Weld glanced over his other shoulder at her. The other Skitter was a distance away, with shattered legs.
“Did she tell you?” Skitter One said, “She set someone on fire. Maimed a minor, slicing his forehead open. She cut off Bakuda’s toes, carved out a helpless man’s eyes. I can keep going.”
“I don’t care,” Weld said. He wasn’t moving. Why? He was waist deep in Noelle’s belly, holding me… it dawned on me that he couldn’t throw me to some point clear of Noelle without giving me to the Skitter.
“You should care. I could tell you about the critically injured man she left to bleed out and die. She stood by and let people get attacked by Mannequin so she could buy herself time to think of a plan to make a counterattack.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but I couldn’t draw in enough breath to manage more than a hoarse whisper, and Weld wouldn’t have heard me.
“I don’t care,” Weld said. “I know she’s done bad things. After this is over, we’ll find her, beat her and take her into custody.”
“You don’t care?” Skitter One asked. “She murdered your boss. Shot Thomas Calvert in cold blood, not that long ago.”
Weld froze. Or he went more still than usual.
“Whoopsie,” Imp said. She’d appeared behind Skitter One. A slash of her knife ended Skitter One’s contributions to the discussion. “Sorry to interrupt.”
I couldn’t say whether Skitter One’s feedback had done anything to change his behavior, but Weld wasn’t gentle when he grabbed me and flung me overhand. My legs tore free of Noelle, where her flesh had closed firmly around my legs, and I was sent flying.
Unable to move to protect myself or react to the landing, I sprawled where I landed, fifteen or so feet from Noelle.
Weld turned back to Noelle. His left hand changed to become a blade, and he used it to hack and slash his way through Noelle’s side. His other hand dug and scraped for purchase as he deliberately and intentionally submerged himself.
My bugs found their way to the others. I did what I could with my bugs to drive Shatterbird away from the doorway and put her out of reach of Noelle’s tongue. Once she’d started staggering back, I set about finding and destroying the bug clones who were attacking people and ignoring my powers.
The door where the Wards and Protectorate had been lurking opened. Miss Militia tested her weight on the staircase, then leaped down to ground level.
She trained a gun on Imp as she noticed the girl crouching over Skitter Two, the taciturn Skitter with the broken legs. Imp executed the girl, glanced at Miss Militia and shrugged.
I tried to speak, coughed. I pulled my bugs away from Rachel and Tattletale.
Miss Militia stared at Noelle, her eyes adjusting to the poor lighting.
“You fed her!?” Miss Militia asked.
“Rachel,” Tattletale said, “Come on!”
There was a clapping or slapping noise, and Bastard lurched to his feet. Rachel stood, and the other three dogs spread out around her.
“You fed Echidna?” Miss Militia asked, disbelieving.
Echidna? Right. They’d coined a name for her, then.
“And we’ll feed her more,” Tattletale said. “Rachel! All of the spare dogs! Try not to get in Weld’s way!”
The dogs began to grow, flesh splitting, bone spurs growing, and muscles swelling to greater size.
Rachel hesitated.
“Do it!” Tattletale shouted.
Rachel gave the orders, shouting, “All of you, hold! Malcolm, go left!”
She slapped one dog on the shoulder, and he bolted.
“Coco, go right! Twinkie, go right!”
The other two dogs gave chase, stampeding past me as they ran along the right side of the room.
“Hurt!” Rachel gave the order.
The dogs attacked the closet target – Noelle. They got stuck in her like she was tar.
But, I realized, that the converse was also true. Noelle was absorbing them, but she was unable to move so freely as long as this much extra mass was stuck to her. It was like the way we’d fought Weld, sticking metal to him.
The problem would be when she spat out the dogs.
I tried to move, but I felt like I had fifty pound weights strapped each of my arms and legs. My face burned hot, and my vision swam.
It wasn’t an entirely unfamiliar feeling. I felt sick.
