His teammate Bonesaw, was standing in the corner of the room just to my right. I could see the edge of a dress, an apron with tools and vials in the pocket, long blond hair curled into ringlets, and that same shroud of smoke around her, moving out to fill the room. The rest of her was obscured by the wall to my right and the shelves that stood behind the podium. It put her in an awkward spot for me to shoot. If I’d known she was there, I would have crawled over to the door at that end, gunned her down at point-blank.
Panacea stood at the far end of the room, at the highest point. She had brown hair that was blowing slightly with the breeze that flowed in through the glassless windows behind her, topped with a flat top cap. Freckles covered her face, and she was dressed in a tank top and cargo pants. More than anything else, she wore a look of fear on her face that marked her as the victim, not the threat.
And process of elimination meant the thing beside her was her sister. I would have called it a coffin, but it was clearly made of something living. It resembled a massive growth of flesh that had been shaped into a vague diamond shape, gnarled with horny callous and toenail-like growths that protected it and reinforced it at the edges. On the side closest to me, a girl’s face was etched into an oversized growth of bone. It was unmoving, decorative, with locks of long wavy hair that wrapped around the sides of the diamond. The ‘sister’ floated a foot over the floor.
It was so startling to see that I nearly forgot what I was doing. I drew in a short breath, then let slow breath out as I aimed the gun at Jack and squeezed the trigger.
I’d mentally planned to unload the gun on Jack and Bonesaw, but I’d forgotten about the recoil. At the same time Jack was struck down, my arm jerked up, and my mental instruction to fire nonetheless carried through. The second bullet hit the ceiling.
I whipped the door open and turned to my right to fire on Bonesaw, but my arm was numb, and her reflexes were sharp. She was already opening a door at the other corner of the classroom before I could shoot, making her way into the hallway.
I had a split second to decide if I should chase her or go after Jack. I glanced at Panacea, saw her staring. As if the eye contact snapped her out of a daze, she lunged toward Jack, one hand outstretched. She stopped dead in her tracks as he lashed out blindly with the knife. Reversing direction, she went for her sister instead.
Jack hadn’t been incapacitated. Aside from the impact of the gunshot, he didn’t even seem wounded. He was on his feet in a flash, spinning a hundred and eighty degrees to face me, his knife in motion.
I ducked back through the door, the knife delivering a glancing blow to my back. It failed to penetrate my costume.
Oddly enough, moving into the hallway and putting my back to the wall made me feel like I’d committed to fighting Jack, even if I might have been in a better position to go after Bonesaw.
“Wake,” I heard Panacea speak. She said something else that I missed.
I felt a jolt, but it wasn’t physical. It shook me on an emotional level. My voice abandoned me, not that I wanted to speak. I felt as if I stood on the very edge of the grand canyon and any movement, even one to step back onto solid ground, was guaranteed to send me falling to certain death.
The levitating construct of flesh slammed through the door and the door-frame that Bonesaw had used to make her exit. The mask of bone drew upward like an opened lid, to reveal a clear sphere, containing vitreous fluid and a teenage girl with blond hair.
Her eyes were open, but she looked half asleep, her hair fanned out around her, floating in fluid that seemed thicker than water. Her arms were outstretched, but her hands and lower body were hidden by the meat that surrounded her. The edges of the shell that were unfolding around her were curved forward like the horns of a bull.
If the sister had come after me, I wouldn’t have been able to fight back. Like a deer in the headlights, I stood there, unable to think or compel my body to move.
She rotated in mid-air slowly, as if getting her bearings. As ponderously as she had moved one moment, she went tearing after Bonesaw in the next, slamming through walls as momentum carried her too far and as she turned a corner too tight and sheared through the drywall, tile and window frames.
I could hear Bonesaw laughing with childlike glee as she fled.
“Not smart, not smart, either of you,” Jack chastised us. ”See, with Victoria gone, you’ve left me here with a hostage.”
