Cuff, to her credit, was ready. I could sense her catching ahold of the building’s face, using the cover of the rising snow around her to climb up and disappear into the alley.
“Status, Weaver?” Grace’s voice came over the channel.
“All kosher,” I replied, managing to sound calm. I walked to the far end of the hall and turned a corner, until I stood by a window with a view of the villains. ”Waiting to see which way they go, so sit tight, Golem and Tecton.”
“Fuck,” Topsy was saying, as he approached the wreckage. Mockshow was using her power to animate the chain and help herself out of it.
“What the hell was that?” Mockshow asked.
“Wards. … this, it’s a trap,” Watch said. He’d made his way back down the side of the building, where Topsy’s power had oriented gravity at a right angle. He was calm as he spoke, “They shut down this … area, and they’re making …cal strikes to disable us. Even the fact that …show here doesn’t have a … and I’m wearing sneakers instead of boots, they wanted that. They want us unprepared, angry, even cold.”
“I’m paying you to get me out of this kind of situation,” Topsy said. ”Do your job. How do we handle this?”
“They want us pissed enough to fight,” Watch said. ”Don’t. Also… yeah. Bug bitch tagged us. Here.”
He reached for Mockshow, and she slapped his hand away. He caught her wrist, simultaneously capturing her arm and blocking the path of the cockroach I’d hidden in between her sweatshirt and her jacket. He plucked it out.
“Ew! Ew, ew!”
With a systematic, accurate and patient series of movements, Watch began catching and killing every single one of my bugs. Slowly but surely, I was being rendered blind and deaf. It would make tracking a great deal harder.
“Cuff,” I communicated over the earbud, “Let me have the flight pack.”
Dutifully, she unhitched the harness and let me pilot the thing back in my general direction. Annex and I made our way outdoors, back to the fire escape, as Watch killed the last bugs.
“Ew, ew, ew,” Mockshow moaned, with each bug that was revealed.
“… … think we should fight?” Topsy asked. ”… …ing kids. … money, my rep…”
“Could fight,” Watch said. ”…ther plan. Let me kill these last few, then I’ll …”
Over the ensuing four or five seconds, he killed the bugs I’d planted on him despite my best effort to retreat them to inconvenient and inaccessible areas.
My flight pack returned to me, and I strapped it on, before flying to the roof for a better vantage point.
“Going to be hard to track,” I reported. I could see them running. ”Watch killed my tracking bugs. They’re heading north, along Addison. roughly four hundred feet away from my location.”
It was Revel’s voice, not Grace’s, that came over the channel. ”Watch?”
“With Topsy and Mockshow and five underlings with guns and no apparent powers. They’re on foot, trucks are disabled. Can I get a roger?”
“Roger,” Tecton said, “Moving to intercept with Golem.“
“Belay that,” Revel cut in. ”I’m not throwing my Wards to the wolves like this. Abort. Protectorate moves in.“
“You let them face Behemoth,” I said.
“Different story.”
“We’re safe,” I said, taking flight to keep my eyes on the villains. ”There’ more danger if you derail the plan. They won’t even see us.”
“Watch sees everything,” Revel answered. ”Everything within range of conventional eyesight, from every angle.“
“Revel,” I said. ”We won’t get close to him. Promise. I’ve been on the team for six months, I’ve shown you guys I can play nice, play safe, avoid making trouble. But you guys brought me on board to be the shot caller in the field, with Tecton as the leader. Let me do what I’m supposed to do and call the shots. It’ll be a win for the good guys, I promise.”
There was a long pause. I’m up against Revel and the Director, now. My advocate had switched stances.
I took flight again to maintain a good distance. I wasn’t sure, but I thought maybe Watch had briefly turned my way.
He knew I was following, but he didn’t seem to mind. He had a plan. Maybe more than one.
They wasted no time in putting it into action. Topsy used his power over a wide area, reversing gravity’s effect. Snow began to fly in the air, and was soon joined by a pair of cars. They reached the top of Topsy’s effect, caught between the two gravities, and began to rotate aimlessly in the weightless middle-ground between normal gravity and the area Topsy had altered.
Then he shifted gravity’s direction again. An attack, such as it was. The snow and cars fell in my direction. Were flung, for lack of a better term. I flew for cover, ungainly as I raised the insulated box as a shield, snow and ice slamming into the buildings around me, pinging off of the metal. I managed to duck out of sight. The cars, for their part, were only thrown into the street a block away.
It wasn’t an attack he’d aimed, but a scattershot approach, meant to scare, to allow the possibility that he’d get lucky.
And it had given them the chance to try and slip away. A few minutes, while I recouped and tried to get my sights on them in the midst of the stirring snow and limited visibility.
“Okay,” Revel said. ”Only because we can’t move the Protectorate heroes there fast enough. You are not to engage.”
“Roger,” I reported, my relief mixed with a frustration that the go-ahead had come so late.
Their attempt to occupy me and break away might have worked, if it weren’t for Golem and Tecton. The villains had come to a complete stop as they reached the barrier. A row of asphalt and concrete hands, the gaps filled by Tecton’s power. The wall was as tall as the buildings on either side of it, spanning the breadth of the street.
