by wildbow
There was more to do: belts, Imp’s scarf, Tattletale’s mask and Bitch’s shirt, not to mention finishing my new mask, and my plans for different masks for our various minions.
When we’d been fighting the Slaughterhouse Nine, I’d lamented the fact that I hadn’t better outfitted the team, and people had been hurt where the costumes would have otherwise protected them. In the days I’d had to wind down, focusing on getting people organized and working on cleaning up the area, I’d been in range to get a serious effort going on the costumes.
I was satisfied with this.
By all appearances, they were too.
“Safe to turn around,” Tattletale told the boys.
They did. I gestured, and people found seats in the various chairs.
“Feels like we’re different people than we were an hour ago,” Imp said, looking around.
I considered her words. “I appreciate the sentiment, but I think it’s more accurate to say we’re different people than we were a week ago.”
There were some nods. I glanced at the scar on Tattletale’s cheek, at Shatterbird, who stood obediently behind Regent, and at Grue, who had transformed more than any of us.
And I couldn’t forget the change I’d undergone, even if I didn’t have the objectivity to nail down exactly what about me was different from a week ago. Sure, my costume was different, and I had the three hundred pound beetle that was resting on the roof.
“You wanted to touch base?” Brian asked, after he’d pulled off his mask.
“I had some words with Skitter,” Lisa answered. “I think it’s about time we all got on the same page.”
“In terms of tactics?”
Lisa shrugged, “There’s that. I think working independently is kind of throwing us off, and it leaves us weak against any coordinated attacks from the Chosen. We work best when we complement one another.”
Alec shrugged. “Okay. That’s easy enough to arrange. Not really a reason to throw a major group meeting.”
“There’s something else,” I said. I swallowed, looking at Regent, Imp and Bitch. “I’ve already talked about this at length with Lisa, and I’ve discussed it some with Brian. This isn’t an easy topic to broach, because it sort of fucks with the team’s status quo.”
That had their attention.
“I guess the question is, how keen are you guys on continuing to work for Coil?”
“Are we talking quitting in the short-term or what?”
“I don’t know exactly what we’re talking about, because so much depends on how you guys respond and how things unfold in the next while,” I said. “But this thing with Dinah, I’m not happy with it. I know Lisa and Brian have their issues with that, even if they don’t share my perspective in how culpable we all are in that.”
“I’m not responsible at all,” Aisha pointed out.
“Aisha,” Brian’s tone was a warning.
“Just saying.”
“You aren’t responsible, I know,” I told her. “I get the impression you’d side with Brian, Lisa and me if it came down to it. The people I’m really directing this question at are Alec and Rachel. I’m under the impression they’re the least invested in helping Dinah out, and they’re most interested in what Coil has to offer.”
“Doesn’t Brian have a stake in this?” Alec asked.
Brian shrugged. “Coil approached me a few days ago about increasing my pay. I think he knows I’m not that reliant on him anymore. I got into this because I wanted to get Aisha away from my mom. With the way things in the city have been turned upside-down, I know and Coil knows that I don’t need help. The fact that I can say I’ve got money saved up, I can arrange to get a place and Aisha’s safe and sound with me? That’s almost enough to decide the court case as is.”
“And mommy’s on a bender,” Aisha said. “Don’t think it’ll end anytime soon.”
It was odd, but Brian looked more upset at hearing that than Aisha was about saying it aloud. Hadn’t he grown up with his dad?
“So it’s really down to you two,” I addressed Alec and Rachel.
“If I were to say I wanted to stick around? That I like the status quo?” Alec asked.
“That’s fine,” Lisa said. “You’d be an asshole and a prick, but we’d work around you.”
“That’s vague,” Alec commented.
“We can’t exactly share our game plan with you if we’re going to wind up on opposite sides,” I pointed out.
“It’s a hassle. Why make things complicated for all of us, because one member of our group has a moral quibble?”
“A preadolescent girl was kidnapped, with our help, and she’s spent the last few months in a dungeon, drugged out of her mind, all so Coil can use her power,” I said. “That’s not a quibble.”
Alec sighed dramatically. “I’m just pulling your legs. World’s going to end in a couple of years. Won’t kill me to help you make peace with yourself before it does.”
There was a long pause where nobody spoke.
“Nice, Alec.” Brian said.
Alec chuckled. “What? It’s true. That Dinah kid said it was. Don’t pretend it’s not going to happen. Might as well live it up before everything goes to hell in a handbasket.”
“There’s a chance it won’t,” I replied, my voice quiet. “And with the sheer variety of powers out there, there’s got to be an answer.”
“That optimism’s bound to be wearing thin by now,” Alec commented.
“Enough,” Brian said.
“Why are you guys freaking out? Because I’m calling you out on your willful blindness? The world’s gonna end, and I’m okay with that. Therefore I’m saying I’ll go along with your plan, whatever it is. Why argue with me?”
Brian sighed.
