“Maybe.” Her generated image smiled in return, even as she felt a pang of guilt.
“It seems she is a committed villain, now. And she is still with her team, despite what was said at the hospital.”
Colin’s eyebrows rose fractionally. “How committed?”
“They are now employing Regent’s full abilities. Shadow Stalker was controlled, and they attacked the headquarters.”
“I see. Damn it, I’m itching to throw on my costume and get out there to help, but I can hardly do that, can I?”
“No. I’m sorry.”
He sighed.
“One last thing. I’ve read the transcript. As far as I’m aware, you offered options to Skitter, and she refused all of them? Including the invite to the Wards?”
“Right. She was being stubborn.”
“Having interacted with her before, did you get the feeling it was just stubbornness because of hostility towards you?”
“No. It was… unexpectedly strong, as resistance went. What stuck in my mind was that she said she’d rather go to the Birdcage than join the team.”
“I read that, myself. Curious. Okay, Colin. I think we’re done.”
“Sure. Bye.”
“Bye. I’ll be in touch.”
She cut the connection to the monitor, but left the video feed open so she could watch him.
Another check of the Birdcage. Another check of the class S threats. No changes.
She made contact with one of Richter’s programs. It was a web trawler, designed to monitor emails for high risk content. Were there any clues about what the Undersiders were doing with the stolen data? Were they selling it online?
She didn’t find any such clue. Instead, the trawler had copied an email sent to the police station. It had been highlighted and intercepted because the trawler had caught the words ‘Sophia’ and ‘Hess’ in the message body. Shadow Stalker’s civilian identity.
She read the archive of texts that were attached to the email twice over.
Then she did a search for a student named Taylor at Winslow High School. Nothing.
The nearest middle school? There was an online scan of a yearbook photo. A girl with curly black hair and glasses, stick thin, hugging a red-haired girl. The body type was a match.
It didn’t answer everything, but she could feel a piece of the puzzle click into place.
She set the trawler to abandon its monitoring of web traffic and start digging through archives at the city hall, to scan the old security footage from the hundreds of cameras around the city, and to check all local news articles. The goal was always the same: to look for the girl with the slight build, curly black hair and glasses. Taylor Hebert.
She had to manage this carefully. Colin’s own experiences indicated that approaching the girl would be a delicate process. Having a real conversation with her would be doubly precarious. It would be reckless to attempt to contact a parent, but she could try being discreet to get some kind of verification from the parents. Just to be certain.
The danger was that, with the bullying, the girl might be inclined to see things in terms of ‘us’ against ‘them’. Her interactions with the heroes thus far certainly hadn’t put them in the ‘us’ category. This might also explain why she had gravitated back towards the Undersiders, even after the chaos Colin had sown by revealing her intentions for joining the group.
The various cameras around the city were out-of-order or lacking power, the schools were not operational, and there was no telling if the girl would even be active in her civilian identity. Assuming this was not some fantastic coincidence. Dragon knew she would have to be patient. Even with Dragon’s full resources turned to the task, she would not find the girl in seconds as she might in another time or place. She set background processes to ensure the hunt continued steadily, instead.
She would be ready to act the instant the girl resurfaced.
Arc 11: Infestation
11.01
I stared down at the metal walkway as I caught my breath. I had one gash at the side of my head, and another trickle ran from beneath the armor of my shoulder, down my arm and to my fingertip, where it dripped almost in sync with the head wound. It should have hurt, but it didn’t. Maybe it would when the shock wore off. If so, I didn’t look forward to it.
Trickster, Ballistic and Circus lay in front of me. Another cape had fallen over the railing and lay on the concrete floor below, unmoving. They were all either unconscious or hurting badly enough that I didn’t need to worry about them.
I swallowed hard. My heart had climbed up so far into my throat that I almost couldn’t breathe, and my heartbeat felt oddly distant and faint for how terrified I was.
