the blunted side of the weapon at the couch. The woman rolled out of the way, and energy rippled away from the lance, freezing and shredding cushions.

He could choose the effect, making it fairly versatile. Concussive blasts, fire, ice, lightning, suction and disintegration, among other things. Trick was that he had to hit to deliver the effect.

The advantage, conversely, was that he had another power. With a brief-lived burst of superspeed, he closed the distance to the woman, coming to an abrupt stop just in time to kick her in the midsection.

Clockblocker followed, stepping forward to touch the woman and freeze her.

“Woman is Paddock,” Jouster said, through the earbud.

“Caught her,” Clockblocker said.

Hoyden and Vantage were already breaking into the other rooms, interrupting the men and women at play.

Vantage had super strength, but his strength and reflexes scaled up as the number of opponents rose, with diminishing returns. He wasn’t especially durable, but he packed short-range teleports. Very short-range – a matter of two or three feet, at best. He teleported to help close the gap to Swoop and slammed one hand into the man’s collarbone. The woman scrambled for cover.

“Anyone want to break the wishbone?” he quipped.

The other man raised a hand at Hoyden, and she stopped in her tracks. He almost leisurely stood, taking the hand of the girl beside him, then reached down to collect his robe, and recoiled in horror at the bugs that festooned it. He couldn’t get to the rod, whatever it was supposed to do.

“Heads up, Hoyden’s ensorcelled or something,” I said, communicating through the earbuds.

“Nuh uh,” I could hear her speak through the earbud. She caught the cape from behind, then hurled him through the doorway, at Clockblocker. He stepped on the man’s bare back, and the man was frozen.

“Cape two captured,” Clockblocker said.

Hoyden was one of the capes with a mess of powers. Things she hit exploded, things that hit her suffered a retaliatory explosion. She was stronger, more durable, and to top it all off, she had a peculiar resistance to damage and powers that improved as she got further from her target.

Between them, they each had the ability to apply their abilities in devastating ways. They were team captains for a reason.

Wait, was this okay? I’d barely done anything. I was used to hanging back, supporting my allies, and delivering decisive strikes where necessary, but I was supposed to be proving something. Would I be able to say I’d achieved anything definitive?

Was that intentional?

I hurried up the stairs in double time. I reached the door frame, and I got a look from Jouster.

Definitely intentional. He’d had his team bulldoze through the capes, leaving nothing for me. I’d provided recon, but would that be enough?

“Securing the bystanders,” Clockblocker said, from across the room. He approached one of the women, and she made a squeak of alarm as she jumped back from his reaching hand. “Shhh, it’s okay. Doesn’t hurt. If you’ve done nothing wrong, there’s nothing to worry about. You’ll wake up in a few minutes, visit the police, and then go home.”

She glanced at Jouster, as if looking for confirmation, and Clockblocker touched her, freezing her.

The other woman was pulling on pants, the kind of skinny jeans you pulled up inch by excruciating inch, if you were lucky enough to have actual hips. She still wore a black bra, and way too much eye shadow.

“Last one,” Clockblocker said. “You can call in the PRT vans.”

She buttoned up her jeans, then ran her thumb along the chain that ran from her belt loop to her pocket.

“Wait,” I said. The chain- there were charms on it. “Those charms.”

“My embellishment,” she said.

“Shit!” Jouster said. “Clock!”

Clockblocker lunged, but she leaped back. Landing on his hands and knees, Clockblocker reached out, firing the fingertips of his glove at her, each trailing cords that extended to his gauntlet. Two of the cords looped around her limbs as they made contact. Thick, I noted. Not fishing lines that might cut when they were frozen in time.

He froze them, then freed his hand from the glove. She was immobilized.

It wasn’t enough.

“It’s Standstill,” Jouster said. He broke into a run, charging her with his lance held ready.

“Thirteenth Hour, now,” she retorted. Her eyes flared with light, and I felt my body jolt.

“Tecton!” I spoke through my bugs.

My heartbeat slowed to a glacial pace, my breathing slowing. My outstretched hand started drifting down, the strength to hold it up slowly leaving my body.

Thirteenth Hour collapsed, going limp in the midst of Clockblocker’s suspended wires. Jouster, mid-stride, did much the same.

My thoughts were slowing down, volition gone. The others were the same. My sense of time… I was reminded of a dream I’d had, of being put under a spell by Coil. Scopolamine.

Clockblocker’s power wore off the various Adepts, one by one. They composed themselves, dressing.

Swoop dialed a number on his phone, approached the sleeping Thirteenth Hour while holding it to his ear. He lifted her chin and kissed her, staying beside her to catch her as the cords were released.

“Spot of trouble,” he said, with a faint accent. Australian? British? “Wouldn’t mind one of the top tiers. They’ll have reinforcements.”

My eyelids drifted closed. I didn’t have the will to raise them.

But I could follow my bugs as they stirred, converging, moving as if with a mind of their own.

Following my unconscious directives?

The bugs went on the offensive, biting, stinging.

No. It wasn’t even a coherent thought. I’d get in trouble.

“No,” the bugs whispered, their droning forming crude words.

Swoop and the others startled at that. I could sense their movements through the accumulated bugs. He made a hand gesture, murmured a phrase, and birds took flight from the cages around the apartment. After a moment, they ignited, winging their way through the thickest areas of the swarm.

The others would be arriving soon. I had to do something.

That urgency, more than anything, seemed to translate into an order for my swarm. They began moving, bearing silk threads.

That, I was okay with.

The binding they performed was carried out as if from some deep-seated, creative part of me, the part of me that would doodle absentmindedly in the margins of my notebook when I was tired in class. Instead of aimless doodles, however, it was cords and lines of silk extending from table legs to feet, from wrists to earrings and between the loops of shoelaces, and it was all accompanied by the butterflies that I was still maintaining in formation.

Swoop’s improvised phoenixes couldn’t get close enough to burn those things without burning the individuals in question.

The other Adepts were arriving. My sense of time, still, was obscured. Where were the Protectorate capes?

How long would we be stunned like this?

Swoop, one hand pressed to his collarbone, moved his other arm to allow a flaming pigeon to rest on one hand, then winced in pain as he wound up nearly yanking an earring out. “Curses!’

He really said things like ‘curses’.

I did not want to lose to these guys.

The bugs were still moving, aimless, without my active direction, but they were using the silk cords.

Butterflies, I thought.

The butterflies I’d been prepared to use moved into the formations I’d instructed, joining and complementing the swarms of bugs that were weaving webs of silk over and around the four Adepts, including the sleeping Thirteenth Hour. I could sense her breathing.

How to break the spell?

Tecton.

He was under the effects. I could tell, by how his arms had drooped from where he had them on the door frame.

If this was simply a kind of hypnosis…

I called bugs to me, directed them to gather on my face.

Not enough… they couldn’t get through my mask.

Without me asking it to, a cockroach started chewing through the fabric. The fabric that wasn’t nearly as strong as spider silk.

The female Adept that Jouster and Clockblocker had attacked as they entered the apartment made her way toward the kitchen, stumbled as a silk cord around her knees failed to give her enough give.

“Annoying,” she said.

“Admirable, almost,” Swoop commented. “This is the sort of thing we hope to train, and she’s already a fair hand at it, isn’t she?”

“Whatever,” the woman said. She drew a kitchen knife from a wooden block on the counter, then began cutting the most obvious threads.

Seconds, minutes, hours passed. I couldn’t say for sure. There was fighting outside. Capes fighting capes. I couldn’t focus my attention on it.

With the hole in my mask now large enough, the cockroach wormed his way in.

Two ways this could go, I realized, as it dawned on me what I was doing. What my passenger was doing? Either this worked, or it would fail disastrously, and they’d be distracted, at the very least.

The cockroach reached the back of my throat. I gagged and coughed.

And that disruption was enough to shake off Thirteenth Hour’s influence. My thoughts began to coalesce into something more coherent.

Still coughing, fighting the urge to throw up into my mask, I directed bugs into the eye holes of Tecton’s mask, down to his mouth, to do much the same.

“No,” the cape with the rod said.

Another mind-affecting power. I could see my spiders getting larger as they crawled, the apartment getting smaller, I felt vertigo…

Tecton reached out to the doorframe and made the building shudder with enough force that everyone stumbled.

Everyone woke, Thirteenth Hour included. The hallucinations stopped.

“Again!” Swoop shouted.

Thirteenth Hour’s eyes glowed, her power flaring…

But I was ready. A cockroach mobilized to set off my gag reflex a second time, and I was alert before the effect had even sunken in.

So gross.

Vantage and Jouster wore masks that covered their mouths. It’d take a second to get into Tecton’s, and I didn’t want him to unwittingly wake Thirteenth Hour again…

I woke Hoyden instead.

I wasn’t making friends or allies here, I suspected.

Hoyden strode forward, coughing and wiping at her mouth. A flaming bird soared at her face. In the instant it made contact, it detonated in a ball of flame and unburned feathers. She was thrown backwards.

Another homed in on me. I wasn’t durable, like Hoyden. I shielded my face with my arms.

The armor protected me, the cloth didn’t. I could feel it as though something scraped against my flesh, felt the hot prickle that promised future pain. A burn.

“Stop,” the cape with the hallucination power said. He made a sign with his hands, extending his rod at me.

Again, I felt the sensation of things distorting.

I was free of Thirteenth Hour’s power, though, and my bugs were winding silk around his arm and face. He clawed at it, to little effect, and the more butterflies that settled on his face, the less effective he seemed to get.

Hoyden had returned, and endured a barrage of more flaming birds. The larger birds weren’t obliterated as they exploded, and circled around to strike her again. I ducked below one I could sense only by the bugs it burned along its path, then backed away.

The one with the knife. I tied some silk around the knife handle, connecting to the silk between Swoop’s leg and the table.

She tried to bring the knife down to cut something, and the cord went taut, pulling it from her hand. She tried to bend over to pick it up, and the thread between her throat and the light fixture pulled taut.

What was her power, even?

I wasn’t interested in finding out. I navigated the threads by using the bugs to track their placement. The armor Dragon had fashioned didn’t have compartments inside the armor panel at the back, but I had a taser dangling from my belt. Before she could figure out a way to break a thread, arm herself or use her power, I jabbed her with the taser.

She fell, momentarily suspended by the threads. I had the bugs near the light fixture manually break the thread before she strangled.

That left Swoop and Mr. Hallucination, who was apparently suffering for not having removed more threads from himself earlier. He swatted at the butterflies.

I reached Jouster, shaking him. When he didn’t rouse, I shook him harder.

Nothing. Not jarring enough.

I kicked his leg out from under him, and he sprawled.

“Fuck you,” he mumbled, as he began to climb to his feet.

“Wake up Clockblocker and Vantage,” I said.

“You don’t give me orders,” he said. He approached Swoop. The man smacked Hoyden with one more bird, whirling around to face Jouster, and then got slammed in the chest with the fattest part of the lance. The third tier Adept flew into a wall and went limp.

Jouster wanted to clean up? Fine. I tazed the hallucination guy, then hurried to Clockblocker’s side. When shaking him didn’t rouse him, I raised his head from the floor and then smacked it down hard enough to startle him.

“Jerk,” he mumbled.

Jouster had poked Vantage awake.

“Our reinforcements are fighting their reinforcements,” I said.

“Good to know. We get Tecton and back them up.”

“You kicked their asses with butterflies,” Clockblocker said, as we made our way to the stairs.

“I cheated. The butterflies are superficial, decorative.”

“No, no, no,” he said. “If anyone asks, you kicked their asses with butterflies.”

Defiant and I walked back through the corridor of double-layered chain-link fence. There was a long pause as the gates opened.

“You may have won over some of the ones with doubts, but Rime was grumbling about your attitude, and I suspected she was on your side to start with.”

“My attitude?”

“I don’t know. Something to ask her, when the time comes.”

I sighed.

“Your arms?”

“Hurt,” I said. I extended my arms, prodding at the bandage on my forearms. “Nothing serious. Will probably peel like a motherfucker.”

“Language,” he said, as we entered the hub.

The warden was there, waiting for us.

“You got injured.”

“In the line of duty,” Defiant said. “Permitted duty.”

“I told you to keep her out of trouble.”

“Wasn’t my choice,” Defiant said. “I can give you my superior’s number if you’d like.”

“I would like. Taylor Hebert? On the issue with the bug population of my facility, I feel it would be a very bad idea to provide you with a caustic substance to give your bugs, given what your file says you achieved with capsaicin. I had a bug zapper purchased, and you should be able to access it with each and every one of your tiny soldiers. I expect to see it used, understand?”

I nodded.

“Go change. I’ll have a guard waiting here to escort you to your cell.”

“Okay,” I said.

I changed back into a fresh prison tunic and pants, leaving my shoes behind. It pained me to leave everything behind, but I did. The female guard patted me down when I’d emerged and handed the bundle of clothes to the guard at the hub’s office, then led me to my cell.

I was cognizant of my fellow prisoners, who watched me. Prisoners who, I had little doubt, saw my injury as a sign of weakness, a reason to descend on me like wolves with wounded prey.

Being out among the Wards had shaken me, on a level. I still needed to find out how to fight like a Ward. A more effective Ward than the ones I’d encountered in the past, ideally. I needed to adjust my tactics, the very way I thought. To build a measure of self-confidence that wasn’t borne by fear and intimidation.

I settled down on the bunk with my book.

I shifted restlessly. I still had trace amounts of adrenaline in my system. The rush of a fight. My arms hurt, too, despite the over-the-counter painkillers I’d tossed back. A second degree burn, and like so many other injuries of the hands and arms, they seemed as though they had been strategically placed where they’d be most irritating and debilitating.

Tonight is going to suck, I thought. How was I supposed to get comfortable like this?

My bugs found the bug zapper, and I began systematically eliminating every cockroach, louse, fly and ant in the building.

The spiders, I kept on hand, directing them to the burned corpses. They could breed, in time, and I could put them somewhere where they wouldn’t encounter any people.

Breaking the rules, maybe, but it was something to occupy my thoughts. It made me feel just a little safer, a little more like myself.

23.02

Every part of the Las Vegas team’s reaction to our arrival screamed dissatisfaction. Folded arms, the way none of them would meet our eyes, the very way they were positioned, so they were just enough in our way to make it clear they didn’t agree with what was going on, but not so close as to be with us.

Except it wasn’t me that was the problem, this time.

Satyrical, Satyr for short, wore a helmet sculpted to look like a goat’s head, the mouth in a perpetual smile. On a good day, I imagined his eyes were bright with mischief, his shaped eyebrows quirked behind the large eye-holes of the helmet. This wasn’t a good day. There were circles under his eyes, and he glowered. With the smile on his helmet, it made him look… I didn’t want to say deranged, but it was the word that sprung to mind.

His bare chest was muscular, waxed hairless, the belt and leggings of his costume slung low enough that I could see the lines of his lower stomach that pointed to his… yeah. It was admittedly distracting. It was meant to be distracting.

Nix, Blowout, Leonid and Floret joined Satyrical in their anger. Heroes in more flamboyant and colorful costumes than normal, their moods a contrast in how dark they were. Spur and Ravine seemed more lost than angry, but the way they retreated into their group as we passed told me that they would side with their team over us.

If there was something to be said, words of encouragement or apology, nobody I was with seemed ready or able to come up with them.

We approached the elevator and made our way down, and none of the local heroes joined us.

“Thoughts?” Vantage asked me.

“For a city like Las Vegas, I’m surprised the building is so…” I trailed off.

“Dull? Like a giant tombstone?”

“No windows,” I said. “Just the front door, walls all around it, no decoration except for the PRT logo on the face of the building, no lights except for spotlights.”

“Stands out,” Vantage said. “There’s contrast.”

“And it’s required. Vegas is one of the worst cities for sheer number of villains,” Rime said. Her entire demeanor was rigid, which maybe fit in a way with her ice powers. “Vegas employs a group of unsponsored thinkers and tinkers to monitor the venues, much like the PRT does with the economy, ensuring that everything is above-board, that everything is being conducted fairly and that the numbers add up. Vegas changed as a result, developed a different cape dynamic. In Los Angeles or New York, it’s the people who can blow down buildings that are seen as true ‘heavy hitters’. Here, they’re trying to game the system, and the heroes are trying to game them. In Vegas, it’s thinkers, tinkers and strangers who rule the underworld.”

“A different sort of cops and robbers,” I said.

“Cops and robbers?” Vantage asked.

“A way my teammate once explained it to me. The, for lack of a better word, healthy way for heroes and villains to be, is for all of this to be a game of sorts. Trading blows, counting coup, but ultimately leaving the other side without any permanent damage.”

“Counting coup?” Leister asked. He was the sole subordinate that Vantage had brought along. Rime, by contrast, had brought Usher and Arbiter from her team. Prefab from San Diego had shown up as well.

I explained, “The term came from the Native Americans’ style of warfare. In a fight, one person makes a risky, successful play against the other side showing their prowess. They gain reputation, the other side loses some. All it is, though, is a game. A way to train and make sure you’re up to snuff against the real threats without losing anything.”

“Except,” Rime said, “Things escalate. One side loses too many times in a row, they push things too far. And there’s always collateral damage. I notice civilians don’t factor into that explanation.”

“I’m not saying I agree with it a hundred percent,” I said. “I didn’t, even from the beginning. But it sounds like what you’re describing.”

Rime shook her head. “No. The strip is dying. Every successful job the villains pull causes catastrophic damage, sees venues shutting down. More villains arrive, hearing of the last group’s success, or because there’s room for them, and they settle in the more desolate areas. The problem feeds itself, gets worse. This building is a fortress and a prison because that’s what the city needs, that’s how bad things have gotten.”

“And the heroes?”

“Flamboyant, as brilliant and attention-grabbing in the open as the villains are discreet and hidden in plain sight. The Vegas team is largely made up of strategists, charlatans and borderline scoundrels. Individuals who can foil cheats and frauds, or throw a wrench in the works of the local masterminds, who think like they do. Which is why this is such a problem.”

The last sentence had a note of finality to it. I decided not to push my luck with further questions.

We made our way out into the corridor with the cells. It was deeper, more developed than Brockton Bay’s. There were two tiers, with one set of cells above the other.

Rime moved her phone next to a television screen, then tapped it. There was a pause as a row of black squares with white outlines gradually lit up. She leaned forward a little, her hand resting against the wall beside the television.

The screen came alive. I saw a man in a cape uniform within, without a mask. He had albinism, to the point that the velvet purple of his costume overwhelmed the little of his skin that was showing. The irises of his eyes were a dark pink.

“Pretender,” Rime said. Her voice had a harder note than before. “What have you done?”

“Don’t place all of the blame on me. You forced my hand.”

“No,” she said, “There had to be another way. You could have admitted-”

“A death sentence,” he said. “You’re an upper-echelon cape now, and you have the clearance. You know about her. The bogeyman that comes after anyone who tries to release information they want to keep secret.”

I glanced at Vantage, who only shrugged.

“We could have protected you,” Rime said.

Pretender only chuckled. “No. No you couldn’t. I’m dead anyways, one way or another. I surrender, it’s the end of my career, and that’s all I have. I talk, I die. This was the best option.”

The hand that Rime was using to lean against the wall clenched into a fist. Her voice was tight as she asked, “Killing a government thinker was the best option?”

“Yes.”

Rime straightened, but it was more of a defeated gesture than anything, her hand dropping from the wall. “You were one of the good ones, Pretender.”

“Still am,” he said. He crossed the length of his cell, sitting on the corner of the bed. “I’d explain, but it would only get us all killed.”

“We’re going to have to take you to a more secure facility,” Rime said.

“Well, I didn’t expect you’d let me go. Do what you have to. I made a deal with the devil, you caught me, for better or worse,” Pretender said. In a quieter voice, he said, “About time I pay the price.”

Rime turned off the television. She looked at Arbiter.

“My riot sense was going off like crazy as he talked,” Arbiter said. “There’s something at work here.”

“Describe it.”

Arbiter touched her middle fingers and thumbs together, forming a circle, “Orange.”

She moved her hands further apart, “Red.”

Then further apart again, until the implied ‘circle’ was as big as a large pizza. “Yellow.”

“That bad?” Rime asked.

“Bad.”

“Then we move now,” Rime said. She raised her hand to her ear. “Dragon? Cancel your errands. We’re in for some trouble, almost guaranteed, and I’m thinking we want to clear out before it descends.”

There was a short pause.

The digital voice of Dragon’s A.I., the same one I’d heard through her drones and the armbands, informed us, “Kulshedra model en route to Las Vegas Protectorate Headquarters. ETA two minutes. Tiamat to join in t-minus eight minutes.”

“Okay,” Rime said. “It’ll be here before we’re on the roof. Let’s get Pretender packed up. Standard stranger protocols in effect. Usher and Arbiter, you handle it. Everyone else with me.”

Once we were all in the elevator, I figured I was clear to ask without sounding too much like a newbie. “What was Arbiter talking about? Riot sense?”

Rime explained. “She’s a social thinker, in addition to her minor blaster and shaker powers. Her danger sense is mild at best, not something she can react to immediately, but it makes her aware of associated individuals and the threat they pose. She wouldn’t be able to see much from Pretender alone, but she knows that there’s a moderate to high danger posed by those closest to him-”

“His team, probably,” Prefab said.

“She’s predicting a massive risk from people who have an intimate but less immediate association or those who have a recent but less familiar association with him…”

“Old teammates or family that he doesn’t see regularly,” Prefab said, “Or people he’s hired for help that he isn’t as familiar with.”

Rime finished, “…And a moderate risk from people or things on the periphery of his real-life social network.”

“The bogeyman?” I asked.

Rime didn’t answer. Instead, she looked at the digital display above the door of the elevator. “Prefab, look after our Wards. I’m going to have words with Satyr. See if we can’t work out what the angle is. Wait on the roof for our ride.”

“Stranger protocols mean you don’t go anywhere alone,” Prefab said.

“Of course. I’m thinking… Vantage,” she said, beckoning.

Vantage nodded, stepping forward.

The elevator doors opened for Rime to exit, then shut. The three of us continued up to the roof. Prefab was large, and his armor made him look larger, with shoulderpads that looked like the tower-tops of a castle, each probably weighing twice as much as my entire outfit, equipment included. He carried a heavy cannon, obviously tinker made.

Leister was a teenager in lightweight silver armor with the edges molded into wave-like forms. Beneath the armor was blue cloth with a similar wave-like design embroidered on it. He held a trident, as ornate as his armor. As lightweight and sprightly as Prefab was a veritable tank.

“This bogeyman-” Leister started.

“Based on what we know,” Prefab said, “Arbiter giving us a yellow that possibly includes her is more worrying than a red alert involving just about anyone else.”

“You don’t know anything about her?”

“We mainly see her censoring information,” Prefab said. “Silencing and disappearing people who are talking about sensitive stuff, and doing the same with everyone they talked to. Only details are slipping through the net, now. About Cauldron, about Alexandria, the formulas.”

