by A. C. Wise
“I see a staircase. It’s in the far left corner. Is there a door up there?”
There’s a murmur of voices. Footsteps retreat. Grime streaks Madeline’s suit; the tatters of her cape hang uselessly from her shoulders, but she’s okay. She made a choice, and she survived.
She dusts herself off, pressing her hands over her midsection. What if…? The thought is too horrible. She barely even considered it until now. What kind of mother will that make her?
“We found the stairway, but it’s under a collapsed section of wall. We’ll have to dig a bit to get down to you. Hang tight, doll.”
Silk takes a deep breath, drawing in the scent of mildew and dust. Beyond the crates and boxes, something catches her eye, a deeper patch of darkness in the shadows. She retrieves one of the floorboards broken in her fall. It’s just long enough to use as a makeshift crutch.
She hobbles closer, confirming her suspicions. An entire section of wall has been torn away, the earth scooped out to form a passageway taller than her and wider than her arms can stretch.
“There’s a tunnel!” Madeline can’t keep the excitement from her voice.
Fear comes close on the heels of her words. The way the earth is hollowed out—it’s too irregular for machinery, but too much work for human hands. Beetles. The seismic activity the G-String Men mentioned. The beetles have been burrowing under the factory.
There’s a crash behind her and Madeline’s heart finds its way back to her throat. The door grinds open, then CeCe rushes to her, and a sob escapes as velvet enfolds silk.
“Shh. It’s okay.” CeCe strokes her hair; after a moment, Madeline pulls back, looking down into CeCe’s concerned eyes.
CeCe cups her cheek, smoothes away a tear with her thumb and only then does Madeline realize she’s crying. Her ankle throbs and with it comes a pulse of guilt. She can’t tell CeCe she didn’t even think of their baby. If the fertilization worked… She’s shaking again, deepening the concern in CeCe’s eyes. Madeline wipes at her tears, forcing a smile.
“I’m fine. Sorry. Everything is fine.”
The crunch of footsteps approach and the room is full of glitter and g-strings, all attention turned to the hole in the wall.
“Well, I guess we know where the rest of the beetles are,” Bunny says. “Now what do we do about it?”
GOLD HOOPS SWINGING FROM PENNY’S EARS CATCH THE LIGHT, winking in the dim space of the factory. She’s more made-up than usual, Sapphire notes, like she’s got something to prove.
“We hit them where they live.” Penny draws her pistol.
“We haven’t even heard from Doctor B yet,” Esmeralda says.
“The whole point of this is to give him more information to work with. We’re not going to get it standing here gawking.” Penny’s boots crunch on the grit at the tunnel entrance.
To Sapphire’s surprise, Kahuna moves next, whistling and following Penny into the tunnel. Bunny unfreezes, jabbing Kahuna in the small of the back with the blunt handle of her harpoon.
“Are you trying to get us all killed?”
Kahuna shrugs, falling silent. Even as he does, something dangerous slides through his gaze. Sapphire catches her breath; she’s seen that look before, in Bunny’s eyes. So what is Kahuna running from? What could make him strip off so much armor, make himself so vulnerable, just to feel strong?
Boomer catches her eye. Her body tingles, and she looks away, reminding herself she doesn’t want to know if he’s a good guy under that floss-width of spandex. She doesn’t want to think about him at all. She hurries after Penny, Bunny, and Kahuna. In her haste, her heel catches, and she nearly falls. Boomer catches her elbow, steadying her.
“Are you okay?” The concern in his eyes seems genuine; Sapphire feels worse as she yanks her arm away.
“I’m fine.” It’s a struggle to keep her voice low, not let it echo, announcing their presence.
The dirt-packed walls are high and wide enough that she can straighten her back. She deliberately raises her chin, not wobbling once, despite the thinness of her heels. She refuses to look back, letting the points of Bunny’s ears anchor her.
“Why wouldn’t you let him help you? It’s obvious he likes you.” Starlight moves up beside her; there’s a tone of wistful resentment in her voice, faint but obvious.
