Tattletale nodded, smiling.
“Then let’s hurry. We wasted too much time here.”
“Let me know when she’s not in your range anymore,” Tattletale said to me. “I’ll try to use my power to make sure she isn’t following us.”
I nodded.
She hugged my arm, “You’re stubborn, but we’re still friends, right?”
I nodded again. I felt like I was back in school, in a situation where I couldn’t say anything without saying the wrong thing. Strange, to recall being around the bullies rather than in the company of my team.
The argument weighed on me, as did the things Grue had said, the judgements. Had I been wrong? Were we risking letting one of the Nine get away, to murder others? Was I arguing because I was still clinging to old ideals, or because the miasma was making me divisive?
Even if the miasma was to blame, I hated the idea of failing the others yet again.
This situation was fucking with my head. I still felt like I was in the middle of a fight, that heart pounding mode where I was ready for bullets or laser blasts to start flying, for me or a friend to be in mortal danger, where a split second response meant the difference between life or death.
Except there was no danger here. The only people nearby were the woman we were leaving behind, Grue and Tattletale.
I glanced at Tattletale as we ran. Could I trust them? They had been in the miasma for a little longer than I had, and I was already experiencing what I could only label as paranoia. With only a difference of minutes, Legend had been thrust into a paranoid state where he was taking a reckless, offensive course of action, eliminating everyone from the battlefield, regardless of whether they might be friend or enemy. How much was it affecting these two? How would it influence their actions?
More to the point, what was my best course of action here? If I worked on the assumption that I could trust them, would they drag me into a situation that was just as bad as what we’d gone through with the bound woman? Or if I didn’t trust them, if I allowed myself to become suspicious and take countermeasures, would that be a slippery slope that led to me trying to kill them, in fear for my own life?
We’d come close to fighting just now.
“You’re awfully quiet,” Tattletale said.
“Leave her be,” Grue told her, his voice low.
What was I supposed to do? I didn’t trust myself to handle this alone, not with the speed at which this general unease was building up. But I wasn’t sure I trusted them either. Something about the argument, it felt off. Wrong.
“She’s out of my range,” I said. “Tattletale?”
“I’ll keep an eye out!” She grinned.
Traitor. I could almost hear the accusation.
I’d lied. The woman was still in my range.
“Is there service?” Grue asked. I must have looked confused, because he clarified by saying, “The phone.”
I pulled my phone out of the space between my breasts and the armor at my front and checked the display.
“Yeah,” I said. Why does that bug me?
“Call Coil,” Tattletale reminded me. “We need to know where Cherish is.”
I found him in the contact list and made the call.
“Speaker phone?” Grue suggested.
I nodded, selected the option and hit the button.
As the first ring sounded out, my swarm sense alerted me to the bound woman breaking free of the silk strands, as if it was effortless. Had she been playing possum after all, hoping we would get close?
I looked at Tattletale, trying to see if had any inkling that this supposed member of the Nine was free.
Nothing. Tattletale turned to me and grinned.
“No trouble incoming?” I asked, as the phone rang again.
She shook her head. “All good.”
Was her power not working as well as she’d thought? I couldn’t even recollect what it was, but she’d said she would keep an eye out… and there was something alarming occurring this very moment.
“Skitter,” Coil answered the phone. “I’ve been made aware that Bonesaw has deployed the ace she had up her sleeve.”
“Yeah. Agnostia… Agnosia-inducing mist. Permanent, according to Tattletale.”
“I see.” I could hear the sounds of typing on a keyboard. “Agnosia… Panacea can’t reverse the effects?”
“She’s not here. We’re trying to find her.”
“And you need Cherish for that, I suppose.”
I was grateful that he was supplying the names, because it meant I didn’t have to bog down the conversation by remembering or asking. Grue, Tattletale and I had brought them up recently enough that it wasn’t a huge leap to remember their names.
The woman who I’d tied up with the spider silk was walking towards us. Her progress was hampered by the decoys. I kept my mouth shut. It wasn’t an imminent problem, and I was more interested in gauging just how far gone Tattletale’s power was.
“Except that with the agnosia, we can’t remember where she is and go meet her.”
“Meeting Cherish would be a grave error,” Coil spoke.
“Just put us in contact with her, then?”
“Tattletale informed me of your code. You remember how it’s put together?”
“Yeah. My memory’s fine, it’s just my ability to identify people and remember stuff about them that’s fucked up.”
Tattletale glared at me. Right. She didn’t like swearing.
“Then, using a name we’re both familiar with, D-gangrene.”
“I can’t remember names. I don’t think I can use the code.”
“Troubling. You must understand my predicament. For all I know, you’re a third party using Skitter’s voice to make the request. With shapeshifters, empaths and other methods of coercion, I have to be very careful about the dissemination of information.”
“I know.”
The woman was still approaching. Tattletale and Grue weren’t talking.
Something was wrong.
“What if we kept you on the line?” I suggested.
“That will suffice.”
There was a pause, then the sound of background noise. A ring sounded, different from the one before. It was interrupted as Cherish picked up.
