I glanced to my right. ”Foil. Can you use your power on just the tip of an arrow?”
“Yeah. But why would you want me to? Fucks up the trajectory.”
“Just thinking,” I said.
“You have a plan,” Rachel said. There was a measure of smugness in her voice. No, I was reading her wrong. Satisfaction?
“Maybe, yeah,” I said. I glanced at the space outside the bubble. The people were moving at a glacial pace, heads turned our way. Eidolon flew in the sky above. ”We need to hurt Behemoth, and hurt him badly enough that he gets distracted. Then I signal Phir Sē, and hopefully we aren’t vaporized in the wake of all that.”
“Explain,” Dispatch said.
“Each of us has a role to play,” I said. ”Timing’s essential. So’s luck…”
■
The bubble burst, and we moved into action. Behemoth had barely advanced from his position. The others were still running. We’d earned ourselves two minutes to think, to plan and discuss.
I’d gathered countless bugs through my journey across the city. I’d briefly lost track of them when I was teleported away from Phir Sē, but they were still there. Relatively few had died, even from the start, their lives thrown away to test the boundaries of fires or gushing water, or shielding people from the roar.
A lot of bugs, held in reserve.
“Golem!” I called out. ”Metal hands. Doesn’t matter how big. Find a way.”
He glanced at me, still jogging away from the Endbringer. Still, he managed to find a shop with a metal shutter at the doorway. He plunged his hand inside it, and hands appeared in various places across the street. A large one from a rickshaw, another from a car’s engine block, small ones from the metal grilles covering windows.
Half of my bugs gathered. Another half began chewing through power lines. The transformers here were nightmares, tangled messes, and had an abundance of wires.
Each of the others was carrying out their tasks, their roles. Rachel had a chain stretched between two dogs, and was attaching the chain from one dog’s harness to it to extend the thing further. Annex stretched it further, extending it so each link was nearly two feet long, thin. Citrine was tinting the area between us and Behemoth.
Dispatch called to Eidolon, and the ex-Triumvirate member descended. Dispatch contained them.
Eidolon needed time, and he needed to hear the details of our plan. Dispatch would give him both.
In the distance, Behemoth pushed his way through the forcefield, shattering it. We had a minute, if that.
I waited impatiently as the others tended to the chain.
Dispatch’s effect ended. He and Eidolon relocated to the other end of the street, Dispatch took a second to catch his breath, and then he used his power on Eidolon again.
Come on, come on, I thought. This could go awry with one lucky shot from Behemoth.
“Yangban!” I shouted, no doubt mispronouncing the title. ”Forcefields! Protect the teams!”
Lightning crashed against the forcefields only moments after they went up. Some diverted to the metal hands.
And my swarm started to arrive. Millions of insects, bearing power lines that they were still stripping of insulation, hauling the wire itself, bearing the ones who bore the wire in turn, or hauling on silk that was attached to the wire.
I’d hoped to drape it over the hands, to wrap it around. I was forced to attach it to the base of the hands instead. Too heavy to move otherwise. Conductive hands, conductive wire.
“Go!” Foil shouted.
The dogs moved. Bitch rode one, hollered commands to get them to stay apart. The chain stretched taut between them, long, thin.
I saw Dispatch’s effect end. Eidolon took flight, following.
“This’ll work?” Imp asked. Her voice sounded more hollow than Grue’s did when he used his power. I jumped a little to hear her suddenly speaking beside me.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Because if this is revenge for Regent, it has to work.”
“It’s for him if it works,” I said.
“Mm,” Imp said. ”I’ll kill you if it doesn’t, then.”
“We’re all screwed if it doesn’t,” I said.
“Mm,” she said, and she didn’t say anything else.
The Endbringer lashed out with a mess of lightning. It caught one dog before it disappeared behind cover. The dog slowed, but it recovered and found its pace, redoubled its efforts to catch up, as Rachel continued to shout commands to keep the chain taut.
Behemoth used fire, instead, targeting Rachel, and Citrine’s power dampened the effects. That was her role in this.
