Rachel snorted. “We do the chain thing again, cut him in half at the middle instead. Or cut off his head.”
“Honestly?” I spoke up, “I’m not sure he’d die if we cut off his head. And correct me if I’m wrong, but he could go after the people that carry the chain. Even if it’s someone like Eidolon, he could overheat and melt the part they’re holding on to.”
“You’re really a buzzkill,” Grace said.
I didn’t deny it. “There’s one more reason we should go, though. He’s going to-”
Retaliate.
Behemoth rose from beneath the ground a distance away. In a heartbeat, things shifted from a near-quiet to chaos. He was still glowing, and his claws crackled with electricity as he struck quickly, violently, and indiscriminately.
Three capes taken down, struck out of the sky by the bolts of electricity. Even if they’d survived that much, the kill aura and the radiation would end them.
He turned, facing us, but the Wards were already moving, their wheels squealing on the pavement before they peeled away.
It’s the Endbringer’s pattern. We hurt them or stall them enough, they change tactics, hit us back.
“Go!” I shouted.
Rachel moved, climbing astride her dog in an instant. She whistled for her other dogs, directing them to Imp, Parian, Foil and Citrine.
Golem’s hands absorbed some of the lightning that crackled around us. Not one stream, but a storm, with Behemoth at the eye of it.
And he was standing. He didn’t necessarily have a full leg, but he had the ability to stand upright, now.
And Rachel, as I saw her making her way to the Undersiders, looked determined.
Was it weird that she seemed more comfortable in the here and now than she had before the fight started? It wasn’t that she didn’t look scared, I could see the way her entire body was rigid, her hands clenched, white knuckled. But she had a role here, she fit into a dynamic.
We took off, moving behind cover, running, as Behemoth crashed through a line of buildings. Heroes from even half a mile away were lobbing attacks, and the stray shots that missed the Endbringer crashed down around us, tearing through buildings, turning stone to liquid, igniting nonflammable materials, one doing little damage but detonating so violently with the impact that my mounted teammates were nearly thrown free.
Behemoth roared, and I could see the Wards and Undersiders suffering. A dog shook its head in an attempt to shake off the noise, and lost its sense of direction. It crashed into a bike and sprawled. Parian, Foil and Grace were dismounted. Grace landed on her feet and physically ran, reaching for Tecton’s outstretched gauntlet. He extended a piledriver to give her something to hold onto.
Few bugs had managed to keep up, much less the ones with wires, but I brought a curtain between us and Behemoth. I was past the point where I wanted to conserve them. If it was lightning, I could only hope that Golem’s makeshift lightning rods and my wires would protect us.
But it was flame. It sheared through my swarm, and it splashed down around Parian, Foil and the dog.
The Endbringer had more aim than I’d expected. He wasn’t blind, despite the fact that his eye socket was empty. But he wasn’t entirely on target otherwise. Was he relying on another sense?
The Yàngbǎn intercepted the attack, raising forcefields. Parian did something with her thread, slapping the dog’s hindquarters, and it bolted. They were carried off, tied to its side, a flame still burning on Parian’s sleeve and the hem of her dress.
Someone, an Indian cape capable of getting inside Behemoth’s kill aura, closed the distance, and Behemoth was momentarily distracted by orange cords that bound his head, lashing him to the cape. With that, the others had a chance to escape.
“Regroup!” I called out, as I descended to the midst of the Undersiders and Wards. “I’ll point the way!”
The sound of the fighting stopped with a crash. Where was the motherfucker? I rose higher to check, but saw neither Behemoth nor the cape who’d been binding him. He’d burrowed.
It was quiet, all of a sudden, if not quite silent. The defending capes were spreading out, and were hovering in place or holding positions, rather than bombarding the landscape. The lightning and fire had stopped, and no shockwaves ripped through the city. The rumbling was intermittent, mild when it wasn’t almost imperceptible. The ringing in my ears was louder than the ambient noise.
