Calvert had studied us. He’d be aware of this.
Dinah and faux Skitter were walking. Whatever excuse they’d given for not being able to ride Atlas, they’d opted to travel on foot instead of riding on Bentley or catching a ride in the truck Calvert’s man had driven. Maybe that wasn’t because Dinah was scared of the dogs. Maybe faux Skitter had suggested it, encouraged this for some greater plan.
They wanted to let me catch up. They were betting I’d get here, then take time to deal with the squads so my teammates weren’t in danger. By doing that… what? How would he capitalize on it?
Identify the direction I was attacking from, then bring all the soldiers he’d had at the deathtrap house here to corner me? Bring the Travelers? Über? Leet?
Dinah struck the side of her leg with the bug she held, hard. Grue said something I didn’t catch.
The message was clear. Now. If Calvert was expecting me to delay, to take my time and be methodical about this, and Dinah was urging me to be aggressive, throw myself headlong into this situation, that had to point to something. I’d decide what the hell I was supposed to do while I was en route. I broke into a run.
I couldn’t move directly to their location. I had to backtrack, find a route that didn’t put me in view of any of the watching squads. The activity was making me cough, and I was forced to suppress it or limit it to muffled choking as I got closer to the soldiers.
Sweeping the whole of my range with my bugs, I found a route. I had to backtrack a touch, move a bit closer to the water, but I found the construction site, and I found the ladder leading into a hole in the ground. From there, it was a short climb to accessing the storm drains.
The acoustics of the storm drains made for a lot of noise, even if it wasn’t raining aboveground. The water varied from knee-high to waist-high, depending on how much debris had filtered down, and it was moving with enough speed that it interfered with my ability to run. My chest screamed at me in pain every time I was forced to stoop down to touch ground with my good hand for added support, and I didn’t dare cough for fear that the same acoustics that made the area echo with the flowing water would carry something to the ears of soldiers above.
The realization hit me when my swarm reached far enough to sense the second mortar and accompanying squad of soldiers. There was an advantage to putting myself in the middle of the mortar’s target area. I just had to get there.
I picked up my pace, hurrying in the direction of my teammates and Dinah, slipping on the slimy footing and loose grit, trying not to cough and failing. It didn’t matter too much. I was past the perimeter and closing in on my teammates, using my bugs to figure out which turns I needed to make and which paths were most open to travel.
In a matter of minutes, I was close enough that I had to find a way up. My bugs identified a ladder, and I pushed my way up, using one shoulder and my legs to lift the drain cover from its housing.
I emerged just far enough away that I thought the sound of the cover wouldn’t be audible. Bentley perked his ears up as I used my good hand to set the drain down, but didn’t do anything further.
My concern and my worry were driving my range outward. I was sending any bug I didn’t need for sensing my surroundings to the periphery of my range, gathering them near the mortars. Spiders threaded cords of silk together, and other bugs gathered en-masse. Being here, at the bullseye, with my range extended like it was? It meant I could strike at each of the four mortars simultaneously.
I hit each squad of soldiers in the same moment, a tide of bugs washing over them. I tried to wind cords around the noses of the mortars, snag them on anyone who was moving, but they were too stable.
One soldier grabbed a bomb and moved to load it into the tube of the mortar. In an instant, I had the full mass of that one swarm on him, slipping beneath the stylized, high quality armor and masks Coil outfitted his mercenaries with. They bit, stung and attempted to wind cords around him, tying his hands, for lack of a better word. He put the mortar down and backed off, and I eased up on him, settling for a more general form of attack.
Snipers couldn’t fire, mortars were out of commission, and the soldiers weren’t in a position to attack.
And faux Skitter raised her head a fraction, her back straightening. If I could see, and if I were in a position to see her, I might have missed it, but I was aware with my bugs on her. She knew. A headset beneath her mask? A communications device in her ear, feeding her info?
I ran towards my team. Bugs stirred around the others, as I attempted to rouse them and get their attention.
Fake Skitter wheeled around, reaching behind her back to draw her gun. Her arm caught Dinah around the shoulders, hugging the girl to her side.
I missed the first part of what she said. The meaning was clear. ”…got no more use for you.”
And she sounded like me as she said it. I could sense the shock on the part of my teammates.
And I could sense the trap fall into place, as though a switch had been flicked.
The bugs I’d placed on my teammates to sense where they were went on the attack. It wasn’t my command.
I tried to push the bugs to stop, but my power was drowned out. It wasn’t that the commands they were receiving were more powerful than mine, more that they kept coming, a singular, crude set of commands extending across my entire range, maybe even further, every half second, overriding any ongoing instructions to my bugs. Attack, move this way, attack, move this way.
Grue said something, and I couldn’t catch it.
“Betraying us!?” Bitch screamed the words. Next to Bentley, she was suffering the worst of it as the bugs attacked.
“Sorry…” my doppleganger said. I missed the tail end of what she said after that, but it ended with, “…the plan.”
Sorry, Bitch. It was always the plan.