With that thought, it dawned on me. Noelle absorbed living things, and that apparently extended to bacteria. Where others had bacteria in their digestive systems to help them digest food, Noelle, Echidna, had no need for such. When she absorbed the ambient bacteria and molds from her surroundings, she was storing them, weaponizing them like she did with rats and insects. They were used to debilitate her victims, render them unable to fight back while her clones got the upper hand.
It meant I was sick, and I’d have to hope that whatever the illness was, it would be short-lived.
Shatterbird was still thrashing, trying to do something with her glass and failing because she couldn’t breathe or see. Echidna couldn’t move, as her legs were caught on the dogs. The other clones had been executed by Imp, as far as I knew.
The sticking point was Weld. Tattletale had apparently figured out that he was immune to Echidna’s absorption ability, but he wouldn’t be immune to her basic shapeshifting ability. She didn’t have a lot of control over her form, or she surely would have chosen something without that number of legs, without the three mutant dog heads, but she did have the ability to shift her flesh around, and Weld was limited in how fast he could cut that flesh away.
Rachel had moved to my side. She put her arms under my shoulders and my knees and lifted me, grunting.
I twisted around to cough and gag. I managed to move one arm to my face, but didn’t have the strength in my fingers to move the fabric at my neck.
Rachel found it instead, pulling it up and halfway up my face. I coughed up lumps of stuff that tasted the way raw meat smelled.
“Careful!” Tattletale said. “Incoming! Dogs!”
Noelle had apparently moved one of her heads around, because she managed to spray a stream of vomit our way.
There was a pause as her body heaved, my bugs could sense the movement as one of the bulkier dogs was repositioned inside her monstrous lower body, and then she puked up one of the dogs, along with a handful of humans.
It wasn’t large, wasn’t mutant. Well, it was a mutant, but it wasn’t one of Rachel’s mutants.
“Bentley,” Rachel ordered. “Kill.”
The bulldog lunged and seized the smaller dog in its jaws in a matter of seconds, crushed it in a heartbeat.
“Yeah,” Rachel said, her voice low enough that only I heard it. “Feels wrong.”
“Why?” Miss Militia asked. “Why was it small?”
“When we were hanging out with Panacea during the Slaughterhouse Nine fiasco, she put her hand on Sirius,” Tattletale said. “And she said that the tissues die as they get pushed out from the center. They’re more like super zombie dogs, really, with a juicy, living center.”
“And Echidna doesn’t copy dead things,” Miss Militia said.
Tattletale nodded. “We got lucky. I was worried it would only be a little smaller.”
Weld was fighting to emerge. He had his hands on Grue and one of the dogs. He hurled them out, and Miss Militia caught the dog. Imp and Tattletale hurried to drag Grue away.
“Did you bring all the stuff I asked for?” Tattletale asked.
“Yes. It won’t be enough.”
“So long as you’ve got some, it’ll help. Just need to buy time,” Tattletale said.
Echidna’s bulk shifted. I couldn’t see it with my own eyes, but with the blurry vision the bugs offered, I could track how she was getting her legs under her. I could see that there weren’t any distinct bulges anymore. She was breaking down the mutant flesh she’d stripped away from Rachel’s dogs and she was making it her own. Six dogs… if my estimates about them being roughly a third her
mass were right, she could be three times as big as she’d been before.
“She’ll be stronger,” Miss Militia said, putting the dog down. “If this doesn’t work, we just gave her a power boost for nothing.”
“We’re saving the people she took,” Tattletale said, “And we’re buying time. It’s not nothing.”
Echidna heaved herself up to her feet. She vomited forth a geyser of fluids and flying clones. Our ranks were scattered, knocked over and pushed away from Echidna by the force and quantity of the fluids.
It was stronger than before. Whatever the source she was drawing from was, she’d reinforced it with the mass she’d gained from eating the dogs. No less than fifteen clones littered the floor, and there were another twelve or so dogs and rats in their mass.