It was just a question of whether it would run out prematurely, if the dogs would get far enough.
He clapped, and a shockwave tore through the area. Rachel was already directing the dogs; they moved so there was cover, buildings between them and Behemoth. The chain, imbued by Foil’s ability to shear through anything, cut through the buildings as though there was nothing there.
And just like that, they made it. The dogs passed Behemoth, a hundred and twenty feet of chain maintained between them, and the chain cut through him as easily as Foil’s arbalest bolts had.
Too low. There was just a little slack, and they weren’t high enough off the ground. The chain cut through the soles of his feet, through the lower part of one ankle. Insignificant. He didn’t even fall over.
Then I heard Rachel through my swarm. A shout. ”Back!”
The dogs stopped, one doing so so abruptly that Rachel was nearly thrown to the ground. Nearly touched the chain, losing a limb.
The Endbringer moved his hands in anticipation of a clap, and Exalt used his power. Blades of wind, a hundred strikes in a moment, a thrust of telekinetically controlled air from across the city, rushing past Behemoth, making the Endbringer stumble. The clap arrested.
Rachel held on as the wind hit her, held on as each dog turned a hundred and eighty degrees. They passed Behemoth a second time, only this time, Rachel shouted another command. One of the first I’d heard her give. I knew now that it was the command for ‘up’.
Her dog leaped up to the highest point on a ruined building, and the chain caught Behemoth at the knee this time.
They got halfway before Foil’s power wore off. The dog tumbled in midair, Rachel thrown, flipping head over heels.
Behemoth crashed to the ground, one leg a stump.
Eidolon caught Rachel with one arm, and extended the other towards Behemoth.
“Now,” my bugs told Phir Sē, as the field surrounded the Endbringer, a forcefield, extending into the Earth, surrounding Behemoth on all sides, a cylinder.
Phir Sē’s portal opened beneath Behemoth’s feet, aimed upward, and a plume of light speared into the sky, consuming Behemoth, covering him.
Eidolon’s power held. He’d had the situation explained, had been given time to let his power build up to full strength, and his passenger had supplied something with a durability on par with Clockblocker’s ability. Inviolable.
“That’ll do,” Imp said, quiet. The light continued to flow upward, a narrow column no more than fifty feet across, billowing out only slightly as it reached the top of Eidolon’s barrier, parting smoke and clouds in a circular ring, revealing the intensely blue sky above. The entire sky seemed to brighten as the light dissipated beyond our atmosphere.
Phir Sē’s light faded, and the barrier collapsed.
Dust continued to fill the area, plumes of it.
Behemoth lurched forward.
Not quite Behemoth, but a skeleton, something like a skeleton. Emaciated, a black-red frame dripping with ichor, it had all of the key features, the basic underlying structure with the horns and the gaping mouth, the claws and the way the shoulders were broad enough to host his bulky frame, but a good eighty percent of him had been torn away, shredded. A skeleton covered in a veneer of meat.
“Go,” I whispered, feeling a quiet despair. ”Go home. Go underground. Leave. We hurt y
ou as badly as we’ve ever hurt you bastards. That’s enough.”
He reached out, and lightning reached across the landscape, striking Golem’s metal hands, into the grounding wires I’d rigged. The hands melted with the intensity of the strikes.
Behemoth wasn’t any weaker than he had been. Not in terms of what he could dish out. As much as he was wounded, he was healing. Even from where we stood, I could see him healing, flesh expanding, swelling, regenerating.
The Endbringer lurched forward on three intact limbs, starting to glow with that radioactive light of his. He was ignoring or ignorant to Eidolon’s escape, as the ‘hero’ carried Rachel away, the dogs following on the ground.
He was continuing to make his way towards Phir Sē, who had formed another portal, was gathering power for a second strike.
“Retreat,” I said, only to realize I wasn’t loud enough for anyone but Imp to hear. I raised my voice for the others. ”Go! Retreat and regroup!”