“I have never been so sorry to miss out,” Cherish said. She sounded a bit hoarse.
“We’re requesting your help,” Coil spoke.
“Oh, you need my help in more ways than you’re aware of. Not that I’m going to provide it. Skitter’s on the line, I believe?”
“She is.”
“I’m here,” I confirmed.
“And Tattletale and Grue, of course.” She chuckled. ”How amusing. Seems like I’m in high demand.”
“They’re looking for Panacea,” Coil said. “Identifying her for us would be one way to achieve revenge on the Slaughterhouse Nine for turning on you.”
“Revenge? Not my interest in the slightest. I’ve learned my lesson and I’ve become the poster child for team loyalty.”
Coil paused, then said, “I’m prepared to offer you some enticements. I imagine your current quarters can’t be too comfortable.”
“Don’t suppose these enticements will be hand delivered?”
“They will be provided by remote control, as your food has been.”
“Some headphones and music would be nice,” she said. “The sound of the waves banging on the hull is driving me crazy.”
“Such could be arranged.”
“Nah, I’m totally fucking with you. Music, as if.”
There were too many things that seemed off. Cherish’s tone among them. I glanced around. The woman was still following us, throwing herself after decoys, verifying they were false, then retracing her steps. She was slowly closing in. I positioned Atlas so he would be ready to distract her if it came down to it.
“You’re stalling?” Coil asked. “I don’t see the point.”
“Just trying to see if I can provoke a reaction from you. Th
ere’s only so many times I can read the labels of the shipping containers before I lose my mind. Have to amuse myself somehow.”
“What will it take for you to tell us where Panacea is?” Coil asked.
“Oh, I’m feeling generous, and I want to see what happens. I’ll tell you that as a freebie. They’re at Arcadia. Somewhere in the top floor.”
A freebie. Something was going on, and I wasn’t aware what. I had to piece it together, but I had so little information.
“And maybe I could offer you something, in exchange for some goodwill. Maybe you’ll even want to let me go free, no obligations.”
The feeling of dread that had been following me wasn’t getting worse as the woman approached. It was staying steady, like someone had a gun pointed at me, and they’d had it aimed my way for some time now.
“I’m listening,” Coil said, “But if this is frivolous or another waste of our time-”
“Nah. Critically important. I’ll trust that you’ll take it for what it’s worth and repay me in kind.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“Oh, it’s simple. Going by what I’ve been able to observe around the city, there seems to be a major concern. Si Jack effugit civitatem, mundus terminabitur.”
“I’m not versed in Latin,” Coil spoke, sounding annoyed.
“For shame, Coil, for shame,” Cherish said. Her voice was too cheerful. “You can’t sell the cultured supervillain image without the ability to make quips in an ancient language. I had the benefit of my power, languages are easier to learn when you can get a sense of what the other person’s feeling.”
“That was something about Jack?” I asked, “Repeat that in English?”
“Doesn’t matter anymore,” she replied. “The message was delivered. I’ll leave you to think about it.”
If only I could have blamed the miasma for my idiocy. Everything clicked into place.
I kept my voice level, “I don’t think you’ll get much goodwill if we don’t understand what the fuck you’re talking about. Coil? We’re moving out now.”
“Report back when you’ve found the healer,” Coil told me.
I hung up before Cherish could speak, then I glanced at the others. “Let’s go? Arcadia high?”
They nodded.
My heart pounded with such force that my vision wavered. I turned to head toward Arcadia high, joined by the two members of the Nine. Stay calm, don’t let on that you know.
If I could direct the woman to us…
The miasma’s effects had almost made me lose track of her. She was fighting, grappling with mechanical spiders. She went from fighting like an ordinary individual to moving at high speeds and throwing crushing punches, then back again. I couldn’t think of how to help her, and she was obviously unable to help me.
Cherish had been engaging in double-speak, saying one thing to us, while addressing the two people with me the entire time. She’d told them about where she was being held captive, and she’d offered the most valuable information she had to avoid getting tortured to death after they’d freed her. From the way she’d talked about the message being received, one of the people with me had to be Jack.
Jack was slated to bring about the end of the world if he left Brockton Bay, and now he knew.
Couldn’t meet their eyes, didn’t want to speak, in case I let on that I knew. I could barely breathe, I was so afraid of letting my emotions show.
My gun was in the compartment at my back. I’d put it away at the conclusion of our argument, and with the compartment broken in my fall from Atlas’s back, I’d been forced to put it in a place where it wasn’t easy to draw. I couldn’t be sure I would be able to draw it and fire. I was still handicapped, unaware of their powers. I was fighting blind.
If Jack or the girl killed Amy, just about everyone in the city would die violently from the miasma’s effects. But I couldn’t stop them without letting on that I knew. Fighting them put me at a clear disadvantage, and-
“Skitter,” Jack spoke.
I didn’t waste time turning to face him. I gripped the hair of the blonde girl beside me and virtually hauled her off her feet as I dragged her around to a position between Jack and myself. Jack was already swinging his knife.