“Too much for one person to handle?” I suggested.

“Speculation from the top is they’ve probably stopped caring,” Prefab said. “Thinkers believe she’s letting things leak, because it doesn’t make sense that they’d keep things this tight and then slip up like they have been.”

“What’s her classification?”

“Thinker. Don’t worry about the number. Just run.”

I frowned.

“Exactly how many capes are like that?” Leister asked.

“A handful. Enough.”

“I’m beginning to feel like I’m out of my depth,” Leister said.

“You get used to that,” I said. “With the sheer luck involved in powers and the crap we wind up facing on a daily or weekly basis, it’s only a matter of time before you wind up going up against someone you don’t have a chance against.”

“Yeah, but Fab’s talking-”

“Prefab,” Prefab growled.

“Sorry. I mean, Prefab was talking about opponents we couldn’t hope to fight, and I’ve only had two real fights so far. One of them wasn’t even a real fight.”

“You’re new?” I asked, raising my eyebrows.

“I’ve only been a Ward for a month.”

Only two fights in a month. I felt a pang of envy.

“Let’s hope there isn’t a fight today,” Prefab said. “But let’s be ready if there is one.“

We ascended to the rooftop. Dragon’s suit had already landed. A bulky craft, twice the size of a helicopter, with what looked to be a cargo bay. Letters stenciled on the edge of the wing read ‘Kulshedra v0.895′.

Inside, in boxes, there were butterflies. Innumerable varieties. Sadly, quite a few had died due to a lack of food or being crushed under the weight of the others. The idea was clear. The PRT wanted me to change how I operated. Dragon, at least, was willing to give me the means.

It was still stupid. Ridiculous.

The back of the craft opened, giving me access to the hatches. I stepped up onto the ramp and found the buttons to open the boxes.

“Go, my pretties,” I said, monotone. “Go, seek out my enemies and smother them.”

They took off, moving in colorful formations, organized by type, drawing fractal shapes in the air as they spread out.

I stepped down off the ramp to see Leister staring at me.

“I know you were joking,” Prefab said, “But no smothering.”

“No smothering,” I said, sighing. I looked up. The sky was darkening. “If there’s a fight, it’s going to be at night. It’d be pretty stupid to use butterflies at night, when half of my tricks are subtle.”

“You’d have to ask Rime.”

Was I supposed to use non-butterflies to scout for trouble?

I considered asking, but I was suspicious I already knew the answer.

Best not to ask, and beg for forgiveness later.

Insects and flies moved out over the surrounding cityscape. There were too many buildings here, too many that were sealed off, but I could check rooftops and balconies, and I could investigate the ground. Tens of thousands of people, all in all.

“Sniper rifle,” I said, in the same instant the thought came together.

“Wha?” Leister asked, incoherent and confused.

Prefab’s head snapped my way. “You sure?”

“I’d point,” I said, “But he’d notice. Our masks and helmets cover our faces, or I’d be worried about lip-reading.”

“Don’t panic, don’t give away that you’re afraid. Into the craft. Go,” Prefab said.

I nodded, wishing I had my real costume, though I knew it might not be tough enough to withstand a bullet from a sniper rifle.

Prefab was the last to step inside, slowing down as he approached the ramp. I could see light glittering around the edges of the roof, growing more intense over the course of seconds. Ten, fifteen seconds passed, until there was more of the light than there were spaces in between. The light was most intense near the edges.

In a clap of thunder, a rush of wind and a flare of… anti-sparks, crenellated walls appeared, extending fifteen feet up from the lip of the roof’s edge. The sparks, such as they were, were black at their core, surrounded by shadow. They spun in the air before drifting to the ground, where they flickered out of existence.

“Does that block his line of sight? I can make them taller,” Prefab said.

“I don’t think he has the right angle to shoot over the wall,” I said.

“No weapons? Costume?”

I used my subtler bugs, but he was already packing away the rifle in record time, then swiftly moving away from the roof’s edge. He brushed away my bugs as they converged, kicked a hatch open with his foot, then climbed inside with a speed that almost made me think he’d fallen. Only the fact that the hatch closed firmly after him convinced me otherwise.

The only way he’d have evaded the swarm like that was if he’d known what I was doing.

“No costume,” I said. “He brushed away the bugs before I could get anything substantial, but I think… glasses? And a dress shirt. I think he noticed what my bugs are doing. That’s rare.”

“We’ve got trouble,” Prefab said. I realized he was using his phone. “Sniper on a rooftop nearby. Possible Thinker. Barricades should make for safe elevator exit.”

“We’re on our way up,” Rime said, through the speaker. “Four capes and the containment box. Hold position, play safe. If Pretender arranged a jailbreak, he won’t have just one person working under him. Arriving in eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one…“

The elevators opened. Rime, Arbiter, Vantage and Usher made their way out, wheeling a box along with them.

“Password?” Prefab asked.

“Twenty-three-aleph-pater-newfoundland-washington-vikare,” Rime said. “Arbiter’s group is already confirmed, they haven’t left my sight. First half of your first password?”

“Eight-nine-three-scion,” he responded. “And the other two are clear.”

“Good. Let’s move. A hand?”

Prefab gave Rime a hand in moving the box. It couldn’t have been comfortable: four feet by six feet by four feet. Enough to stand in, but not enough to lie down. The thing had four wheels, and was dense enough that it took some muscle to get it up the ramp. I would have joined in, if I didn’t fear I would get in the way more than I’d help. I wasn’t the strongest person around. Fit, yes, but not strong.

Instead, I focused on bringing my butterflies back. I couldn’t get them all back in time, but a loss of a hundred or so wasn’t a tragedy.

A loss of all of the butterflies wouldn’t be a tragedy. I’d feel bad, if only because of the trouble Dragon likely went through in acquiring them, but yeah.

Gosh, if they all just happened to die or get left behind, maybe I’d have to use something else. Tragic.

They finally managed to settle the box at the center of the cargo bay, pulling a switch to close clasps at the base of it, lowering a solid metal pillar from the roof to the top of the box.

I doubted it would budge if someone crashed a bus into it.

I called back some of the butterflies closest to me, keeping others around the building with the sniper. He hadn’t set up again.

“I’m worried about that sniper,” I said. “If he was coming after us, why is he giving up so easily? If he wasn’t coming after us, who was he after? A civilian?”

“Identify the building as we get airborne.”

“Through a window?” I asked, looking forward, to the ‘head’ of the craft, that looked out onto the city.

“Bulletproof glass or no, let’s stay away from the windows for now,” Rime said. “Kulshedra, show Weaver what your cameras see.”

Monitors changed from red text on a black background to high-resolution images of the surrounding walls and rooftop, a different image for each one.

A second later, the ramp closed, and we took to the air, the craft vibrating softly.

I studied the monitors, watching, getting a sense of the surroundings and of which buildings corresponded with what I was looking at.

“Kulshedra,” I said, pretty sure I was mangling the name, “The leftmost monitor on your left side. Zoom in, a little up and left. There. Building to the left of the one in the dead center.”

I tapped the screen as the ship highlighted the building in question.

“Good job, Weaver,” Rime said, peering at the monitor.

“Was on the roof, moved below through hatch when I used my bugs. Hasn’t left the building,” I said.

Rime touched her earbud. “Vegas teams, be advised, armed individual in a building at… 125 West Sahara.”

“It’s port,” Leister murmured to me.

“Huh?”

“You said ‘left side of the ship. It’s port.”

“Isn’t that boats?” I asked.

“Can be aircraft.”

“Best leave it,” Vantage said. “Leister’s a little stubborn.”

“So am I,” I said.

“Maybe ‘tenacious’ is the word you want,” Vantage offered. “There aren’t a lot of people who get knocked out and still manage to win a fight.”

“Are you all this pedantic?” I asked.

Vantage only laughed, though I saw Rime glancing at me, and she didn’t look pleased.

“Alexandria was always hard on us,” Arbiter said. Her voice had a strange tone to it, oddly melodic, “Getting us to focus on grades, extracurricular stuff, on top of what we did as a part of the team.”

“We were challenged to be better than the other teams in everything, academics included,” Vantage said. “But we were the only team with a leader who cared about it.”

“Except the capes in Fresno,” Arbiter said. “I was still a Ward, then.”

Vantage smiled, “Oh yeah. The bastards in Fresno. They caught on, probably because we were complaining so much. Small team, but they started studying like crazy, just so we’d be in second place, academically. Didn’t matter why we were second, Alexandria was still annoyed at us.”

“All those sermons on being top-notch, on acting like the people we wanted to be, and… she turned out to be a monster,” Arbiter said.

“A monster slain by Weaver, here,” Usher spoke.

All at once, I felt very on the spot. Each of the capes here, Rime and Prefab excluded, had worked with Alexandria in some capacity. Except Rime and Prefab were team leaders, and Defiant had commented on how every cape in a position of power had some experience working under the Triumvirate, so even they knew her to some extent.

“Weaver did what had to be done,” Rime said. “Not pretty, not kind, but sometimes you have to use a knife to cut out a cancer.”

All eyes were on me. Nobody was speaking.

“I asked you to come along on this job for a reason, Weaver,” Rime said. “I’ve read the incident reports that involved your interactions with the PRT and the groups under the PRT’s umbrella. The bank robbery, the fundraiser, the theft of the database with the Shadow Stalker kidnapping, and your ultimate surrender, a little over a week ago.”

I nodded, not sure where she was going, not wanting to interrupt.

“On the latter two occasions, you and your team perverted the natural course of justice. You pretended to be defeated by Shadow Stalker in order to ambush the Wards, and you later surrendered, only to get off rather lightly for your crimes.”

“I think I follow,” I said. I glanced at the others, but they were all busy trying not to look like they were listening to our conversation.

Rime nodded, “It’s about-”

The ship lurched, and Rime broke off mid-sentence to catch herself before she fell to the floor. Usher fell and nearly slid across the floor, but Vantage caught him.

“Kulshedra!” Rime shouted, “Report!”

“Incoming fire. Taking evasive maneuvers.”

“The sniper,” I said.

“Not likely,” the ship reported. “Unless the sniper is capable of moving great distances, he is approximately point seven three five miles away. The missile came from a perpendicular direction.“

“Missile?” Leister asked, sounding very alarmed.

“Projectile,” the ship corrected. “Humanoid in shape.”

I saw Leister relax a fraction at that, which I found oddly charming. He was relieved it was just a person. Experience told me that small-to-medium sized explosives were less daunting than the prospect of fighting an unknown parahuman.

“Let me out, Kulshedra,” Rime said, “Before they attack again. Follow my orders on comm channel two.”

The back of the ship cracked open, and wind rushed into the cabin. Several of my butterflies were torn free of their roosts.

“Prefab’s in charge,” Rime said.

“Got it,” Prefab answered.

“Usher?” Rime asked. “Hit me.”

Usher didn’t respond, still struggling a bit with his precarious position, holding on to Vantage’s hand. He did close his eyes, and Rime began to glow, a sheen radiating over her hair, skin and costume.

With that, she was gone, pushing her way out of her seat, leaping and taking flight, flying out of the open hatch.

An instant later, the ship swayed again. Prefab used his power to create a short half-dome over Usher. The back hatch closed, and Usher was finally able to relax, with solid ground and something to hold on to.

“Projectile was rotating rapidly, along both horizontal and vertical axes. Rendering composite image from video footage.“

The monitors showed a gray expanse, but it began to rapidly take shape in what was first a distorted sphere, then a crude face, and finally a face complete with details.

Arbiter, Vantage, Leister and Prefab all groaned in unison. I suspected Usher might have joined in if he had a better angle..

“Fuck you, Pretender,” Vantage muttered. “Fuck you. You had to hire the worst mercenaries possible, didn’t you? You asshole.”

I looked at the image. Not a face I knew, but one I recognized from TV, from the internet, and one very brief encounter.

“That’s B-”

The ship swerved, but it didn’t manage to avoid the hit this time around. This time, the shifting center of gravity was compounded by a sudden impact, heavy enough to cave in the front of the craft. Each and every one of us were thrown out of our seats.

From there, things went south quickly. No longer flightworthy, the ship struggled to maintain altitude. Bugs that had collected on the outside of the ship made me aware of how the jets that had been driving the craft forward were now angling towards the ground. They worked double time to keep the Kulshedra from spinning as it fell and to give downward thrust to counteract the pull of gravity.

Rime’s power froze the Kulshedra in mid-descent, catching it between two buildings, suspended in the midst of a bridge of ice.

The projectile struck us again, from directly above. The ice to our left, our port side, shattered.

“Seatbelts on!” Prefab bellowed. “Hold on tight if you can’t get to one! Deep breath, don’t tense with the impact!”

I climbed up to a point where there were benches, and belted myself in. One over each shoulder, one over my lap. The headrest- it wasn’t there. There was only metal. My butterflies found the real headrest above me. I reached up and found the clasps to lower the softer bundle until it sat at the right height to cushion any impacts.

The ice on our starboard side cracked, an agonizing, gradual break. My heart leaped into my chest as we plunged towards the street below.

The Kulshedra hit ground, and the impact was so heavy my thoughts were jarred out of my head. For long seconds, I couldn’t think, but could only experience, could only feel every part of my body hurt, aches and pains I didn’t know I had magnified by the jolt.

It was a small relief that my passenger didn’t take the opportunity to act without my consent. I was bewildered enough without any added complications, stunned, sore where the straps had pulled against my shoulders and gut.

“Kulshedra!” Prefab shouted. “Lights on!”

“Auxilary offline. Emergency lighting failed in six attempts carried out in two seconds.”

“Uhhhh,” he said, drawing out the sound, “Damage report?”

“A.I. bank one offline. Aux offline. Propulsion offline. Weapons offline. Helm offline.“

“Why are you speaking strangely?” I called out.

“A.I. bank one offline. Advanced linguistics, memory, geography-“

“Enough,” Prefab said, cutting it off.

I almost told him to let it continue, just so we had an idea, but he was the boss.

“Protectorate, Wards, sound off!” Prefab shouted.

“Arbiter. Fine.”

“Vantage, mildly injured,” Vantage said. “My hand.”

“Usher, bleeding from a bad scrape, but otherwise okay.”

“Weaver,” I said, “I’m fine.”

There was a pause.

“Leister?” Prefab asked.

“Mostly okay,” Leister said, but his voice sounded strained. “Took a hit to the gut.”

“Let’s get ourselves sorted out,” Prefab said. “If you can reach your phones, use them for light. There’s an exec on the second page, if you haven’t mucked with them to add ten pages of games.”

“Don’t-” Leister said, still sounding odd, “Don’t diss the games, when you make us sit around waiting for stuff all the time.”

I didn’t get a phone yet, I thought. But hey, I’ve got the damn butterflies.

At my order, the butterflies that had been clustered on the outside of their cage took flight, spreading out over the ship’s interior.

I spoke, “Kulshedra. Roof got crushed, lights with them, am I right?”

“Yes.“

“No lights in floor?”

“Not at present. Standard floor fixtures in Kulshedra model precursor were removed for containment box fixtures. Lights included.”

“Any power to monitors?”

“Yes.”

“Video footage of exterior, stat,” Prefab ordered, cutting in.

Monitors flickered to life. One in three showed only the ground beneath us, and another third were broken.

“Change the focus of any monitor displaying only asphalt,” I said.

“A.I. bank one is offline. Discrimination no longer possible.“

“Monitors with video from any camera on the ship’s upper half.”

“Restate, please,” the A.I. said.

“Nevermind,” I said. “Um. Nine working cameras, four on port side, five on starboard, am I right?”

“Yes.“

I worked on unbelting myself, ensuring my legs were fixed in the bars beneath the bench, so I wouldn’t fall. “Label monitors with numbers from one to nine.”

One by one, the monitors displayed numbers instead of the video feed.

“Weaver-” Prefab said. “This isn’t helpful. We need information on our surroundings.”

“No immediate threats nearby, according to my swarm,” I told him, checking with my bugs. “Ship, monitors one, three and seven weren’t displaying a usable feed. Restore a feed to each other monitor.”

The videos reappeared.

“Monitors two, six and eight are broken and are not displaying anything coherent. Display white instead, maximum brightness, on those screens and any ones not displaying any video.”

Monitors lit up. It wasn’t much, but it was marginally better than what the Protectorate-issue phones were granting.

“How the hell do you know your way around this thing?” Vantage asked. I could see him below me, one hand outstretched, the other held behind his back.

“Defiant and Dragon have been ferrying me between the PRT and court, and between prison and these little field exercises, so I’ve gotten a sense of them,” I said. “And I fought a bunch of others back in Brockton Bay. You figure them out, kind of.”

“I saw that bit about Dragon’s visit to Brockton Bay in the news,” Vantage said. “Here, fall.”

I twisted myself around until I hung by my hands, then let myself drop from the bench. Vantage caught me with the one hand.

The others were getting themselves sorted out. A few minor injuries, but it wasn’t as bad as it could be.

My head snapped around as our opponent landed just outside the ship. She let go of her companions, setting them down on the ground beside her.

“Hellooooo,” a girl’s voice sounded over the system. I had to turn around, checking all of the cameras, before I found the one where she was displayed, upside down.

“Ship, flip monitor, um, monitor four, one-eighty-degrees vertical,” I said.

It flipped the right way around. I could see a young girl on the opposite side. She was flanked by two other small children, one a male with a widow’s peak and a severe expression for his age, ten or so, the other a girl of about twelve, in overalls that ended at the knee, a star at the chest, and far too much makeup.

“Fuck me,” Vantage muttered. “Bambina brought her team.”

“Come out and plaaaaay,” Bambina called out. A second later, she leaped. The small detonation that followed in her wake was quenched by the appearance of Rime’s ice crystals.

“Sniper’s active,” Rime’s voice came through the earbuds. She was panting. “Deliberate, accurate shooter. I’ve taken three bullets, ice armor took most of the force out of the shots. Bambina is accompanied by Starlet and August Prince, um. Shooter’s shots ricochet. Can’t dodge. There’s wounded just outside craft. Traffic caught underneath when you fell.“

“Stop talking and get inside,” Prefab said.

”Can’t close the gap to the Kulshedra without getting shot again. He’s cutting me off.”

“Use crystals to form a wall, get inside, damn it,” Prefab said.

“Ricochets,” Rime stressed. “I- shit!”

I found her with my bugs, setting them on her costume. “She’s okay, just fleeing from Bambina and Starlet. The shooter doesn’t seem to be targeting the kids.”

“My power makes her immune to Bambina,” Usher said.

“Maybe to the explosions,” I said, “But the impact? Or something else?”

He frowned.

“They’re not on the same side,” Arbiter said, “The shooter and the child villains.”

“Good,” Prefab said. “Let’s-”

Bambina collided with the Kulshedra again. It rocked, nearly tipping over onto one side.

“Kulshedra,” Prefab said, “Open ramp!”

The ramp opened, and I sent the butterflies out. Nothing substantial, but it was something.

Okay, not really. But it was an opportunity to lay out some silk. I emptied the reserves I had contained in my costume.

Prefab began working on a structure, forming it out of the same flashes of light and sparks of darkness he’d used before. It took time to pull together, and the way it joined with the wall next to it, it didn’t seem like he was designing it on the fly.

Similar to Labyrinth, but it was only natural that powers might run in parallel.

The shooter wasn’t in my reach. Bambina was horrifically mobile, bouncing off of walls and the street, creating explosions with most of the impacts. Her teammates were along for the ride, apparently unscathed by her power. Going on the offensive would be hard, even if I was using my full complement of bugs.

I was having a really hard time justifying Glenn’s rule on pretty bugs only.

Prefab’s wall appeared around the craft. “Priority one is the wounded!”

We made our way out of the craft. Odd as it was, I felt a mixture of relief and… an emotion I couldn’t place, at the realization that I didn’t have to fight to convince my teammates that we had to help other people.

Three cars had been caught beneath the wings of Dragon’s craft, another smashed by a chunk of ice. The passengers of one car had fled, another two cars had people trapped inside, and the people in the fourth were unconscious.

I helped Arbiter with the unconscious ones.

“I alerted Dragon,” Prefab said. “The Vegas teams know too. This is a waiting game. We help Rime, and we keep the prisoner contained. If he gets loose, or if Bambina destroys the containment vessel, this gets a lot more complicated.”

The prisoner, I noted the word choice, not Pretender.

“If I can get closer to the shooter, I can disable him,” I said.

“Too dangerous.”

An explosion against the exterior of the wall Prefab had pulled together marked another attack from Bambina.

“I can do dangerous. Let me take the kid-gloves off, and-”

“No,” Rime’s voice came through my earbud. “No. Stay.“

I grit my teeth. “You’re underestimating me.”

“We’re well aware of what you’re capable of. I’m doing you a favor,” she said, and her voice was strained. “Stay, follow Prefab’s orders.“

I considered running, then stopped. “Okay. I’m giving you some backup, Rime. Best I can do.”

With that, I sent butterflies her way, clustering them into human-shaped groups. When one group reached her, they surrounded her. Decoys.

“Hard to see,” she said. I didn’t even need the earbud to understand, with the butterflies near her.

I kept the bugs away from her face. I wasn’t sure that was ideal, but it was her call.

Arbiter and Prefab had enough medical training to check the civilians over before we moved them or moved them further. With my power, I tracked Bambina as she ricocheted through the area, causing innumerable explosions across the landscape. Rime struggled to evade both Bambina and the detonation, while maintaining some degree of cover against the gunman.

“Last one,” Prefab said. “Weaver, help.”

I helped him get the older woman to her feet, and keep her standing as we led her into the back of Dragon’s ship.

I stopped abruptly, as Bambina’s trajectory swiftly changed.

“Trouble!” I called out.

Bambina landed atop the wall. Her teammates landed beside her, each holding one hand. They looked a little worse for wear. Starlet was firing darts of light at Rime, the darts exploding mid-way through the air to block Rime’s path when she tried to advance. Between Starlet and the sniper, she wasn’t able to advance.

”You were there for the Leviathan fight,” I spoke to Bambina.

“Can’t really bounce on water, it turns out,” she said. “Wasn’t worth the trouble. Ducked out.”

Prefab let go of the older woman, leaving me with the burden as he faced Bambina square-on. “Lots of attention on Pretender all of a sudden.”

“Paying pretty well,” Bambina said, “And he promised a favor, too. He set some rules, but considering how we’re going above and beyond the call of duty, I’m hoping he’ll bend them. You know how fucking awesome it is to have a favor from a body snatcher? He zaps himself into some hunky celeb that’d never touch me otherwise, then…”

Bambina launched into a lewd explanation of what she’d have him do to her, and vice versa. I averted my eyes and did my best to turn off my ears. I’d started out spending months suppressing my powers to varying degrees, and I’d learned to ignore some sensations from my bugs. I wasn’t so lucky when it came to my hearing.

“…with my feet,” Bambina finished.