Coil’s base was deserted. I knew his men were out on patrols, that the only people in here were a handful of the capes that were working for him. He’d left it almost undefended.
If I was going to act, I’d have to do it now.
My costume’s feet lacked hard soles, so I should have been nearly silent, but the interior of Coil’s base was deathly silent and my feet were slamming down on the metal walkway as I ran. The noise of singing metal filled the dark space, echoing, seemingly louder with each step I took.
The thrum of the metal rang through the air even after I came to a stop. I’d reached my target; a reinforced door, identical to so many others in the complex. With the labyrinthine mess of metal walkways and the dozens of doors, I might have missed it. The only thing telling me I was in the right place was the smudge of ash left behind from when the soldier had put out his cigarette on the wall.
I opened the door, and it was far too loud, creaking, then banging into the wall with a crash despite my last-second attempts to stop its momentum.
The room looked like a prison cell. It had concrete walls and floor, a cot and a metal sink and toilet. Coil and Dinah were both there. I couldn’t say whose presence left me more devastated.
I could say Coil’s presence was the worst thing, because it meant my info was bad. His power meant I was probably fucked on a lot of levels, that the odds were suddenly astronomically against me. I was caught. My gut told me that I wouldn’t make it out of the compound in one piece, now. He was washing his hands in the sink, he turned to look at me, apparently unconcerned by my presence.
But no. As I stared at Dinah and registered what I was seeing, I realized the image would be burned into my mind’s eye forever. She lay on the cot on her side, her eyes open, staring at me, through me. A bloody froth was drying at one side of her mouth and at the edges of one nostril. I didn’t consider myself a religious person, but I prayed for her to blink, to breathe, to give me some relief from that cold horror that was gripping me.
I was too late.
My vision practically turned red as I charged Coil, drawing my knife as I ran. I felt him use his power, and suddenly there were two of him, two of me, two cells with two dead girls named Dinah Alcott.
In one of those rooms, I stabbed Coil in the chest. There was no satisfaction in doing it, no relief. I’d lost, I’d failed in every way that counted. The fact that I’d put him down barely mattered.
In the other room, he stepped back out of reach of my first lunge, raised one hand and blew a handful of pale dust into my face. While I was blindly slashing in his direction, he grabbed the wrist of my knife hand and held it firm in his bony hand.
That room where I’d succeeded in stabbing him faded away. The only me that existed, now, was coughing violently. My knees buckled as I coughed hard enough to bring up my lungs, unable to get the powder out of my nose and mouth. I pulled at my hand, trying to free it from his grip. Futile.
“Stop,” he ordered me, and my struggles stilled, though I was still finishing my coughing fit.
“Diluted scopolamine,” he spoke, his voice calm, sonorous. He let go of my wrist, and pushed at the knife in my hand. I let it drop. “Also known as Devil’s Breath. The vodou sorcerers, the Bokor, were said to use this along with the venoms of the puffer fish and
other poisons. With these substances, they could create the ‘zombies’ they were so famous for. These zombies of theirs were not raised from the dead, but were men and women who were forced to till fields and perform crude labor for the Bokor. The uneducated thought it magic, but it was simple chemistry.”
I waited patiently for him to continue. The notion of fighting or responding didn’t even occur to me.
“It strips imbibers of volition and renders them eminently suggestible. As you can see, I attempted to use it on my pet, and the results were… tragic. The price of hubris, I suppose.”
He sighed.
“Take off your mask,” he instructed me.
I did. My hair fell across my face as I let my mask fall to the ground. My cheeks were wet with tears. Was that from before, from when I’d first seen Dinah? Or was I able to cry about my present circumstance, even if I was helpless to do anything about it?
He touched my cheek, brushed a tear away with his thumb. He stroked my hair, and the gesture felt strangely familiar. The way his hand settled on the back of my neck and gripped me there didn’t. It felt… possessive.
“Pet,” he intoned, and fresh terror shook me to my core.