Miss Militia didn’t even stand before opening fire. Twin assault rifles tore into the ranks of the clones as she emptied both clips, reforged the guns with her power, and then unloaded two more clips. Several clones were avoiding the bullets more by sheer chance than any effort on their part. One Grace-clone managed to shield the bullets, moving her hands to block the incoming fire. One stray shot clipped her shoulder, but she was holding out.
Echidna spat up another wave, and I hurried to get my flying bugs out of the way. I still couldn’t move, but I held my breath. The wave hit us on two fronts, an initial crush of fluid and bodies, and the bodies from the first wave that had been shoved up against us. As the fluid receded, my bugs moved back down to the ground to track how many clones she’d created. It made for a pile of bodies, with snarling dogs and clones struggling for footing as they reached for us.
Bentley and Bastard provided our side with the muscle we needed to shove the worst of the enemy numbers away, bulldozing them with snouts and shoving them aside with the sides of their large bodies. Miss Militia followed up by sweeping the area with a flamethrower. She stopped, waiting for the smoke to clear, and Tattletale shouted, “Again! Weld’s still inside!”
Another wave of flame washed over the clones. They were Regents, Tectons and Graces, as well as various dogs, and none were able to withstand the heat. Each and every one of them burned.
But this much heat and smoke, even with this space being as large as it was, it wasn’t an assault we could sustain.
Echidna opened her mouth for a third spray, then stopped. One by one, bodies were dropping from her gut.
“No!” Noelle screamed, from her vantage point on top of the monstrous form.
Weld forced another dog free, and Echidna moved one leg to step on it.
Grace and Tecton fell, and Weld dropped after them. He turned the blade of one hand into a scythe, then chopped a segment of Echidna’s foot free. With one motion of the scythe, he sent Tecton, Regent and some of the dogs skidding our way, sliding them on the vomit-slick floor like a hockey player might with a puck on ice.
Echidna deliberately dropped, belly-flopping onto Weld, Grace and the dismembered foot that had stepped on the sixth dog.
Miss Militia was already drawing together a rocket launcher. She fired a shot at the general location where Weld was. He forced his way free of the resulting wound a moment later, the dog tucked under one arm, Grace under the other.
Echidna swiped at him, but he hurled the others forward to safety a second before it connected. He was slammed into the wall, but he didn’t even reel from the blow. He made a dash for us.
“Retreat!” Miss Militia gave the order.
The staircase shook precariously as we made our ascent, one group at a time. One of the capes had frozen the staircase of the metal walkway to the wall to stabilize it. They started getting organized to hand each of us and the dogs up to the door, but Rachel barreled past, carrying me and two dogs, with Bastard and Bentley following behind.
As we reached the doorway, dogs were handed to the able-bodied. Others were helping the wounded. Clockblocker had fallen, and Kid Win was being moved with a makeshift stretcher formed of one of the chain-link doors that had been in the hallway. There was a lot of blood.
It was Shatterbird’s power, I realized. I’d barely registered the event. Shatterbird was still in the hallway on the other side of the underground complex. Standing away from the main fighting, perhaps, or waiting for an opportunity. She’d found the locker where Regent kept her costume, was using her power to put it on while simultaneously fighting off the bugs that were still biting her.
Echidna reared back, apparently gearing up to vomit, and Miss Militia fired a rocket launcher straight into the monster’s open mouth.
It barely seemed to slow Echidna down. Vomit spilled around her, crawling with vermin and bugs.
The monster was moving slower, now. The entire structure shook as she advanced on us, sections of the walkway crumpling and screeching where her bulk scraped against it.
But the door was just that – a door. Three feet wide and six feet tall. The tunnels the trucks had used were too small for her mass, even if one ignored the fact that they’d been strategically collapsed.
The entire area shook with the impact of her furious struggles. She was trying to tear her way free. The violence only ramped up as we made our escape, to the point that I was worried the building above us would come down on top of our heads as we headed outside.
The warm, fresh air was chill against the damp fabric of my costume as we escaped from beneath the building. I could sense other heroes and trucks stationed nearby, no doubt surrounding the area.