Starlet, still firing on Rime, glanced over her shoulder to look at us, cackling at Bambina’s audacity, while August Prince didn’t seem to react.

I’d backed away, helping the older woman hobble forward on her bad ankle, and we were close enough to the ramp for her to make her own way up. I stepped forward, my eyes still on Bambina.

“Worst thing ever,” Vantage murmured from behind me. “Fighting kids? You win, you get zero credit, no matter how good their powers are. They’re children, after all. But if you lose, well, they’re kids, your reputation is fucked.”

“Focus,” Prefab said. “We know who these three are. We’ve got a Mover-shaker six, a blaster-shaker four, and a master-stranger three.”

“Hey, Weaver,” Bambina called out. “You’re that supervillain-turned hero, right? Offed Alexandria?”

“Yeah,” I said.

Odd, how I felt more at home in this situation than I had fifteen minutes ago. Or even helping the civilians. I’d liked helping civilians, but this was where I felt most able to reach into myself and be strangely calm.

“You fucked up my rankings for a straight week, worst fucking time, too. I’d planned an escapade, was supposed to rise to number thirty, but your news took the front page instead, and I dropped to forty-five instead. I haven’t been that low in a year!”

“Rankings?” I asked.

“Rankings! Don’t you even pay attention? It was embarrassing. My mom’s still giving me a hard time over it, and it’s like, that’s less money from our sponsors. So I’m going to make you deepthroat my fist, okay? Break your arms and legs and make you suckle it.”

She stamped, and fire rippled around her. Both August and Starlet flinched.

Worse, it destroyed the silk I’d been tying around her leg.

She leaped down, holding August Prince’s hand, and Arbiter took action. The heroine directed a sonic blast at Bambina with one hand, but Bambina kicked the wall, changing the direction she was moving. Arbiter blocked her with a forcefield, then raised a hand to shoot again-

And stopped, standing still instead. A look of consternation appeared across her forehead, above her mask.

Bambina ricocheted off of Dragon’s craft, hitting it hard enough that it shifted, then flew at Prefab. One hit, and he was out of action. The explosion hadn’t even been that large.

Prefab, who had his cannon raised and hadn’t even pulled the trigger once.

Bambina whipped around, rotating crazily before touching ground, her feet skidding on the ground. She set the Prince down. Starlet, up on the wall, laughed.

“Can’t touch the Prince, can you?” Bambina asked. “Go, August.”

The little boy advanced. He held a scepter, different from Regent’s. More of a mace.

Arbiter was backing up rapidly as he advanced, and I-

I thought briefly about what the heroes had said about Alexandria, about how she’d wanted them to act like the person they wanted to be.

I’d done that, in a way. It reminded me of how I’d formed my identity as Skitter. I’d acted fearsome, acted as if I expected people to be afraid, expected them to listen, and they had. Even Dragon had, at one point.

But maybe I didn’t need to be feared here. I could do something as Weaver. Confidence. I didn’t back down as the August Prince approached. I sent butterflies his way. No problem.

Tried to move them so he would be blinded… and found they didn’t listen.

Tried to bite and sting with the nastier insects I’d hidden inside the butterfly swarm, and again, no response.

He closed the distance to me, swinging at my knee with the mace. I ducked back out of the way.

His fighting style was graceless, without any particular fluidity. He held the mace with two hands and swung it, and then took seconds to recover. An opening to strike, and my body refused to follow up on it.

That would be his power then. Something in the same department as Imp’s ability.

My bugs continued past him, and I sent them straight for Bambina.

She only laughed as the butterflies landed on her, stomped hard to kill most of them. “No way. You offed Alexandria. I’m not- Ow!”

Bees, wasps and hornets stung simultaneously, targeting her eyes, mouth and earholes.

She stomped, and soared up to the top of the wall. “My face, fuck you! This is going to swell! This fucking…”

I didn’t hear the rest. I was more focused on the little kid who was striving to cave in something vital.

The Prince swung at me, and I caught the mace.

It was a mistake. He let go and tackled me, gripping my leg, hauling on it to put me off-balance.

I couldn’t fight to pull him off, couldn’t use my bugs.

This was annoying.

Then I saw Bambina point, saw Starlet stop taking potshots at Rime and turn my way, reaching.

If the Prince was the master-stranger hybrid, and Bambina the mover-shaker, then that left the blaster power to Starlet.

“Arbiter!”

Arbiter threw a forcefield between us. It didn’t matter. The dart of light she fired exploded against the forcefield, and the ensuing implosion pulled me off the ground. August Prince held on as I tumbled, then climbed up me before reaching around my throat.

I tucked my chin against my collarbone, preventing him from getting a decent hold, and he started clawing at me, struggling to get fingers, a hand, between my chin and my neck.

If this goes any further, Clockblocker’s never going to let me live this down.

The second thought was a little more grave.

If this little bastard kills me, the Undersiders will never forgive me.

The others were helpless to assist me, due to the peculiarities of the Prince’s power, but they could direct their focus to Bambina and Starlet. Leister thrust out his trident, and it distorted, stretching the distance between himself and the two kid villains on the wall. He struck Starlet in the face with the shaft of the trident.

Bambina kicked him, and he went flying to a point on the other side of the wall. His spear distorted and brought him to the ground, but the kick- it hit too hard. He didn’t rise.

Seeing one of her Wards get taken out of action, Rime made a break for us, my decoys moving parallel to her.

The sniper fired, and she went down. One guess, and it was accurate.

Tumbling through the air, she used her power in one singular burst, and was encased in a two-story high tower of ice.

Vantage leaped onto the top of the craft, then onto the top of the wall. Starlet’s blast nearly moved him. Bambina leapt, bouncing off a nearby building, then flying towards Vantage. He teleported out of her way, then threw a bola, catching her. She fell from the wall, landing hard.

One down. Two to go.

I’m better than this.

The rules about interacting with the Prince were strictly defined. I could hold him, but I couldn’t hurt him. Which category did silk fall under? I had some on my person. Twenty feet in all. Twenty feet disappeared fast when it was wound around something.

I chose his neck. Not hurting him, not directly. His power allowed it.

One of Starlet’s implosions sent Prince and I tumbling. Too far from anything I could hold. He found the opportunity to seize me by the neck.

“Someone!” I said, “Come closer!”

Usher approached, and Starlet blasted the ground behind him, pulling him off his feet. He was mere handspans from where I needed him.

“Rime’s out of commission!” I said, my voice strangled as Prince did his best to choke me. “Your power isn’t affecting her. Give it to me!”

Usher focused his power on me. I felt it ripple through me, felt something, but it didn’t break the spell. I still couldn’t turn the slightest amount of aggression towards the kid.

“No,” I said.

Usher focused his power on Vantage instead, and Vantage flared with light.

Starlet’s power hit him, and it didn’t do a thing. He punched her in the gut, then caught her as she went limp.

And Prince… was harder to deal with. Usher approached, and I tied thread around his leg.

I tried to tell Usher to run, knowing what would happen with the thread around Prince’s neck. My voice wouldn’t come out, and it wasn’t due to the feeble but persistent attempt at strangulation.

So many heroes around me, and they couldn’t touch this little bastard.

Move, I thought. Move, move, move.

“Your power immunity isn’t making me immune to the kid,” Vantage said, helplessly.

Don’t talk, move.

In the midst of the Kulshedra, I could sense moving air currents. A woman emerged from thin air, from a place cooler than the interior of the ship. The civilians we’d rescued shrieked and backed away from her. She didn’t respond, barely reacted. Someone with long, dark hair and a suit. She fixed her cuffs, then moved with purpose.

But I found myself less fixated on her than on her surroundings. Oddly enough, I could feel a different structure behind the woman, a hallway.

I tried to speak, but couldn’t find the air. Damn this little bastard. Damn Usher for not doing something.

“What a mess,” Satyr called out.

Heads turned.

The Vegas Wards had arrived, perched on top of the nearest wall. They didn’t move to help, didn’t leap to intervene. Satyr glanced at Bambina, who was struggling to free herself from the bola. There was something in his eyes.

Were they in on it?

“Help us!” Vantage called out. “Rime’s out, and we can’t save Weaver!”

Satyr didn’t speak. He glanced at the ship. He couldn’t see from the angle he’d approached, but the woman inside had pulled the lever, and the door at the back was slowly closing.

I drew out words on the side.

The heroes turned, eyes going wide. Satyr, Blowout and Leonid rushed forward, joined by Vantage.

Then Usher stepped forward to help, and the August Prince choked, giving me a little slack. I sucked in a gasp for air.

Arbiter heard, whipping around, and threw a forcefield between us. I pulled away.

She managed to sandwich the little bastard between her forcefield and the ground. I rolled away, sitting up.

The ramp was nearly closed by the time they arrived. Vantage slammed one hand against the door, but it was too heavily armored to give.

“Kul-,” I gasped out.

The woman turned and walked up to the ruined nose of the craft, and began threading wires together. She didn’t even flinch as sparks flared between them. She was measured, even patient, as she worked at fixing the panel. When she was done, she tapped something out on the broken, unlit touch panel.

“Kulshedra, shut down,” I managed.

“Restate request.”

The pillar rose from the top of the box, freeing the upper part of the box’s door.

“Kulshedra, contact Dragon,” I tried.

“Dragon is currently unable to reply.“

“Contact Chevalier.”

“Calling.“

The woman tapped out another code, and the clamps on the bottom came open, freeing the bottom.

Yet another code typed out, and the system spoke, “Type two safety override accepted.“

The woman in the ship struck a single button. The A.I. spoke, “Call ended.“

“Kulshedra, call Chevalier,” I repeated.

Nothing.

The woman inside typed out a final code, and the door of the box opened, releasing Pretender.

And then she spoke, and I could hear through the bugs that surrounded her. “The Doctor will see you now.”

“Right-o,” Pretender said. “Gotta be better than the Birdcage.”

They stepped through the gateway that led to the cool, air-conditioned hallway, and then they were gone, the butterflies in the hallway no longer in my reach.

I felt my blood pumping, roaring in my ears. “They got him. They collected Pretender.”

“Who?”

“Her. The shooter’s partner. Cauldron.” I clenched my fist. “Rime’s down. We have to help her.”

“The shooter-” Vantage started.

“He’s gone,” Arbiter said. “Not sensing a threat. You guys go. I’ll look after Prefab and Leister, and make sure Weaver’s okay.”

Usher nodded.

Satyrical gestured, and most of his team joined the L.A. team members. I was left kneeling, still catching my breath. Satyr and Nix hung back, arms folded, exchanging surreptitious glances.

Arbiter didn’t look at them as she spoke, “You hired them. Bambina’s crew. You wanted to break him out.”

Satyr didn’t respond.

“You were going to leave the Protectorate? You had to have been.”

“Yeah.” It was Nix who spoke, not Satyr.

“Just like that?”

Nix shook her head. “It’s gone. Doomed. We lost Alexandria, we lost Legend and Eidolon. The new team doesn’t hit half as hard. Look at Rime. Taken out of action like that. Protectorate’s a shadow of what it was.”

“She was beaten by monsters the Protectorate refuses to even classify,” I said. I coughed a little.

“Alexandria would have managed.”

“Alexandria worked for them,” I said.

Nix shrugged.

Arbiter looked up at Satyr and Nix, “If you leave, the Endbringers-”

Nix interrupted, “We’ll still fight Endbringers. But the Protectorate was going to take Pretender from us because of how he got his powers. It’s ridiculous.”

“He was still going to be on the team,” Arbiter said. “Just… we can’t let him be leader if he’s beholden to a group like that.”

“It shouldn’t matter.”

“Cauldron’s evil,” Arbiter said. “They experimented on people to get the powers Pretender has.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Satyr said. His voice was rough. “Pretender’s gone, and so are we. We’ll get our teammates and we’ll go.”

He nudged Nix, and they turned to go.

One Protectorate team gone.

Arbiter dialed her phone, shifted restlessly. “Chevalier. It’s an emergency.”

There was a long pause.

“The Vegas team,” she said, finally. “They’ve broken ranks. There’s more, but if we’re going to arrest them, Dragon needs-”

A pause.

“No,” she said. “They aren’t. No. Yes. Yes, sir.”

There was a defeated tone to her body language as she let her arm fall to one side, disconnecting the call.

Arbiter looked from her phone to Prefab. “Dragon collapsed just before this began. She was meeting a Las Vegas Rogue.”

“Yeah,” I said. I thought of the woman who’d been so handy with the computer. The censor, the bogeyman. They’d taken out Rime, no doubt because she could have sealed the box behind a wall of ice.

Yet they hadn’t taken out Prefab, who could have done much the same thing.

Every step of the way, every action perfect.

“The Vegas heroes?” I asked.

“He said to let them go,” she said, her voice small. “That we need them, even if they aren’t Protectorate. He’ll send people to talk to them and arrange something later.”

I nodded, mixed emotions stewing in my midsection. It was bad, it was disappointing, to see a failure on this level, after I’d given so much up to help the Protectorate out.

“We lost on every count,” I said.

“Rime’s alive,” Arbiter said, looking at her phone.

“Every other count, then,” I said.

“There’ll be better days,” she said.

Not like this, I thought, and it wasn’t a good thought. As nice as the feeling of rescuing civilians had been, this was an ugly idea, a pit in the depths of my stomach.

The person I wanted to be, the person I was, reconciling them wasn’t so easy. The hero on one side, Skitter on the other.

This has to change.

23.03

“Mr. Chambers? Weaver’s here to see you.”

He called out from the opposite end of the room, “Send her in!”

I ventured into his realm, staring around me as I entered the space that was apparently the hub of costume design and marketing for the PRT.

The wall to my left had a map of North America. Cities had been identified, with clusters of portraits around each major city. Protectorate members on top, Wards on the bottom.

To my right, there were glass cases showing off costume designs, old and new. A woman was inside the case, dressing a dummy.

Further down, there was Glenn.

Power was a funny thing. I’d seen it expressed in a number of ways, with parahumans, but the unpowered weren’t quite so flexible. There were people like Tagg, who relied on bluster and bullying, and people like Calle, with sheer confidence and a strict reliance on their own abilities in a particular field. Piggot had been something else, someone who had known how to leverage people and situations, more like Calle than anyone, but with the added advantage that she’d had the authority to call in airstrikes and requisition Dragon’s A.I. driven craft. Like Tattletale had said, Piggot wasn’t a genius, but she had her strengths.

I’d suspected that Glenn Chambers would be more like Calle, with a touch of Tagg’s tendency to bulldoze through problems. Seeing him operating in his home territory, I wasn’t so sure that was the case.

Glenn Chambers wore plaid pants with red and green, and a pink dress shirt, His belt bore a buckle with the PRT logo on it. His hair had changed too, parted neatly into what I assumed was ‘geek chic’, and the glasses had changed as well, with thick, round frames. An ID card hung around his neck. He didn’t fit any of those particular archetypes.

I looked at him and the person who came to mind was Skidmark. Brockton Bay’s onetime loser villain, meth-head and drug dealer, later the head of the depraved, anarchist Merchants. It was hard to pinpoint why, at first. They were nothing alike, on an aesthetic level. Their demeanor, their status in society, their appearance or goals, there were no similarities.

People milled around him. Twenty-something men and women, who carried coffees and portfolios, cloth and paperwork. Fat as he was, Glenn moved swiftly. He sipped a coffee, handed it back to the assistant who’d delivered it, and sent her off with a command or clarification. Men and women with portfolios were told to set up at his desk while he examined action figures in the light of the window. His pudgy hands, almost childlike, took hold of an action figure by the arm. He shook it violently, his cluster of minions backing away at the sudden flailing of his arm and the plastic figure. The arm snapped off, and the toy went sailing through the air. Someone scooped it up and brought it back to the group.

“Go, and hurry,” Glenn said. “Tell them to fix it and cast another prototype before the run starts. These are toys, they’ll be in the hands of children and collectors both. The people who are buying these are fans. What’s it going to say if their most immediate association with Esoteric is the broken toy sitting on a shelf? It’s going to convey that he’s flimsy.”

The action figure people fled, and Glenn approached his desk, where the portfolios had been set out. I approached, a touch lost in the midst of all of this, and nearly stumbled as another group entered the room, vacating to fill the void left by the group that was exiting.

“Weaver, come. Look and tell me what you think.”

I approached the desk, and the group parted to give me space. It was hard to put my finger on why, but I couldn’t help but feel like they were doing it at Glenn’s bequest and not mine.

The massive portfolio folders were open, showing poster images of various Protectorate members. The leaders of the new teams. The images were stylized, with splashes in pale watercolor in the background, an almost sketchier appearance to the heroes. But the masks, necks and shoulders, the emblems and their characteristic tools were all done in hyper-realistic detail. Chevalier, Rime and Exalt, with backgrounds in gray, blue and yellow, respectively. There looked to be more behind them.

“They’re good,” I said.

“They’re crap,” Glenn countered. One finger tapped on a blossoming of yellow and red watercolors at the tip of Chevalier’s Cannonblade. “The last thing we want to convey are that things are a mess, and that’s exactly what the blobs in the background will do.”

“I’d buy one,” I said. “If I wasn’t already a cape, anyways. Things are a mess. I don’t see how you’d convince a non-cape me otherwise.”

Glenn sighed. “We’re treading into philosophical and hypothetical territories there. It’s a no-go.”

He turned to one of the artists, “Something cleaner, tighter. And don’t use a side-profile of Rime. If she doesn’t want the post-effects, she’ll have to accept that her waist isn’t quite poster material.”

The poster people disappeared, fleeing Glenn’s presence.

I stepped into the gap, “I wanted to talk to you-”

“One minute,” Glenn dismissed me. He turned to the group that had just arrived, “The interview?”

“It’s good,” a young man said, handing over a print-out. “Chevalier is personable, but different from the old leaders. Fits the ‘New Protectorate’ atmosphere you described.”

“Of course it does,” Glenn said. He skimmed the paper, turning pages. “I based it all around him. Good call on the interview’s quality. Quite good.”

Skidmark, I thought again. Skidmark, who had built up a kind of momentum around himself, like-minded people falling into his orbit. Despite being utterly repulsive and foul-mouthed, Skidmark had charisma. People followed him. Glenn wasn’t repulsive, but he grated.

Maybe that was part of their charisma. Maybe the natural, casual narcissism, as much as it didn’t jibe with Skidmark’s meth-mouth or Glenn’s obesity, conveyed that they were the center of the universe. Everyone wouldn’t necessarily be swept up in their delusion, but the fact that they drew in weak-willed sheep lent them a measure of clout that forced people to acknowledge them. For Skidmark, it had been depraved homeless, addicts and thugs. For Glenn, it was a cadre of college students hoping for a career in marketing, advertising or public relations within the PRT.

Or maybe I wasn’t thinking too generously about Glenn Chambers, given how pissed I was. Maybe he wasn’t that bad.

“Well?” he asked me, as if I was making him wait.

I resisted the urge to react, forced myself to stay calm.

If he was really like Skidmark, in how he surrounded himself with loyal and terrified sheep and minions, there were two ways to mount an attack. I could take the fight straight to him, like Faultline had with Skidmark, or I could strip him of his flock.

“I’d like to speak to you in private.”

“Impossible, I’m afraid. I’m busy enough I shouldn’t even be taking the time to talk with you,” he said. He offered me a smile, “But you’re my most interesting project.”

“It’s a matter of courtesy,” I said. He wanted to play this on a political level? “Please.”

Put him on the spot. Force him to play along or look bad.

Glenn only smiled. “Isn’t it just as discourteous to interrupt me in the middle of my work, when I’m already doing you a favor by meeting you?”

Fine. He wanted to play it that way?

“Last night, Pretender got broken out of Dragon’s craft, our team crushed, and Rime shot. I almost died.”

“I heard,” he said. He looked at the woman who was just arriving with his new coffee, “Kayleigh, can you go talk to Mr. Payet? He was supposed to call me in ten minutes and it’s been fifteen.”

“Yes sir,” she said, running off.

He either doesn’t care or he’s deflecting.

“Your insane restrictions on powers were a big part of that, Mr. Chambers. The bad guys won, and it’s partially your fault.”

The heads that turned my way, silent and staring, only confirmed my suspicions. The crowd of twenty-something assistants and designers around him were a defense system. Not a power, but power in general.

“My fault? I wasn’t even there.”

“I asked to speak to you because I wanted you to know about the damage that’s being done.”

“Ah, this is about the butterflies.”

“It’s about a lot more than butterflies. It’s the whole mindset. The attitude of the heroes. I’d talk to Chevalier, but he’s too busy. I’d talk to Rime, but she’s recovering from being shot three times. You’re the only other person I’ve met so far who really seems to be in a position to know what I’m talking about. Besides, as far as I can figure, image and PR seem to be at the heart of the problem.”

“A complicated issue, something you could study for six years in college,” he said. “But you’ve figured it out after two brawls? The rumors of your intelligence must be true after all.”

“I wouldn’t make light of it. Pretender got captured. Either he’s in enemy hands, and there’s a body snatcher out there, or he’s dead. Because of a fight we could have won.” I said.

“You’re sure?”

“There’re no certainties, but come on. There’s got to be a point where the kiddie gloves come off and we actually put up a fight. I saw the Wards struggling in Brockton Bay, as they faced pressure from outside forces, me included, and serious threats. They got whittled down because, as powerful as they are, they didn’t get the chance to put up a fight. Now the rest of us are starting to face the same pressures, and the PRT isn’t learning from past mistakes.”

“I’m trying to understand what you’re wanting to argue. Are you saying our Wards, children with powers, should take your cue? Fight more viciously? Intimidate? Be merciless?”

“All your capes could stand to stop holding back. Wards and Protectorate both. At least in situations like this. We lost Pretender, and we didn’t exactly inspire confidence in the Vegas teams. That played a part in losing them.”

Glenn frowned, glancing at his collection of underlings. “Everyone but Weaver, out. I hope each of you can find something to do.”

The flock scattered.

“You already know what happens if you speak on the subject,” Glenn called out to them, raising his voice as they got further away. “I personally know everyone you might try to leak details to. It’s not worth the risk! Discretion!”

A moment later, they were gone. His office seemed so empty without the young professionals running around.

“We must have a talk about which things can be said when,” Glenn said. He took a second to tidy up stray pictures on his desk.

“I did ask if we could speak alone,” I told him.

“And I said no. I’m much too busy, and as much as I relish our future discussions, hearing how you did what you did in Brockton Bay, the Vegas Wards are a large part of why I’m racing to provide the public with our new, upgraded Protectorate.”

“Misdirection and deception,” I said. “You know, I do know about subtlety. I kind of ran a group that ruled a city.”

“And I’m sure you did an excellent job,” Glenn said. “But you’re a dog in a duck pond here. You’re out of place, you don’t know the usual precautions, the customs and conventions. You gave evidence to that when you talked about the Vegas wards, something that should be kept more discreet.”

That would be his mode of attack then. I was the ignorant child, who didn’t quite know how the Protectorate worked.

