“I don’t… I can’t believe all this,” a woman said. Miss Militia.
“He’s really their creator?” Defiant asked. “Eidolon?”
“…Sixty percent sure. Eidolon’s some kind of exception, on a lot of levels. His power works by different vectors, the innate limits aren’t there… something broke, and I’m betting the Endbringers are tied to it. Like, this entity is fissioning off into countless fragments that impregnate hosts and somehow a little extra gets tacked on. Or Cauldron’s method of replicating the fragments gets that little extra.”
“Yes,” Defiant said. “But how does that help us here?”
“Getting to that. Sort of. Every power has secondary uses, uses that are locked away. But maybe there’s something we can express using the powers, like a kind of parahuman charades. Not, you know, actually miming something, but giving off a vibe.”
“I’ll try whatever,” I said. “Who? How?”
Tattletale smiled. “Oh, this is fun. It’s like a puzzle, but it’s not one with a clear cut answer. Rachel, Canary. Um. Imp too. And Taylor’s right. Any use of power in a way that could be seen as violent might give the wrong cue. So… none of that. Let’s move people between ships. Bitch, to the Pendragon. Leave Bastard behind. Canary, can you get out on top of your ship? And Imp, same for you. We need to distance you from the rest of us.”
“Outside?” Imp asked.
“Outside and away. Where your power doesn’t necessarily have a target. You get me?”
“Three people using their powers,” Defiant said, “Without any valid targets?”
“Exactly,” Tattletale said.
“I could lose my bugs,” I said. “But I’m not sure I can express my power in a case like that.”
“Even if you could, but that would be pretty heavy handed. It’s what we try next if this fails. For now, let’s work with the existing plan.”
I pulled off my flight pack, then handed it to Imp.
“Oh, fun,” she said. “God damn it.”
“No quips? No jokes?” I asked. I helped her find the buckles and straps.
“When I’m done, maybe,” Imp said. She glanced at Tattletale. “I can’t turn my power on. It’s always on. I can turn it off, but that only works so long as I’m paying attention.”
“Don’t pay attention then. Leave it running. We’re trying to express an attitude.”
Imp nodded.
“What attitude is Imp?” I asked.
“Nonviolence, passivity,” Tattletale said. “At least as far as we’re concerned.”
“And Rachel?”
“A call to arms, expression of strength.”
“And Canary is… cooperation?”
“Something along those lines.”
I nodded.
Tattletale shrugged. “Lung would be too violent, and the focus of Vista’s power is too… location-driven? I have no idea how she’d take Narwhal’s power, because it’s pretty evenly split between offense and defense.”
“Kind of abstract,” I said.
“I’m… reaching,” Tattletale confessed. “Definitely reaching. But reaching and abstract thought bought us the portal to Gimel, and I’ve got to flex my power somehow.”
“Somehow,” I agreed. “No, it’s worth a try. Or it will be if it doesn’t provoke her to violently murder us all. Can I make a suggestion, though?”
“Any suggestions are good,” Tattletale said.
“Send Shadow Stalker instead of Imp.”
“You bitch,” Shadow Stalker said. “No.”
“Awesome idea,” Imp said.
“Shadow Stalker’s power doesn’t express itself over an area or any particular medium,” Tattletale said. “It’s more personal.”
“Can’t she represent us?” I asked. “Or can’t the personal effect represent us? If we had Imp flying up there way out of range of any of us, we’re still expecting her to represent our group, or humanity as a whole, aren’t we?”
“Sort of,” Tattletale said.
“Then I’m not sure I see the difference,” I said.
“It doesn’t matter,” Shadow Stalker said. “This is moronic. Charades and acting like powers are some kind of massive signal flag for the Endbringer? You’re lunatics.”
“Send them both?” I suggested.
“Oh, that’s less fun,” Imp said. “You had a working plan, and you’re letting Tattletale convince you otherwise. Come on. Send the psycho crossbow girl and I’ll hang back here. My power would send the total wrong message. Totally.”