Topsy began to use his power, moving snow at the far left of the wall, no doubt intending to scale the structure, move over the wall. Watch stopped him.
They turned to run instead, moving parallel with the wall.
Watch, I guessed, had seen Tecton, Golem, and the two PRT trucks on the other side of the wall, ready to spray the villains with containment foam.
By the time Topsy and his crew reached the next street over, the PRT van had pulled to a stop. Golem was outside the vehicle, creating another barrier. The implication was clear. Every escape route would be cut off.
This was a battle of attrition, a patient fight, with civilians kept out of reach. We’d let them get tired, frustrated, cold, and we’d break their spirits.
The goal here wasn’t just to win. It was to win so irrevocably that we took the fight out of them altogether, left them without any hope that they could win the next time.
Topsy hit Golem and the truck with flipped gravity. Both moved, but neither lifted off the ground. Even before he started raising the wall, Golem would have used his power to hold his feet against the ground, to grab the truck’s axle. Tecton would be waiting inside, ready to leap out and break the hands if necessary.
The villains could have continued. In their shoes, I might have. It made sense, to force Tecton and Golem to stop and start until an opening presented itself.
Except they were cold, tired, and being countered at every turn was starting to take a psychological toll.
They might have split up, scattered, but they didn’t. Again, they suspected a counterplan. Which we did have. Golem and Tecton could have tripped up the most problematic combatants while the rest of us picked off the weakest members one by one. I didn’t have bugs, but I could fly, and I had coiled lassos of silk cord that I could use in a pinch, along with a taser that I could use if I wanted to end things sooner than later. A good attack from above, I could manage. If they went inside, I could unload the bugs I had in my insulated box.
They had a different plan in mind. They reversed direction and headed straight for a restaurant with a sign showing a gold dragon against a red background.
/> “Grace,” I said. ”Wei shu wu? Does typing it into the computer turn up anything?”
“A cover business for a group with affiliations to the Folk,” Revel volunteered.
“We safe to harass them, or-”
“No. They have people with powers, and that’s beyond the scope of this manhunt.“
“Can you find the number at the building? A restaurant, Wei shu wu.”
“Weaver,” Revel said, her tone a warning.
“Please,” I said, as the villains disappeared inside.
Revel only sighed.
A moment later, the phone rang, and I could hear a voice.
“Wei shu wu dining. Would you like delivery? We can also arrange reservations if needed.“
“We would, if it’s no trouble,” I said, hoping I was connected. ”Eight criminals just entered your restaurant on Addison. They’re cold, bedraggled, a little desperate. It’s an ugly situation, and I’m sorry for the trouble that’s found its way to your doorstep.”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
Playing dumb?
“It was trouble they started,” I said. ”They crossed lines, and now that we’re coming after them, they’ve come running to your place for shelter.”
“We can hardly offer anyone shelter.”
“I know,” I said. ”But call your boss, if you need to. Let them know that the heroes aren’t going to start a fight, but the villains inside the building need to leave and get taken into custody. If this goes any further, we’re not going to press you, but it’s going to draw attention. People will wonder why the bad guys are hiding there.”
“Weaver,” it was a man’s voice this time, over the comms. ”You don’t have the authority to make promises or offers.“
“We can’t make them leave,” the man from the restaurant said, his voice a whisper. ”We don’t have ability to make threats.”
Because you’re hapless restaurant owners or because your gang doesn’t have the clout there to go head to head with Topsy?
“Don’t hang up the phone,” I said, “Use your cell phones, talk to anyone you can think of that might help. Bosses, franchise owners, whoever. Fill them in. Let them know that the guests in your store include men called Topsy and Watch. If they ask who I am, you tell them I’m a superhero called Weaver.”
“From the video?”
“From the video,” I said.
His tone changed, as if he’d shifted mental gears, at that. He sounded vaguely plaintive. ”You’re talking as if my boss is an important man, but-”
“You’re just a restaurant employee,” I said. ”I understand. Call whoever. We’ll figure this out together.”
There was a muffled sound, as if he was covering the phone’s mouthpiece with his hand.
“You’re talking as if you’re on the same side,” the man said. The Director, I was pretty sure.
“Weaver,” Revel chimed in, sounding annoyed.
“Mute me so he doesn’t hear?” I asked.
“Already done,” Revel said. ”This isn’t the way we should do this.”
I bit my lip. I wanted to retort, to argue, but I knew there were too many listening ears.
This is exactly what we should be doing.
“They’re people,” I said. ”They’re bad guys, maybe, but they’re all people. Topsy and Watch and Mockshow want the same things we do, to be safe, warm, dry and well rested, and we’re taking that away from them. And the people who work with this restaurant? They don’t want to deal with people like Topsy and Watch. All we have to do to resolve this is make it easier to deal with us than to deal with the other villains.”
“We shouldn’t be dealing with them, period,” the Director said.
“We-” I started to reply, then I stopped.
Topsy, Watch and Mockshow had stepped from the building.
“They just decided to leave,” the restaurant employee said. His voice shook a little.