“No!” I shouted, and the act of shouting made me cough until my knees buckled. I could feel the bugs gathering on me, attacking mindlessly, collecting on my scalp. Still coughing, I reversed the short cape that sat around my shoulders and pulled it over my head to serve as a hood. It didn’t do anything to kill the bugs that were still alive and present, but it kept more from accumulating.
I was too far away for any of them to hear. A block away. Miles away, for all the good it did.
The other Skitter fired her gun at Bitch, one shot after another. Grue blanketed the area in darkness, and the false Skitter dropped her weapon. I could sense Bitch slumping on Bentley’s back, Bastard spilling from her lap to hit the ground and roll on impact.
Did he clone me?
No. I could sense the movements of the bugs throughout my range, even if I couldn’t control them. They were moving in a massive, slow spiral, drifting counterclockwise and attacking anyone they came in contact with, and the center of the effect, where they were settling and gathering in piles? A box in the center of one building.
Had to get there, shut it down.
I struggled to my feet, half-running, half-staggering as bugs gathered in a heavy carpet on me. I was lightheaded, exhausted, still coughing, and the first of the bugs were arriving from where they’d been attacking the soldiers.
I sensed Dinah in the midst of the swarm. The pheromones that false Skitter wore were serving to override the pulses from the box, keeping bees and wasps from doing too much damage to the pair. I wasn’t sure how they planned to deal with the more dangerous spiders, but the bugs that were moving across land were slowed by the constant vertical ascents and descents as they ran into buildings and other features of the landscape.
False Skitter hurled a canister into the midst of my teammates.
A flashbang. I could see the flare of light, the concussive sound that scattered the bugs that had congregated on them. Heading for the swarm box, I wasn’t close enough for it to really affect me.
The mortar crews were packing up their equipment and climbing into the trucks to beat a retreat from the scene. This is Calvert’s doing. He was convincing the othe
rs that ‘I’ was turning on them the second I had Dinah. He’d probably rigged it so I would disappear afterward. Skitter out of the picture, in a way that was totally believable given my prior actions. The Undersiders would be mad, they’d be hurt, but they’d still be his.
Except I was here. I could convince them it was a trick. Either shut off the swarm box or take a left turn, show up where they were, and things would make sense in an instant, two Skitters, one a fake…
No, I had to shut off the box. I could feel blood, where some bugs had found flesh on Rachel and the dogs. If too many bee or wasp stings struck home, someone could be seriously hurt, needing epinephrine.
I could sense Dinah moving one hand, drawing it across her chest in deliberate gestures. From shoulder to shoulder, down the side of her body from her armpit, turning to cross the base of her ribs…
Letters. S. O. R. R.
There was no time for the Y. Both Dinah and the other Skitter disappeared, replaced by a collection of rubble and a single flashbang. The others were still reeling from the first when the second flashbang detonated.
More boarded up windows and doors. I fired my gun at the handle of the door and then kicked. I did more damage to myself than the door, collapsing in another coughing fit.
The others recovered before I did. I could sense Grue standing, shouting something. I couldn’t understand him with the effect his power had on his voice. Not the first time I’d run into that issue. Rachel was up too, using Bentley to stand, one hand pressed to her side. I sensed the hot knot of metal where it had impacted the reinforced jacket I’d given her. Good.
“Find her!” she shouted. ”Find Skitter! Hurt! Kill!”
Bentley broke into a run, zig-zagging across the street they were standing on toward where false Skitter had been.
Did they make her smell like me? They had to have, to keep the dogs from barking distress. But how? Had Calvert had his men raid my stuff? Had he used my dirty laundry?
I felt violated, not just because of the potential trespass, but the extent to which they’d stolen my identity and abused it.
Bentley raised his head and then turned right in a loping run that would put him behind me in a matter of seconds. Then he’d have my trail, he’d zone in on me… I could picture what happened next. I wasn’t in a state to put up a fight.
I climbed to my feet, reloading my gun, then fired three more times at the door handle. A gnat that was following the spiral summons of the swarm box made contact with a deadbolt on the far side of the door, and I shot at that too. This time, when I kicked, it opened. I collapsed to the ground, my cough so fierce and ragged that I wouldn’t have been surprised if I’d been expelling flecks of blood into the inside of my mask.
Bentley spotted me and began charging. I crawled inside, brought my legs up to my chest to get them out of the way of the door, and kicked it shut.
The mutant bulldog was too large for the door. When he impacted it, it split across the midsection, the upper half coming free of the hinges, and the surrounding brickwork bulged inward, cracked mortar showering down around me. The wooden framework around the door kept him from getting much further, wooden pillars of support that were a foot thick on each side. It made sense that Calvert had picked a fortified structure to stick the swarm box inside. Small blessing that it afforded me some small advantage as well.
Bentley butted his head against the doorway again, getting no further than before, then backed away a few steps and howled. Bitch and Grue were already en route, following the sound of gunshots. I could hear Bitch howl a response to Bentley’s cry, an utterance of raw anger and promised violence. Bastard was at Bitch’s side. He was bigger, growing spikes of bone and an armor of calcified muscle. He would fit through the door.