“I’m not sure what you want, Glenn. You guys know I can hold my own, but you ignore the fact that I took down Alexandria, that I’ve fought against three class-S threats.”

Glenn sighed. He walked around his desk and plunked down in his chair. “You’re going to be one of the challenging ones, aren’t you?”

“I only want to help people. The PRT and the hero teams are falling apart, but you’re more focused on testing me than letting me do something.”

“Chevalier would be a better person to talk to about this,” Glenn said.

“You want me to fight with nerf weapons? I can. Put me up against just about any Ward, I could probably give them a pretty hard time, whether I’m using regular bugs or just butterflies. I could win against most.”

“Your strength isn’t in question. We’re not sure you’re dependable.”

“I can show you that I can make the butterflies work. I just want the a-ok to use my full assortment of powers against the real threats. Like the sniper and whoever that woman in the suit was, last night. If I’d had a real arsenal in reserve, I could have attacked either of them before they really get underway. Give me the ability to match the strength of the tools I’m using to the strength of my enemies.”

“Beginning an endless loop of serial escalations,” Glenn said. “No, Weaver, that’s not what I mean when I say ‘dependable’. Wrong word. We have footage of you snapping, shifting from calm to homicidal in an instant. Was there motivation? Yes. But it doesn’t inspire confidence in your allies. We wanted to see how you functioned in high pressure situations, your willingness to follow our restrictions, as unfair as they might seem.”

“Always testing me,” I said. “Okay. I listened, I followed your orders, and the test doesn’t serve a purpose as long as I know about it. Can we call it quits, at least with the butterflies?”

“You didn’t follow the orders,” Glenn said. When I glanced at him, he locked his eyes onto mine. “You stung Bambina.”

“To save people. She was going to pick us off. Would you blame me if I picked up a dropped gun and shot someone who was aiming a surface-to-air missile launcher at me?”

“It’s a little different.”

“It’s an almost exact parallel to what I was doing! She’s a living surface to air missile, only she ricochets all over the place, and she keeps going. I didn’t even use a gun. I debilitated her, maybe enough that Vantage could hit her with his bolas. Nonlethal weapons, exactly like what the Wards are supposed to use.”

“The focus isn’t on lethal or nonlethal,” Glenn said. “It’s on whether we can trust you to keep on the path you’re walking. If you start taking shortcuts now, what happens a year down the line? If we decide you can go all-out in one specific situation, does that open the door for another?”

“Maybe, instead of setting rules and restrictions in place, you could ask. Talk to me like a human being, negotiate certain rules.”

“Rules you then break or circumvent. You take rather naturally to it, and no, that isn’t a jab at your iniquitous background. It’s a statement about your particular abilities.”

I grit my teeth. “I’m good. I have more experience than some of your Wards who’ve been on their teams for two years. I’m versatile. If you need someone in Vegas to deal with thinkers and strangers, I can hold my own, the embarrassment with August Prince aside. If you need someone to track down groups like the Nine, I can do that. Recon, assassination, communication…”

“The public’s watching this too closely for us to let you off your leash so soon after Alexandria’s death. When things quiet down, it might be a possibility. Our heroes in Vegas tend to be a little grayer than white, and an ex-villain would fit. But not now.”

I exhaled slowly. “You guys wanted a newer, shinier protectorate. You guys need wins. Give me the chance, I’ll give them to you. But this isn’t me. I’m not about butterflies.”

“We know what you’re about,” Glenn said. He touched his keyboard, then typed out what I presumed was a password. A second passed, “Look.”

He spun his monitor around.

It was me, entering the PRT office in Brockton Bay. A video feed from a surveillance camera.

It was me, crawling through a window. That would be from the night I retaliated against Tagg. Odd, seeing how the bugs moved in coordination with me. When I turned my head in the video, the orientation of every bug in the swarm changed in the same moment.

All around me, PRT employees were howling in pain, their cries silenced by the lack of an audio feed. Either the camera hadn’t picked it up, or Glenn had muted it. They thrashed. One reached for me, for the me on the screen, and I could see how I moved out of the way without even glancing at him. The swarm concealed me at the same time, briefly obscuring the Skitter in the video from both the man on the ground and the security camera. When it parted, she had shifted two or three feet to the left. A simple step to one side in the half-second she couldn’t be seen, but it misled the eyes.

And I couldn’t remember doing it. I’d never consciously added the trick to my repertoire.

“If you told me that girl was a member of the Slaughterhouse Nine,” Glenn said, “I wouldn’t have batted an eyelash.”

It was like hearing my voice played back to me, but it was compounded over several levels. The movements, the movements of the swarm, it wasn’t familiar to me.

The head turned towards the security camera for a moment, and I could see the yellow eyes of my lenses in the midst of the thick black swarm.

“That isn’t marketable,” Glenn said, oblivious to just what I found so bothersome.

“There’s a middle ground,” I said.

“When I asked you to use butterflies, it was to break a habit, see if it changed how you functioned in the midst of a fight, just like I might ask someone to try on a particular outfit and see how it fits them. I didn’t think it would throw you off kilter as much as it has. But that isn’t a bad thing.”

“It is if it means Rime nearly dies and Pretender gets taken.”

“We collected the three members of Bambina’s group. Not a complete loss.”

“They’ll get free and continue their rampage,” I said.

“Most likely. We’ll strive to hold on to Bambina at the very least. With luck we’ll be able to recruit the little prince, maybe Starlet as well.”

I looked at the video. Glenn had paused it. The momentary turn of the head, the yellow lenses…

“I can work on being a little less nightmarish,” I said. “But there’s got to be a way for me to be more effective. How long are these restrictions in effect?”

“Until you come of age and join the Protectorate,” a voice spoke from behind me.

It was Chevalier, accompanied by Defiant, my ride. Chevalier wore his gold and silver armor, heavily decorated and etched until every square inch looked like a miniature work of art. It didn’t strike me as something that would hold up to any abuse, but I’d heard how tough it really was.

“Until I turn eighteen,” I said, feeling a little hollow.

Chevalier approached. “You murdered two people. Three, going by your admission while in custody. Two PRT directors, one major hero. When Dragon and Defiant suggested we bring you on board, we were divided. It was Glenn who offered the compromise that we ultimately agreed to. This compromise.”

I glanced at Glenn, who shrugged.

Glenn?

“You have blood on your hands. We need to know that you can hold back, that you won’t simply snap as you did when you were in custody in Brockton Bay. We’re still wanting to ensure that this isn’t a long-term scheme on the Undersider’s part, as unlikely as it might be.”

“That’s why you’re waiting two years? You think that it’ll take that long to vet me, before you can give me actual responsibility?”

“It’s one consideration of many.”

“It’s ridiculous. The world is going to end before I have my eighteenth birthday. I’m giving you full permission to use me. Send me to round up tinkers who could find the Nine’s pocket dimension. I’ve been a villian. I’ve got some reputation I can fall back on. I can talk to people you guys can’t.”

“I won’t say this is set in stone,” Chevalier said. “Maybe in a few weeks or a few months, we can discuss options. For now, we’ll find you a team, get you settled. Once we know where we’re situating you, we’ll find a different institution to keep you in. Possibly low security, or in the Wards headquarters, depending. The rest… there’s time to figure that out.”

I sighed, closing my eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Chevalier said. “Really. I was there for the fight against Echidna. I saw the Undersiders in action. I saw you in action, and I’m willing to credit you with the maneuver that turned the situation around in the final stages. As long as your rap sheet may be, I’ve heard of the good you did. It strikes me that you’ve likely saved one person from death and injury for each person you’ve assaulted, if I were to count what you did before Shatterbird hit your city.”

“But that doesn’t matter in the end.”

“It does. More than you suspect, but you have to be patient.”

“You’ve faced a great deal in the span of half a year,” Defiant said. “Take this for the reprieve it is.”

I grit my teeth. No use. The legitimate avenues were failing me.

I couldn’t put up with this.

“Then there’s one last thing,” I said. “If I can’t help directly, let me help indirectly. I can outfit your heroes. Most of them.”

Glenn and Chevalier exchanged glances.

“We were going to raise the idea somewhere down the road,” Chevalier said. “We can work out a deal, like we have with our tinkers. An allowance, with payment for each costume produced.”

“I don’t want money,” I said. “But so long as you’re offering, maybe we could talk about a workshop?”

I glanced at Defiant, “And equipment?”

Spiders moved through the back corridors of the prison. It was a space where the plumbing and heating for the two interconnected prisons ran through pipes, and where the flooring was little more than metal grates, easily removed and replaced in a pinch. Almost lightless, but that didn’t bother me. My spiders could manage, and it only meant I had some time to hide them if someone entered and hit a switch to turn the lights on.

I’d thought of ‘Weaver’ as a hero on the straight and narrow. That was out.

Being a villain with good PR just wouldn’t work either.

No. A middle ground, then.

The spiders found a rat. It backed away from the mass, hissed.

A spider dropped on it from above and delivered the first of what soon became a series of bites. Fatal.

Working together, the spiders set to devouring it. They weren’t natural scavengers, but meat was meat. Meat meant the spiders could get the sustenance they needed for breeding. Breeding, in turn, meant I could start mass-producing silk.

It was calming, a relief to do something concrete after an afternoon in Glenn Chamber’s company. When the time came, I could carry any materials and the spiders onto the bottom of the Pendragon, moving them to my workshop.

“Hebert,” the guard said.

I raised my head.

“Mail day. You’re a popular one.”

It was a bundle of mail, bound together with tape marked ‘USPS’.

“They’re already open?”

“Rules. We don’t read it, or we’re not supposed to. But they check there’s nothing illegal inside, and the dogs give it a sniff.”

I nodded. She studied me for a second, then moved on to the next cell.

Mail from all around the United states. From strangers, from fans.

Words of support. Criticism. Death threats.

I opened the ones from Brockton Bay last.

I read it three times. I could almost hear his voice.

I opened the next one.

There was only a little circle with devil horns at the bottom, in place of a signature. I rolled my eyes and moved on.

I took it in and sighed. There were no less than three villainous groups converging on the Undersiders, and Grue had been in bad shape.

And yet it was still reassuring. Things were, for better or worse, normal. Much as I’d expected.

It affected me more than I would have thought. Not him dying – he’d never been more than an automaton, a freak of nature made to do little more than obey my commands.

But it was one more tie to the Undersiders that had broken.

The last letter was handwritten in a spidery script.

Stay alive until we can see each other again?

Doable.

‘Try hard’?

Maybe that was the push I needed, such as it was.

I collected the mail, wedging it into a space between two of the library books on the little table in my cell.

Withdrawing a notepad, I started sketching out the designs I was thinking of. Alterations to the costume, weapon ideas, tools and concepts.

Payloads for bugs? Something I can drop? Caltrops? Something toxic?

Back to my roots, to where I’d been after my powers had manifested. Only then, I’d been writing in a black speckled notebook.

Darker fabric? Must talk to Glenn about costume style. Butterflies are in, but can I complement them? Need official word.

It was moronic to have a white costume. Equally moronic to have butterflies.

What about containment foam? If Dovetail can use it what does it take for me to get permission?I’d pay homage to Atlas and push Defiant and Dragon to create something that would let me fly. Pay homage to Skitter and settle on a middle ground in costume design, in combat effectiveness, weapons and utility.

I thought of Atlas, and added a note – jetpack? With beetle wings? Flight system?

I was nearly through the pad, and it was pushing four in the morning by the time I had the sketches and outlines at an acceptable point.

The costume Defiant and Dragon had given me was theirs, not mine. The fighting style that had been dictated was Glenn’s and Chevalier’s.

This, this would be me.

23.04

“I’m so sorry I’m late. I never do this,” Mrs. Yamada said. She entered the office, a raincoat, boots and a messenger bag in her arms, her hair a touch damp, clearly flustered. “What a way to start us off. I’m so embarrassed.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “It’s not like I’m going anywhere.”

I knew right away that it wasn’t her office. It just didn’t fit her, in any sense. She was average in height for a woman, which put her a little taller than most Japanese women, her hair cut short in what I took to be a utilitarian choice, but was styled enough to show a degree of effort. Her clothes and shoes were much the same.

The room, by contrast, clashed with her demeanor. There was a level of care that went into it. Like, I couldn’t help but feel that the desk in the corner and the chairs were antiques, or at least very expensive. There were model airplanes on the shelves and pictures of airplanes on the walls, and Mrs. Yamada didn’t give me the impression of an airplane afficionado. The sheer heft of the chair and desk seemed out of proportion with Mrs. Yamada as a person.

Was she borrowing a colleague’s office? For the last while, I’d been ferried here and there. Dragon and Defiant were my custodians, and between them, they were traveling all over America, making it relatively easy to schedule a pick-up and drop-off. It was almost easier for me to go to Yamada’s office than for her to come to me, but we’d come here instead.

“It’s a matter of professional courtesy,” she said, more like she was talking to herself than to me. She was still getting herself sorted out, her raincoat hung up, rain boots replaced with slippers she’d been holding beneath the coat. “Being prompt, it indicates that I respect and value your time. You can’t confide in me if I don’t respect you.”

Respect me?

I looked down at the floor for a moment. She was looking at me when I raised my eyes to her. “With all sincerity, it was due to forces entirely out of my control, with complications at every turn.”

“Bureaucracy,” I said.

“You’re not wrong,” she said, “But it was something else. A patient of mine, institutionalized, she’s reacted badly to certain events in the last month. Someone she idolized left the Wards, and-”

I could see her stop, composing herself, the stress and preoccupied attitude melting away.

“-And this isn’t about that. This session is about you.”

“About me. This could be a long session,” I said.

“My instinct,” Mrs. Yamada said, as she settled uncomfortably into the large, somewhat ostentatious chair, “Would be to ask about the little details you’ve seeded into the conversation already.”

“Details?”

“How you seized the idea that it’s bureaucracy that would be holding me back,” she said. “Or your facial expression when I said I want to approach this meeting with respect. But there’s other points I think we should cover first. We’ll get back to that, if you’re interested.”

I shrugged.

“FIrst off, let’s start off with the basics. How are you?”

Pretty basic. “Fine.”

“You’re in prison, and will be for at least two years, maybe longer. By all reports, you’re chafing under the new restrictions you face as a member of the Wards. That’s without touching on the fact that, two weeks ago, you murdered Alexandria and Director James Tagg out of fear for your safety and the safety of your friends and teammates. In this room, or wherever we go to talk, it’s okay to answer ‘how are you’ with an admission that you’re not okay.”

“I’m- I feel better, after talking to Glenn and Chevalier.”

“How did you feel before?”

“Restless. I still am, really. Very restless. If one feeling is taking hold of me, it’s that.”

“How so?”

“Before I was in jail, I ran every other morning. I can’t run now, but my body still wants me to, at the usual time and the usual pace.”

She nodded, making a note. “When did you start?”

“About a month after I got my powers. February.”

She nodded.

I went on, “And there’s the other stuff. You might not believe me, but I was helping people. Hurting people from time to time, but mostly helping. I was getting food out to people who were hungry, checking everyone had what they needed, laying long-term plans for the future, so that people who’ve never had a chance in their lives would finally get one. I’m helping people less now that I’m going out with the Wards.”

“Do you think that maybe you’re hurting people less?”

“But the sum total is worse. It’s like, if you go back to the very fundamentals of right and wrong, you have to ask, ‘if most people acted the same way I’m acting right now, would society be better off?’”

“Okay,” she said. “And you think society would be better off if everyone acted like you?”

“Sort of,” I said. “Yes, I hurt people, but I hurt people who deserved it. When I had the resources to do it, I helped a lot of people.”

“In this hypothetical reality where most people think like you, correct me if I’m wrong, transgressions would be punished?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Guess so.”

“Would it be fair to say they’re punished harshly?”

She was thinking of Alexandria and Tagg, no doubt. Maybe Valefor. “Yeah.”

“Kind of medieval, isn’t it?”

It reminded me of my dad, that idea. “Guess it is. But capes are naturally violent.”

“And what about the Wards? I wasn’t there at the time, but one of my colleagues started seeing the Brockton Bay Wards a short time after Leviathan attacked the city. Did they commit a transgression that warranted the pain they suffered at your hands? The ones that aren’t Shadow Stalker?”

I didn’t have a ready answer to that. She waited in silence for long seconds before I shrugged. “There was stuff, the fact that they tolerated people like Shadow Stalker, but I’m not sure I could explain it now. Feels like a long time ago.”

“A lot’s happened all at once. It might contribute to the restlessness you feel now that things are quieter. You said you felt better after you talked to Glenn and Chevalier. Why?”

“I got a chance to talk stuff through. More of a sense of why they were putting obstacles in my way. And on my way over here, I gave Dragon some notes on an updated costume and gear. She’ll probably email it out, they’ll discuss the options and tear the proposal to shreds. If they accept any of it, though, I’ll bring me a step closer to being me, to being more comfortable with what I’m doing.”

“That’s a good lead-in to the next big question I had in mind. Who are ‘you’? I make a point of asking all of my clients this, but what should I call you? Weaver? Taylor? Skitter?”

“All of the above? Maybe call me Weaver. I’m still trying to get used to the name.”

“Okay, Weaver, and my next easy question is whether I can get you anything? Water? I remember you had a coffee cup in front of you in the interrogation room in Brockton Bay.”

“It was tea,” I said, “And not right now, thanks.”

“Okay,” she said, making another note.

“Writing down some profound insights?” I asked, gesturing towards the pad of paper she had in her lap.

“Details about you, your tastes and priorities. Maybe I’ll have tea ready the next time we meet. Black, green, herbal?”

“Black.”

“Okay,” she said. Another brief note. “This is the first date, Weaver, if you’ll excuse the metaphor. This is when I get a sense of who you are as a person, the fundamentals of who you are. I then use that to help you and inform you. You aren’t obligated to take my feedback without question, or to take my advice as orders, but if we wind up being a good team, then hopefully you’ll want to, because you find it genuinely helpful.”

I nodded.

“I know only a little about you from context, but I don’t want to be one of the people who jumps to conclusions about you, so I’m second guessing every detail that you don’t personally share with me. I drew up a timeline, which was why I asked when you started running, trying to get a sense of what was happening for you and when.”

“Any insights?”

“Some, but we can talk about that another time. Later today, maybe. My point is, I’m trying to figure you out. So please forgive me if any of my questions seem too simple, or if I’m asking about things I should already know. The next set of questions are a little more serious. Do you want therapy?“

“It’s kind of obligatory,” I said.

“I’d change my approach depending on whether you hated this but were playing along, if you really did want help figuring things out, or if you wanted therapy but didn’t want it with me.“

She let that last bit hang in the air.

When I didn’t respond, Mrs. Yamada said, “I would understand if you felt like you had to be on guard against me. When you were dealing with the Protectorate and PRT in Brockton Bay, it might have looked like I was one of the enemies.”

“You were pretty decent to me, all things considered.”

“Good,” she said. She smiled a little. “Thank you. Let me pose the question another way. You’ve said you’re able to tolerate my presence?”

I nodded.

“Okay. Given that you’ve accepted me, I’m wondering what you think my goal is.”

“You’re going to report back to the guys in charge of the PRT and the Protectorate and tell them whether or not I’m of sound mind, whether I can join the Wards team without snapping and murdering someone.”

“That’s not it,” she said. “In fact, I may well do the opposite, depending on how this meeting goes, and avoid commenting altogether. My only goal is to help you.”

“Help me?” I asked.

“There’s two very different paths we could take. The first is simple. I’d act as your therapist. I would be an objective ear, and I could equip you with tools to handle things like stress, anger, or anything else that concerned you. Anything you said would be entirely confidential, and I would decline to comment when the time came for your placement in the Wards, so as to preserve that confidentiality.”

“Isn’t that damning?” I asked. “If you don’t have anything good to say, they’ll naturally assume you know bad things.”

“I don’t think so,” she said. “I’ve had upstanding heroes choose to exercise their right to confidentiality. If we started off by establishing this as therapy right off the bat, there would be enough forewarning that it wouldn’t reflect badly on you.”

“Okay,” I said.

“The second route would involve me not being your therapist, but your advocate. We’d set you up with someone else as a therapist, and I’d focus on serving as a middleman, in working with the PRT, Protectorate, the Wards and the warden at Gardener. I could, for example, talk to the warden about you getting a chance to run in the mornings, testifying that it’d be a good, healthy release. When the time came for you to be placed with the Wards, I’d testify with all of the good and the bad, from what we’ve talked about here.”

“That makes a lot of sense,” I said.

“There’s a middle ground between the two options,” she said, “I could certainly be an advocate for you if you were coming to me for therapy, or offer you a listening ear if you were coming to me for advocacy.”

“With the knowledge that anything I said could be used against me, in that case.”

She nodded. “So long as you know.”

“I could really use an advocate,” I sighed.

I thought of how she’d composed herself, pulling herself together. It struck a chord.

“But I think I’d rather have you for a therapist.”

“Thank you,” she said. “And I respect that you’re willing to ask for help. That takes a kind of strength.”

I shrugged.

“Is there any particular place you’d like to start?” she asked. “We already touched on bureaucracy, you seemed a touch bewildered that I would respect you.”

She paused, as if waiting for me to chime in.

“There’s other things, but it’s hard to articulate them.”

“Give it a try. It’s sometimes easiest if you start with the underlying emotion. I feel, followed by the emotion, then talk about why.”

I nodded. “I feel… anxious, because I’m worried I’m not a very good hero.”

“Assuming it isn’t inexperience, is that so terrible? Being less than stellar?”

“Doesn’t it say something ugly about me, if I make a pretty excellent villain and a crappy hero?”

“Maybe it says something about your power, or it’s simply past experience. I stress, you are new at this.”

“When I was new at being a villain I took on established heroes and robbed a bank, walking away with a small fortune.”

“You had a team with you.”

“I felt a hell of a lot more effective, when I count everything that’s happened without teammates at my back. I dunno.”

“So you’re restless and anxious-”

“And genuinely afraid,” I said. I sighed. “I feel… afraid, because I’m starting to think that maybe my power isn’t entirely under my control. There’s a monster taking up real estate in my brain, deciding to use my power when I don’t want to, and I’m pretty sure it’s been getting more effective over time.”

“Is this monster metaphorical?”

“That’s a very good question,” I said. I leaned on my knees and stared at my hands. “Is it just me? Or is it my ‘passenger’, some inscrutable life form from a parallel universe that decided to give me powers, currently helping me manage those powers so my brain doesn’t overheat? Or is there even a distinction? Did my trigger event fuse us to the point that the line is blurred beyond recognition?”

“I can see where the idea would be frightening,” she said. “I’ve heard of some of these things, though the particulars and names differed. We don’t know enough about them, about powers, even, and the unknown is daunting, especially when it affects you as deeply as your power seems to affect you. This lack of control, it-”

“If I tell you I’m dangerous, that I’m going to hurt someone, intentionally or by accident, are you obligated to report it?”

