The school was on a hill, meaning the water that was producing the miasma was far enough away that only traces of it reached this far. The little vapor that got to the school was held at bay by the stone wall that ringed the school. The design suggested it had been intended more for aesthetics than for utility, but it was serving a purpose nonetheless.
Panacea’s the healer, top floor, Jack is the slasher, the blond girl the chemist-tinker. Panacea is the healer, top floor, Jack is the slasher, the blond girl is the chemist-tinker.
It seemed like the mechanical spiders had lost track of me. They would probably give up the chase and return to their master, but it was one less thing to worry about for the time being.
Jack and the tinker would have gone in through the ground floor. I decided to land on the roof. The second I was on terra firma, I reached for my phone to check. No signal.
I needed to signal someone about what was going on. I was woefully underequipped, and I doubted my ability to win this alone, especially when my opponents weren’t as disadvantaged as I was.
I could use something like a giant nine crafted out of bugs floating over the school to signal that the pair was here… but there was no guarantee that someone would come. There was also the possibility that it would lead to the good guys dropping another bomb on us. That would get the healer and maybe even me killed. Panacea had to survive, or everyone in the city would die in the aftermath of Bonesaw’s miasma.
Panacea is the healer, she’s on the top floor, Jack is the slasher, the blond girl is the chemist-tinker.
I tenderly touched the cut on my face. Jack must have pulled back as I used the tinker as a shield, because the cut was fairly shallow. It was long, though, and my fingertips were wet with blood after I touched my hand to it. I couldn’t distinguish the blood from the black fabric of my gloves, so I couldn’t tell how much it actually was. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.
There was a door on the rooftop, and I used my knife to pry the doorknob partially off, then gave it a firm kick to remove it. The lock was built into the handle, and it didn’t take long to figure out how to open it when I could see the internal mechanisms. It wasn’t exactly high security, more intended to keep kids from getting onto the roof than keeping people on the roof from getting in.
Just past the door was a set of stairs that led down into the top floor of the building. It looked like a janitorial closet. I sent Atlas down to check before venturing down myself, and I began distributing my swarm through the school. I prepared silk lines across doorways and hallways to inform me of others passing through, placed ants, earwigs, centipedes and pill bugs on the walls to give me a sense of the layout, and sent flies to scan the interiors of each room to see if I couldn’t find anyone.
Again, I repeated the refrain in my head, reminding myself about who was in the building. I wasn’t sure it was helping, but I didn’t want to get tricked again.
There were two hallways and three classrooms my bugs couldn’t enter without dying on the spot. That marked out a relatively small area that the Nine could be.
The biggest issue was that I couldn’t find Panacea. Did that mean she was in close confines with the enemy? It wasn’t a good thought.
As I laid silk lines across possible entryways to alert myself about enemy movements, I was careful to check each area before I advanced further into the building. My eyes searched for details while my swarm scanned the walls and the ground.
I was a short distance away from the Nine when I saw a wet spot on the wall, complete with discoloration of the paint. I sent bugs in, and they felt shards of glass on the floor around the patch. I wouldn’t have said that the swarm smelled anything, but there was something heavy in the air as flies beat their wings, the muscular action simultaneously drawing oxygen in. Whatever it was, it was dense, cloying, odorless and colorless, only extending a dozen feet around the spot.
I backtracked and picked a different route. My pace slowed to half of what it had been as I searched for other telltale details. Twice, I found similar traps, both with that odourless smoke, and twice I had to change my route.
I paused outside the bug-killing zone. Flies had ferried spiders to me, and I started organizing them to produce lengths of silk cord. I left them behind while I creeped closer and listened in.
“…minds do think alike. I did something very similar for Siberian.” A girl’s voice.
“Shut up. We’re nothing alike.” Another girl.
“We could be! Haven’t you ever wanted to start over? I could make you younger! We’d be the same age! And wear matching outfits! Oh! I could do plastic surgery, we could be twins!”
“Did- did you do that to yourself? Make yourself young?”
“No.” A male voice. ”Rest assured, Bonesaw’s immaturity is genuine. Both an asset in how it makes her that much more creative, free in her ways. A detriment in other ways.”
“Doesn’t… that bother you? Him saying that about you?”
“Jack knows what he’s doing.”
“I do. I know a lot of things,” Jack spoke, his voice smooth, almost seductive.
“Don’t. I know you’ve got a silver tongue. I don’t want to hear it.”
“You prefer the alternative?” Jack asked, his voice cool.
I could picture him holding that knife of his, the threat all too clear.
There was a long pause.
He spoke, “I suppose not. So let’s dialogue.”
“Go ahead,” Panacea’s voice was small, almost defeated.
“What’s holding you back? You’re capable of so much, of changing the world, of destroying it, but you’re so very small, Amelia Claire Lavere.”
His voice was almost mocking as he said her name.
“That’s not my name.”
“It’s the name you were born with. Imagine my surprise when I found out your relation to Marquis. In my last visit to Brockton Bay, I crossed paths with each of the major players. I met the man. I must tell you, Amelia, he was a very interesting character.”