Glancing back, Sapphire can barely make out the others. Starlight follows her gaze, her shoulders curling inward slightly. For a moment, everything inside Sapphire hurts. She wants to tell Starlight she’s too young, that she’ll understand someday. The words are trite; they taste empty, saccharine, even without saying them aloud. She shakes her head.
“Look, honey. You’ve known exactly who you are ever since you were seven years old. Maybe younger.”
Starlight looks up in surprise; Sapphire holds up a hand to stop her.
“It takes some of us a little longer, and I’m just not ready to share who I am with someone else yet. Not like that.”
Starlight presses her lips together and nods, her eyes wide. Sapphire breathes out. She’ll have to deal with it someday, letting someone in, letting them see her and facing the possibility they won’t like what they see. Someday she’ll have to deal with the chance someone will see her and not see her; they’ll see a fetish, they’ll see a body and want to know who she really is, they’ll see her but not understand this has always been her, this is who she is. But right now, it’s too raw, too close.
And despite everything, despite what she knows, she can’t help feeling that being herself means turning her back on her family. Her daddy wanted someone to carry on his name, and there’s only her. Maybe if she’d gotten a chance to talk to him before he passed… But what would she have said? She can almost hear his voice even now—a black man has a responsibility to his community, to his family, to act a certain way in the eyes of the world.
The pain from the cancer was so bad at the end, even if she’d gotten up the guts to say but I’m not a man, he probably wouldn’t have understood. With all this tangled up inside, Sapphire can’t afford to think about Boomer. Not right now. Maybe not ever.
“Are you okay?” At Starlight’s question, Sapphire realizes she’s stopped walking.
“Yes. Thank you.” She puts one foot in front of the other. Repeats it.
Then she stops, nearly colliding with Bunny and Kahuna, and all thoughts of her family and her future drop away. The tunnel opens onto a plateau. Beyond it lies an entire hollow world of façades and steps and doorways cut into the rock, all of it spiraling down like an inverted funnel.
“Holy shit.”
“No kidding,” Starlight says beside her.
Peering over the edge, Sapphire can just make out the shape of beetles moving in the depths. She can’t tell how many there are. It looks like an entire city.
And all it would take is for one beetle to notice them and they’ll be devoured by a swarm.
BUNNY CROUCHES, GETTING AS CLOSE TO THE LIP OF THE PLATEAU as possible. The drop is dizzying. Wooden bridges crisscross the space, connecting stairs and ramps and platforms. It’s impossible. But they’ve faced impossible before. And won.
Penny crouches beside her, voice low. “There must be hundreds of them.”
As Penny glances her way, Bunny catches something that’s not quite remorse in her eyes. There are marks Penny hasn’t bothered to hide—welts on her shoulders, the backs of her arms and her legs, just starting to fade. There’s pain in her movements, too. Bunny’s seen it, but Penny hasn’t stopped moving. She’s right where she always is, at Bunny’s side.
Something twists inside Bunny, a bruise in place of her heart. She hasn’t forgiven Penny. She hasn’t decided whether there’s anything to forgive. But for now, they’re okay.
“It’s your call,” Penny says. “How do we handle this thing?”
“I…” Bunny says, but gets no further.
A door opens two levels below them. A man and woman in their best Buck Rogers knock-off villain costumes emerge, gaudy r
obes and headpieces and all.
“Victor and Helena?” Penny whispers.
“Who else?” Bunny half-smirks.
She straightens. And as she does, a terrible thing happens. The toe of one of her chunky, glittering shoes catches a tiny pebble and sends it over the edge.
The sound is minuscule. And in the echoing space it’s huge. It pings, once, twice, and Bunny stops counting, breath held and heart hammering.
Everything pauses. Or maybe it’s only Bunny’s perception. Then the two former scientists raise their heads, and the world snaps into motion again.
