Echidna belched out another set of clones.
There was one forge-man, two identical to the one I’d seen flinging stones at Chevalier. And an Alexandria. They lurched to their feet, but they didn’t attack. They were letting Eidolon speak.
“We founded Cauldron. The Triumvirate. The Number Man. William Manton. The Doctor. We sold people powers.“
“No,” Clockblocker said. Other murmurs came from the crowd.
“It meant more people with powers to fight the Endbringers, that was the lie we told ourselves. But we created the Siberian and Shatterbird, in a roundabout way. We created the Gray Boy, selling him powers, finding ourselves unable to stop him when he went out of bounds. There were countless others. Echidna is just the latest in a long series of grave mistakes.”
Nobody moved. I suspected that if anyone attacked him, they’d be seen as a Cauldron sympathizer, trying to shut him up. I could see Noelle: her arms had separated from her torso, but she left them limp at her sides, her long hair in her face as she stared up at him.
“We made the PRT, pretended to let ourselves be run by the unpowered, but we put Alexandria in charge. We manipulated media, manipulated nations, in the interest of power. We ventured into alternate worlds to kidnap people, experimented on them to refine our formulas. And the failed tests? The people who turned out wrong? We cast them out, tossed them out as a bonus to anyone willing to pay a little more for an enemy that was guaranteed to lose against them.”
The Eidolon moved, facing one of the monstrous parahumans I didn’t know. A boy with crimson skin and hair. The clone spoke, “That’s all you were, monsters. Little more than the cheap towels that are on offer for a few extra dollars when you buy something on a shopping channel.“
Legend shouted something, but the wind kept his voice from reaching us. He had to fly to avoid the Alexandria-clone’s unending pursuit.
The other, naked Alexandria took flight and went after him.
It said a lot that nobody moved to help.
I glanced at Gully, saw her already disfigured face contorted with emotion.
“He’s lying,” I said, to her. “Twisting the truth to make it sound worse than it is.”
Gully only made a small noise in response.
“He couldn’t make all that up,” Clockblocker said. Were it not for the bugs I had near his mouth, I wasn’t sure I would have caught what he was saying in the face of the wind. “… kernel of truth.”
“It’s all been a ploy from the start,” the Eidolon-clone said, his aerokinesis carrying his words to our ears, “Every single one of you were deceived. For every one of you that bought your powers, there were innocents who died or became monsters for the sake of that formula’s research. No matter what good you might do, it will never make up for that. And the rest of you? Conned, brought in with promises of ideals and saving the world. You’re fools.“
And with that, he let the wind die down. There was a crunching noise as Echidna shifted her weight, but that was followed only by silence, the sound of murmurs.
“We just lost,” Clockblocker said.
I looked at him, saw Gully hanging her head.
He wasn’t wrong. We were suffering losses, and we hadn’t achieved anything. Echidna was as strong as she’d ever been, stronger than she’d been at the outset of the fight, and she kept on acquiring clones that cost more than we could afford to put down. Alexandria and Eidolon were only the tips of the iceberg.
“It’s a big hit to morale, but-”
“No,” Clockblocker cut me off. “We lost. Not this fight. Maybe we can still win it, won’t deny it’s possible, with Scion maybe showing up. But the big picture? There’s no coming back from this. Without the Protectorate, without all the work that it does to organize heroes around the world, there’s no getting everyone working together. The amount of anger? The suspicion, wondering if a teammate took the formula or not? How can we go up against the next Endbringer that shows up?”
“We’ll manage,” I said. “We’ll find a way.”
He barked out a cough, groaned. “Fuck, don’t make me laugh.”
“Laugh?”
“Never took you for an optimist.”
Was I? Or was it just that the heroes were reeling just a little more in the wake of these revelations. I wasn’t surprised, and I was betting the other Undersiders weren’t either.
Advantage: us. We villains were the only ones who could really think straight in the wake of all this. Except Tattletale, Grue and Imp were elsewhere, and Regent and Rachel weren’t really in a position to do anything major here.
I stared at the scene, Legend doing his best to fend off two Alexandrias, and Eidolon looking down on us, the crowd of fools. I could see Echidna, standing still, surveying it all, much as I was.
No, not Echidna. Noelle.
“I need your help,” I told Clockblocker.
“Can’t fight.”
“Don’t need you to fight,” I told him. I reached behind my back, drew my gun. I pressed it into his hands. “If and when she comes for me, aim for the back of my head. It’s unarmored, anything else might mean I survive, and I don’t want to be hers. Not again.”
“Hers?” he asked. “What are you doing?”
I paused. “Wait until the last second. Just in case. You can call that more optimism, I guess.”
“Skitter?”
I moved my bugs away from the heroes around us and into the air, a cloud capable of getting attention.
If I was going to do this, I was going for optimal effect.
Back when this skirmish had started, I’d wondered if I’d be willing to make a sacrifice if it meant coming out ahead. Even when the idea of throwing away one life for the greater good had crossed my mind, it had been with the notion that it would be me paying the price. I couldn’t, wouldn’t, ask someone else to do it.
Fuck it. I wasn’t about to back down now, not with the stakes this high.