“I don’t really want to know.”
“I’m going to tell you. And I have another motive, but I’ll get to that in a moment. Marquis was a man of honor. He decided on the rules he would play by and he stuck to them. He put his life and limb at risk to try to keep me from killing women and children, and I decided to see if I could use that to break him. I admit I failed.”
“He killed Allfather’s daughter.”
“No, Amelia, he didn’t.”
There was a pause.
“Did you kill her?”
“No. What I’m saying is that Marquis would not have killed the girl, even under duress; that was one of the rules he set for himself. If he was going to violate that rule, he would have done it when I’d tried to break him.”
“Allfather put a contract on my head before he died, because of what Marquis did. Because- It’s how I found out he was my dad. A letter from Dragon to Carol.”
“Carol… Ah yes, Brandish. Well, I suspect either Dragon was manipulating you, or your father was manipulating Dragon in an effort to get a message to you.”
“A message.”
“That he’s there, that he exists. Perhaps he sought to ensure he wasn’t forgotten by his child. He was an old-fashioned individual, so it makes sense that he’d seek immortality through his progeny.”
Bonesaw piped up. ”That’s stupid. Why do something like that when someone like me could make you immortal for real?”
“Shush, now. Finish sewing yourself up while Amelia and I talk.”
“Okay,” Bonesaw said. Her voice overlapped with Panacea saying, ”Stop saying that. It’s not my name.”
“Isn’t it?”
There was another silence.
“You’re your father’s daughter. Both of you are bound up in rules you’ve imposed on yourselves. His rules defined his demeanor, the boundaries he worked within, the goals he sought to achieve and how he achieved them. They were his armor as much as his power w
as. I would guess your rules are your weakness. Rather than focus you, they leave you in free fall, nothing to grasp on to except your sister there, and we both know how that has turned out.”
Sister. I made a mental note of that. There were four people in that room.
“I- how do you know this?”
“Our emotion reader picked up on some. I’ve figured out the rest. As you might expect, I’m rather familiar with damaged individuals.”
Bonesaw giggled.
I didn’t like the way this was going. I looked down the hall to see the doors. Each door had once had a window on the upper half, but there were only slivers left, the rest scattered over the floor. In an ideal world, some distraction would present itself, or the conversation would become a heated argument and they would distract each other. I could rise from my crouching position, step forward, aim my gun and fire. Unload the gun’s clip on Jack and Bonesaw.
Or I’d miss, resulting in the messy deaths of Panacea, her sister and I. I really needed that distraction if I was going to do this.
“I’m not… not that type of damaged. I’m not a monster,” Panacea protested. As an afterthought, she added, “No offense.”
“I’ve been called worse. I almost relish being called a monster. As though I’ve transcended humanity and become something from myth.”
“Myth.”
“And according to Cherish, it may well be a destruction myth.”
“What?”
“She recently informed me that the world is going to end because of me. Not quite sure how or when. It could well be that I’m the butterfly that flaps his wings and stirs a hurricane into being through a chain of cause and effect.”
“I don’t want the world to end,” Bonesaw said. ”It’s fun.”
“It is. But I expect it won’t end altogether. There’s always going to be survivors.”
“True.”
“And it makes for an interesting picture. After everything’s gone, there’ll be a new beginning. Who better to craft the remains into a new world than you and Mannequin?”
“And Amelia?”
“And Amelia, if she so chooses. We could be like gods in a new world.”
“You’re crazy,” Panacea muttered.
“According to studies, clinically depressed individuals have a more accurate grasp of reality than the average person. We tell ourselves lies and layer falsehoods and self-assurances over one another in order to cope with a world colored by pain and suffering. We put blinders on. If we lose that illusion, we crumble into depression or we crack and go mad. So perhaps I’m crazy, but only because I see things too clearly?”
“No,” Panacea’s voice was quiet. ”Um. You’re not going to kill me if I argue, are you?”
“I’m liable to kill you if you don’t.”
“It’s not that you see too clearly. I think your view is warped.”
“Over the course of millions of generations that led to your birth, how many of your ancestors were successful because they were cruel to others, because they lied, cheated, stole from their kin, betrayed their brothers and sisters, warred with their neighbors, killed? We know about Marquis, so that’s one.”
How many were successful because they cooperated? I wondered.
Jack probably had a rebuttal to my question, but I wasn’t about to speak up to hear it, and Panacea didn’t ask. She fell silent.
I was tensed, ready to move and shoot the second an opportunity arose. Anything would suffice. Anything would do.
I visualized it, the steps I’d take to open fire, and I realized that the shards of glass on the ground between me and the door could provide them with a half-second of warning. Slowly, carefully, I began brushing the shards aside, keeping my ears peeled for some clue about a key distraction.
“Survival of the fittest, it sounds so tidy, but it’s really hundreds of thousands of years of brutish, messy, violent incidents, billions of events that you’d want to avert your eyes from if you were to see them in person. And that’s a large part of what’s shaped us into what we are. But we wear masks, we pretend to be good, we extend a helping hand to others for reasons that are ultimately self-serving, and all the while, we’re just crude, pleasure-seeking, conniving, selfish apes. We’re all monsters, deep down inside.”