“Bitch?” I asked. “I know Coil’s set up your dogs in those shelters, and we’d be asking you to potentially lose that, depending on how this plays out, but…”
“I’ve managed without money before,” Bitch said. “Smarmy bastard conned me. Promised me I’d be left alone if I joined the group. That hasn’t happened. If he thinks I’ll forget that because of what he’s given me, I’d like to see the look on his face when he finds out how wrong he is.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“So we’re all in?” I asked.
“It was fun,” Alec shrugged. “That’s why we got into this, wasn’t it? Easy money, fun, get to do what we wanted. No pressure, no responsibilities. It’s become something else. So maybe we end that.”
“I don’t necessarily want to end it,” I said. “I’m not talking about taking Coil head on, and I do want to preserve my territory, if I can help it. It’s helping people.”
“So what do you want?” he challenged me.
“For right now? I mainly wanted to know you’re on my side. I really appreciate that you are,” I said. I looked at Bitch and repeated myself, “Really.”
“And for the future?”
“We’ve got an awfully small window,” Lisa said. “One and a half weeks, roughly, before Dinah’s power is back online. Once that happens, Coil becomes a thousand times harder to take on. There’s the mayoral elections, the question of whether the city gets condemned—”
“What?” I cut in.
“It’s arguably more expensive to fix the problems here than it is to abandon the city entirely. Depends on what the consensus is from the President and all the other folks in charge.”
“If that happens, what will Coil do?” Brian asked.
“Leave. Start over somewhere else, transporting any resources he can, leaving behind all liabilities. He might bring some of you with him, offering some hefty bribes. Somehow I don’t think he’ll bring Skitter. Even my own currency is running pretty thin,” Lisa shrugged.
“He can’t afford to lose you,” Brian said. “You’re too dangerous as an enemy.”
“Oh, I think he’s studied me enough to feel pretty confident he can off me if he wants to,” Lisa said. “Trick is making it a sure
enough kill that there’s no chance of it backfiring on him.”
“And me?” I asked, feeling a pang of alarm.
“He knows your weak points. The gaps in your power, your dad, your identity, your morals. You already know that.”
I did, but hearing it said so clearly, it was one of those cases where having the details laid out in front of me didn’t make me feel more confident.
“So this is going to be a different kind of fight,” Brian mused. “It’s about control and subterfuge. If he figures out what we’re doing, if we clue him in, he’s probably better equipped than any of our past opponents when it comes to knowing how to deal with us. If the city gets condemned, we’re boned. And if Dinah gets her powers back, he’ll be impossible to beat.”
“That’s the gist of it. Even I don’t know what he has planned for his endgame, here. It’s looking pretty ugly, to be honest.” Lisa counted off the points on her fingers. “The Chosen will be gunning for us, Coil’s got a small army of pretty excellent, well-equipped soldiers at his disposal, he’s got some pretty fucking heavy hitters with the Travelers, the heroes are going to be going into overdrive to establish some sort of control and last but not least, he’s Coil.”
“Well,” Alec said, chuckling a little, “At least we’ll have something to help pass the time while we wait for the world to end.”
Interlude 15 (Donation Bonus)
Darkness. Almost a physical presence, bearing down on her as though she were deep underwater and the weight of all of the water above her was pressing against her head and shoulders.
Some of that was fatigue, some of it was hunger, some was thirst. She had no idea how much time had passed. She might have been able to guess from her period, but her body had decided such would be a waste of precious resources. It hadn’t come, and she had no idea how many weeks or months it had been.
Darkness, so absolute she couldn’t tell if her eyes were open or closed. As she breathed, it almost felt like the dark was pressing down on her, making exhaling harder with every breath. It didn’t help that the room smelled like an open sewer mingled with body odor.
Reaching out, she fumbled, felt the dim warmth of skin. An arm so thin she could wrap her hand around it, middle finger and thumb touching. Her hand slid down the arm and her fingers twined with those of a hand smaller than hers. The physical contact seemed to put the physical sensations of air on her skin into a kind of context. The sense of pressure faded.
“I’m hungry,” the girl beside her spoke.
“I am too.”
“I want to go home.”
“I know.”
There was the sound of a key in the lock, and her heart leapt.
The light felt like knives being driven into her eye sockets, but she stared anyways. A man, tall, tan and long-haired, entered the room, a lantern in one hand and a plate of food in the other.
He set down the food and then turned to leave.
“Thank you!” she called after him. She saw him hesitate.
The door slammed shut after him.
“You thanked him?” The words were accusatory.
She couldn’t justify it. Her heart was pounding. She stared at the plate. Soup and bread: enough food for one person, barely enough for two. She could have said she did it in the hopes that he would feed them more often, but she wasn’t sure she would be telling the truth.
“Let’s… let’s just eat,” she spoke.
* * *
“I knew you were here when I was a block away,” Alan spoke. “The number of lights on in these offices is asking for troublemakers to notice and come by. And the doors were unlocked.”
Carol looked up in surprise. Composing herself, she answered, “I’m not concerned.”
The man laughed, “No, I imagine you aren’t.”
“You’re back?”
“For a little while, at least. The partners asked if I could come by in case we had to close up shop in a hurry.”
“In case the city is condemned?”
“That’s it. What are you doing? Are those the files from downstairs?”