“Shh,” Tattletale said. She frowned. “Why Shadow Stalker?”
“Because Imp… is too passive.”
“Way too passive,” Imp murmured.
“So’s Shadow Stalker,” Tattletale said.
“But Shadow Stalker’s passenger isn’t. If there are any undertones, any way that the passengers influence our actions, then Shadow Stalker was definitely influenced. I dug through her old records, read up on her history.”
“What?” Shadow Stalker asked.
“She got aggressive after she got her powers. Generally more…” I searched for the way to phrase it.
“You fucking looked at my records?”
“…More violent than most people would be, in her shoes. Lashing out, aimlessly at first, and then with a target, channeling the aggression. Except it was the same amount of violence, just concentrated into fewer incidents, alongside a pretty extensive bullying campaign.”
“You’re doing this because of a grudge?”
“Let’s do it,” Tattletale said. “Go with our guts. Imp and Shadow Stalker, up on the roof. Bitch, either you or Bastard need to head over to the Pendragon. Canary on the roof of the Pendragon, singing with nobody listening.”
“You’re not getting me outside or any of that shit,” Shadow Stalker said.
“You’re scared,” Imp said. “That’s so cute! Is it a fear of heights or a fear of the Simurgh?”
“I’m not scared,” Shadow Stalker replied. “I’m being sensible. This is lunacy, and for what? Charades with the Endbringer?”
“That was a metaphor,” Tattletale said.
“It sounds fucking stupid.”
“I’ve changed my mind,” Imp said. “I’m going. I’m not going to get lumped in with Sissy McNancypants over here and get called a coward.”
“I’m not scared,” Shadow Stalker said.
“We never really got to meet,” Imp said. “Fight or any of that. So I’ve only got the stories I’ve heard about you. Like when you shot Grue with your crossbow and it went right through his stomach? Took him a month to recover? I used to think, you know, you were a badass. But you’re a pussycat.”
“She’s a bully,” I said. “At the end of the day, she only wants to fight opponents she knows she can beat.”
“I’ve fought two Endbringers,” Shadow Stalker said, stabbing a finger in my direction. “I know what you’re trying to do. Fucking manipulating me, getting me into a dangerous situation where you’ll get me killed. Fuck you.”
“Fought two Endbringers as part of an army. But going up alone, putting yourself in the line of fire against something that much bigger and stronger than you? No. You’re a bully at heart, and that’s the antithesis of your usual M.O.”
“Fuck you, Hebert. Fuck you.”
The sentence left her mouth, and then she stalked to my right, making her way to the cockpit. She passed through the glass, making her way onto the nose of the ship, where she crouched. Her flapping cloak obstructed the view, even as translucent as it was, but there was no chance we’d hit anything.
It took a minute to arrange. Narwhal created a force field platform and carefully moved Rachel over to the Pendragon. I watched their glacially slow movement and the utterly still Simurgh.
More alarms went off as she moved her head a fraction to watch the floating platform.
It took a few long seconds for my heart to stop trying to jump out of my chest. Not completely oblivious to us petty h
umans.
“The girl is right. This seems… ridiculous,” Lung rumbled.
Oh, Lung and Shadow Stalker are of like mind, that’s wonderful.
“It is, just a little,” Tattletale said. “But I’m hoping that if this doesn’t exactly work, she’ll give us credit for trying.”
“The Endbringers do not give you credit,” Lung said.
“No, guess not,” Tattletale said. She bent down to scratch Bastard around the ears, then stopped short when he pulled back, clearly uncomfortable with the stranger.
“Ridiculous,” Lung repeated himself. “And you stopped in the middle of a conversation. She is waiting for you to continue.”
“She doesn’t care. Ninety-nine percent sure. Gotta understand, she’s not even close to human, especially once you scratch the surface. We think in black and white, she thinks in… void and substance. In abstracts or in causative contexts, looking into the future and seeing how things unfold. So we’re going to try this, and maybe something sticks.”