With the swarm swirling through the air, and the fact that I was the only person moving in this otherwise still tableau, all eyes were on me. Noelle’s included.
“Noelle!” I screamed her name. My swarm augmented my voice, carrying it much as the wind had carried Eidolon’s.
She turned toward me.
“It is you, isn’t it? It’s Noelle, and not Echidna?”
She didn’t respond. My swarm drifted between us, partially to help obscure me, to cloak me from her vision if she charged me.
“At the start of all this, you offered a deal. Any of your captives for one of us Undersiders. Is that deal still open?”
I saw her shift position, planting her massive claws further apart.
“You’re dead anyways,” she said.
You’re not wholly wrong.
“Follow through with the deal, maybe you get to kill me yourself. And maybe the other heroes here will turn the other Undersiders in for a chance that they can walk away alive.”
“You’re saying you’ll let your team die?”
“My team can fend for themselves,” I said. “Right now? I’m offering you me, in exchange for Eidolon. That’s all.”
“The one who deceived them?” she looked out over the crowd. “What makes you think they want him?”
“They don’t,” I said. I made sure that everyone present could hear as my bugs carried my voice. “But they need him.”
If there was any salvaging this, any way of recovering from this terminal hit to morale and avoiding the scenario Clockblocker had outlined, I had to make sure that everyone recognized how essential it was that we kept the big guns on hand for future Endbringer attacks. Regardless of what they’d done in their pasts. If it came down to it, I was willing to put myself on the line. I’d die to drive the point home if it came down to it.
Noelle spat Eidolon out. He landed, covered in puke, wearing his costume. He recovered faster than the other heroes had, faster than I had. He took to the air, flying toward the other members of the Protectorate.
A pair of flying heroes moved closer together, barring his path.
Through the bugs I had placed on the two flying heroes, I could hear him. A single utterance, monosyllabic. “Ah.”
He turned, surveying the scene, then started to fly towards Legend. The other Eidolon moved to match his flight, and the original stopped. If he moved to help, he’d only be bringing his clone into the fight with him. He settled above a building, on the other side of the street from his mirror opposite, keeping a wary eye on Legend and the chase that the two Alexandria clones were giving.
“Now’s the part where you run,” Noelle told me.
“I’m not running.”
“You’ll try something. Because you’re a coward. You don’t have it in you. You’re selfish. You killed Coil when you knew we needed his help.”
“I killed Coil because he was a monster,” I said. I didn’t let my voice carry, but it didn’t matter. Others had heard what she said. “But I’m not running.”
I sensed Rachel kick Bentley, stirring him to action. Some of my bugs barred her path, forcing her to pull short and stop before he’d moved two paces.
“How do I finish you, then?” she asked. “Should I puke on you and let them tear you apart while everyone watches?”
“Someone might try to save me,” I said. “They’re still heroes, after all. Takes a lot to stomach watching a girl get beaten to death.”
“Then I kill you myself,” she said, and there was a growl to her voice. That would be Echidna chiming in, at least in part. “They’ll see what you’re made of when you break and start running, and they can’t stop me from tearing you apart.”
That said, she charged. The ground shook with her advance, and the heroes only stood and watched, no doubt considering the possibility that I was right, that they could negotiate their way out of all this.
I closed my eyes, using my bugs to stop Rachel from intervening for the second time.
I took a deep breath. Every instinct I had told me to run, to find shelter, to survive, or take cover. But I had to do this.
Instead, I used my bugs to whisper to Clockblocker, “Use your power.”
There was only one thing for him to use his power on. He froze the gun. Along with the gun, he froze the length of thread I’d attached to the weapon.
The thread, in turn, was held aloft by the bugs that flew as a curtain between Noelle and I.
I kept my eyes closed, relying on my bugs to feed me input, dissociating from my real self, because it kept me still, and that kept Echidna on course for the thread that extended vertically through the curtain.
Spider silk was, generally speaking, about two to three times as thick as the thinnest part of a safety razor. That was still pretty thin, especially when Clockblocker’s power rendered it immobile, utterly unyielding even as a monster with three times the mass of an African Elephant crashed into it.
She tried to pull to a stop as she made contact with the thread, but her momentum carried her all the way through. The bracing of her foremost limbs against the ground only helped to force the separation of the two halves.
Severed, the two pieces of her body crashed down to either side of me. Despite my best intentions, I stumbled a little at the impact.
“Hit the Eidolon-Clone,” I spoke to Miss Militia through my bugs, hurrying to step away from Noelle’s bisected form. “Hit him hard.“
The Eidolon-clone moved one arm in our direction, only to stop short. A thread that had draped his arm was now a rigid barrier, connected to the same thread that I’d positioned between Noelle and I. He tried to retreat, only to find the thread I’d circled around his neck holding him firm.
He started to flicker, no doubt to escape. One arm free. Then another.
Miss Militia hefted her rocket launcher. Our Eidolon was already flying to Legend’s rescue as she pulled the trigger. The Eidolon-clone wasn’t quite free when the warhead hit home. For extra measure the explosion drove him against the threads that had draped his body.
If I’d been good at the punchlines, I might have thrown one out there. The best I could come up with was, Flicker that.