This was his new tactic, burrowing, surfacing. But where was the retaliation? Their whole damn pattern centered around repaying us twice over for any abuse we inflicted on them.
The armband crackled, and I jumped, despite myself. The first message didn’t come through the static, but the second was clearer. “Be advised, seismic activity suggests the Endbringer is still local. Regroup and form defensive lines.“
I did a little mental math, then pressed the button on my armband. “Armband, note that Behemoth may have a likely target, roughly eight to fifteen miles north-northwest of India Gate.”
At least, that was my best guess, judging by the flight speeds Defiant had noted for my flight pack and the time it had taken me to travel.
Every armband in earshot repeated my message.
“Keep going!” I called out. “Keep moving!”
Surely he couldn’t keep up with us while moving underground. I didn’t want to underestimate his intelligence, but was he even capable of holding a grudge?
What was Behemoth really doing?
The travel was uneventful, uninterrupted and eerily quiet, as we made our way to our next destination. Three times, we stopped to pick up wounded, fashioning another quick sled for the dogs to accommodate all of them.
We reached the temple and delivered the sled to the temple doors. The Chicago Wards stopped to park their bikes off to one side. I waited for the Yàngbǎn to gather, extending my range, before I reached out to Phir Sē.
“He’s underground. He may be coming for you,” I informed him, speaking through my swarm.
“I assumed,” Phir Sē responded. “Thank you.”
“You need to leave, soon.”
“I have a way out. I’ll leave when trouble begins. Could you rid me of the bugs? When you leave them, they fly about me, and I cannot afford distractions.”
I hesitated, then removed the bugs, shifting them to nearby rooms and corridors. I left only a pocket of them to communicate with. “Be safe.“
“You as well, Weaver. Thank you, for the cooperation.”
“Have you gained a bit of faith?“
“Faith gained in this, perhaps, faith lost in another.”
“I know what you mean.“
“Good bye. If we both live, perhaps we talk again, in a less dangerous time.”
“Good bye,” I responded.
I drove the remainder of my swarm from his chamber. It once again became a blind spot, an emptiness in my power’s range.
“You okay?” Tecton asked, as he caught up with me. He held Cuff in his heavy armored hands, as though she were a small child.
“Saying goodbye to a self-professed madman. Is she okay?”
“She’s breathing, but I can tell she’s hurting.”
I nodded, glancing over my shoulder as the others caught up. Bitch brought her dogs.
We entered the front door, and I saw the amassed capes within. Innumerable teams, looking after their wounded, lacking in direction. The temple interior had no benches, and bedding had been laid out flat on the ground, capes set down in rows. Medical teams were scrambling to take care of them, and capes with first aid experience were hurrying to help. Dispatch already had his costume jacket off, his sleeves rolled up, and his hands dirty, taking care of a cape in power armor. Parian was sitting on a mattress, tearing at her sleeve to show the burn, with Foil and Citrine beside her.
I couldn’t help but notice that more than half of the capes were covered in white sheets. That wasn’t counting the innumerable capes left lying dead in the streets, like we’d done with Regent. Behemoth kill
ed more easily than he wounded.
Clockblocker had fallen. I looked for him in the crowd of injured. I didn’t see him. Then again, I had my suspicions already. This only helped justify them.
Too many others I needed to track, to watch for. But I couldn’t use my bugs, and the dust and smoke had desaturated the colors. Blood, in other places, marred the colors further.
“Miss,” a local man in white said, in an accented voice, “You cannot bring these animals.”
He was talking to Rachel, who glowered in response.
“Leave the dogs outside,” I said.
“I’m not leaving my fucking dogs,” she said, her voice hard.
Damn it. My eyes roved over the crowd, but I couldn’t see Grue or Tattletale. I didn’t want to use my bugs, not in a sterile environment. It was left to me to rein her in some.
“You can come and look for Grue and Tattletale with me, or you can stay outside with the dogs.”
She scowled, and for a second, I thought she’d stride out of the doors. Instead, she pointed, barking out orders, “Out! Go guard!”