“You couldn’t have succeeded. This was terribly unwise.”
“Okay,” I murmured.
No, no, no, NO.
I didn’t deserve this.
My eyes fell on Dinah. She still stared at me, eyes wide and unblinking, and I couldn’t help but see the look as accusing.
I did deserve this. It was thanks to me that she’d been kidnapped. Thanks to me that she’d been made into Coil’s slave. Karma, perhaps, that I’d take her place.
The strength went out of me. My head hung, and I stared at my feet.
Tears streamed down my face. I didn’t wipe them away. I wasn’t sure I could.
“Look at me, pet,” Coil instructed, and I did. I was glad to, like a compliant, eager to please child. A part of me wanted more orders. In that drug induced haze, I wanted to lose myself in obeying, wanted to serve. That way, at the very least, I wasn’t to blame for my own actions or the tragic consequences that followed from them.
Coil removed his mask, and I stared.
I recognized him. He was someone I knew all too well.
They were both tall, thin. How hadn’t I seen it? Coil’s costume could must have been designed to highlight his skeletal structure, make him look thinner and more bony. All it had taken, beyond that, would be an affected change to his voice and different mannerisms. I’d been unable to see it.
So dumb, so stupid.
I could understand it, too. He’d been struggling to fix things, watching people failing to find work, knowing it was the city government that was to blame. I could remember him telling me how he’d make the city work again, how he had all the answers. I knew how hungry he was to do it.
He’d gotten powers. He’d started to put plans into motion so he could do just that.
“Welcome home, pet,” he spoke, and he didn’t speak in Coil’s voice. The voice I heard was my father’s.
■
I woke up, and for a long moment I stared up at the ceiling of my room and reassured myself that it was all a fabrication of my own scumbag mind. It had been a nightmare or a terror dream; I wasn’t positive on the differences between the two. It was my brain drawing together all my guilt about what we’d done to Shadow Stalker, the role I’d played in Dinah being kidnapped and leaving my dad; knitting it all into some convincing, disturbing scenario. Not the worst I’d had, but there was at least some repetition and familiarity with the usual ones.
Fuck.
It had felt way too real, and it had sucked. My shirt stuck to me with the damp of my sweat, the room was warm, but I still shivered.
My alarm clock sat on the ground by my inflatable mattress. I picked it up and turned it around so the I could see the green numbers of the digital display. Five forty in the morning.
Time to wake up, I supposed. There was no way I was going to be able to fall asleep again in the next few hours. It wasn’t just the idea of having another nightmare. The dream had left me with a feeling of an impending deadline.
How long could Dinah be expected to hold on? I doubted Coil was taking bad care of her, so she wouldn’t die of malnutrition or overdose on whatever drugs Coil was giving her. Still, there was a limit to what the human mind could handle. How long until Coil pushed her abilities too far? If she was getting headaches from the use of her power, there was a chance she could suffer more severe issues if pushed to use it more often. Pain generally signified something was wrong.
I was also worried I wouldn’t earn Coil’s trust and respect. Until this was resolved, I wouldn’t be able to rest, take it easy, or have a day to myself. Not in good conscience. Depending on what happened, it might be a long, long time before I could relax again.
What worried me more than anything was the idea that I might save Dinah, only to find that Coil had broken her spirit or her will to the point that she couldn’t go back to her old life. I worried that, like in my nightmare, I would be too late.
With this in mind, I sat up and tossed the sheet aside. I reached for my glasses, by the alarm clock, then stopped.
Instead of putting on my glasses, I stood and made my way to the bathroom adjacent to my room. Alongside fresh supplies of toothbrush, toothpaste, soap, tweezers, shampoo, conditioner and all that, I had a small box with packages of disposable contact lenses, daily use.
I hated contacts so, so much. I’d tried them in middle school, at Emma’s recommendation, and they had never felt comfortable. That, and I had never figured out how to put them in properly. It seemed like ninety-nine out of a hundred times, they flipped inside out to cling to my fingertip instead of sticking to my eye.