The second we’d reached the perimeter, Tattletale collapsed to the ground, propping herself up with her back to a wall. Grue and Regent were placed next to us.
We were covered in blood and vomit, half of us so weak we could barely move. It didn’t convey the best image.
“Vista wasn’t inside Echidna,” Weld said. “If she’s still in the building-”
“Triumph, phone her,” Miss Militia ordered.
“Yes’m,” Triumph replied.
Miss Militia turned to Tattletale. She gestured at the nearby vehicles. “You said you wanted containment foam.”
“I did,” Tattletale said.
“You think she’ll fight free?”
“Almost definitely,” Tattletale said. “She had a Grue with her. One with teleportation powers. He disappeared partway through the fight, lurking somewhere out of sight. Being pragmatic about the situation. So unless someone can testify to having killed the guy, we can expect her to pop up in a matter of minutes.”
“Minutes,” Miss Militia said.
“No reply from Vista,” Triumph reported.
“Keep trying.”
“She gets free in a few minutes, and we’ll use the containment foam then?” Assault asked. I jumped a little at the realization it was him.
“No,” Tattletale said. “We’ll use it as soon as the dust settles.”
“Dust?” Assault asked.
She withdrew her cell phone, raised her voice, “If any of you have force fields, put them up now!”
Tattletale started punching something into the keypad. Miss Militia grabbed her wrist, prying the cellphone from her hand. “Stop.”
“It’s our only option.”
“What’s our only option?”
“Buying time,” Tattletale said. She wrenched her hand free, but Miss Militia still had the phone.
“How?”
“You could punch the last two digits, one and four, into that keypad, see for yourself,” Tattletale said. “Or you could give me the phone, let me do it, and then if Vista’s in there, your conscience is… less muddy, if not exactly clear.”
Miss Militia turned her face toward the phone, stared at the building that loomed over Coil’s not-so-secret base.
“Shatterbird-” I started to speak, had to catch my breath, “She’s in there too. She was talking to Noelle. To Echidna. Last I saw. They might be deciding to work together.”
“I won’t have a clear conscience, no matter what I do,” Miss Militia said. “But I might as well own up to it.”
>
Miss Militia touched the phone twice. Long, quiet seconds reigned.
“Didn’t think you had it in you,” Tattletale commented.
There was a rumble. My bugs couldn’t reach far enough to see, but they could see the blur. A cloud, at the top floor of the building.
Another cloud expanded out from the top of the building, one floor down from the first.
The explosions continued, escalating, ripping through the building in stages. I couldn’t even breathe as I experienced the resulting aftershock, the vibrations as the building folded in on itself, plummeting down to the construction area.
“What-” Assault started.
There was another explosion, muffled, and my bugs were in range for the explosion that followed. Plumes of earth rose in a rough circle around the building, and then the ground sank. The entire underground base, folding in on itself. Even with the debris of the fallen building on top of it, the area seemed to form a loose depression.
Fitting for the criminal mastermind, I thought.
“Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiit,” Regent said, his voice reedy.
“He didn’t use it on us?” I asked Tattletale. “Coil?”
She was staring at what must have been a massive cloud of dust.
“He tried, sort of,” she said. “His computer was rigged to blow everything up if someone tampered too much. I found the stuff when I went looking for his files, as I moved in. Scared the pants off me when I realized that it was already in motion.”
“Before that?” I asked. “When we were waiting for the meeting?”
“Couldn’t afford to let ‘Echidna’ loose,” she said. “And I think I would’ve known. Can’t say for sure.”
It took minutes for everything to finish settling.
“Containment foam on the wreckage!” Miss Militia shouted. “I want cape escorts for each truck and equipped PRT member, do not engage if you see her!”
She was rattling off more orders. I couldn’t focus enough to follow it all.
“She’s not dead,” Tattletale said, “But we bought an hour, at least. Maybe a few. With luck, they’ll upgrade this to a class-S. We’ll get reinforcements… which we’ll need.”
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