I stood with my back to the wall, gun in hand. Ten bullets in here, four spent, if I’d counted right. I’d always sort of rolled my eyes at how movies treated guns and counting bullets, but it was harder than I’d thought. The shock and disorientation that came with firing a gun tended to disrupt even basic arithmetic. I couldn’t remember how many times I’d fired during the fight in the parking lot.
“I’ve been turning every microbe that touches my skin into an airborne plague, Jack,” Panacea spoke, her voice low. ”You should be dead now.”
“And me?” I called out, feeling a pang of alarm.
“I didn’t know you were there. You should be dead too. Sorry.”
“A benefit of little Bonesaw’s smoke,” Jack answered. ”If I recall correctly, it’s something of a safeguard in case she accidentally deploys a concoction she hasn’t immunized herself or the rest of our team against. The fact that it works against bugs and small rodents is a side benefit, rather than the intent. Bonesaw’s work has made us members of the Nine more or less immune to disease anyways.”
“And the gunshot?”
“Subdermal mesh. There’s more protection around the spine and organs, and you landed that shot pretty close to my spine. It hurts quite a bit.”
“Skitter! I don’t care if I die,” Panacea called out, “I’d rather live, if only to turn Victoria back to normal, but… just don’t worry about the hostage part. If I have to die so you can kill this fucker, I will.”
It isn’t that simple. Killing a monster like Jack or Bonesaw? That was one thing. I could push myself to do it. Killing a bystander in the process? That was something else entirely.
Jack seemed to be able to interpret my pause. “I suspect, Amelia, that she is worried about the hostage. The monster that dwells in Skitter’s heart is very similar one to yours. It’s a lonely thing, desperate for a place to belong, and the only thing it wants to be brutish to is her.”
“Don’t pretend you know me, Jack,” I called out. ”You already tried to fuck with my head, you guessed wrong.”
“I had bad information. Cherish has her uses, but she was never going to be a long-term member of the group. The people who can are truly special. Bonesaw, Siberian, me. Perhaps Mannequin, but it’s hard to say. He’s not terribly social, but he’s been with us for some time.”
I stayed silent. I could hear his voice changing in volume as he spoke. Was he moving?
There were two doors leading into the classroom. Was he moving toward one, aiming to leap out and strike at me? I glanced down the length of the hall. Bathroom, janitorial closet, another bathroom, storage room… it made sense that there wouldn’t be other classrooms adjacent to a music room with minimal soundproofing.
“You two have your differences, of course. Amelia, you’re burdened by guilt, as you’re burdened by your rules and so much else. I’d like you to think again about how nice it would be to be free-”
“No,” Amelia’s interruption was curt, almost defensive.
“Alas. Well, while I’m interpreting you two, I’d say Skitter is driven by guilt. What makes you feel so guilty, bug girl?”
He’s trying to distract me.
I scampered along the length of the hallway, keeping low enough that I wouldn’t be visible from the window while I moved to the point just beyond the effects of the bug-killing cloud. I could send bugs after Bonesaw and the sister -Victoria, was it?- but Bonesaw would still have that cloud of smoke around her. I doubted my ability to achieve anything on that front.
“There’s always some guilt related to family. Tell me, wh
at would your mother think, to see you on an average day? Or can’t you remember her with the miasma? I’d almost forgotten.”
Even if I couldn’t remember her face, who she was, or even where she was, I could feel a pang of regret that knotted in my gut. I grit my teeth to remind myself to keep from opening my mouth and grasped the cords that my bugs had threaded together. I looped them around Atlas’ horn, and then I ran down the hallway, still keeping low.
Just to check, I tried bringing bugs into the hallway. The smoke was still present, if thin. They still died, just a little slower than before. I returned them to their previous location. No use wasting them for nothing.
“Skitter,” he called out in a sing-song voice. With the acoustics of the hallway, I couldn’t pinpoint his location. ”Aren’t you going to reply?”