“Yes, if the risk is grave. Forgive me for asking, but are you going to hurt someone? Accidentally or otherwise?”

I shook my head. “No. But it makes me wonder if something like that is a possibility.”

“I’ve worked with a lot of young parahumans who had uncontrollable powers. There are options.”

“Like?”

“It depends on the form this lack of control takes. Is it perpetual? Does it hinge on you losing focus? On your being tired? Illness? Anger?”

“I’m not entirely sure. Sometimes when I’ve been knocked out, I’ve found that my power keeps going without my instruction. It’s not brilliant, it makes mistakes, and the logic isn’t always there, but I’ve had my power keep working when I was unconscious, after a concussion, and when a cape used their power to wipe away my volition. When I was tranquilized, after setting my bugs on Director Tagg, they apparently kept going after him.”

“Let’s start with the fundamentals, then. I almost always recommend relaxation exercises and meditation to my patients with control issues. There’s almost always a degree of improvement. The next trick is to find a way to track this.”

“I’m getting a new costume. Maybe a camera? The most recent time I noticed it was when I was with Glenn Chambers, he showed me a video, and I saw myself using tricks I’d never taught myself.”

“Perhaps a camera, then. Is it reassuring, to know that there are answers?”

“I’ll be reassured when I see improvement,” I said. “No offense.”

“None taken. But you raised two problems. Your lack of confidence about being a hero. That’s more immediate, if less ominous?”

“It’s pretty ominous, honestly,” I said. “I staked a lot on this.”

“You have options in mind, am I right? You said that you were suggesting a new costume and new equipment.”

“But that doesn’t fix things if I’m a round peg in a square hole. I’ve thought about compromises, stuff beyond the gear and costumes, but I feel like I’m almost betraying myself. The me that spent three months after getting powers, with the idea that I’d be a hero. I had all of this idealism, all of these ideas of how I’d help, big and small, and I wind up doing more good as a notorious villain than as a hero.”

Jessica Yamada made a note on her pad of paper, then set it on the small table to her right. She glanced at the window, then at me, “Are you still restless?”

“All the time,” I said.

“Want to go for a walk?”

“Hell yeah. Am I allowed?”

“I’ll need to make a few phone calls.”

Middle schoolers swarmed around a very unhappy looking team of Wards, pushing, jostling, calling out, reaching to touch armor and costumes. The overcast sky was only just clearing up, causing the colors in the park to be all the more vivid.

“Why?” I asked.

“Why are we here, or why is this happening?” Mrs. Yamada asked me.

“Yes.”

“This is happening because of you, in a roundabout way,” Mrs. Yamada said. “When your secret identity was revealed, it didn’t take the media very long to discover that you’d been bullied in high school.”

“Oh hell no,” I muttered.

“People asked why more hadn’t been done to reach out to you and individuals like you. This was the response.”

“I’m not sure this is a good thing,” I said. “These assemblies and events were always atrocious, with really bad speeches.”

“I saw enough of them when I was in high school, I know. But superheroes have the ‘wow’ factor, at least.”

I looked at the very uncomfortable Boston Wards. They had enthralled the kids, but they couldn’t do anything with them, with the crush of bodies. The teachers seemed to be enjoying the break, sitting on the far end of the field, in the shade.

“Want to wow them, too?”

I glanced at her.

“Not a fight, but a chance to be heroic. The PR that’s been forced on your head won’t be a handicap here,” Mrs. Yamada said. “And maybe it will help you feel a little more human, at a time when you’re worried about the monster inside you.”

“A little heavy-handed,” I commented.

“A lot heavy-handed,” she said, smiling. “But it’s a chance to be outside, instead of cooped up in yet another room, without worrying your life’s at risk.”

“I’ll take it,” I said. “Thanks.”

I ventured into the fray.

A hundred kids, all probably from one school. I almost would have rather been up against Bambina.

I called on every butterfly in the area, across the whole park. It took nearly a minute before they were gathered. I sent them into the crowd, flying over and around the mass of kids. Some of them screamed, others ducked, covering their heads.

Not quite the delight I’d hoped for.

Was this another point where I was underestimating what the effect of the swarm was, or were the kids just overreacting? It was only five or six hundred butterflies.

“Whoever catches the most wins!” I called out. “Go!”

The kids stared at me. Some were still reacting from the rush of butterflies.

“Go!” I said. “There’s a prize! A good one!”

They scattered.

Butterflies wove in around one another, around trees, out of reach and over heads, between legs and under tables. I watched the crowd, got the kids to bump into one another, gathered them into clusters where I had ten or twenty students running after one group of butterflies, conserving effort and increasing the confusion when two groups ran into one another.

When the mass of kids had burned off their initial energy, I joined the Wards, still controlling the butterflies.

“Thanks,” said one heroine in pale blue.

“A bit much?” I asked.

A guy with a fox mask said, “You can’t really interact with them when there’s this many. There’s no point.”

“Good memories,” I said. “Better than nothing.”

“But not great,” fox-mask said. “Good memories aren’t exactly why we’re here. Somewhere in that group, there’s kids who could be the next wave of capes.”

I watched the kids run. They’d succeeded in surrounding one group of butterflies, and some had taken off rain jackets to form improvised butterfly nets.

That kind of organization deserved a reward. On the flip side of things, they were liable to murder one another over a handful of butterflies. Competition trumped reason.

Making the butterflies simply rise into the air was too easy, and there were some kids who were sitting on each other’s shoulders, to get more height in anticipation of the tactic.

I swept up butterflies with dragonflies, carrying them out of reach, through the crowd.

Some of the kids rushed up to me, red in the face with exertion.

“You’re cheating!”

“Not fair!”

“I used to be a supervillain,” I said. “I’m allowed to be a jerk. Go! You two are in second place, but you’re falling behind while you complain.”

They gave me death glares, then ran off.

I focused on my power. The power I wasn’t entirely sure I could trust anymore, and I identified the stragglers. The ones without a group. The ones who weren’t participating, or who weren’t able to maneuver around the crowd, solitary in the midst of groups of friends.

“Can you guys do me a favor?” I glanced at fox-mask.

He nodded.

A few quick instructions, and the Boston Wards were mobilized, tapping on shoulders, saying hi to each of the ones I’d identified.

We gathered at the picnic tables.

“What’s the point of this?” one kid asked, a twelve or thirteen year old with hair draped over half his face. Never understood that hairstyle.

“A break can be nice,” I said. “Whether it’s from school or saving the world.”

“Inviting us here, I mean.”

“You want the cheesy answer or the real one?”

“Cheesy,” one heavyset girl said, with just a touch of snark.

“Cheesy answer is you didn’t seem interested in going squee over these guys, you didn’t feel like chasing butterflies, so I figured I’d invite you to hang.”

“It’s so fake, ridiculous,” she said.

“It is,” I said. “Fake can be good. Reality sucks sometimes.”

“What’s the real answer?” the guy with hair over his face asked me.

“The real answer is that this whole thing is a ploy by the good guys,” I said.

He rolled his eyes.

“They want to get on your good side, just in case you get powers,” I said.

He rolled his eyes again.

“Powers?” another kid asked. He was shorter than all the others, and his eyes were disproportionately large for his face.

“Powers,” I said. “And you guys, I’m thinking, are among the most likely to get them.”

I was getting funny looks.

“Do you know what trigger events are?” I asked.

He shook his head.

“Um,” one of the boy heroes said, “Not sure this is approved.”

I cocked my head, turning to the kid with the hair in his face, “See? It’s a ploy. Big secrets.”

“Not that big,” Fox-mask said.

“I didn’t find out about trigger events until months after I’d had mine,” I said. “It’s how you get superpowers.”

Okay, that had their attention. Twelve or thirteen pairs of eyes were fixed on me.

“It takes something pretty lousy to happen to you,” I said. “You get attacked, or you get hurt, or someone attacks someone or something you really care about, and you have nowhere else to turn, and you get powers.”

“It doesn’t work if you force it,” Mrs. Yamada said, approaching the table, “so don’t try.”

“Right,” I said, though I was digesting a tidbit of information I hadn’t had.

“Why are we going to get powers when they won’t?” another kid in our cluster asked me.

“Because you were alone. It’s a bit of a trend, I think, one I’ve noticed. I’ve seen a lot of powers, and I’ve seen a lot of people with powers who had similar things wrong with them. Labyrinth, Bakuda, Night, Fog, Mannequin, Siberian, Lung, August Prince… again and again, it’s their ability to communicate that’s missing, either because of their powers or because they chose to hide or mask their voices. I was thinking about it, and I think we parahumans tend to be loners by nature.”

Which might explain why we struggle so much as a community.

“So you’re here to make nice, just in case?” the boy with hair in his face asked me.

“That’s the gist of it. I think the PRT’s cunning plan is to get you on board before you get powers.”

“As if,” the boy retorted.

“Hey,” fox-mask said, “Not cool. We’re trying to be nice here.”

I could see a scowl, the glance away on the kid’s face. I was put in mind of Regent for an instant. A similar personality?

“No, let’s be fair,” I said. “Being a villain’s an option.”

“You did not say that,” Fox-mask said, incredulous, “It’s not an option at all.”

The girl in blue looked at Mrs. Yamada, “Ex-villain’s corrupting the kids, and you’re not stopping her?”

Mrs. Yamada was frowning at me.

“I’m going somewhere with this, honest,” I said.

“If you’re sure,” she said. “I can stop you at any time.”

“You can.”

I looked at the gathered kids. A few of the less successful butterfly catchers had drifted away and approached.

“I always hated the speeches when I was in school, the preaching in auditoriums, the one-note message. Stuff like saying drugs are bad. It’s wrong. Drugs are fantastic.”

“Um,” Fox-mask said.

Mrs. Yamada was glaring at me, but she hadn’t interrupted.

“People wouldn’t do them if they weren’t. They make you feel good, make your day brighter, give you energy-”

“Weaver,” Mrs. Yamada cut in.

“-until they don’t,” I said. “People hear the message that drugs are bad, that they’ll ruin your life if you do them once. And then you find out that isn’t exactly true because your friends did it and turned out okay, or you wind up trying something and you’re fine. So you try them, try them again. It isn’t a mind-shattering moment of horrible when you try that first drug. Or so I hear. It’s subtle, it creeps up on you, and you never really get a good, convincing reason to stop before it ruins your life beyond comprehension. I never went down that road, but I knew a fair number of people who did. People who worked for me, when I was a supervillain.”

I had their attention now, at least.

This was probably going to hit the news as something like, ‘Ex-supervillain Wards member recommends drugs to kids’. Whatever.

Maybe I’d get a shit placement in the Wards, but I felt more like the Weaver I wanted to be.

“It’s the same, being a villain. I went there, I did that for a few months. Risked my life, hurt people, made an incredible amount of money, but I look back, and it wasn’t worth it. I value the people I got to know and love far more than I do the money, the power, the fame. They’re the only thing I regret leaving behind.”

“How much money?” the heavy little girl asked, grinning.

“You’re missing the point,” Fox-mask said.

“Fifteen or twenty million,” I said, ignoring him.

“Shhh-ugar,” one of the heroes muttered, just behind me, deciding on a new word midway through.

“That’s so worth it,” a kid said.

“I think this is bordering on counterintuitive,” Mrs. Yamada said.

“Do you have a piece of paper?” I asked.

She only frowned at me.

One of the young heroes, a boy with goggles, handed me a pad of paper.

“Pen?”

He handed me a pen.

“What’s your name?” I asked the boy with hair in his face.

“Ned.”

I wrote it down. “Ned. And you?”

I got the names of all of the kids I’d picked out. The stragglers. Maggie, Bowden, Ryan, Lucas, Jacob, Sophie… the list went on. Fifteen kids in all.

I ripped off the sheet, then tore another sheet into squares. “More pens?”

The goggle-guy handed me a handful of pens.

“Each of you write down the most horrible thing you can think of, that you can reasonably expect to happen to you in the next few years. No need to get too complicated. Think of something horrible that would give you a trigger event. Write it down.”

I waited while each of the kids wrote something down. Other kids were gathering now, but they’d be bystanders. It was the stragglers who were the focus now.

“Hand your sheet to the person to your left. Boston Wards, help me on this score. We’re going to make up powers that sort of fit the trigger events, in a vague way. No need to be specific.”

“If it helps,” Mrs. Yamada said, “More mental powers for mental stress, physical powers for physical stress.”

“She’s the expert,” I said. “Let’s go.”

“I want to pick my own power,” Ned said.

“Too bad. You don’t get to in real life,” I said. “You think I wanted bug powers?”

By the time we’d finished, more of the butterfly catchers had come back. They were watching, now.

“Ned gets the ability to fly.” I’d left him for last. “And some sort of ranged attack. Kind of like Legend.”

“Sweet.”

“But no power is really that simple. So… you fly by blowing. Like a balloon with the end untied, only with more control. You attack by blowing too.”

“No! That sucks!”

“Too bad,” I said. “It’s not all fun and games. What was your trigger event, Maggie?”

The heavyset girl frowned, blushing a little. “Um. Someone chopped my wiener off. How does that-”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. Someone hurt you badly, and you got a more physical power?”

“Reynard said I got super strength, and regeneration.”

She looked at Fox-mask. I had his name now.

A little boring, whatever. “Okay. Now, on the back of the sheet, write down whether you’re a hero or a villain. Your choice.”

“This has got to be a trap,” she said, “So hero.”

“Okay,” I said. “And do you join the Wards, or no?”

“Join us,” Reynard whispered, urging her.

“Kind of seems like a pain.”

Reynard groaned. “I’m wounded!”

“So you’re on your own, or you join another group?”

“Another group.”

“Okay. And… Bowden?”

The kid smirked. “Screw that. I want fifteen million dollars. Villain.”

“Okay. Ryan?”

We went around the circle, until everyone had their affiliation.

“I don’t suppose you’d have any dice?” I asked the Wards.

The goggle-hero handed me a handful of dice.

“Oh shit,” Ned said, “You conned us into playing dungeons and dragons!”

“Nothing so complicated,” I said. “Roll, Ned. A three is bad luck about your powers, a two is bad luck about your life as a cape, and a one is really bad luck.”

He rolled. A three.

“Aw, what? No!”

“Okay,” I said. “Your powers came with a drawback.”

“I blow air! I already got screwed.”

“Your power came with the ability to understand air currents, which you need to fly,” I said. “But they erased something else. Your sense of direction is gone, unless you’re using it to fly. Wherever you go, you get lost. It’s bad enough that you can’t do anything on your own. Unless someone here asks you to join their team, your life is ruined.”

“What?” He asked. He glowered. “Fuck you.”

“Language,” Fox-mask warned.

“It happens,” I told the kid. “Let’s hope others have more luck.”

We went around the table, there were a few more with bad luck. I found it interesting when the Boston Wards volunteered penalties. One involved a trigger event so public that a kid had to abandon the idea of a secret identity. Another was traumatized by theirs, and wouldn’t get a good night’s sleep for ten years.

“Now let’s talk about what you do with your careers,” I said. “Ned? You found a team, and your power’s pretty good, so let’s say you win a fight against the heroes on a two or better.”

He rolled, “Six!”

“Now you fight other villains, who want to steal the money you just got. Roll.”

“I’m a bad guy, I’m not fighting them!”

“Bad guys fight villains and heroes,” I said. “But you can give up the money if you want to run.”

He scowled, shaking his hand in anticipation of rolling, dragging it on far too long.

“And because bad guys don’t always play fair, these guys kill you if you roll a one, and they win on a two,” I added.

He rolled. A two.

“Money gone, you’re hurt, embarrassed, but still alive. Maggie, your turn.”

The exercise continued. Once we had a general system in place, crude rules or no, the Boston heroes took up the job, until each of us had three ‘capes’ and a small crowd of spectators.

“I’m not sure I get the point,” Maggie said, after a few rounds. She looked a little nervous with a crowd looking over her shoulder.

“Okay,” I said, clapping my hands. “Villains, raise your hands.”

They did.

“If you’re dead, maimed or in jail, lower your hands.”

More than half of them did.

“Heroes, raise your hands if you’re okay.”

Most of the other kids raised their hands.

“Sophie chose to be a rogue,” Fox-mask said, “She’s been in one fight, but she came out okay.”

“You’re screwing the villains,” Ned said. “It’s not really one fight after another.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but was interrupted.

“Being a villain is hard,” Mrs. Yamada said. Odd as it was, she seemed to have a measure of authority I didn’t, here. Weird, that the kids would listen to her because she was an adult, and not someone who’d actually been in the thick of it.

Weird and frustrating.

“One in twenty might make it in the long run,” I said. “If they’re lucky, if they’re good, if they have friends they can count on.”

“Pat yourself on the back a little more,” Reynard said, a little sarcastic. The girl in blue elbowed him.

I made sure to look each of the participants in the eye as I spoke, “I wasn’t satisfied doing what I was doing, as a villain. I switched sides by choice. Think about that. Even after all of that, after everything I had, even though I felt pretty good, spending all of that money on helping people in my neighborhood, being front page news, I gave it up.”

I knew it wasn’t time for it, that I should let that sink in, but people were talking more in the back of the crowd, jostling or getting restless.

“So let’s say there’s an endbringer attack,” I said. “Time to decide. Do you volunteer?”

Nobody moved.

“We need volunteers, or it’s over,” I said. “Hero or villain.”

Maggie put her hand up.

“One,” I said. “Not enough.”

Others raised their hands in turn. Five volunteers out of the eight who were still in the game. Ned was among them.

“Roll,” I said. I handed over the dice, “One in four chance you die.”

The kids rolled, one by one.

Three dead.

“You rigged the system,” Ned said, a little petulant.

“I’m being a little harsh,” I said, “But this is it. It sounds dumb, but being a cape means beating the odds, again and again. If you’re a villain? The reward is pretty damn good, but the risk is bigger. You saw how few villains actually survived intact. Even then, a lot of them lost their money, or got hurt.”

I glanced around the group. “That’s my pitch. Take it from someone who’s been on both sides. Being on the side of good? It’s safer, a hell of a lot smarter. Know that there’s always going to be someone out there that’s stronger, and-”

The ringing of phones interrupted me. Multiple phones, all at once, both the Wards and Mrs. Yamada.

A sick feeling welled in my gut. The Wards looked at their phones. Mrs. Yamada was the only one to raise hers to her ear. I closed my eyes.

“Yes,” Mrs. Yamada said. “You’re coming here? Okay. Yes. Of course. The Boston Wards are here. Yes.”

I felt like my chest was clenching around my heart. The kids had fallen silent.

“Weaver,” Mrs. Yamada said.

My voice was quiet, “I’m not ready. My new stuff, it’s not prepared.”

“Defiant says he has your old costume, he can spray it white, if you want, swap out the lenses. It won’t be pretty, but it’ll be better than what they gave you.”

I opened my eyes. The kids were wide eyed.

“Which one is it?” I asked her.

“Behemoth. Seismic activity building in New Delhi. He hasn’t appeared yet.”

I nodded.

“You don’t have to go,” she said.

I shook my head. I thought of the Undersiders. “I’ll go. Have to.”

“Can I hitch a ride?” Reynard asked. “At least to the HQ?”

I nodded, glad for the solidarity. I wasn’t in this alone. “Probably.”

I looked at the Wards, could see how some were standing taller, grim, fatalistic, but confident in their own way. Others averted their eyes. Shame, that they weren’t coming.

“Hey,” Ned said.

I glanced at him.

“Is it really a one in four chance?” he asked.

“Those are the numbers they gave me when I fought Leviathan,” I said. “They probably won’t be so generous this time around.”

“They call him the herokiller,” Reynard added.

That thought hadn’t even crossed my mind. We’re not ready. None of us. We’re still reeling from Echidna, from Alexandria.

The kids who were still in the field fled as three Dragon suits set down, crossing the park to rejoin the teachers who’d been sitting in the shade. Doors opened and ramps lowered to welcome us into the dark interiors.

Defiant and Dragon were inside the Pendragon, waiting for me, Defiant carrying my Skitter costume, Dragon holding a new back compartment, wings extended, two mechanical limbs sticking out each side.

It wasn’t everything I’d asked for, but it was something.

I glanced back at the kids. The ones who hadn’t cleared the way for the crafts to land in the park were still at the tables, along with one or two Wards who apparently weren’t coming.

“Still owe you that prize,” I said. My voice sounded funny. “Was going to con Defiant here into giving you a ride.”

“Doesn’t matter,” a girl said. She had the most butterflies. “Really.”

I nodded.

It had meant something to me after all, getting the chance to do this. I met Mrs. Yamada’s eyes, nodded.

She nodded back.

Gathering the Skitter costume and the lightweight jetpack into my arms, I watched the kids as the doors slid closed.

None of them wished us luck.

Maybe we didn’t need any further reminders about our chances.

23.05

The waiting was the worst part.

My restlessness was cranked up to eleven, cooped up in the craft with Defiant and Dragon, waiting to cross half the world. Dragon was focused on piloting the craft, unable to speak, in any event. Defiant was busy communicating, which translated to being inaudible as he kept the vents of his mask closed. From the images on the monitor, he was clearly tracking who was coming, our forces, the Endbringer and the high-risk areas.

I watched for a time, saw the cape count rise. A screen filled with lines of text, noting the hero teams who had committed to the fight, numbers beside them to tally the total numbers.

For every group that joined, I felt myself growing a touch more nervous. More participants in the fight was a good thing, but… so many small teams. I couldn’t read half of the names of the groups on the list, but there was nothing to suggest it was organized.

I shifted my weight, sat, stood, stretched.

Agony.

Being in a prison, I didn’t have the luxury of a full wardrobe, certainly not the bike shorts and tank top I tended to wear beneath my costume. I had only underwear, and I needed to change into the new costume. I could have waited, but I wanted to hit the ground running.

Worse, the boxes with my butterflies within were in one of the crafts that followed just behind us, carrying a full contingent of capes.

But Defiant was engrossed in the monitors, and that left me debating the merits of modesty over being ready.

I stripped down, pulling on my old costume. They’d said something about painting it, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to wait for that. I left the major armor components off.

The pack they’d given me, it was the wrong color to match with the armor. I’d be sacrificing the ability to keep things inside my utility compartment, but I suspected this would make up for that. There were built-in wings that folded at a juncture, like dragonfly wings with joints, and there were the ‘arms’. The controls seemed to be worked into gloves I was supposed to wear beneath my costume.

I found that there was a hatch, but it was small, barely larger than my hand, and the space was shallow. I sent bugs inside to explore, and found a series of fine switches.

“Redundant controls,” Defiant said.

I looked up. He’d turned away from the monitors.

“If your glove gets damaged, you’ve got the controls built into the pack itself. If the pack gets damaged, you have the gloves. If both are damaged, you’re not likely to be in a state to fly. It might take getting used to, but this will give you the ability to move faster if you need it, and it’s very possible you’ll need it this afternoon.”

“You built it so fast. I wasn’t with Mrs. Yamada for even two hours, and you put this together?”