The dogs filed out of the double doors of the temple. I could see the man relax visibly.
Don’t let Grue be dead. Don’t let Grue be dead, I thought. Tattletale was okay, she was okay the last time I saw her.
“My friends, they were stable,” I told the man in white. I saw Tecton crossing the room to lay Cuff out on one of the thin mattresses, turned my attention back to the man. “They were here since a little while ago. Where are they?”
“Stable? They were better?”
“Mostly better.”
“Up,” he said, pointing at the nearest stairwell.
I used my flight pack without thinking, to give myself extra speed as I headed to the stairs. Rachel was just behind me, her boots thudding on the floor.
There were more wounded above, recuperating in a long, narrow room with beds on one side. In a grim twist, like a reminder of how close they’d come to dying, the opposite side of the room had more mattresses on the floor, more bodies.
How many dead, all in all? Fifteen in this room alone, placed side by side, their shoulders touching.
“Skitter,” Grue said, as I approached. Tattletale stood at his bedside, her phone in hand. There were no curtains here. No privacy. This was all improvised, care facilities hashed together with what the locals had on hand. He still wore his helmet, but he had his jacket off. He noted the arrival of the others. “Imp. Bitch.”
“It’s Weaver now,” I corrected him.
“You’ll-”
“I know,” I said. I looked at his arm. The burned flesh had angry blisters. “You okay?”
A hand pushed at me, moving me out of the way. Imp. She approached her brother’s bedside.
“Hey kid,” he said. Beside him, I could see Tattletale’s reaction. She was silent, silenced by the damage to her throat, but she communicated well enough, that she’d drawn the full conclusion from our presence. Her eyes closed, her head lowered. There was no smile on her face, as she heaved out a whistling sigh through the plastic tube taped to her throat-wound.
“Regent’s dead,” Imp said.
I could see Grue go still.
As if reminding us of the culprit, there was a distant rumble. It grew steadily in intensity, then stopped abruptly. As far as I could tell, with bugs spread out over the area within two thousand feet or so, the Endbringer wasn’t moving any closer to us.
“I should have been there,” Grue said.
“Yeah, well, you weren’t,” Imp retorted.
I put a hand on her shoulder. She tried to knock it away, and I dug my fingers in as I refused to cooperate. It must have hurt; my old costume’s fingertips had clawed points. She didn’t say anything on the subject.
“No, Grue,” I told him. “You want to feel bad? That’s allowed, but I forbid you from taking the actual blame for this.”
“You can’t do that,” he said. His voice was hard. “I’m team leader, not you. I’m supposed to pick up the slack, remember? I’m supposed to manage these guys. So don’t turn around and decide shit like this, when you left. I dropped the ball. I didn’t move fast enough, I got hurt, and because of that, I wasn’t there to help, to lead.”
“You’re not allowed to take the blame, because if you start, then I’ve got to own up to it too,” I said. “I-”
My breath hitched. It caught me off guard. I had to stop and take a deep breath.
Staying calm, composed, with my words carefully measured out, I said, “-I was there, and there was nothing I could do. And if you’re saying you could have done better, I’ve got to think I could have too. So I’ll match you one for one on any guilt trips.”
He sighed, heavy. “Fuck.”
“Fuck,” Imp echoed him.
“Fuck,” Rachel followed, from the entrance to the room, as if we were toasting Regent in our own messed up way. Tattletale was nodding.
“Fuck,” I agreed.
“Christ,” Grue said. “What do you even say to that? How… how do you even pay your respects to a guy like him?”
“He was a jerk, and worse,” I said. I saw Imp bristle, but held on to her shoulder, “And he died for Imp’s sake.”
Grue looked startled at that, as much as one could look startled with an all-consuming costume like the one he wore. Tattletale, beside him, was unfazed. She frowned a little.
“Christ,” he said, again.
“So maybe we respect him by respecting that.”
There was no response to that for a few seconds.
“Yeah,” Imp said, her voice small. “I’m going to fucking kill his dad for him.”