Just as I was trying to locate him, he was attempting to do the same for me.
I decided to give him what he wanted.
“You’re pathetic, Jack.”
I’d intended to provoke him, and I’d succeeded.
I’d also intended to pull the silk cord taut as he stepped into the hallway, tripping him.
Instead of opening the door, he leaped through the open window in the upper half of the door, tucking his knees against his chest. He landed with a short roll, spotted me, and slashed.
I brought my arms up around my face to protect it. The feeling of the silk cord’s weight dropped to virtually nothing as the slash cut it.
I’d been given tips on fighting, even if I couldn’t remember by who or by whom. Catch them off guard. My arms around my face, nearly blind, I charged him.
He caught me in the side with a kick, but I had enough forward momentum that I crashed into him anyways. We fell to the ground, and I reached for the smoking vial that hung around his neck.
Jack already had the stiletto in one hand. He jabbed it toward my face, my eye, and I jerked my head back out of the way, abandoning my attempt to get the vial. Using one elbow, he shoved me to one side, then flipped over, simultaneously reversing his grip on the knife in his other hand and driving it down toward the side of my head. I rolled with the momentum he’d given me to escape before it could pierce my ear or my temple. He was already following up, slashing both knives at me, one after the other.
He knew how to fight, of course. He’d said he’d been at this for a while.
Hated this. Hated fighting without knowing enough about my opponents.
I tried to get my feet under me, but it was slow and awkward as I was unable to use my hands. I had to wrap my arms around my head to shield my face against the continued flurry of slashes. Jack had a knife in each hand now, and he wasn’t giving me a half second between cuts, if that.
My forearms and hands didn’t cover enough of my head. I could feel the cuts nicking my ears, slashing through my hair by my temple. A few slashes made their way through gaps between my arms and fingers.
Blindly, I rushed for the classroom. Needed a second to breathe, to think, before I was whittled down to a bleeding ruin. I could hear footsteps behind me. I felt a hand seize my shoulder. I whirled and knocked it away, felt another knife slash crossing the back of my head. I had blood in my eyes, my ears were a bloody ruin, and cuts burned like fire around my scalp and neck.
A shout. Not Jack’s. I heard it again, the same words, but I couldn’t make them out. There was blood in my ears.
I stumbled into the classroom, and Panacea was at my side in a moment.
“Fix me,” I gasped. I couldn’t tell where Jack was, and I was hurting enough that I couldn’t think to strategize. He hadn’t followed. ”Fast!”
She touched my forehead, and I could feel the cuts knitting together.
But there was another injury that wasn’t mending.
“The red miasma took away my ability to recognize people. I don’t know anything about the people I’m fighting. Fix my brain.”
“I don’t- I can’t.”
“If you don’t fix me, Jack could win, and billions could die. If you don’t cure whatever it is that Bonesaw’s done with this miasma, I and tens of thousands of others could die of a degenerative brain disease.”
“You don’t understand. I can’t cure brain damage.”
My heart fell.
“I- my- the last time I did it, the last time I broke my rules, everything fell apart. You’re asking me to do the exact same thing Jack was. To break my rules again.”
“They’re just rules.” Where was Jack?
“They’re the only thing holding me together.”
He’s getting away. This stupid girl. ”You were willing to die if he took you hostage. I’m asking you to sacrifice yourself in a lesser way. Fall apart if you have to. But undo what Bonesaw’s started.”
“This is worse than dying,” she said, her voice quiet.
“Ask yourself if it’s worse than the slow, degenerative death of thousands and the potential end of the world.”
She stared at me.
Even as she looked at me, aghast, I felt something awaken in my mind, barriers crumbling.
“This is bad. Every second is time you’re suffering more permanent damage.”
“That’s not a huge priority. I’m more worried about Jack, and all the others who got hit harder by this stuff than I did.”