“It’s made using components and technology we already have. Four antigravity panels, like those Kid Win had in his hoverboard,” Defiant said, angling his hand to indicate the general placement. One at the very bottom, one above that, facing more back than down, and two more at angles on either side.

“Okay,” I said.

“That gives you lift, the ability to offset gravity or momentum in a given direction, but the acceleration is low. Expect zero to thirty miles an hour over eight seconds. It won’t carry you out of the way of trouble, understand? It won’t stop you if you’re moving at terminal velocity, unless you’re falling a long way.”

I nodded.

“The wings are a modification of technology that was confiscated from a cape called Stinger. Missile themed, not wasps and bees. They’ve got a venting-exhaust system we repurposed. It toggles between using either antigravity or propulsion. They should give you an easier time orienting yourself, or more speed pushing yourself in a particular direction, but not both at the same time. While the wings are intact, you should be able to manage zero to forty-five in about three and a half seconds. That ends if the wings break, and they aren’t made to be durable.”

I nodded. “It won’t let me flit around the battlefield, but it’ll give me some vertical movement?”

“Yes.”

He continued, indicating lines with his finger. “We built nineteen tracks into the device, that you’ll be able to control with the bugs you direct into the interior. One for the on-off switch, doubling as an override for the glove handling, four for antigravity panels, eight for the arms, six for the wings. You’re sure you can handle all that?”

“Multitasking is a strength of mine,” I said. “If it’s anything like controlling Atlas, it’ll become almost subconscious.”

“I hope so. You’ll want to learn with both the glove and the insect control. There’s also limitations on energy and fuel, for the antigravity and propulsion, but not so limited that you’ll run out by the end of the day. You have time to review the documentation Dragon put together. Pay attention to the particulars of the flight pack’s vulnerability to electromagnetic radiation. While the wings are deployed, one good hit will scramble it and render you flightless. While the wings are withdrawn and the casing closed, it should be shielded against all reasonable EM sources.”

“I’ll have to stay close to the ground then, in case it gets scrambled.”

“For now.”

“Can I practice?” I asked. “Not flying, but the arms, and moving the individual components…”

“The arms aren’t done. Keep them out of the way for now. Until I figure out a way to approach the internal design, they’ll have about as much strength as a newborn baby.”

I nodded. “I really appreciate this, anyways. You two went above and beyond the call of duty.”

“It’s not customary for tinkers to design things for teammates. If they do, it’s on a relatively small scale, simple. Kid Win making Gallant’s armor, for example. Any device requires a great deal of upkeep. Time is spent tuning, calibrating, repairing and identifying problems. Each device created is something the tinker then has to take time to maintain, and mass production means the tinker becomes tech support more than an innovator. Dragon and I don’t sleep, or sleep very little, but even for us, it isn’t effective. Far better to invest our time into the artificial intelligences and the ships.”

“But you’re doing this for me.”

“We, I in particular, wronged you,” Defiant said. “I know that even now, we’re not fully on the same page, but I now believe you did start out wanting to be a hero, and I may have played a part in your drift from that path. I’ve put myself on the line to recommend you to the Wards, and I’ll dedicate the time and equipment necessary to get you on track.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Really. Thank you.”

“If you don’t mind,” he said. “I-”

He paused, glancing at Dragon. Then he continued, “I’m working on being more humble, but I think I will always have a certain measure of pride and an excess of focus, to the point that I lose sight of the periphery of things. I’ll forgive your past transgressions if you look past mine, and if there’s any disparity in the two, I’ll make it up for you with this.” He lowered his head to indicate the flight pack. “And I’d ask you to spare my ego the reminder by accepting this without thanks.”

“I’ve worked with Rachel, with Bitch, I think I can do that much,” I said.

“When this is over, today, if we’re all still alive, I will maintain two of these packs for you, and you can switch to the spare if one needs repairing or recharging. Some of it’s of Dragon’s design, but the maintenance will be left to me. If you have questions, I’ll answer them,” he said.

And the latter half of the statement was left unsaid. But let’s not talk of this any further, unless it’s about the technical aspects of the device.

He had already turned back to the monitor. There were three screens filled with columns noting the various teams who were showing up.

“How long until we arrive?” I ventured.

“Forty-five minutes.”

I nodded. “We’re going to show up late, aren’t we?”

“Inevitable. Dragon already has had every combat-ready craft on standby in eastern Europe for a week now. They and the local forces will have to hold the fort until then.”

“Okay.”

“The computer opposite mine is available. Dragon is pulling up the documentation on the flight device now, if you need something to occupy yourself.”

I glanced behind Defiant, noting the terminal and the stool that was built into the craft’s cabin. I took a seat, resting the pack on my right thigh.

Okay, so they’d found the time to pull together a flight pack with some antigravity and propulsion systems, I could believe that. But the documentation? Who had time to draw out 21 pages of notes on capabilities and limitations, on top of building the thing?

Especially when it was all drawings, rather than typed out words.

I wasn’t about to complain, but it did leave me reconsidering what Dragon’s specialty might be. I’d thought I worked it out, but the speed with which she’d pulled this together…

My bugs found the channels inside the suit, and I set about experimenting with it, working through the various steps for moving the wings and the individual limbs. Each ‘track’ inside the pack’s interior was a narrow corridor with very sensitive switches along the interior, so that any movement of even something as diminutive as a ladybug was capable of pushing them.

The sensitivity would need to be calibrated at a later point. As it stood, any jarring impact would briefly lock all of the inputs in place, so they wouldn’t read the impact as contact from a bug and send the wrong signal.

I had to shrug out of the upper half of my costume to get the gloves on beneath my costume, but I managed to get everything set up. There were too many straps and no room for them to slot beneath my costume, so I connected them over the costume’s exterior, beneath the armor, and cinched every strap tight, doing up the metal clasps once everything was comfortably tight.

There were four ‘arms’, each a little longer than my arms. The control was a little simplistic, with only two switches for each limb. I imagined it was similar to an artificial limb. I folded them close to my body, so they hugged my lower ribs and the space just beneath my ‘breasts’, and then left them be.

The wings were just as simplistic, but had three switches each. Two to move and reorient the wings, with a third to switch between the antigrav vent and varying amounts of propulsion. I didn’t dare experiment with that in an enclosed space.

I read and reread the documentation ten times over, because there was precious little else to do.

“We’re landing in a minute,” Defiant announced. “Estimated eight minute wait before the last craft from North America arrive on site and a cape by the name of Silk Road deploys a corridor.”

I nodded.

“We picked up your old team,” he said. “Sent a craft.”

I turned around, surprised.

“Stipulations of your membership in the Wards dictate that you aren’t to extend contact to them.”

Oh. Right. Shitty.

“Keeping in mind that there are likely going to be cameras and cell phones pointed at you throughout this incident,” Defiant said, glancing at Dragon, “You’re free to do as you wish. So long as you don’t do anything troublesome on camera, I don’t expect anyone will make an issue of it. It might even help if you allow others to record you, so it’s clear you aren’t doing anything questionable.”

I glanced at him.

“Dragon’s suggestion, not mine,” he said. “But I don’t object.”

“Thank you,” I said, meaning it.

“Thank me by staying out of trouble,” he said, brusque. He glanced at Dragon, then back to me. “And you’re welcome.”

She can communicate with him, but not with anyone else. Why?

I nodded. “Um. You reminded me, when you said there’d be people getting camera footage of me. Mrs. Yamada said I should start recording myself while I’m in the field. I know we still have to talk about my costume, and it’s too late to make any updates, but I wouldn’t mind having it, especially for the next high-intensity situation.”

“We’ll see,” he said.

I nodded.

The craft set down, the doors opening. My mouth dropped open in surprise as I took in the scene.

The area was a flat, open field with knee-high grass. Settled on it were twenty of Dragon’s ships, with two to sixteen capes to each. People were stepping out, stretching, meeting others and talking. Almost all of them were from the Protectorate and the Wards. Others included Haven, a villain group I didn’t recognize, and one of the corporate teams I’d seen before the Leviathan fight.

And the Undersiders. I sensed them with the bugs in the field.

I felt a measure of hesitation.

Time to test out these wings.

It wouldn’t do to faceplant in front of all of these heroes. I was tentative, as I sent a bug down a tight corridor with innumerable tiny switches. Only one corridor, one switch.

A panel kicked to life, gentle. I nearly tripped as I stepped forward and was lifted an inch or two higher off the ground than normal.

I sent the bug further down the corridor, directing more power to the panel, and I was no longer having an issue, because I was being lifted into the air.

I was starting to lose my balance, though, necessitating a drop in lift and some experimental firings of the left and right panels to keep myself upright.

I touched ground and extended the wings, activating the vents for the antigrav at the wing’s tips. It made for a sudden, lurching adjustment, nearly flipping me over to the ground.

Not wanting to waste too much time, I made a beeline for the Undersiders, experimenting as I went. Rather than fly, I used short bursts of the antigrav with kicks of my feet to get some air, landing on the noses and limbs of various Dragon-crafts, so I didn’t have to walk around.

“There she is,” Tattletale said, “And she’s flying.”

I settled on top of a head, swaying for a second as I touched ground and found my center of balance. “Floating, until I get more practice.”

“Close enough,” she said. She flashed a grin. “Fancy.”

They were all present, Parian included. Accord, Citrine and the woman with the water powers were all present. I couldn’t recall her name. Ligeia? She had a costume, now. Or an evening dress, rather, with a conch brooch and mask.

More than Parian, I was surprised that Accord had come.

Flechette, now Foil, stood off to one side. She’d donned a black costume, which I was pretty sure was made of one of my failed attempts at a Tattletale costume, using asymmetrical belts, boots, armor and gloves to cover the areas where I’d tried to embellish. Her mask was an opaque pane, like Clockblocker’s, but black, with silver trim at the edges.

“You’re wearing your old costume,” Grue said, finally.

“Haven’t had a chance to make a new one,” I said.

“No kidding,” Regent said, his tone dry, “Too busy making license plates, dropping the soap…”

“I can’t believe you went and became a hero,” Imp said. “What the fuck? How the fuck do you off a major cape and get invited to the Wards?”

“It’s complicated,” I said.

“Are you getting by?” Grue asked.

“Not as well as I’d like,” I said. “But surviving. Are you guys okay, leaving your territory like this?”

“Hey now,” Regent cut in. He stabbed a finger at me. “Aren’t you supposed to read us our rights before questioning us?”

Imp snorted. Grue smacked Regent across the back of the head, a little harder than necessary.

“It’s all good,” Tattletale said. She grinned, “Booby traps, some misdirection, I figure we can afford to be gone for a day. We can look forward to going back home to see some bruised egos. Regent’s dad among them.”

“You’re being safe?” I asked. “I mean, we’ve taken on some monsters, but this is Heartbreaker, and the repercussions of a lost fight are kind of, well, permanent. There’s no undoing his power.”

“Like I said, it’s all good.” Tattletale shrugged.

“You with a team?” Grue asked, “Or with us?”

“No idea. As far as I know, I’m independent,” I said. “I’m not sure what that means, yet, but way I figure it, I’m going to do whatever works best in the moment.”

“Isn’t that how you wound up with us in the first place?” Tattletale asked.

I didn’t have an answer to that, so I shrugged. My eyes followed Foil as she walked over to talk to Jouster. He handed her an arbalest, and a quiver of needle-like bolts.

When she took the quiver, he gripped her wrist, speaking something in a low volume. She nodded as she replied, saying something I couldn’t make out, and he let her go.

Wordless, they parted, him rejoining his team, Foil moving to Parian’s side.

I wanted to say something about that, but what? I didn’t get the vibe she was a double agent, but I imagined there was something more to that.

I turned my attention back to the Undersiders, and my eyes moved to Rachel. She was sitting on the ramp at the back of a craft, her dogs clustered around her. She was stroking Bastard, using her fingernails to get in deeper than the base layer of fur.

Finally a chance to talk, and nothing to say. The silence hurt me more than any accusations or insults.

“I don’t know how to say this gracefully,” I said. I paused, noting the presence of a hero nearby who’d raised a camera towards me. Whatever, I’d say it anyways. “But you guys mean a lot to me. I’m sorry I didn’t say it before, but I couldn’t without letting on that something was going on. You’re my family, in a way. As lame as it might be, I love you guys.”

My head turned from Grue to Rachel to Tattletale as I said it.

“Gaaaaaaayyyyyyy,” Imp drew out the word. Parian and Foil gave her an annoyed look.

I smiled a little, despite myself. “Fuck off.”

“Are you trying to get someone killed?” Regent asked. “That’s totally a death sentence, telling someone you love them, tying up loose ends.”

“She’d be getting herself killed, going by the rules,” Tattletale said.

“Don’t say that,” Grue said, his voice quiet.

With a touch more seriousness, Tattletale said, “No dying, okay, Skitter?”

“Weaver,” I corrected.

“Skitter,” she said. “Here, today, you’re Skitter. Consider it a good luck charm. And no dying. I’ll say it as many times as it takes, until it gets through to you.”

I shook my head a little. “No dying. That goes both ways.”

“Way I see it,” Imp said, “She’s gone soft. Real quick, too, getting affectionate, lovey-dovey.”

“Alternate costume, too,” Regent said, “White, light gray, baby blue…”

“Electric blue,” I said. I was smiling now. I used the flight-pack to slow my descent as I hopped down from the head of the craft. I pitched my voice lower so I wouldn’t be overheard, and poked Regent in the chest. “Fuck you guys. I’m as badass as ever. Recommending drugs to kids, strangling a ten year old, forcing bugs down my allies’ throats…”

“Killing Alexandria,” Regent said.

“Mm,” I said, and I could feel my heart plummet into my stomach. All at once, I was left wondering just how many capes here were secretly blaming me.

“Asshole,” Tattletale told Regent.

I folded my arms, feeling a chill, the summer warmth notwithstanding. “We may pay for that today.”

“I think we’re fucked in general,” Tattletale said. “But no sweat. We’ll-”

She snapped her head around. There was an uncharacteristic emotion as she swore under her breath. “Fuck. He’s up.”

A second later, the ships each spoke in their identical voices, out of sync not because of any flaw in Dragon’s program, but due to their positions across the field, and the delay of sound traveling, a chorus, “Behemoth has surfaced. Return to your craft as soon as possible. Supplies will be provided while we are en route. Individuals on the ground may or may not be left behind.“

“See you on the battlefield,” Grue said.

“See you,” I answered. I felt a tug of worry. I had almost hoped he’d sit this one out. He didn’t tend to do well when it came to facing down the real monsters.

I bit my tongue and started up the flight pack.

“Don’t hold back now,” Regent said. I could see that he was watching the guy who was still training his camera phone on me. Regent turned back to me and extended his arms, injecting fake emotion into his voice, “You know we love you too!”

I kicked off, just barely floating out of reach as he tried to fold me into a hug. “Jackass.”

He was back to his casual, detached attitude in an instant, showing just a touch of swagger as he stepped back to rejoin the others. He gave me a sloppy mock salute. I shifted my ascent and set foot on the head of the craft that had been behind me.

“Just remember,” Tattletale called out, “You’re officially Skitter today. Don’t be a hero. No point to all this shit if you do something brave and get yourself killed.”

“Not sure about that,” I said. “About being Skitter, not the getting killed bit.”

Heroes were rapidly retreating to the craft. I didn’t have long. There was so much I wanted to say, but… shit.

“Rachel,” I said.

She glanced up at me, her eyes almost hidden behind her hair. I could see the hurt in her expression, a raw feeling.

“The letter, it helped. All of the letters meant a lot to me, except Imp’s. But yours especially.”

She grunted in acknowledgement, setting Bastard on the ground, then stood.

“And I’m probably going to get crucified for saying this, but I still consider you a friend. Someday, after all of this has settled down, when you don’t need to be a villain anymore to take care of your dogs, and I’m okay where I’m at, I want to hang out again. Throw the balls for the dogs, clean up dog shit, go for walks. Whatever works.”

“Saying shit like that, you’re signing death warrants!” Regent said, his hands to the side of his head. “Stop it, you lunatic!”

I shook my head, then turned and took flight.

All around me, doors were shutting. If it weren’t for my bug sense, I might have lost track of where Defiant was. So many Dragon-ships, no two quite the same.

I entered, and I could see Defiant standing in front of the monitors, his arms around Dragon’s shoulders. One of them must have acknowledged my presence, because the doors of the craft began shutting behind me as I made my way inside.

Odd as it was, I hadn’t fully parsed that they were together before now.

I approached, quiet, and watched as the drama on the monitors unfolded. The bugs from the field followed me inside, clustering around me.

Behemoth, nearly fifty feet tall, was still standing in the midst of a collapsed building. The structure had no doubt fallen on top of him as he emerged, and the debris was ablaze, casting his gray skin in hues of red and orange. He didn’t seem to care about the building.

Dragon’s A.I. were already attacking him, each from the greatest distance possible. The camera shook, out of sync with the timing of the strikes, as the vibrations took time to travel to the distant cameraman.

Heroes were fighting, contributing pitifully little to the assault. They were too distant to make out.

“Locals?” I asked.

Defiant turned, reacting as if he were surprised I was present. “Yes. Don’t ask me to pronounce their names.”

“Sāhasī Pān̄ca,” Dragon said.

I glanced at her in surprise. “You can talk, all of a sudden?”

There was a pause. “…Little.”

“She felt she needed to be able to communicate,” Defiant said. To her, he said, “And this is the last time we make a last-minute fix.”

“I’m sort of in the dark here,” I said.

Defiant declined to fill me in, staring at the screen. His voice was almost pained as he muttered, “They’re too close.”

One Dragon suit was unleashing what looked like a freeze ray at the Endbringer, while another of the Dragon suits was turning a laser on the ground beneath Behemoth’s broad feet. It wasn’t enough to take away his footing. He set one ‘claw’ -a growth of obsidian-like black shards- onto solid earth, then half-loped, half-hopped forward. With his claws and feet now on firm ground, he leaped. The shockwave of his departure toppled the slipshod buildings around him in his wake.

The landing as he arrived flattened another set of buildings. The heroes started to run. They were too slow, when compared to the length of Behemoth’s legs, the sheer power he was capable of putting into the simple act of walking. One by one, they fell within his kill range. Two were scorched from the inside, a brawny-looking cape seized up with smoke billowing from his corpse as he struck ground, his arms and limbs still twitching in death.

One managed to escape, taking flight. He got a full four city blocks away before Behemoth reached out. He was struck out of the air by a visible arc of lightning that extended from a claw’s tip.

Four A.I. were continually bombarding him now, three using what looked to be freeze-rays. The fourth alternated between destroying his footing and blasting burning buildings flat with some sort of concussive laser-drill, stifling the spread of the fires. Heroes here and there contributed some inaccurate ranged fire, but seemed preoccupied with fleeing.

Behemoth hardly seemed to care about any of it.

Our ship lifted off. Outside, the surroundings were taking on a rosy tint. I could hear the cumulative thrum of the twenty-seven Dragon-craft’s propulsion systems operating in unison. My bugs could track them all, the late arrivals included.

There was a shudder, and the rosy tint of our surroundings intensified, filling the cabin. We started to move, and it wasn’t the ship moving us. Dragon stepped out of Defiant’s embrace to approach the ship controls.

An instant later, the propulsion system kicked into motion, and we were moving far faster than before. The shuddering of the cabin was so intense I had to sit down.

“India’s capes fall into two categories,” Defiant said, not taking his eyes off the screen. He had to raise his voice to be heard over the movement of the craft. “They term their capes ‘hot’ and ‘cold’, with very strict rules on who falls into a category. Walk between the two groups, you get the worst of both. Hot, it’s about flash, color, appeal, and engaging the public. Villain or hero, they’re cape celebrities. Cold, it’s… bloodshed, violence, assassination and secrecy. Capes of the underworld. The public doesn’t see or hear about the cold capes. The media does not speak of them.”

On the screen, Behemoth wasn’t even slowing down. Another arc of lightning lanced across the cityscape, setting a dozen fires. The houses looked shoddy, dirty, and were apparently very flammable. The flames spread quickly, and plumes of smoke were streaming towards the overcast sky.

“The capes that are getting killed, they’re-”

“Garama,” Dragon said. “…Hot.”

“We need the ones with killer instinct,” Defiant said. “The ones who fight for real, not for play. The cold capes.”

“Thanda,” Dragon supplied the translation.

“Question is whether the Thanda think it’s worth breaking the rules and emerging from the shadows,” Defiant said.

“Did last… time,” Dragon said, her words bearing an odd cadence. She approached me, holding an armband and a silver packet.

I accepted them, turning both over in my hands. “Radiation pills?”

She nodded, holding up one finger.

“Take one?”

“Yes,” she said. “Still.”

“Still?” I asked.

But she just touched one side of my face. One finger was under my chin, and I raised it, looking up at her, confused.

She let me go, leaving me momentarily confused. I touched my face where she’d laid her hand and felt two bumps.

A camera?

“Dragon,” Defiant said, before I could ask any questions. “Look.”

She approached his side, her arms wrapping around his armored left arm, metal scraping against metal.

“They’re not supposed to be here,” he commented, his voice low.

I turned my attention to the monitor. “Who aren’t?”

“The Yàngbǎn.”

The focus was on a formation of capes. They were lined up like musketeers, rank and file, each a set distance apart from the others. The ones in front were kneeling, the ones behind standing. Each wore a mask that covered their faces, flowing costumes with loose sleeves and pants, somewhere between a martial arts uniform and a military uniform, each crimson with a black design of horizontal and vertical lines at edges of the sleeves and pants. There were nearly thirty of them.

All together, they directed lasers at him, aiming for his one red eye. He blocked the concentrated laser-fire with one claw, and the flesh at the base of the obsidian claw began peeling away.

“Who are they?”

“The C.U.I.’s military parahumans.”

“Isn’t the C.U.I. xenophobic?”

“Yes,” Dragon said. Her voice sounded funny. It wasn’t emotion, but something was somehow off about it.

“Excepting diplomatic functions, this is the first time in over a decade that any of the Yàngbǎn have set foot outside of China,” Defiant said. “We’ve tried to arrange for their aid in the past, but relations between our side and theirs are sour. For years, they’ve alleged that the PRT and the Protectorate are fundamentally corrupt, the source of the problems currently plaguing the world.”

“They were right,” I said.

“Yes,” Defiant said. He didn’t sound happy about the admission.

Behemoth slammed his claws together. The Yàngbǎn responded by creating forcefields en-masse, one for every person, overlapping with those to either side of them. The shockwave of the clap ripped through them, shattering the first two rows of forcefields and virtually liquefying the unfortunate capes who no longer had protection.

The Yàngbǎn in the back rows were already dropping their forcefields, extending their hands forward, open palms aimed at their comrades.