“Mm,” Lung said, clearly unimpressed.
“Start us up again?” Tattletale asked me.
I nodded.
“So, Simmy, Eidolon made you, or he’s been enough of an opponent that you’ve kind of got that weird frenemy thing going on. Not in the shitty high school way, but a real love-hate relationship. You know what I mean. You fight them so long you get to know them, you almost respect them on a level, and that respect becomes something more.”
“You’re rambling,” I murmured.
Tattletale shook her head a little. “Whatever the case, you’re reacting to his being gone. We’re here because we’re asking you…”
Tattletale trailed off. She’d noticed something.
My head turned. Canary was singing, and I could hear it through my bugs.
Wordless, insistent, filled with a lot of repressed emotion.
Almost angry.
I shut it out as best as I could, took a second to focus wholly on keeping my power from communicating any sound to me. I hit a button on the dashboard, then spent a few seconds tracking down one of Dragon’s programs.
Defiant found it first, loading it onto the Dragonfly’s system. It began filtering out the singing. Most of it.
But no sooner had Canary’s Song gone away than the Simurgh began screaming.
Not as intense as I’d heard it described. Barely audible.
More ominous than anything.
“Not full strength,” Miss Militia’s voice came over the comms. “I give us five minutes. Wrap this up.”
I unclenched my hands, belatedly realizing I’d been squeezing them so hard they almost hurt. My fingernails throbbed where they’d been almost bent against my palms. If I’d not been wearing my gloves, I might have pierced the skin. I flexed my hands to work out the tension that had accumulated and exhaled slowly.
“We’re here,” Tattletale started again, “Because we’re asking you for help. For vengeance. For your strength. We want you and the rest of the Endbringers on board to stop Scion.”
The Simurgh didn’t react.
“I don’t care if you’re doing it to fuck with us, though I’d prefer it if you saved any backstabbing for when Scion’s dead and gone. Fucking wipe us out. I don’t care. Just so long as we go out with a bang, taking him out with us.”
I made a hand gesture, urging Tattletale to move on.
“…Do it for the psychological impact, leave a mark. Or do it because Scion killed Behemoth, your brother, and some part of you is programmed with a sense of kinship or whatever. But above all else, I’m hoping you’ll help us murder that golden alien motherfucker because he killed Eidolon, and he stripped you of your purpose.”
Sixty percent sure, I thought. Tattletale had revised her number. How confident was she now?
The speech had no meat to it if Eidolon hadn’t made the Endbringers.
Very little if he had.
Tattletale held up her hand to me again, another sign that I shouldn’t repeat what she was saying, because she was talking to us. “Fuck this. It’s like talking to a fucking answering machine. I feel like some dim asshole with no idea what I’m talking about. There’s no feedback, no responses to read and judge for the next line.”
“Well,” I said. “She’s not exactly your usual target.”
“What do you usually do?“ Narwhal asked.
“Needle someone until they get upset, then find cues in that. I’d do that here, except irritating the Simurgh seems like an excuse to get a Darwin Award.”
“Tattletale’s being cautious. Must be the end of the world after all,” someone said. Might have been Foil.
“She’s singing,” Tattletale said. “So that’s either a good sign or a very bad sign.”
“Going by the numbers,” Miss Militia said, “If we assume it’s half strength, I’d say three minutes before we have to abort.“
“Maybe tell Canary to stop,” I said.
“No,” Tattletale said. “We’re getting a response. Let’s hold out.”
“Then keep talking,” Defiant said.
Tattletale sighed. She perched herself on the bench, hands on her head. “I don’t know if I should continue buying into this Eidolon thing. Less convinced the further we go. Most times, you get that key piece of information, and you can coast from there.”
“It’s very possible we don’t have enough information,” I said.
“I’m trying to communicate with something that doesn’t communicate back,” Tattletale said.
“Reduce,” Defiant said. “We’re trying to convey a message to a being that we don’t wholly understand. You’re appealing to sympathy, to revenge. Something simpler?“
“Like?” Tattletale asked.