The knife cut the girl more than it cut me. I could feel it raking across the exterior of my costume, failing to penetrate, but he was swinging it underhand, and it caught me in the chin, slicing through the side of my cheek and up to my temple.
I tried to keep a hold on the girl for the sake of using her as a human shield, but I saw her reach into her dress and withdraw some vials. I shoved her toward Jack, then stepped forward to kick her square between the shoulder blades. She collided with him, interrupting his follow-up swing. For good measure, I drew the bugs from beneath my costume and sent them chasing after her. Some capsaicin-laced bugs, just the few I had remaining.
Jack caught her shoulders and spun her around so she faced me. The vials were already billowing with a chemical reaction. She threw them at me.
I backed away, and they hit the ground between our two groups, black smoke joining the crimson mist around us.
“You’ve outlived your usefulness, Skitter,” Jack spoke.
If I’d just had a minute or two more to decide on a course of action.
“It was fun. I almost wish I’d nominated you for the Nine. You’re versatile, and there’s so many weak points I could have exploited if I’d had more time. If Cherish’s information on you wasn’t so misleading, I think I could have made you shoot the heroine. To corrupt you like that, it would have been amusing.”
I fumbled for the gun, using my bugs to get a sense for where it was. In the same motion that I pointed it, Jack slapped it out of my hand with two slashes of his knife. He was a dozen feet away, but the knife nonetheless connected with my weapon.
My bugs began to gather like a dark cloud, their mass casting a shadow on the already gloomy surroundings.
“So I end the world? Interesting.”
“The source is a little unreliable,” I lied.
“Still, I would love to see how that comes about.”
“You won’t live to,” I told him.
“I’ll make sure he does,” the girl informed me.
My swarm could feel others approach from the heroine’s direction. They were the size of dogs, and they skipped forward on mechanical legs. The mechanical spiders. Dozens of them, coming straight for me.
If I was judging right, they were running faster than I could.
I sent the swarm after Jack and the girl, massed into thousands of bugs. Some groups clustered so tight together that they looked like massive, amorphous black entities, amoebas floating through a cityscape painted in shades of red and black. Atlas heard my call and headed my way from the place I’d positioned him, too far away to join the fight for a minute or two.
The girl was already mixing something else together. Plumes of white smoke billowed around her, almost luminescent after so long spent in the crimson mist. My bugs died on contact with the gas.
Everything I’d learned about my enemies had been blocked. I had no information on them, no sense of what to expect. They weren’t so handicapped.
She tipped half the vial’s contents into an empty container and handed it to Jack. Both protected from my power, they started backing away.
I moved to edge around the cloud of black smoke, but Jack struck me with the knife. I had to use my forearms to cover my unprotected face. I just had my glasses, some bugs, and a layer of cloth protecting it. Nothing that would guard against Jack’s cuts.
When I’d lowered my arms, they had already turned a corner, running in the general direction of Arcadia high. Running around the cloud of black smoke cost me a precious minute. I made my way around the same corner they’d rounded, and stopped short as I came face to face with another black cloud.
Couldn’t match their speed, not with these noxious clouds slowing me down. With the heroine lying unconscious in the
street, several blocks in the wrong direction, I had no allies to turn to. Worse, anyone I came across was as likely as not to be a threat. It was down to Atlas and me, and Atlas was especially vulnerable to both of my opponents. I couldn’t even fly after them without risking being cut down in midair.
I had minimal information on my opponents, while they knew enough about me to completely counter my powers. Topping it all off, the mechanical spiders were steadily, inexorably closing in on me. I’d lost my last fight with the things, and there were dozens more this time around. Couldn’t fly without exposing myself to Jack’s power, couldn’t stay on the ground without getting swarmed.
I swallowed hard and held out one hand to grab Atlas’s horn as he landed. In a moment, we were in the air, giving chase.
I wasn’t thinking about winning anymore. I was thinking in terms of minimizing the damage when we lost.
14.10
Arcadia high was the school every kid in Brockton Bay wanted to attend. A big part of that was the fact that everyone knew that the Wards attended Arcadia, and attending meant that any one of your classmates could be a superhero or superheroine. To anyone else, you could just as easily be one, too. It wasn’t a rich kid’s school like Immaculata, but it was a good school. Every classmate treated other classmates with the utmost respect. Both the students and the school itself maintained a certain status and pride as a consequence.
Now it was something else, and it inspired entirely different feelings. The front gate looked like it had aged a thousand years, the sharp corners of the cut stone had rounded off, the ivy that once wound around it had withered. The windows of the building were all shattered, empty of glass, and the fields were a patchwork of overgrown grass and mud. With the faint tendrils of colored mist that surrounded the grounds, it looked like a prime location for a horror movie.
I had little doubt I was in the right place.
Panacea’s the healer, top floor. Jack is the slasher, the blond girl the chemist-tinker. Panacea’s the healer on the top floor, Jack is the slasher, the blond girl is the chemist.
I recited the words as a refrain, as if I could hold the names and identities of the major players in my short-term memory by constantly reminding myself of who they were.
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