24.05
The damage Behemoth was wreaking in New Delhi was, I thought, a microcosm of what was happening all over the world. Three or four attacks a year, since the Simurgh had appeared.
The fight with Leviathan in Brockton Bay had been a good day. We’d lost people, we’d lost good capes, but we’d more or less bounced back, made it three-quarters of the way back to where we needed to be, in a matter of months. There had been ugliness, infighting, a hell of a lot of doubt, but we’d started to make our way back to where we should be. It had been the lowest number of casualties we’d had in an Endbringer attack in years, not counting a few of the Simurgh attacks. A good day.
This? This isn’t a good day.
Behemoth roared.
This is the other end of the scale.
For nearly twenty years, we’d endured intermittent Endbringer attacks, and the end result was, globally, what was happening here in a matter of hours. We were divided, scared, fighting among one another, and our defenses were being eroded. We were being forced into pockets of defense, instead of a united one where we all stood together. Those pockets, in turn, were at risk of being wiped out with a series of decisive blows.
Yes, we had our good moments. Doing as much damage to him as we just had, that was a good moment. But we had bad ones too, and the end result was always the same.
The bastard -the bastards, plural- kept coming.
Phir Sē’s light had cleared smoke and dust from the sky, though it had been almost entirely directed upward, with concentric rings still marking the skyline. Smoke was free to rise, and Behemoth was in plain sight. He was moving on three limbs, planting hands on the ruined, half-toppled and flame-scorched buildings to stay more upright.
His body, though, was a mix of high contrasts. His flesh, what little was visible through the black ichor that dripped from his frame, glowed a silver-white. The remaining material of his claws, teeth and horns remained black.
Tecton had pulled ahead of the group, and turned abruptly, skidding to a stop. Cuff’s body was folded over the back of the bike, limp. The Yàngbǎn had two more bodies with them, as well. I’d taken my flight pack back from Imp, and was airborne as he raised a gauntlet to get my attention. I descended to meet him, and we were soon joined by Dispatch, and Exalt, who carried an unconscious Revel.
“Where to?” Tecton asked. His voice was hoarse. He was recovering, it seemed.
“If we’re sticking with the regular plan,” Dispatch said, “We should gather with other capes, form another defensive line. I think we should hold to the plan. Working together with a less than ideal plan is best, until we can come up with something better.”
I glanced over my shoulder at Behemoth’s barely visible profile. How far away was safe, if he was emitting that kind of radiation?
Far, far away, I answered my own unspoken question.
“Weaver?” Tecton asked me.
I ventured, “There’s a temple, not far from here. Tattletale’s there, medical facilities. Direction he’s moving, he’s headed in that general direction. We protect them, hold position, see if we can’t figure out a way to keep him away from Phir Sē. It fits with Dispatch’s idea of sticking to the plan.”
“Why don’t we press the offensive?” Grace asked. She still sat astride her bike.
“Believe me, I really want to press the offensive,” I said, “But I don’t want to get close to him while he’s glowing like that. That would be a pretty good reason unto itself.”
“He won’t be using the radiation forever,” Tecton observed.
“There’s another key reason,” I said. “Our guys are scared, maybe a little desperate. It’s not a good mindset for fighting.”
The heroes turned to look at the others, who had apparently taken our stopping as an excuse to tend to other business. Golem had stopped to raise some hands, more lightning rods between us and the Endbringer, and others were flanking him. The Yàngbǎn were looking after their injured.
“Desperate,” Exalt said, gazing at the rank and file troops.
I wanted to join the others, to get involved and help, offer what little medical care I could, and the mental and emotional support I knew they needed, but we needed a greater direction, a mission. I turned my attention back to Exalt. “Regent was desperate, maybe, and he died. I’m scared that our side would take risks or put themselves in danger if we ordered them back into the fight. This is getting uglier by the minute, and we’re prone to doing stupid shit if we’re backed into a corner, or if we feel like we need to end this fast so our friends can get the medical help they need. Let’s get the medical help, catch our breath.”