Carol nodded, glancing at the crate of paperwork marked ‘1972’. “We’ve been saying we would copy them over to digital format the next time business got slow. It won’t get much slower than it is now.”
“The idea was that everyone in the office would pitch in,” Alan answered.
“Everyone in the office is pitching in.”
“Except you’re the only one here,” Alan said. His brow creased in worry, “What’s going on? Are you okay?”
She shook her head.
“Talk to me.”
Carol sighed.
He sat down on the corner of her desk, reached over and turned off the scanner. “Talk.”
“When I agreed to join New Wave, Sarah and I both agreed that I’d keep my job, and I’d strike a balance between work and life in costume.”
He nodded.
“I felt like I had to keep coming, even after Leviathan destroyed the city. Keep that promise to myself, keep myself sane. This filing helps, too. It’s almost meditative.”
“I can’t imagine what it would have been like to stay in the city, with everything that’s gone on. I heard things in the news, but it really didn’t hit home until I came back.”
Carol smiled a little, “Oh, it hasn’t been pretty. Addicts and thugs thinking they can band together to take over the city. The Slaughterhouse Nine—”
Alan shook his head in amazement.
“My husband was gravely injured in the attack, you might have heard.”
“Richard mentioned it.”
“Head injury. Could barely feed himself, could barely walk or speak.”
“Amy’s a healer, isn’t she?”
“Amy has always insisted she couldn’t heal brain injuries.”
Alan winced. “I see. The worst sort of luck.”
Carol smiled, but it wasn’t a happy expression. “So imagine my surprise when, after weeks of taking care of my husband, wiping food from his face, giving him baths, supporting him as he walked from the bedroom to the bathroom, Amy decides she’ll heal him after all.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I. But we can’t ask Amy, because she ran away from home while Mark called to let me know he was okay.”
“Something else happened?”
“Oh, quite a bit happened. But if I got into the details of the Slaughterhouse Nine visiting my home, the ensuing fight destroying the ground floor, Bonesaw forcing Amy to kill one of her Frankenstein mutants and inviting her to join the Nine, I think that would derail the conversation.”
Alan opened his mouth to ask a question, then shut it.
“This is strictly confidential, yes?” Carol stated. “Between friends?”
“Always,” he replied automatically. After a moment’s consideration, he said, “Amy must have been terrified.”
“Oh, I imagine she was. Victoria went looking for her after she ran away, returned home empty-handed. I think she was even more upset than I was, with Amy taking so long to heal Mark. She was almost inarticulate, she was so angry.”
“Your daughters are close. The sense of betrayal would be that much stronger.”
Carol nodded, then sighed.
“Quite a lot to deal with. I can understand why you’d need some quiet and routine to distract yourself.”
Carol fidgeted. “Oh, that wasn’t even the worst of it. Victoria’s been flirting with the notion of joining the Wards, and she went out to fight the Nine just a few days ago. Apparently she was critically injured. She was carried off for medical care and nobody’s seen her since.”
“Carried off by who? Or whom?”
“The Undersiders. Who have dropped off the face of the map, in large part. I’ve tried finding them on my patrols, but all reports suggest they’ve spread over the city in an attempt to seize large tracts of territory. It’s a big city with a lot of stones to overturn and dark corners to investigate.”
“So Victoria’s missing, now?”
“Or dead,” Carol said. She blinked a few times in rapid succession, fighting the need to cry. “I don’t know. I was patrolling, searching, and I felt my composure start to slip. I feel like shit for doing it, but I came here, I thought maybe if I took fifteen minutes or half an hour to center myself, I could be ready to start searching again.”
“I wouldn’t beat yourself up over it.”
“She’s my daughter, Alan. Something’s happened to her, and I don’t know what.”
“I’m sorry. Is there anything I can do?”
She shook her head.
“I could call some people, if we organized a search party—”
“Too dangerous when you’re talking supervillains and the numbers of armed thugs on the streets. Even civilians are likely to attack first and ask questions later, if confronted. Besides…” she picked up her cell phone from the corner of her desk. She showed him the screen, “Cell towers are down. No service.”
He frowned. “I—I don’t know what to say.”
“Welcome back to Brockton Bay, Mr. Barnes.”
* * *
“Carol, wake up.”
Carol stirred. She was sleeping so much of the time now.
There was a man in the doorway. Her heart leapt in her chest.
Then he moved the lantern. A stranger.
“Time’s up,” he spoke, his voice heavily accented.
“Don’t understand,” Sarah spoke, her voice thin.
“Where’s… where’s the other man?” Carol asked. She felt almost ashamed she didn’t have a better name for him.
“Quiet,” the man snapped. He moved the hand that wasn’t burdened with the lantern, and Carol could see a knife. She gasped, or maybe moaned. It was hard to tell what it was supposed to be, because it was involuntary and her voice caught, making the sound come out more like a yelp or a reedy shriek. She shrank back.
“No, no, no,” Sarah squeaked, shaking her head.
Time’s up. Sarah had to know what he meant, now.
They’d spent so long in the darkness, in their own filth. They’d eaten so little, grown so weak, and now they’d die. And the thing that upset Carol most was that they would never understand why.