“They have a sense of self preservation,” Narwhal said. “They run when we hurt them enough. Fear?“
“Because it allows them to maintain their mission,” Tattletale said. “I don’t think we can actually scare her, either. Scion might, but we can’t.”
The screaming was getting worse. Warbling, with highs and lows. It snagged on my attention, making it harder to maintain a train of thought.
Maybe she was reaching out to us, communicating. Maybe she was just doing her thing, trying to worm her way into our heads so she could figure out how we functioned, put her plans into motion.
“Anger,” Rachel said.
I turned my head.
There was a long pause. I glanced at the screen on the cockpit to see what she was doing, but she’d stopped by the time I got there to look. “When I cut Behemoth’s leg off, after we’d melted most of him away, he was angry. Stomped around, attacked more. Kept fighting until he died. Didn’t he?“
“He did,” Tattletale said. “But now we’re getting back to the whole ‘needling them’ issue of the debate. I’m pretty sure I don’t want to provoke her.”
“Dunno,” Rachel said. “Just saying.”
“No,” I said, “It’s good thinking. It’s a possibility.”
I could think back to the images of the Simurgh going all-out.
I remembered the various incidents that had unfolded in her wake. Echidna, the sundering of the PRT. Things with ramifications that were affecting us even now.
“…A very scary possibility,” I amended.
Lung gave me a funny look.
“Yes,” he said, agreeing with me.
Tattletale made a gesture, pointing at herself.
“Go ahead,” I said.
“Okay, Ziz. I’m going to be honest. You’re pretty fucked. You and I both know you were made by somebody or something. Accidentally, probably. You were designed to give us as hard a time as possible without exterminating us altogether, probably to feed someone’s ego, unbeknownst to them. But what happens when we’re all gone? What’s the fucking point of you?”
Tattletale paused. Waiting, watching.
No reaction from Tattletale.
“What happens when we’re all gone? You’re tapped into a power source.
Maybe most power sources. You’re draining them dry just to keep yourselves going. There’s nothing for you to do but linger, when there’s no humans left. To hibernate. So you’re gathering your forces. You’re planning one last act, probably for a few days from now, where you wipe out humanity, and I’m betting it’s one last desperate, sad attempt to validate your existence.”
Alarms went off once more. The Simurgh had moved, her head turning to look over one shoulder, flexing wings to move them out of the way, as if she couldn’t see through them but she could see well past the horizon.
She returned to the same posture as before.
“What was that about?” I asked.
“Checking,” Defiant said. “Keep going. Any reaction is a good reaction.”
Maybe it was Scion, arriving just in time to pick a fight with the Simurgh.
I could hope.
Tattletale continued, and I repeated what she was saying verbatim, trying to even match her in tone and pitch. “Here’s what I’m thinking. Shot in the dark. You’re wanting to fight humanity because you’re trying to carry out the old programming, and Scion invalidated that by killing Eidolon, by killing someone else or destroying something. I think that fighting and nearly killing a few billion humans is the equivalent of fighting and nearly killing Eidolon. Or whoever.”
“One hundred and eighty integers of longitude to the west,” Defiant said. “Leviathan just arrived. That’s what got her attention. We expected one to appear there, so Chevalier ordered us to put crews there with cameras for monitoring. They’re there right now, reporting to me.”
A monitor shifted, depicting Leviathan, standing on the water’s surface in the midst of a heavy rainstorm. The water around him was rippling, though he was utterly still.
Tattletale continued without pause, not responding or reacting to this information. “All I’m saying, all I’m proposing, is that Scion’s a better bet than we are. You want to give someone a fucking hard time? Make that someone Scion. You want to terrorize people? Terrorize Scion. Bigger challenge, and you’ll probably have the rest of us fucking scared out of our minds if you pull it off. You want to fucking end the world? Get in line, chickadee, because Scion’s going to beat you to the punch if you don’t stop him.”
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