I could see the body language of the three villains and their henchmen. Topsy kicked the window at the outside of the restaurant, and a crack appeared in it. He shouted something I couldn’t make out from my vantage point.
I’m sure they did, I thought. But I only said. ”Thank you for cooperating.”
“Thank you for talking me through this,” the man said.
With that, he hung up.
Something had gone on that I hadn’t overheard. An exchange of words, a message from the Folk?
It didn’t matter right now. I watched as the villains made their way down the street, then broke into a store to find shelter from the cold.
It was over. I could read it in their body language. As much as the Director had wanted to wear me down, to have me sit in the cold with nothing to occupy myself with but the five minute check-ins, we’d achieved the same thing against the villains, and we’d been successful in doing it. This was only residual stubbornness.
My arms were stiff with the weight of my bug box. I was glad to set down on the roof and deploy the bugs, flooding the building and driving the villains out into the elements. They had winter clothing they’d stolen, but it wasn’t enough to restore the warmth they’d already lost.
By the time they found more shelter, Annex and Cuff had met up with a PRT van and been delivered to the scene. Annex approached from behind, slithering close, and then used his power to open up a closed storefront, allowing cold to pour into the building’s interior.
This time, when the villains emerged, they did so with arms raised in surrender.
“We did it,” I muttered.
“Be wary of Watch,” Revel said. ”Containment foam him first, then move him to a truck. Good job, Wards.“
■
I watched Mockshow on the monitors. She was young. Well, young was relative. She was fourteen or so, and now that she had her costume with her, she wore a hard mask sporting a stylized smiley-face, a headband with screws sticking out like antennae. She’d lost the outdoor clothing and had donned her mask, as if it were a shield between her and us.
I glanced over at our superiors. Revel was in a discussion with the Director, the Mayor and the police chief.
Mockshow’s eyes widened as she saw the bugs filtering into the interrogation room. The tables and chairs had been removed to deny her anything solid enough to use her power on, so she had nothing to hide behind as they began forming into a mass.
“Aw hell no,” she said, as she backed into a corner. ”No, no, no, no…”
They gathered into a rough humanoid shape. My shape. A swarm-clone.
“No!” she shouted, as if her refusal to accept it could banish the thing from existence.
“Let’s chat,” I communicated through the swarm. ”Off the record.“
“Screw you! Driving me out into the cold, fucking with us without a fair fight? Go die in a fire!”
“I’ve been in a lot of fights,” I commented, “Rare to have one that’s actually fair. Most are pretty brutally one sided.“
“Do you not hear me? Screw yourself!”
The swarm advanced a little, and she shrunk back.
“Paradigm is changing, Mockshow. I want to make that clear, so you know what people are talking about when they offer you deals. People aren’t going to be inclined to play nice.”
“Nice?”
“The three strike rule, cowboys and indians, counting coup…“
“You’re cracked. The fuck are you talking about?”
“It doesn’t matter. Things are shifting. People are relaxing when they shouldn’t be, because Behemoth died, and-“
“Pat yourself on the back more, why don’t you? I saw that video.”
Everyone did, I thought.
I couldn’t let her get me off topic. ”I’m going to tell you what I would’ve wanted to hear if I found myself in your shoes, at this point in time.“
“Oh, so generous.”
“There’s two groups of people. There’s the people who’re preparing for the end of the world, who ar
e on pins and needles waiting to see just what hits us next, how the dynamic’s going to change. I’m in that group, understand? In my book, in our book, anyone who isn’t keeping the peace and isn’t helping doesn’t deserve any mercy. They’re detriments. You’re dangerously close to falling into that category.”
“Whatever.”
“And the other group? They’re the people who’ve finally found a glimmer of hope, and they’re relaxing, thinking maybe we can take out the remaining Endbringers, maybe the world can go back to normal.“
She snorted.
“Yeah. Exactly,” I said. I glanced at the others. The Director wasn’t participating in the conversation anymore. He was staring at a monitor, but his reaction didn’t suggest he was watching me interact with Mock.
Either way, I had to wrap it up. ”But those guys? They aren’t on your side either. Once upon a time, they’d be the same people who’d push for people like you to go free. Because maybe you’d help somewhere down the road. Now? They have no reason to give you that slack. You’ve got no help here, and I think you’ll be surprised at how hard they come after you.”
“I didn’t do shit. I’ve barely had my powers a month.”
“You signed up with Topsy. With Watch. This is as much about them as it is about you. Making Topsy uncomfortable, denying him a resource they’d just acquired. Stripping away his conveniences, leaving him wondering if you’ll plea out.”
“Fuck that. I’m good. Not saying a word.”
“Probably,” I said. ”But take it from someone who’s been there. You don’t want to go down this road. The heroes will come after you hard, the villains will never trust you. Honestly? I don’t care if you stay a villain or become a hero. But it’s not worth it to be a villain and stick with guys like Topsy. The gains aren’t worth what it costs you.”
“I turn traitor and walk away, I’m fucked.”
“Join the Wards,” I suggested.
I experienced a momentary flashback to my first night out in costume, talking to Armsmaster.
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