“It’s a parasite that’s producing the improperly folded proteins. I can stop it, and I think I can make them create a counter-agent that counteracts the proteins and promotes healing in the brain. Can’t make them fix the lesions, but I can promote plasticity in the brain and new connections to old information.”
Her voice was so quiet I barely heard it.
But I could remember the others; I remembered Tattletale and Brian. Rachel. I could remember Alec and Aisha. The dogs. Our enemies. My dad. My mom’s face popped into my mind’s eye and I could feel a relief as I let go of an anxiety that I hadn’t been consciously aware of.
“The parasites will replace existing parasites over time, and they’ll die if it gets cold, now. Or if you raise your blood alcohol content. Get drunk after a week or two to clear them from your system, and don’t drink tainted water. If everyone clears them from their systems, the miasma’s effects will be gone by the end of winter.”
“They’re probably what she seeded all over the area, before using the catalyst.”
“I’d believe it.”
“And the damage, can you reverse it?”
“The minor damage, yeah. But I can’t do anything for the people with more serious brain lesions unless I attend to them directly. There’s other healers out there, I know they’re not as good, but maybe they can do something to fix that.”
I nodded.
Precious seconds passed.
“Let me know the second I can go,” I said. ”Jack’s going to attack, or pull something.”
“Trying to engineer a large-scale solution to help as many people as soon as possible. The parasites will leave your body through your sweat, spit and urine, and enter the local water supply to override the others, and anyone you cure will cure others in a sort of reverse-epidemic. I have to make sure this is engineered right, or nobody’s going to get cured. If I screw it up, it could be worse than what Bonesaw did.”
My leg bounced on the spot with anxiety and anticipation. Jack was up to something and I was sitting there.
I tried to distract myself with a change of subject, “Where did you get the material for what you did for Glory Girl? That sarcophagus thing. You have to use living material, so…”
“They weren’t human.”
“That’s not that reassuring.”
“I used pheromones to lure stray cats, dogs and rats to us, then I knit them together. Victoria didn’t have enough body fat to stay warm, and she was wearing out faster than I could get her nutrition.”
“She’s going to return to normal, though?”
“Just a little more time. I have to ensure she’s totally together inside the cocoon, then disconnect her
from it, and make sure she reaches a physical equilibrium afterward. Once I know she’ll recover…” she trailed off.
“Amy-”
“Go. You’re done. Go after Jack.”
I hesitated. There was a look in her eyes, dark. She wasn’t meeting my gaze.
I turned and ran. Atlas was waiting on the rooftop as I ascended the stairs.
Too much time lost. My body was a counter-agent for Bonesaw’s prion generators, but I had to find Jack and Bonesaw. I could scout the area with my bugs, vaguely sense the areas they’d traveled by seeing what spots murdered my bugs on contact, but I still had to track their movements.
Glory Girl was hovering over the school, searching for Bonesaw. The ‘cocoon’, as Amy had called it, was damaged much as the school gate had been, but Glory Girl was still intact inside.
The fact that she was looking made it very possible that we were facing the worst case scenario.
The bug-killing smoke extended outside of the school gates. It was hard to verify if they’d gone that way and corked the flow of the smoke or if it was traces from before. My only resource and means of detecting it was my bugs, but testing it meant killing them by the dozens, if not hundreds.
If they stayed on the grounds and I left, it could mean something ugly for Amy and Glory girl. Conversely, if they’d left and I stayed, it could mean disaster for everyone else.
I left, flying Atlas in an ever-expanding circle, reaching out with my bugs to scan the surroundings.
With a mixture of relief and fear, I realized that Bonesaw’s extermination smoke was stronger a half mile away. I’d been lucky enough to guess right.
They’d split up. Two trails, extending down different streets. My bugs felt around to see where the death-zone was, a few dropping dead each time, their numbers whittling down. It was like a game of battleship, with constantly moving ships and limited ammunition.
Three trails. I stopped in mid-air.
Three?
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