The shockwave’s effects reversed in an instant, and the injured were whole, holding the positions they’d been in an instant before. Here and there, the reaction had been a fraction too slow, and the Yàngbǎn members were only reversed to the instant the shockwave made contact. They were thrown back and caught by the ones in the back row, blood streaming from their eyes, noses and ears. One was saved much too late, and the process of being liquefied was only repeated, splattering the Yàngbǎn soldier who’d failed to react in time to rescue him.

Behemoth unleashed a rolling tide of flame, and the remaining twenty-eight Yàngbǎn fled, using a combination of enhanced speed and flight. The remains of the dead member were left behind.

“I can’t tell if this is a good thing or a bad thing,” I commented.

“With luck, they’ve changed their minds and we have much-needed allies,” Defiant said.

“And if they haven’t?”

He didn’t reply.

More of Dragon’s craft were arriving, adding their attacks to those of the others. I could recognize the wheel-dragon, using some sort of tuned electromagnetic pull to draw away the loose rubble from beneath Behemoth. He sank nearly ten feet as the ground shifted around him.

He struck the wheel-dragon with a bolt of lightning, flaying off a few plates of armor and destroying the wheel. It opened its mouth and launched cannon-fire at him. The shells exploded into blobs of containment foam, fireproof, sticky, virtually impossible to remove.

But not capable of holding back something like Behemoth.

More lightning was unleashed, each doing successively more damage to the craft. By the fourth blast, it wasn’t operational. The fifth split it down the middle. Insulation was little use against a dynakinetic that could redirect the natural course of electricity.

Ten craft were around him now, concentrating fire. Cryogenic beams, containment foam and more served to slow him down. Not stopping him. No, that was too much to hope for. His pace was roughly two-thirds the speed it might otherwise be, at a glance, his attention focused on the A.I.

Behemoth brought both hands together, but it wasn’t to clap. Instead, he directed a stream of lightning at the nearest craft, easily twenty feet across. It was splintered in an instant.

A second craft perished a second later.

Before he could turn his attention to a third, the stream of lightning shifted, curving off to one side. Drones, the annoying little bastard spheres that had electorcuted me on multiple occasions, the same ones that had been built into the ceilings of the cells and prison hallways in the PRT headquarters, were in flight, deployed by a drone-ship like the one I’d fought in Brockton Bay, and they were channeling the lightning along a different path.

Behemoth wasn’t one to roar, but I could see the effort at work as he began to draw the lightning away from the remote drones, forcing it to take another path, beyond the route of ionized air or the electromagnetic charge that they were using to catch it and harmlessly redirect it into an area that was already rubble. He was taking abuse from the airborne craft, unable to move without giving ground. More containment foam and more ice built around him, tearing and melting, respectively, in response to his lesser movements.

They moved closer together, strengthening the bond, and the lightning was caught once more.

He gave up on the lightning and blasted the drones out of the air with a wave of heated wind. An instant later, he resumed destroying the craft. Three in as many seconds, and then a slam of one claw against a building. The shockwave that followed leveled a whole row of buildings.

I belatedly swallowed a radiation pill and attached the armband.

The screen displayed text: ‘Name?’

“Weaver,” I said.

The letters appeared on the screen. I confirmed with a press of the button.

A map of my surroundings appeared, a landscape rushing by. In one corner, the distance to Behemoth was noted, rapidly counting down.

I could see the runway an instant before the ship touched down. The rosy glow was still present as the ship cut back on forward thrust. The craft touched the runway belly-down, skidding to a near-stop.

The red tint that surrounded everything disappeared, and Defiant caught my arm with one hand, holding on to a beam in the ceiling with the other.

The ship activated one thruster, and the craft swung around. The other thruster kicked to life, and we took off, still bearing some of the forward momentum from earlier. We were moving in a near-perpendicular direction to the one we’d been traveling earlier. Defiant let go of my arm.

When I looked back at the screen, nearly half of the city was on fire. Black smoke choked the skies, a stark contrast to the cloudy sky of only minutes ago.

“Were they able to evacuate most?” Defiant asked.

“No,” Dragon answered.

Our craft touched ground, and I glanced out the window to see a sliver of what the monitors showed. A sky choked by darkness, a city aflame.

The glow of his single eye cut through the smoke, and I was reminded of Lung. Of that first night, on the rooftop, when one of Lung’s eyes had been swollen shut, the other open. Lung, like Behemoth, had been virtually untouchable.

This was that same scenario, that same fight. I couldn’t hope to win. At best, I’d manage a distraction, a momentary handicap, but he’d recuperate, and given the chance, he’d murder me with a casual ease.

This wasn’t a rooftop, but there wouldn’t be an easy means of escape. And just as I’d acted to stop Lung from hurting what I thought were innocent kids, I was acting here to save lives.

The same thing, but on a far greater scale. The danger, the stakes, all scaled up by a thousand times, a million times.

The back of the craft opened, and Defiant led the way as we made our exit. Spotlights cast much-needed light on the immediate surroundings. The ships had settled in a ring formation, some posed above the others, as if providing a protective enclosure. Weapons were directed outside, and one craft loomed overhead. For now, we were as safe as we could hope to be.

Chevalier, Rime and the rest of his new Protectorate were all in one group, backed by their respective teams.

A nearby crash made half of the people present, myself included, nearly jump out of their skin. It was somehow reassuring that Chevalier managed to retain his composure.

“The ships have all arrived,” Chevalier said, “I’ve received the data on the other participating teams, those not already fighting will reinforce as they’re able. We should expect record numbers, we shouldn’t expect it’ll help. Any news on the locals?”

“Gathering and setting up defenses at India Gate,” Rime said. “It seems to be his destination.”

“The gate? There’s nothing there,” Chevalier said. “Only population.”

“If it’s not a soft target,” Revel said, “then we can play the long game, buy time for Scion to arrive.”

“Let’s assume it’s soft. We made that mistake once, never again,” Chevalier said. “Okay. Listen up!”

He raised his voice, commanding the attention of everyone present.

“We’ve already notified you if we believe you have the capacity to engage Behemoth. Anyone else is operating as search, rescue, and support. Maintain a distance of at least a hundred feet from Behemoth at the very minimum. Get any closer, you probably won’t have a chance of escaping if he decides to close the gap. Be mindful of line of sight, because he can and will tag you with a lightning bolt, and it’s not something you can dodge. Assume every structure will fall down in a heartbeat, and know that there’s no good place to hide and wait for this to be over. Keep moving and move smart.”

The crowd of heroes was utterly silent. I could see the Undersiders on the opposite end of the enclosure. The spotlights behind them rendered them little more than silhouettes with glowing edges.

“There’s no sugarcoating it,” Chevalier said. “The fact that you’re here, today, knowing the state things are in, you’re the biggest damn heroes I’ve worked with. I’m not going to make any big speeches. Better we get out there and save lives. Hit him hard if you see the chance, keep an eye out for whatever his goal might be, communicate with other groups as best as you’re able. Stay spread out so he can’t wipe too many of us out at once. You work best with the people you know, so form your own teams, stick with the people you’ve operated with before. Go.”

Heroes, already gathered in their groups, mobilized.

I started to approach the Undersiders. Defiant’s hand on my shoulder stopped me.

I could see Tattletale and Accord stepping off to one side, talking. She gave me one glance, offered me an apologetic half-frown, and then continued walking.

“Why?” I asked.

“The Chicago Wards,” he said.

“What about them? I can function better alongside the Undersiders.”

“Dragon thinks you can contribute just as much or more with the Wards group, and they’re the team that wants you.”

I glanced at the groups that hadn’t departed yet. Some were getting geared up, another group had a cape touching each member in turn, turning their skin to what looked like stone. On the far end, past those other groups, I could see Tecton, Grace, and Wanton with three others I didn’t recognize. They were looking at me.

“It’s the smart choice,” he said, “But it’s your choice.”

And, giving evidence to the statement, he departed, entering the Pendragon and freeing me to decide without his influence.

I sighed, then activated the antigrav panels to give myself some forward thrust, speeding me up as I moved to join Tecton’s group.

“Yep,” he said, to one of the newbies.

“You’re leader, I’m recon?” I asked. “Like it was in New York?”

“No, you’re leader as long as this fight lasts,” Tecton said.

I must have looked surprised, because he said, “You’ve been in two of these fights, right? If we count Echidna?”

I nodded.

“I’ve only been in the one, and I was never the shot-caller. That was a partnership between Raymancer and me, and he’s gone.”

“My condolences,” I said.

He nodded, but my focus was on the other members of the team, trying to account for the resources I had available. Grace had changed her martial arts outfit for something with more coverage, a chainmail mesh like the PRT uniforms wore. Wanton still wore free-flowing clothes, but he wouldn’t stay in that form.

The other three… A girl with bands of metal running down each of her arms and legs, with heavy gauntlets, boots and a breastplate, a mask etched to look like a feminine face, with white lenses over the eyes. Her platinum blond hair had three individual braids, two draped over her shoulders, with the ends bound in more bands of the blue-black metal.

There was a guy in a cowl, with another metal mask, who reminded me a bit of Shadow Stalker, but he wore white, and carried no weapon I could see.

And the last one… heavyset, with armor that seemed too generic.

“You’re a rookie?”

“All three of those guys are rookies,” Tecton said. “They cannibalized our non-core team members to supplement other groups, and-”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “I guess you three are getting thrown in the deep end. Names?”

“Cuff,” said the girl in blue-black armor.

“Annex,” the cowled one told me.

“Golem,” the last one said, his voice muffled by his helmet.

I frowned behind my mask, perplexed. “You named yourself after the little bastard from The Lord-”

“No,” he said. I could hear him sigh from behind his helmet. “I’m thinking of changing it.”

If not from the trilogy, then… I fixed the pronunciation, compensating for how his muffled voice had modified it. Right. Golem, from the myth.

“I get it, nevermind. Listen, we’re going to move out, and you’re going to explain your powers en route. You know who I am?”

There were nods all around.

“You’re still okay with following my orders?”

Again, nods.

I saw the Undersiders moving out, along with the Ambassadors.

“We’re supplementing and supporting the Undersiders for the time being. You okay with that?”

A touch more hesitant, they nodded.

“Then let’s go,” I said.

23.x (Interlude; Number Thirty-Six)

Lightning ripped across the landscape, following its own path, independent, breaking every rule that electricity was supposed to follow. It danced over the outside surfaces of houses, running across concrete and leaving glassy scorch marks in its wake. It touched objects that should have grounded it, channeling it into the earth, but leaped for another target instead.

The Yàngbǎn raised their hands, already reacting.

Twenty-third path, fifth benefit. Reflexes.

Thirteenth path, third form. Forcefield constructions, barrier.

The forcefields absorbed the worst of the energy.

Cody was already moving to use the thirty-sixth path to rescue anyone who’d absorbed the remnants of the shock. None. It hadn’t touched them. He was among the last of them to dismiss his forcefield. The forcefields drained their reserves of energy, and weren’t to stay up for too long. They’d been drilled on this.

“Qiān chū.” Three ordered.

They mobilized.

Fourth path. Shallow flight.

Ninth path. Short range electromagnetism. They skated off of the little exposed metal that was available around them, car hoods and pipes, gaining speed to augment their flight.

There were forty-two paths in all. Forty-two powers. No, he corrected himself, there were forty-one now that Seventeen was dead. More would die by the day’s end.

The hope, the plan, was to demonstrate the Yàngbǎn’s strength, to show that they had the answer, a way to defeat the Endbringers. It wouldn’t happen today, but a solid demonstration would serve to bring others on board.

They hadn’t been asked. The expectation was that they would give their lives for this. He would have refused. He’d dealt with an Endbringer before, and he still hadn’t recovered from that chance meeting. He’d lost everything, been stripped of friends and family both.

“Yàngbǎn qiáng!” Five called out.

“Yàngbǎn qiáng!” The group responded in chorus. Cody’s voice joined theirs, quieter. His pronunciation wasn’t good. In all this time with the group, he hadn’t even managed to grasp the fundamentals of the language. Mispronunciation was punished, not by any reprimand, but in a subtle way. They would speak to him even less than they were now, he would get less food. Maybe for a few hours, maybe for a few days. The thought bothered him, and the degree to which it unsettled him was more disturbing still.

Something so minor as that shouldn’t have mattered so much to him, but it was all he had, now.

There was a crash of lightning, and a building collapsed, directly in their path. Flames and smoke barred their path.

“Shèntòu!” Three ordered, his voice nearly drowned out in the noise of the building settling. They were still moving forward, not even slowing.

The forward group hit the barrier with localized vacuums. Individually, they were weak, but with twelve all together, flames were quenched, smaller objects levitated into the air.

Cody joined the middle group in shearing through the remaining wreckage. Thirty-first path. The cutting lasers. The first group was slowing a fraction, and Cody slowed his flight to hold formation.

The twelve members of the Yàngbǎn only accelerated, flying around the group members they had been following. They turned solid, space distorting around them as they rendered themselves invincible and incapable of any action but their pre-existing momentum, effectively human bullets. They tore through the wreckage, clearing a path for the rest.

He felt a rush, just being part of the unit. Being a part of a maneuver that let them cut through a burning ruin of a building with the ease they had.

Some of that rush, he knew, was the second path. Magnification of powers. Two wasn’t present, she was too valuable to risk losing, but they still shared her power between them. Each of them had a sliver of her ability to enhance the powers of those nearby. It was the reason their powers worked to the degree that they did, a feedback loop in power augmentation across their whole unit.

There were more things feeding into his consciousness, other senses he wasn’t actively tapping into. The twenty-third path, it enhanced his perception, particularly his awareness of others, the threat an individual person posed, and enhanced his reflexes, particularly when dealing with people who wanted to hurt him. It was of minimal use against Behemoth, but it made him cognizant of the other members of the Yàngbǎn, aware of their breathing, the noises they made as they ran.

In this way, the group subsumed him, rendered him a part of something overwhelming. For now, in the midst of this, the deep loneliness and isolation was gone. Language was almost unnecessary, beyond the one- or two-word commands he needed to know for particular maneuvers and directives.

Zig-zagging down the streets, they naturally settled back into their established rank and file. With every member of the group having access to the same pool of powers, placement in the formation was a question of experience and how expendable they were. Cody was an essential defensive asset, no use if he was taken out of action, so he rested in the middle of the group, surrounded by people who could protect him in a pinch.

Rumbles marked the collapses of taller buildings as Behemoth advanced, somewhere a quarter-mile behind them.

The heat was oppressive. Even as they got further away from the monster, the fire only seemed to get worse. The smoke was the worst part of it, preventing them from seeing or tracking their enemy. It meant they couldn’t see more than a hundred or so feet around them, and they didn’t have any idea whether they were going to walk straight into the monster’s path or wind up encircled by burning buildings. Their flight depended on proximity to a solid surface. It involved hovering five to ten feet off the ground while moving at fifty or sixty miles an hour. They had another means of flight, but less controlled, one that risked putting them above the skyline, obvious targets for a lightning strike.

Was the Behemoth smarter than he looked? Was the destruction seeded in a way that would spread? Fires started where buildings were closely packed?

Cody could feel his skin prickling. His mask was filtering out the smoke, but the heat, it was getting unbearable.

“Zhàn wěn,” Ten said.

“Zhàn wěn,” the group echoed her, their voices strong. It was an encouragement, an affirmation. Cody didn’t know what it meant. He’d been with them for an indeterminate length of time, what felt like years, but he didn’t feel any closer to grasping the language than he had been on the first day. He’d had help, briefly, but that had been stopped.

Every member of the group was permitted to speak freely, but virtually every utterance was vetted by the group as a whole. If, like Ten, someone were to speak, and others were in agreement, deeming the phrase acceptable, then the response was clear. If the statement was poorly timed, or out of tune with the group’s line of thinking, then it was ignored, followed only by a crushing silence.

Cody had never experienced the adrenaline rush that Ten was no doubt experiencing over the simple act of getting a response from the squadron. The group had never deemed his statements acceptable, because his pronunciation was poor. He was a member of a tight-knit crowd, yet utterly, completely alone.

“Tíng!” one of the members in the rear called out.

They dropped to the ground, their landings practiced, wheeling around a hundred and eighty degrees by planting one foot on the ground and sweeping the other out.

His forcefield was up before he even knew what the threat was. Individually weak, strong in formation: a makeshift bubble of overlapping forcefields twenty feet over their heads.

The glowing projectile swiftly grew in his perspective, giving him only a second to brace himself before it crashed down on the wall of forcefields.

The wave of heat was intense, even on the other side of the barrier. It seemed almost liquid as it spilled out over the edges. In seconds, they were surrounded in flame. The forcefields sealed it off, prevented superheated air from burning them alive, but the viscosity meant it was resting against the forcefield.

Magma?

They’d drilled on abstracts, on possible situations. Attacks from any direction. Attacks in various forms. He’d never really considered the ideas behind dealing with magma, but he had the tools. Being a member of the Yàngbǎn meant being constantly drilled. They took your power, all but a fraction of it, but every member of the group had that same fraction. Every member was expected to know how to use every power, to know when and to do it in unison with the rest of the squad.

A small handful of individuals in the C.U.I. hadn’t been brought onto the group. Null, the cape who made the Yàngbǎn possible, was independent. He couldn’t be a part of the whole. Others included Tōng Líng Tǎ, who had a power that was too slow to use, not worth the fractional decrease in power that came with including her in the network, Shén yù, the strategist, and Jiǎ, the tinker that supplied the C.U.I. with its devices, including the simulations for the drills.

It was those drills and simulations that allowed him to react a precious fraction of a second faster as he responded. It kept him in sync with the others in the group as he joined half of them in letting his forcefield dissipate, simultaneously reaching out to apply another power.

Thirty-second path. Nullification waves.

The effect was short ranged, and he could see the shifting in the air as it extended, passed through the gaps in the forcefield where the magma and heated air were only just beginning to leak through miniscule gaps.

The waves generated by thirty-two served to stabilize. It stalled things in motion, warmed up cold things, cooled warm things. It silenced, stilled.

The magma cooled with surprising rapidity, but then, the power was affecting the inside at the same time it affected the outside, rather than trying to cool the outside to a degree that would extend inward.

Path thirty-two. It made him think of Thirty-two, the member. The source of that particular power. He snuck a glance at her.

She was one of four outsiders, four people not native to China. She’d been his closest ally. Something more.

“Dǎpò,” Seven ordered.

Like the others, the maneuver was a practiced one. The last forcefields dropped, and the group mobilized. Odd-numbered members of the squad crouched, legs flexing, while even-numbered members, Cody included, reached out.

Path fourteen. Vacuum spheres.

The odd-numbered members of the group pierced the barrier of cooled magma, and the vacuum spheres scattered the shards.

Another sphere was already in the air, aimed close to them, if not at the exact same spot.

Without even thinking about it, he trained a laser on it. Others were doing the same, or following suit. The glob of magma, still mid-air, was separated into loose pieces, no longer as aerodynamic as it had been. It expanded, fell short, disappeared into the cityscape between them and Behemoth.

Each action Cody performed as a part of the unit was validating, affirming. It was a series of small payoffs for the drills he’d gone through for over a year, with smaller groups and the Yàngbǎn as a whole. The drills had been intense, with one new situation every one or two minutes, like flash cards, only they were holograms, color coded polygons and shapes with just enough mass that they could be felt. If they failed the scenario, the offending members of the squad would be named out loud, the scenario shuffled back into the list of possibilities, so it might repeat in five minutes, or two hours.

Cody was well aware of what they were really doing, between the six hours of drills and the twelve hours of schooling that combined lectures on the C.U.I. with traditional education. He knew why they only got forty-five minutes in total to eat for their two daily meals, only five hours of rest a night, why every minute of the day was scheduled.

He’d always told himself that he wouldn’t be a victim, that when the time came and he was indoctrinated into a cult, he’d recognize the targeted isolation, the practice of tiring him out so he’d be more amenable to suggestion, more likely to conform. He’d told himself that he would rebel and maintain his individuality.

So stupid, to pretend he had that degree of willpower, in the face of crushing social pressure and exhaustion. It had taken him nearly five days after he left the basic training and joined the official team before he realized what was going on. The saddest part of it was that he was fully aware they were brainwashing him, indoctrinating him, and there was nothing he could do about it. Despite himself, despite the pride he’d once had as a person, he wanted acceptance.

They were a poor surrogate, a surrogate he hated, in a way, but he had nothing else. His family was a universe away, his friends had turned on him, gone mad.

There was a crash, and a shockwave ripped through the area, momentarily clearing the smoke. Cody instinctively raised his forcefield.

Behemoth was there, standing amid leveled buildings, fighting some flying capes who strafed around him. He had built up some steam, and lightning coursed over his gray flesh, illuminating him. Only one or two of the metal ships were still fighting. Other craft, airborne, seemed focused on evacuating, but it was a gamble at best, as shockwaves and lightning struck them down.

The smoke filled the sky once more, obscuring Cody’s vision too much for him to see any further.

Behemoth clapped again, then again, each collision of claw against claw serving to extend the damage one step further, clearing obstructions out of the way for the next.

The Yàngbǎn backed away, spreading out inadvertently. Cody could feel the benefit of the second path fading, the enhanced powers the others granted slipping from his grasp.

“Tā shì fúshè kuòsàn,” Three said. He said something else that Cody couldn’t make out. Something about leaving.

The group moved out, flying low to the ground, and Cody was a fraction of a second behind, pushed himself to make sure he was in formation.

“Radiation,” Thirty-two said, her English perfect, unaccented. It was for Cody’s benefit, and the benefit of the other two English-speaking members of the group, who might not understand the more complicated words. She got glances from the other members of their squad, but continued speaking. “He’s using the shockwaves to spread irradiated material across the city. We’re retreating, okay?”

Cody nodded, but couldn’t bring himself to speak as the group took flight. It was unnecessary, wasn’t worth it when he accounted for how the others would react and respond if he used English. Thirty-two would be shunned for doing so, there was no need for him to join her.

An explosion of smoke bloomed out in front of them.

Not smoke. Darkness.

The Yàngbǎn collectively dropped into fighting stances, ready to use any power the instant it was called for.

Villains stepped out of the smoke, and it was only then that the benefits of the twenty-third path belatedly granted the Yàngbǎn their ability to sense these people. The power had been blocked by someone or something in the group.

They were Westerners, by the looks of them. Cody’s eyes narrowed as he studied them. A guy with a demon mask, surrounded by the same eerie darkness that formed a wall between the group and Behemoth, a young girl with a horned mask, a stocky guy or girl with a thick fur ruff on their hood, and a girl in black with an opaque pane over her face and a crossbow in her hands.

The other group was also mounted, but clearly distinct in style, even if they’d shuffled together with the other group. The boy in medieval clothes with a silver crown, the girl in a frock, two grown women in evening gowns.

They were all mounted on mutants. He had to reach for the name. The guy from Boston, Blasty? Blasto. He was supposed to make horrific mutants. Maybe he was here.

The Yàngbǎn edged around the group, wary.

“Jesus,” the man with darkness shrouding him said. His power was billowing out around him, more darkness. “What the hell are you doing?”