Again, one of those pauses that suggested something was going on that was visual and out of sight, rather than something I could overhear. Jack offered a dry chuckle. ”Did that hit home?”
“I’m… not that kind of person. Not a monster. I’d kill myself before I became like that.”
“But you see how you could be like us. It wouldn’t even be very hard. Just… let go of those rules of yours. You’d get everything you ever wanted.”
“Not family.”
“Yes, family.” Bonesaw cut in.
“You guys kill each other. That’s not family.”
“You’re derailing our conversation, Bonesaw,” Jack chided the girl. ”Amelia, when I say you could have everything you ever wanted, I’m telling you that you could live free of guilt, of shame, you could have your sister by your side, no more doubts plaguing you, no more feeling down. Haven’t you laid in bed at night, wondering, praying for a world where you could have something like that? I’m telling you that you can have those things, and I promise you that the transition from being who you are now to being who you could be would be much quicker than you suspect.”
“No.” The defiance was half-hearted.
“Amelia, you could let yourself cut loose and love life for the first time since you were young.”
And just like that, her resistance crumbled. ”I’ve never felt like that. Never felt carefree. Not since I could remember. Not even when I was a kid.”
“I see. From your earliest memory, what was that? In Marquis’s home? No? Being taken home by the heroes and heroines that would become your false family? Ah, I saw that change in expression. That would be your earliest memory, and you found yourself struggling to adjust to your new home, to school and life without your supervillain daddy. By the time you did figure those things out, you had other worries. I imagine your family was distant. So you struggled to please them, to be a good girl, not that it ever mattered. There was only disappointment.”
“You sound like Tattletale. That’s not a compliment.”
“My ability to read people is learned, not given, I assure you. Most of the conclusions I’ve come to have been from the cues you’ve given me. Body language, tone, things you’ve said. And I know these sorts of things and what to look for because I’ve met others like you. That’s what I’m offering you. A chance to be with similar people for the first time in your life, a chance to be yourself, to have everything you want, and to be with me. I suspect you’ve never been around someone who actually paid attention to you.”
“Tattletale did. And Skitter.”
I startled at that.
“I meant on a long-term basis, but let’s talk about that. I imagine they were telling you ‘No, you aren’t. You can be good.’”
“Yeah.”
“But you didn’t believe them, did you, Amelia? You’ve spent years telling yourself the opposite. You’re a bad person, you’re destined to be bad, by circumstance and blood. And even though you didn’t believe them, you’ll believe me when I tell you no, you aren’t a good person, but that’s okay.”
“It’s not.”
“You say that, but you believe me when I say it.”
There was another pause where Panacea didn’t venture a response.
“Isn’t it unfair? Through no fault of your own, the blood in your veins is the blood of a criminal, and that’s affected how your family looks at you. You’ve been saddled with feelings that aren’t your fault, and doomed to a life without color, enjoyment or pleasure. Don’t you deserve to follow your passions? A decade and a half of doing what others want you to do, doing what society wants you to do, haven’t you earned the right to do what you really desire, just this once?”
/> “That’s not really that convincing,” Panacea spoke, but she didn’t sound assertive.
“I know. So I’ll offer you a deal. If you indulge yourself, we’ll surrender.”
“What?”
“I won’t even make you do it now. Just look me in the eye, and honestly tell me you’ll do it. Drop all of the rules you’ve set yourself. I don’t care what you do after, you can wipe your sister’s memories, you can kill yourself, you can run away or come with us. And your side wins.”
“Aren’t we winning anyways?”
“Up for debate. I’m really quite thrilled with the current situation. Very enjoyable, and we’ve certainly made an impact.”
“This deal is a trap. You’ll make me do it and then you’ll kill me.”
“I could, but I won’t. Do you really have anything to lose by trying? If I’m going to kill you, I’m going to kill you regardless of what you say or do. Three and a half words: ‘I’ll do it’, and we leave the city.”
I almost stood right then, to open fire before she made a decision one way or another. I had to convince myself to wait, that no matter what they were saying, they wouldn’t leave right this instant.
Then I heard the sound of glass crunching in time with someone’s footsteps.
With the length of time I’d waited for an opportunity, I was going to take what I could get. My heart pounded, my hands shook even as I gripped the gun as hard as I could, but I let out a slow breath as I drew myself smoothly to a standing position and stepped into the doorway, pointing the gun through the window frame in the door.
They hadn’t heard me move. It left me a second to take in the scene and make sure I was shooting the right people.
They were in a music room that had been arranged with seats on a series of ascending platforms, backed by windows that had exploded inward, scattering the area with glass shards. At the bottom ‘floor’, there was a podium waiting for the teacher. Jack was walking up the steps to approach a girl. I knew he was Jack because he was the only male present. He was wreathed in thin white smoke, wore a light gray t-shirt marked with blood stains and black jeans tucked into cowboy boots. A thick leather belt had a variety of knives, including a butcher’s cleaver, a stiletto and a serrated blade.
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