“That’s not what I meant,” I said. “I meant we should remember the best part of him.”
“That part of him would’ve killed his dad too,” Imp said.
I sighed. I wouldn’t win here.
I changed the subject, seeing how quiet Grue was. “You should know, Grue, we got ours back. We hurt him. Behemoth.”
Grue raised his head, meeting my eyes with the empty black eye sockets of his mask.
“The others will explain,” I said. I let my hand fall from Imp’s shoulder. “You wouldn’t believe how much I want to be an Undersider again, right this moment… fuck me, I want to remember the guy, to reminisce. But this isn’t over, and I’ve got another team to help look after.”
“We’ll-” Grue started. He stopped as some doctors came barreling in, wheeling in beds with unconscious capes.
“Out!” one of them shouted at us. “No more visiting, there isn’t room!”
“Asshole!” Imp snarled, jumping out of the way as someone moved the bed beside Grue’s, nearly sandwiching her between the two.
“Go,” Grue ordered her. “Go irritate someone who isn’t loaded with painkillers.”
“A way of remembering Regent?” she asked, as if she were trying to be funny, but there was a break to her voice as she altered the pitch to make it a question.
“Exactly,” he said.
“Fuck it,” she said, under her breath. “Fuck it, fuck it.”
We left the room, with only Grue and Tattletale staying. The three of us made our way down the stairs, Rachel just to my right.
I glanced over my shoulder at Imp. Her head was lowered a fraction, her arms folded. Her gaze was on the rows and columns of injured and dead capes in the main hall.
We hadn’t brought Regent’s body. We’d left it lying in the streets, too busy trying to stay alive to collect it. Was that what she was thinking about?
There was a rumble, with a shaking that affected the whole structure. Something distant, beyond my power’s range. A heavy crash. Somewhere in a northwesterly direction.
Phir Sē, I thought. Had that been his complex?
At the entrance to the temple, heroes were gathering. Our last stand. I could see the Chicago wards at one corner. Tecton was talking to Wanton, who was on crutches. Wanton’s right arm ended in a stump at the elbow, bandaged with crim
son on the end.
Bad luck, I thought.
I joined Tecton, only to realize that Rachel had accompanied me. I supposed she didn’t have anywhere else to go.
Imp didn’t either. Another glance showed her lagging behind the group, clearly lost in thought.
I lowered my voice “Rachel, maybe you can do me a favor?”
“Hm?”
I ordered my thoughts, then voiced them, “Grue and Tattletale are too injured to help out. I’m focused on other stuff, and Parian and Foil are looking after each other. Can you keep an eye on Imp?”
Rachel made a face. “I thought you wanted me to do something.”
“This is key,” I said. “She needs someone to be there, right now. That’s all.”
“I don’t know what the fuck I’m supposed to do. What if she gets…?”
Rachel trailed off. Emotional?
“Support her,” Tecton cut in. I suppressed the urge to wince. He went on, “She’s your teammate, right?”
“How the fuck do I support someone?” she asked. “Stupid. Not my thing.”
“You-” I started, but Tecton was already talking, his voice deeper, his conviction stronger. Grace was listening in as well, now.
“Empathize,” he said.
Rachel glowered at him, unimpressed.
He tried again, earnest, “Okay, here’s a cheat I learned in a leadership seminar. It’s called active listening. Someone says something, a complaint, or a criticism, or they’re excited about something that happened to them. For a lot of us, our instinct is to offer a solution, or expand on an idea, to fix or offer something. The key is to think about how they’re feeling, be receptive to that, and parrot it back to them. They just got a new car, and they’re happy about it? A simple ‘that’s excellent’ or ‘you must be so proud’ works. It leaves room for them to keep talking, to know you’re listening. For your teammate who just lost someone she obviously cared about, just recognizing that she’s upset and she’s right to feel upset, that’s enough.”
I opened my mouth to say something, but I couldn’t even begin to sum up how useless this advice was to Rachel in particular.
“That’s retarded,” Rachel told Tecton.
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