I crawled for the swarm box. The bugs were thick, and though they couldn’t penetrate my costume, they were making their way into the folds at my neck, around my hood. It was due to numbers rather than any design, but it was stifling. I could barely breathe, and having to climb through a mass of bugs as big as a large tank, feeling them biting, stinging, feeling the venom the wasps and bees were injecting into me…
I raised myself up enough to get a grip on the tarp that covered the box, and then let myself collapse to the ground, coughing, maintaining my grip so I pulled the tarp off as I fell. I was seeing bright spots in my vision, which shouldn’t have been the case, because I couldn’t see anything.
Getting onto my knees so I could find the wires of the swarm box was a gradual process, made heavier by the mass of bugs on and around me. Every bug for what had to be at least a mile in every direction, gathering here.
I tore at one handful of wires. Nothing. It was just a matter of time. I had a minute or two, judging by the speed Bitch and Grue were moving.
I reached to grab another and felt a hand on my wrist. Imp hauled my hand back, pulling me off-balance, then kicked me square in the chest. I doubted there was a place she could have hit me where it would have hurt more.
I lay on the floor, alternately writhing and spasming as pain lanced through me.
“Did the doggie get you?” Imp growled the question. ”Good. Turn off your fucking power.”
I had only a helpless noise to offer in response.
“I warned you. Warned you what you were in for if you let my brother down. So do I use the knife, make it quick?” she drew a knife. Then she drew her taser with her other hand, “Or do I stick you with this until you stop using your power? Then we can find some place where you don’t have your bugs, and take the slow option.”
Grue and Bitch entered through the door, and I heard Grue mutter something. Bitch gripped Bastard by the collar.
“Imp. You found her,” he said. He sounded strangely unaffected by recent events. There was no emotion to his voice.
“We were just discussing options.”
“I heard. Taser won’t do anything. Worse than anything, she’ll use her power while she’s asleep,” Grue said.
I opened my mouth to speak, coughed instead.
“What about if she’s dead?” Bitch asked. She didn’t sound disaffected. She sounded pissed. ”I can do it, if you two can’t stomach it.”
The lack of a response from Grue was unnerving. He kneeled beside me, putting one knee on my bad wrist. I cried out in pain, coughed more. He just stared. Not that he could see much, with the way the bugs filled the room.
When he finally spoke, it was one word. ”Why?”
I struggled to gain my breath, to center my thoughts. I felt dizzy.
What could I say? Was there anything that would convince them? If I said it wasn’t me, would they believe me? If I turned their attention to the swarm box, would they think it was a bomb?
He waited patiently for me to recover enough to respond.
“Use…” I wheezed in a breath, “Dark.”
I closed my eyes as the darkness flowed over me. I felt my power weaken, realized I’d unconsciously been pushing the bugs to hold back. I felt their attack intensify.
Grue stood. He opened his hand, fingers splayed, and his darkness dissipated. He turned to Bitch, gestured to Bastard.
“Yeah?” she asked.
“Yeah.” He pointed.
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
Bitch whistled, Bastard lunged, and the swarm box caved in beneath the wolf cub’s front paws.
The swarm went quiet.
Grue offered me a hand, I took it, and he hauled me to my feet. I was unable to balance, dizzy, and leaned heavily into him.
“You’re not buying this, are you?” Imp asked.
“It wasn’t her.”
“She’s playing you.”
“It wasn’t her.”
Imp folded her arms. Bitch didn’t move.
Grue murmured, “Explain what’s happened. Then we need to take care of you.”
I shook my head.
“No?”
I coughed briefly. “Tattletale. Regent too. They’re in
trouble. We left them with Calvert. With Coil.”
16.13
With Grue’s help, I seated myself on the intact edge of the destroyed swarmbox, scattering my insects to the walls and ceiling of the room. Grue paced a little, while I eyed Imp and Bitch. My female teammates didn’t look entirely convinced, and I couldn’t blame them. They’d just seen someone who matched my description attacking them. The nighttime darkness and the lack of city lights hadn’t helped, and the obscuring swarm of bugs had helped hide the details from the moment the impostor gave them reason to suspect her.
“What happened?” Grue asked me.
“We arrived at the place he was keeping Dinah, she grabbed my hand, we turned around, and the headlights flashed. Then I was somewhere else.”
“He switched to his highbeams, momentarily. Don’t know about the others, but my eyes had adjusted to the dark. I couldn’t see anything, used my darkness to try to cover us in case he was pulling something, but nothing happened. Turned around and you were fine.”
“Except it wasn’t me.”
Grue nodded slowly. ”Looked like you, sounded like you.”
“I don’t know how. Genesis?”
“Didn’t strike me as much of an actor.”
“Then I don’t know,” I said, feeling lame. I knew I didn’t sound convincing.
“What happened? Was he only trying to separate you from us?”
“I’m ninety-five percent sure he tried to kill me.”
“What’s the other five percent?” Grue asked.
“I’m not a hundred percent sure of anything. But he didn’t have a bomb waiting to go off when I arrived, so that leaves me with some doubt. He did shoot me, and set the building on fire around me. And he had soldiers waiting to gun me down if I stepped outside.”
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