“Watch the two pieces,” I communicated through my swarm, still backing away from Noelle. “Tattletale said there’s a core to her, that’s supplying the regeneration. Whichever half regenerates is the half with the core. We narrow it down, then we destroy it. We can win this.“
I could see Echidna’s body swelling, growing huge with tumorous bulges as she sought to rebuild her other half. Still, she was nigh-immobile, and the heroes were free to unload every offensive power they had on her. Wanton and Weld advanced, tearing into her, pulling people free and seeking something that might be her core. She was regenerating faster than they were dealing damage, but every passing moment saw one cape freed, more ground covered.
Her other half was decaying at the same time. The captives that were trapped in her flesh were revealed as it dessicated, and capes freed each person in turn.
She lurched, then forced herself into contact with her decaying other half, reconnecting to it. She was minus eleven captives, by my count, Alexandria among them, but she was reforming. I wouldn’t be able to bait her like that again, but I might be able to contain her.
I glanced at Clockblocker. Gully had carried him to Scapegoat, who had roused from unconsciousness, and he was getting care. He looked at me, offered me a curt nod.
I wasn’t sure how to respond, so I did the same.
Behind me, bugs could sense the approach of a containment van. Tattletale, I could hope, with Faultline’s crew, perhaps. Chevalier was perched in the fortified turret on top, his sword resting on one shoulder.
We can win this fight, I mused, and this time I could believe it.
But I was all too aware of the movement of a particular contingent of capes. Having deposited Clockblocker, Gully distanced herself from the other heroes, approached Weld and the red-skinned boy. The Cauldron-made, standing apart.
Across the battlefield, I was aware, there were very few people standing shoulder to shoulder. People were distanced from one another as though their personal space was ten feet across, avoiding eye contact, with no conversation, and I wasn’t seeing any upturn in morale. There wasn’t a cheer to be heard, and squad leaders weren’t giving orders to their subordinates.
I could only hope this divide wouldn’t prove as telling as the one I’d delivered to Noelle.
19.07
The heroes found positions and opened fire on Echidna. The difference in this and the fighting as it had been before was noticeable. Small, but noticeable. Capes weren’t communicating and teamwork was faltering as a result. Capes like the red lightning girl and Chronicler were struggling to find people to use their powers on.
I didn’t want anyone else running or flying headlong into the thread, so I gathered my more harmless and useless bugs in a thick cluster around each piece of thread, until each thread appeared to be a black bar a half-foot across.
Clockblocker appeared at my side. He was in fighting shape, though he didn’t look it with his damaged costume.
“Anything I can do?” he asked. “Anything else set up?”
I shook my head. “She dissolves the thread if it touches her flesh, and things are too frenetic. Someone would get hurt.”
“Gotcha,” he said.
He didn’t move from where he was standing. A minute passed as Echidna was bombarded. She wasn’t quite at full fighting strength, she didn’t have many capes to clone, and she was apparently hesitant to charge or make any sudden movements with the possibility of there being more thread.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Clockblocker asked.
“That I had something in mind?” I asked. “I guess a part of me thought that maybe if you figured out what I was doing, you wouldn’t have frozen the gun.”
“That’s not fair. I don’t think I’ve given you any reason to think I’m vindictive like that.”
“Not really,” I admitted. “Maybe I didn’t w
ant you to give her a tell, or do something that Eidolon might notice. I’m not sure why, not entirely.”
“So you’re not really doing anything that those guys out there aren’t. When it comes down to it, you’re suspicious of us, just like we are of each other.”
“Maybe,” I admitted. “It’s… a lot to take in. What do you even do from here on out?”
“I don’t know,” Clockblocker said.
A series of neon green concentric circles exploded outward from a point in the sky above, rippling out to disappear over each horizon. Eidolon had engaged one Alexandria-clone, and whatever he’d done seemed to have finished her off. One left.
Echidna belched out a mass of clones, and I added my bugs to the firepower that the heroes threw their way.
Some slipped past the loose perimeter the heroes had established, and were promptly gunned down.
“I’m guessing Tattletale told you the particulars of my power?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“The range? I’m surprised you knew it would work through interconnected pieces. Hell, I barely knew I’d be able to push that far. I guess that makes this one of the rare days my power’s working at peak efficiency? But you somehow knew that?”
I glanced over my shoulder at Tattletale. She was getting out of the van, and was joined by Faultline, Labyrinth, and four members of the Travelers: Sundancer, Ballistic, Genesis in her wheelchair and a blond boy who resembled but didn’t quite match Oliver in appearance. Tattletale was exchanging words with Regent. Getting an update?
“You’re not responding,” Clockblocker noted.
“I”m not sure what you want me to say.”
“Yes, Clockblocker,” he added a falsetto note to his voice, bent one wrist to a ninety degree angle as he raised his hand to his mouth, “Of course we know more about how your powers work than you do. How else would we kick your posteriors with such frequency?“
He faked a high society woman’s laugh, where the laugh was said as much as it was uttered. A cape nearby, one I recognized as Astrologer from the New York team, shot us a dirty look, before she returned to calling down projectiles from the sky.
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