True to form, it took me four minutes to get the contacts in, and I found myself blinking every two seconds after I did have them in.
At least I could see.
I walked through my new base of operations wearing an oversized t-shirt and a pair of underwear. Not exactly fitting attire for a supervillain.
My new abode was three stories tall, which made it taller than Grue or Bitch’s places, which were the only ones I’d seen thus far, but it was narrow. A cafe had stood here, before, but it had been flattened by one of the first waves to hit the city. Coil owned at least one of the companies that was managing the restoration and reconstruction efforts, and over the past two and a half weeks, as his crews had started clearing and rebuilding on the Boardwalk, he’d had them set up some buildings, all squashed together. When the Boardwalk was fixed up, these same buildings would be at the westmost edge of the same block that had the stores, restaurants and coffee shops. If the Boardwalk ever got going again, they would be prime real estate.
Ostensibly to protect these new buildings until people started buying up the properties, each had been set up with heavy metal shutters to seal the windows and wall off the front. It made the building dark, with only faint streams of light filtering in through the slats at the top of each shutter.
The topmost floor was mine and mine alone. Taylor’s. It was living space, with a bedroom, bathroom and kitchen. The bedroom was spacious enough to serve as a living room as well as a sleeping area. The first things I’d done after Coil’s men had unloaded the furniture and supplies was to hook up an internet connection and computer and get my television mounted on a wall and connected to a satellite.
The second floor, as I liked to think of it, was Skitter’s. It was for my costumed self. It still needed more than a few things to complete it. I flipped a switch in the stairwell, and tinted flourescent lights lit up on the undersides of the shelves that ran along two adjacent walls, floor to ceiling. Each shelf was lined with terrariums and backed by strategically positioned mirrors so that the light filtered through the front of the terrariums and into the room. Only a few were occupied, but they each had the same general contents – a layer of dirt and pieces of irregularly shaped wood.
<
br /> I hit the second switch, and chambers in the lid of each occupied case opened to release their inhabitants. As they crawled through the case, the spiders were lit up by the lighting so that their shadows and the strange shapes of the wood were cast against the panes of hard plastic, distorted and larger than life. I’d seen a picture on the web of the same thing, done on a far smaller scale. I had hopes that the effect would be suitably impressive and intimidating once all of the terrariums were full.
It would be doubly impressive once Coil’s special effects technician stopped by and outfitted a case with a series of switches that a large bug could move – a beetle or something. If I could direct the beetle to release the bugs, turn the lights on or off or even open the lids of the terrariums, all while appearing to sit motionless in my chair, it would be that much more effective for any audience I happened to have in the room.
Terrariums aside, the room was sparse. Six empty pedestals sat just beneath the shuttered window, each standing just a little beneath knee height.
After touring the place yesterday morning and spending some time browsing the web to see what was available, I’d gotten in contact with Coil and named every possible thing I could think of that I could use for the space. The current contents of the rooms on this floor and upstairs had been delivered last night. The stuff I was waiting on was harder to come by, and it would be unreasonable to expect it to be available and in place within this short span of time.
I did have a chair, here, way too large for me. It was positioned in one corner, so that it was framed by the two walls of terrariums. It was black leather, and broad enough that I could comfortably sit cross-legged on it. I’d loved the idea since I’d seen one like it in Brian’s apartment. It was the one concession I was making in regards to atmosphere and appearances. A series of smaller seats were positioned so they faced the larger chair and the terrariums.
A large abstract painting hung above the stairs on the right side of the room. I’d seen a similar one online and had liked it, so I had found the artist’s gallery and stumbled onto this. It was the first thing I had asked Coil for, and he’d delivered a large framed print far faster than I might have expected. I liked how it tied into the room and echoed the shapes cast against the front panes of the terrariums. The black lines were painted on the background of reds and yellows in a way that seemed spidery.
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