He’s getting the benefit of the power boost, Cody thought, but he didn’t speak.

The others were shifting uncomfortably, but the one with the white mask and silver crown, and the two in the evening gowns… they seemed to take it more in stride.

Something about them, it tugged at a memory. Not a strong memory, but a brief encounter at some point… it gave him an ugly, twisting feeling in his gut.

He blinked, and the girl with the gray, horned mask was right in front of him. He resisted the urge to react. His teammates, he knew, were raising their hands in anticipation of a fight. They were distrustful. They’d been taught that foreign heroes were dangerous, unpredictable.

Thing was, they were right. As a rule, capes were fucked up. People were fucked up. The Yàngbǎn, Cody mused, resolved the situation by stripping capes of their humanity.

She turned around, as if she hadn’t just appeared in front of him. “Shit, you weren’t kidding. It gets stronger as you get closer to more of them. I can do practically anything, and they don’t react.”

“No idea,” the man in black said.

“They’re Chinese capes,” a woman in a yellow evening gown said. “They probably don’t speak enough English to answer.”

Something nagged at him. Cody searched his memories. Between the crossbow and the boy in the renaissance era clothes, he couldn’t help but think of the game he’d played with his friends before everything went horribly wrong. But the evening gowns, those masks…

Accord. The bastard who had taken him, who had traded him to the Yàngbǎn for money.

The anger was refreshing, startling, and unexpected. A splash of scalding water to the face, as if waking him from a dream.

“Thirty-six!” It was Thirty-two calling.

“Thirty-six?” the girl with the horns asked. “What?”

It was Cody’s name. His new name, rather, but he’d never quite identified by it. He turned and realized he’d dropped out of formation.

“Let’s go,” she said.

He glanced back at the woman in yellow.

“I can guess what you’re thinking, but it’s not worth it,” she said.

Every step of the way, I got fucked. Fucked by Krouse, fucked by the Simurgh, fucked by Noelle, fucked by Accord, fucked by the fucking Yàngbǎn.

The woman in yellow spoke. “Whether it’s answers, or revenge, or something else entirely, you won’t find any of it here.”

Others in her group were looking at her in surprise, or as much as one could, when wearing masks.

“Do you know how easy it would be to kill you?” Cody asked.

Three gave an order in Chinese. Incomprehensible, but Cody could guess.

“If you killed me,” the woman in yellow said, “He’d barely care, and you’d spend the rest of your life in a hole that Ziggurat made, if they didn’t just paralyze you from the neck down and leave you alive to borrow your power.”

Ziggurat? Oh. Tōng Líng Tǎ, the earth mover.

She’d said she didn’t have answers, but this-

The ground shook violently. Behemoth was still active. Lightning was arcing through and around the dark clouds of smoke that were rising at the edges of the city.

“If it’s alright, we should go,” the darkness man said. “Things get much worse, I’m not sure how much we can help, and I’m losing my mind waiting like this.”

There was a whistle from someone in the group, and they were gone, the mutant quadrupeds breaking into a run.

And Cody was left standing there, staring.

Three snapped something, and Thirty-two translated, “He’s saying we can send you back, if-”

“No. It’s fine,” Cody said. He turned and fell into formation. The disapproval was like a weight on him from all sides. He withered a little. How many weeks, months or years would it be before he was allowed to hold a conversation with his comrades?

More heroes were running by, now. A group of young heroes, a cluster of religious capes with halos and crosses worked into their costumes, and a fresh wave of mechanical ships. The reinforcements had arrived.

Eight said something, but the accent was too thick for Cody to make it out.

He’d been stirred from a delirium, a state where the days had blended into one another, where the sole defining moment of his week might be if he were acknowledged by the other members or rebuked. It wasn’t Behemoth who’d shaken him from that point. It was the woman in yellow.

Anger twisted in his gut, and it wasn’t going away. He found himself holding onto it, embracing it.

As if it reflected the violence within Cody, the city was burning, shattered and gripped in chaos. Thousands were in the streets, running between flimsy looking buildings crusted with signage, or lying dead, struck down by shockwaves created by a monster half a mile away. Women, children.

They passed injured, and didn’t spare a second glance. A family of five were caught in a ring of burning structures, and the Yàngbǎn didn’t even spare a second glance.

We’re military, not heroes.

The goal was to fight the monster, to support the Yàngbǎn and support the C.U.I. in any way possible.

Three changed course, and the rest flew after him, setting down. Their destination was a flattened building, with a group of dead, maimed and dying Indian capes lying in the debris.

Cody exercised the twenty-third path to find out what Three surely knew already. There was nobody nearby.

Three reached down, and others around him joined in, making contact with one of the dying.

It took nearly a minute, to attune everything the right way. But the effect took hold, and the injured hero disappeared.

Five looked to Cody and pointed at the next one.

Lowest rung on the totem pole. If I didn’t think Null would rescind my powers, I’d kill you here and now.

Reluctantly, still stewing with anger, he obeyed, kneeling by the body.

The forty-second path. Teleportation. He could see the destination in his mind’s eye, like an annoying spot of light in the center of his vision, gradually getting more detailed and focused. Each person that joined his side to assist sped the process along.

The wounded hero flickered and disappeared.

By the time they were done, all three bodies had been removed.

“Qiān chū.” Three ordered.

They moved out.

As they traveled, he could see the streets choked with evacuees, a virtual tide of people, rickshaws, bicycles and cars. They’d reached bottlenecks, points where they couldn’t advance, and the evacuation wasn’t proceeding.

Was this an extension of Behemoth’s strategy? The major streets were unused, either because the Endbringer could see them, unleashing waves of electricity and shockwaves to strike down anyone who tried those routes, or because buildings had been felled and they were impassable.

The heroes who weren’t helping with the evacuation were establishing perimeters, staggered lines of defense. Here, Indian capes were setting up turrets on high ground, guns the size of cars, drilling them into the roads and rooftops. Another block over, there were civilians who weren’t running. They’d gathered, and were talking in low voices. They radiated a different degree of power, on par with the capes on the rooftops.

The Yàngbǎn squadron slowed down as the cluster of capes grew denser, the buildings more solid and further apart. There were trees here, but the heroes were cutting them down. Each squad seemed to be executing a different plan, a different setup. What appeared to be force-field fences were being erected in between each group and Behemoth’s estimated point of approach.

There was one group with heavy ranged weapons. An area was being cleared, set up with devices. Another area had been marked off with chalk, but it wasn’t clear what they intended to do. Tinkers everywhere were setting up. A kid with red armor and lenses had two odd-looking cannons set up on one rooftop, each the size of a city bus.

It painted a picture, formed a script of sorts, for the story that had yet to take place. The idea that Behemoth would change direction from where he’d initially started off wasn’t even a consideration. They weren’t consolidating forces, gathering together for one good strike, but were arranging it so one would follow after the other. The capes he’d already seen were the ones that had gone forward to support, to find the injured, trusting to mobility or evasion to slip away.

And here, this far in, a dozen countermeasures were being set up, if not two dozen. This would be the staging ground, without the crush of flammable buildings all around them. Each countermeasure would occupy Behemoth for just long enough that the heroes could manage a barrage of attacks.

The Yàngbǎn reached the center of the network, landing on the rooftop with the most capes. The makeshift command center.

He only had to take one look, and he knew. Something vital was missing. They had any number of ways to stall, and each one would cost them a little. But for all of that, he couldn’t make out anything that looked like it would end the fight.

Cody could see the heroes react as the Yàngbǎn landed, and he could see the way others looked to one small set of people for cues. The top-level guys, the leadership of the Protectorate.

A a man in gleaming armor extended a hand to Three, who’d stepped away from the group. “We didn’t expect the Yàngbǎn.”

Three looked over his shoulder, and Thirty-two stepped forward. Three murmured something, and she translated. “Your PRT was very persuasive, Chevalier.”

“I suppose we can count that as a good thing. You read the briefings and plans we sent out?”

Thirty-two continued to translate, “We did. With your permission, we’ll return to the fight with Behemoth shortly. But we’d like to make a proposal.”

“I know what you’re going to propose,” Chevalier said. “I’m sorry, it-”

“It’s somewhat counter to our usual offer,” Thirty-two spoke quickly to match Three’s attempted interruption.

Chevalier fell silent.

“Your heroes here are scared. They want to help, they are good people. We’re offering another way. They can help without risking their lives.”

“I think I understand. You have to understand why I’m saying no,” Chevalier said.

“Our group shares powers. Time and time again, the West has refused them. We would rehabilitate your criminals, and share their powers among us. They are divided in strength, but we have the ability to magnify powers. You can feel it now, being close.”

“Yes,” Chevalier said.

In the distance, a column of lightning cut through the wall of smoke above the city, as big around as an apartment building. Cody could feel the vibrations shudder through the building, as sturdy as it was, though the lightning was miles away.

“We might each have only a share of a power, reduced effect, range or duration, but we regain as much as a third of that power back with this magnification, depending on how many are together. A full third of forty powers at once. If any would volunteer, we would teleport them to a safe place, where we would borrow their power for this fight only. We would send them home when the fight was over.”

Cody could see the reactions of the capes on the rooftop. People were exchanging glances. Considering it.

A part of him wanted to scream, to warn them, whatever the cost to him might be.

“I see,” Chevalier said.

“For years, we have boasted of the strength the Yàngbǎn offers the world. But we are small, and too many citizens with powers flee or fight rather than cooperate. Today, we hope to show our strength. We have extended our support, and we ask for trust in exchange.”

“Your support is welcome, and that’s why we couldn’t ever ask you to make this leap of faith,” Chevalier said. “I understand your motives are pure, but if some accident transpired, and a good cape didn’t make it back, it would mean war.”

Cody hadn’t missed the way the hero had stressed the words. A warning for his people, more than a statement for Three.

“We would be exceedingly careful,” Thirty-two translated for Three. “Rest assured.”

Cody was watching the negotiations continue, Chevalier looking more and more uncomfortable, when he saw him.

Accord. He was accompanied by a girl in a lavender and black costume, and a dark-skinned man in a suit.

Cody had to hold himself back to keep from striking the man. It would be suicide, and no matter which power he used, Cody couldn’t be sure he could guarantee a kill.

He could see the moment where Accord saw the Yàngbǎn. Cody could see the reaction, as if the man had been slapped in the face. Accord’s shifting mask gave away his reaction, and then his expression set, his body language neutral, as if nothing had happened and nothing was wrong.

The girl beside him smiled, and brilliant green eyes settled on Cody, stark contrasts to her pale purple costume.

He hated not knowing anything, being cut off by language barriers and the rules of the Yàngbǎn. Who was the girl in lavender? Where were Alexandria, Eidolon and Legend?

Every question left him more uneasy, increasingly angry, and Accord was the person who had put him in this situation.

I’m a slave, and he’s the one who put me in chains.

“May I interrupt?” Accord asked.

“If the Yàngbǎn will excuse me?” Chevalier asked Three.

Three nodded. “As you will. We can wait.”

Cody suspected Chevalier had been hoping to end the conversation, rather than postpone it. He stared at Accord. Do they know what you do? What you are?

There was a crash, a clap of thunder, and a rush of hot wind. The cloud of smoke around Behemoth’s battlefield was growing, and it wasn’t just a matter of perspective, of Behemoth getting closer.

Capes flew off, joining the fray. The Yàngbǎn remained.

“What can you tell us? Do you have a plan?” Chevalier asked Accord.

I’ll kill him. I’ll kill him. Somehow. I just need a chance.

It was too much, like being asleep for months and finally waking up, only to discover that the only thing inside him was rage.

“…optimal timing,” Accord was saying. “I’m still working out the particulars.”

Krouse thought he was smart too. When I’m done with you, I’ll find him and kill him.

“What do you need?”

“Contact information for your various squads.”

Cody virtually twitched with a need to move, a craving to fulfill some deep-seated desire for revenge, but the group around him wouldn’t afford him the chance. Each member of the Yàngbǎn was simultaneously a prisoner and a guard, some more of one than the other.

Chevalier nodded. “You’ll have it. Rime?”

A woman in blue limped forward, “I’ll handle it.”

The girl in lavender glanced at Cody before falling in step with Rime and Accord.

Had she sensed his emotion? She hadn’t said a thing.

“He just reached the first perimeter,” someone reported. “Tore through our skirmishers. Some teenagers were killed. Eidolon and Legend are fighting, but they’re not in good shape. We didn’t expect him to move this fast.”

“The Triumvirate’s missing a key member,” Chevalier said. “Our more mobile capes should move out now. Meet him at the first perimeter if you’re fast enough, hold at the second if you aren’t. Maintain cover where possible.”

“Qiān chū.” Three ordered.

The negotiations were over, it seemed.

But he could feel the tickle of new powers taking hold. The three they’d collected from the shattered building were joining them, like it or not.

The first power was an easy one to grasp. He could feel his body surging with some added strength, and that strength swelled a step further as the power-enhancing auras took hold.

The second was a tinker power, he was almost positive, or it was a thinker power with a focus on guns. Nothing useful.

The third… another thinker power. His vision clarified a step. The ability to see through smoke?

No. The ability to see through surfaces.

He was disappointed, and he couldn’t be sure why. What had he wanted? What did he want, in general?

Even now, he was alone. The Yàngbǎn wanted to collect capes, to prove themselves. The heroes wanted to stop Behemoth.

Cody didn’t care about either.

He entertained the notion that helping Behemoth go loose would almost be better. It could mean the end of the Yàngbǎn, Accord’s death. Even Trickster’s death, if they had decided to show up.

Except there was no reasonable way he could do that. Not for a lack of wanting to, but because he couldn’t hope to oppose the Yàngbǎn and the heroes at the same time.

Needed an opportunity.

The Yàngbǎn passed through the worst of the smoke, into the blasted, shattered ruins of the city. In the moment they joined the fight, Cody held back.

They sensed he was gone, but they couldn’t disengage, not as Behemoth gathered up a ruined section of building and melted it down, hurled massive globs of melted plastic, metal and stone at them.

The process took a minute at the best of times, with help. His destination couldn’t be a distant one, and he couldn’t hope to behead the Yàngbǎn on his own, not with the members they’d kept in reserve, the precious ones, with powers they couldn’t afford to lose, like Two’s.

He nearly lost his concentration as a massive crash knocked him off his feet.

The fight’s only beginning, Cody thought.

The teleportation took hold, and he found himself back at the building the Yàngbǎn had just left, three stories down.

The command center.

Accord, the lavender girl, and Chevalier were leaning over a table with computers arranged along it, papers strewn out across the surface.

It brought back memories of the moment everything had turned upside down, the computers, the interrupted tournament. Finding themselves in another world…

If he needed a push to act, that was it. The biggest one first.

The laser didn’t cut the armor. It was capable of cutting granite like a hot knife through butter, but it didn’t cut the armor. Chevalier turned, drawing his sword, a six-foot long beast of a weapon. The armor glowed orange as the laser concentrated on his belly.

“You lunatic!” he shouted, charging.

Cody switched tactics. A forcefield-

The sword shattered it with one swing.

He flew out of the way as another swing came within an inch of decapitating him.

A laser with one hand, a vacuum sphere with another, pulling Chevalier off balance.

Again, it didn’t work. The man barely reacted as the vacuum sphere caught his legs. He aimed his weapon, and a combination of danger sense and a nullification wave stopped the shot in the chamber, disabling the gun.

The x-ray vision was barely penetrating the sword or armor. Cody had to duck, back up and rely on his enhanced reflexes to avoid Chevalier’s attacks. He had forty-four powers and not one was letting him beat, what, a swordsman in a suit of armor?

It was the lack of the power boost. The Yàngbǎn were only strong as a group, granting the aura to one another. Here, now, he was feeble. Forty powers, and not one of them sufficient.

Always second best. Always alone, Cody thought. No.

Keeping the laser trained on Chevalier, he used his own power. Perdition’s power. The thirty-sixth path.

Chevalier was moved back to where he was seconds ago. Cody backed out of the way, kept the laser trained on the hero, and the instant his opponent got too close, he used his power again. It barely set Chevalier back two seconds, but it was enough.

Slow, steady, inevitable progress. Time was one of the fundamental forces of the universe, undeniable.

Accord and the girl in lavender made a sudden attempt to run to the door. Cody created a forcefield to bar their way.

They reached for phones. He used a vacuum sphere to pull them away.

It took nearly a minute to cut through Chevalier’s armor, using the time reversals to effectively put the man on hold while he put some distance between them, and the laser to cut. The man folded over the second the laser pierced flesh, cutting straight from the front of his stomach to his back.

Obstacle gone.

“Reckless,” Accord said, sounding more sad than afraid. “Lunacy.”

“I don’t care what you think.”

“I’d hoped your placement with the Yàngbǎn would temper you.”

Cody lashed out with the laser. Accord’s right arm was lopped off.

Another cut, for the right leg. Accord screamed as he fell.

The girl in lavender hadn’t reacted, only stared down at the two dying men. She clicked her tongue, “Tsk.”

“He’s asymmetrical in death,” Cody mused. “There’s a justice in that, isn’t there?”

“If there’s irony here, it’s the fact that his desire for order led to this,” the girl commented. “We just lost our strategist and our field commander, so there’s going to be more chaos than ever.”

The windows briefly rattled with the shockwave of one of Behemoth’s attacks, halfway across the city.

“Tsk.” the girl said, again.

The anger still burned inside him, not sated in the slightest. Did I end it too quickly? Maybe I should have drawn it out more.

He glanced at her. She was staring at him. “Can you use that computer to find someone? If they’re here, or somewhere else?”

“I can,” she said.

“Trickster.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Oh, I can tell you that without looking. He bit it. Some freaky monster calling herself Noelle freaked out, made clones of him. They ate him alive. Literally.”

He blinked. “When?”

“A month ago, Brockton Bay.”

The details fit. Cody nodded slowly. He wasn’t sure how to feel about that.

“Sorry, if he was your friend.”

“He wasn’t,” Cody snapped. He felt off balance. This was so unexpected. How was he even supposed to react to that? How long had it been since he’d really made a call on his own?

Slowly, he spoke, as if sounding out the ideas as they came to him, “No. I suppose that’s good. Thank you. I’d tell you I’ll make it quick, but… you worked for him. You probably deserve it.”

“Nuh uh,” she said. She’d backed away, gripped the edge of a table. Her entire body was rigid. “I’ll give you my phone, you can call any one of my buddies, tell them it’s Tattletale. They’ll tell you we were constantly fighting. Only reason we haven’t offed each other is that it’d be mutually assured destruction.”

“Trickery. No, knowing him, knowing the kind of people he associates with,” like Trickster, “there’s probably contingency plans. I won’t fall for that.”

“Spare me, maybe I can salvage this mess. I mean, you’ve still got to live on this planet, right? We can’t let Behemoth win. Not today.”

“I’m dead anyways.”

“Because of the Yàngbǎn. I could help. I’ll figure out a way for you to escape. Hopeless as this feels, there’s a way out.”

“No,” Cody shook his head. He felt so lost, so tired, so unsatisfied. There was one major enemy left to eliminate, one more group who’d wronged him. The Yàngbǎn. He already knew he wouldn’t get any more satisfaction from it. He knew he’d likely die in the attempt. “No, no point.”

“Fuck,” she said. “There’s definitely a point. Just… give me a second, I’ll think of it. Shit. Sucks I don’t know much about you. Don’t suppose you’d give me a hint?”

He raised a hand, pointing at her. “No.”

“Think about her,” the girl who’d called herself Tattletale blurted out the words. “What would she think?”

He hesitated.

Her? The first person that popped into mind was Thirty-two. The Yàngbǎn member who’d tried to teach him Chinese. They’d been close, had been friends, before the group segregated them, because they were more malleable as individuals than as a group. Members of the same team, but never given a chance to talk with one another. Always in arm’s reach, never together.

The second person he thought of was Noelle. His first love, the betrayer, the monster.

He shook his head, which only intensified the ringing in his ears. When had that started? With the shockwaves? During the fight with Chevalier?

Or before all that? Before the Yàngbǎn. Had it ever stopped?

He thought of the Simurgh, thought of all of this in the context of him being just one of her pawns.

His head hung.

Always a pawn. Always the expendable one. Kicked off the team, traded away to Accord for the team’s safety.

“There’s…” he started to speak, then trailed off. She didn’t interrupt him. “Who? Which her are you talking about? Which her? Be clear.”

He approached Tattletale, gripping her throat, feeling the added strength of the newest additions to the Yàngbǎn.

Tattletale’s voice was strained, “Honestly? I figured I’d toss it out there. There’s bound to be someone important, and saying her gives me a fifty-fifty chance.”

“I hate smartasses,” he said, and he squeezed, feeling her windpipe collapse in his grip.

She fell to the ground, and he watched as she struggled for air that didn’t come.

The faint screaming rang through his head as he watched her struggle to climb a chair, taking ten, fifteen seconds to just get her upper body onto the seat.

She found a plastic pen, collapsed to the ground with it in her hand. When she flopped over onto her back, it was broken. She’d caught it between her body and the ground.

This’ll have to do as a surrogate for Trickster, Cody mused, watching. Had Noelle felt anything like this when she’d killed and devoured innocent people? A kind of despair, mingled with helplessness?

Anger was all he had left, the drive for revenge the sole thing keeping him moving. Feeble and misdirected as this was, it wasn’t it.

Tattletale drew a knife from her belt, used the edge to remove the nib and the ink reservoir from the plastic case of the pen.

When that was done, she stabbed herself in the base of the throat.

She’s giving herself a tracheotomy, Cody thought, watching in fascination, even as he reached out and took hold of the plastic pen case.

He watched her expression as he crushed the plastic in one hand.

And he felt nothing. Even the paradoxical grin that appeared on her face, in contrast to the frustrated slam of one hand against the floor, it reminded him of Trickster in an odd way. Yet it added nothing to this.

Think about her. What would she think? Tattletale’s words struck him.

He thought of Thirty-two, and without even deciding to, he used his own power on the pen case, returning it to the state it had been in seconds ago.

He handed it back to Tattletale, then stood, his back to her, as he concentrated.

As goals went, it wasn’t much of one. He’d barely talked to her. As far as kindnesses went, hers had been minor at best. But he’d save Thirty-two.

It took two minutes to carry out the teleport. He didn’t have much time before the Yàngbǎn found a free moment to contact Null and rescind his powers. Maybe they were calling already. Maybe the electromagnetic radiation in the area would block the call.

He’d find a way, regardless.

He felt his power take hold and teleported. Back to the battlefield, back to Thirty-two.

Chest heaving as she greedily sucked in air through the plastic tube she’d jammed into the hole in her throat, Tattletale feebly crawled over to Chevalier. Her strength was depleted before she got halfway.

She stared across the room at Accord and Chevalier’s bodies, straining to see if either were breathing.

She managed the only utterance she could, without the ability to bring air from her lungs to her mouth: A click of her tongue. “Tsk.”