“There’re more capes joining the fight now,” Grace said. I wasn’t sure if that was a rejection of my plan or an agreement. I followed her gaze to see a torrent of flames making its way in Behemoth’s general direction. A cape was hurling fireballs with some sort of space-warping effect tied to them, so they swelled dramatically in size with each second they were airborne.
I assumed it would be to Behemoth’s advantage, to have access to that kind of flame, but he wasn’t deflecting them. The fire exploded through the area around him, and I could see him lose his grip on a building as he reeled from the impact, slumped down to a place below the distant skyline of damaged and half-collapsed buildings. Orange light lit up the area around him, marking the areas that had been set on fire.
The fireball hurler, barely visible as a speck against a backdrop of black-brown smoke, stopped abruptly.
“Why’d he stop?” I wondered aloud.
“The radiation?” Grace offered.
“The radiation was there before he went on the offensive,” I said. “I don’t see Behemoth retaliating, but the cape stopped lobbing fireballs.”
My bugs noted Eidolon’s descent. I turned around to see him depositing Rachel on the ground. She shrugged out of his grip without so much as a ‘thanks’.
“He went underground,” Eidolon informed us.
“He ran? It’s over?”
“No,” Eidolon said. He didn’t elaborate as he watched Rachel back away and whistle to call her dogs. The opaque pane of his mask was heavily shrouded beneath the heavy hood he wore, a dim blue-green glow emanating from within. He was burned, his costume scorched and shredded in places, but the body armor beneath had more or less held. Shaped to give the illusion that he had more muscle than he did, it seemed. I could see blood running along the cracks at one panel of armor, where he’d apparently sustained a heavy blow. He was mortal, after all. Eidolon could bleed.
Fitting, that he layered disguises behind disguises. Regent had done the same thing, to a lesser degree, had worn armor behind the deceptively light and delicate shirts he’d worn, had padding beneath his masks to cushion any blows, had hid a taser in his scepter.
I felt a pang of guilt, a swelling lump in my throat. I’d never really gotten to know Regent, not to the extent that I’d gotten to know the others. He hadn’t really revealed much about himself, either. I’d reminisced before about the intimacy
of friendships, about the sharing of vulnerabilities, allowing others to be close, exposing oneself to possible harm. I’d done it with Emma, back in the day, and I’d suffered for it. I’d allowed myself to form a kind of intimacy with the Undersiders, and it might well have been a reason we’d survived this far. Regent hadn’t established that kind of intimacy with us.
Except maybe for Imp.
He’d hidden so much. I’d only glimpsed the seriously disordered personality that lurked beneath the outer image of the lazy, disaffected teenager, had only seen traces of that part of him that just didn’t care that he could enslave a person’s body and leave their mind as little more than a helpless observer. And beneath that aspect of himself, he’d had something else, something that had driven him to distract Behemoth so Imp might live.
My eyes fell on Eidolon. Was there a similarity to Regent? Lies, deception, a false face behind a false face behind a false face?
What was at the core?
Eidolon turned away from his observations of Behemoth, and he briefly met my eyes.
I felt intimidated, despite myself, but I didn’t look away.
“Alexandria,” I said, “How is she-”
And he took off, not even waiting for me to finish.
“-still alive?” I finished.
“I don’t like him,” Rachel commented.
“Nobody does,” Dispatch said. Rachel seemed to accept that with a measure of satisfaction.
“And why won’t this motherfucker die?” Rachel asked, looking towards Behemoth.
“He’s been fighting us for twenty years and he hasn’t died yet,” I said.
“So?”
“So… he’s tough,” I said. It was hard to answer a question so… what was the word? Innocent? Guileless?
“We’re tough. Let’s fuck him up.”
“I was arguing for that,” Grace said.
Oh great. They’re of like mind.
“But,” Tecton cut in, turning his head her way, “Skitter had a good reason as to why we shouldn’t. We need to recover, recuperate. Other heroes are picking up the slack, applying some pressure. Or they were until he burrowed,”
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