At first, Bunny doesn’t know what she’s seeing. Parts of the ridiculous villain costumes flare wide, bright jewel-colored shields extending between their shoulder blades. When the secondary wings—delicate and glowing and veined—appear, it clicks into place. Of course they have wings. Because what self-respecting mad scientist doesn’t genetically modify themselves?
Victor and Helena’s external wings rattle, a sound like hail hitting a rooftop. At least they can’t fly, Bunny thinks, but as the beetles turn their attention upward, she realizes it’s much worse. They can’t fly, but they can command their charges to do so.
“Move,” Bunny yells. “Take out as many as you can. And stay alive!”
It’s not much by way of rousing speeches, but what else can she say? They are the Glitter Squadron, and this is what they do.
Grasping her harpoon, Bunny launches into action. The beetles swarm up from the underground city. The sound of their wings is terrible and beautiful. They are a dozen colors, a shimmering mass of stained glass, shattered and brought to life.
“The dress I could make with those,” Starlight says somewhere behind her.
“You can keep whatever you kill,” Bunny says.
She doesn’t give herself time to think as she leaps, dropping to the next platform down and running across the nearest wooden bridge. It swings under her weight but vertigo doesn’t bother her. She’s in her element.
She brings her harpoon up, spearing a beetle as it flies past her. Before its weight can throw her off, Bunny yanks her weapon free; the beetle tumbles into the depths. The bridge rattles, swaying with a new weight. She crouches, ready to attack, but it’s Kahuna, grinning.
He’s already smeared with beetle guts, holding a serrated knife almost as long as Bunny’s forearm. Despite herself, despite everything and the wildness in Kahuna’s eyes, Bunny returns his grin. Whatever else he may be, he’s good at his job. G-string aside, there’s no doubt that job is saving the world.
She throws him a mock salute, then turns, running for the far end of the bridge. More beetles swarm toward them, but if she can get to Victor and Helena maybe she can silence their call.
There’s a blur of motion to Bunny’s right. Sapphire and Ruby take down a beetle, barely pausing before moving on. A shot rings out. There’s a crack of something striking a shell. Bunny keeps running.
She reaches the far end of the bridge, turning toward the stairs leading to the next level. With a whirring clatter of wings, a beetle launches itself from of the darkness of a doorway cut into the rock wall. Bunny hits the ground hard as the creature slams into her, driving the breath from her lungs. The edge of the platform is perilously close. Bunny rolls away, ignoring the pain in her ribs.
She forces herself to her feet as the beetle lunges again. Bunny spins her harpoon, bringing the blunt end down with a sickening crunch. The beetle twitches and she raises the harpoon, bringing it down twice more until the beetle is still. Her arms shake with the effort. She considers kicking the beetle over the edge, but there’s no time for dramatic gestures.
She takes a deep breath and regrets it immediately, clutching her ribs. Another shape moves from the doorway and Bunny stops just short of running it through. The sleek blackness is leather, not beetle shell.
“M?”
M doesn’t respond, only stepping aside to reveal Doctor Blood, who stares wide-eyed at the city around them.
“I never meant… I never thought…”
Bunny grabs his shoulder, shaking him. She doesn’t care how M got him here, or how M even knew about this place. She doesn’t care what Doctor Blood did or didn’t mean to do.
“Doc. Hector.” Finally Doctor Blood’s eyes focus.
“This.” He holds out the canister clutched to his chest.
“What is it?”
“Pheromones.” It’s a moment before the doctor releases his death grip. “Spray it like perfume. It should calm them down. Hopefully.”
A length of rubber tubing leads from the top of the canister with a nozzle on one end.
“Doc, I could kiss you,” Bunny says, and Doctor Blood’s focus snaps back to her, his eyes going wider still. “But there’s no time.”
Bunny hands her harpoon to M, wielding the canister instead.
“Helena.”
The sound of his ex-wife’s name in Doctor Blood’s mouth as he catches sight of her stops Bunny in her tracks. It’s a broken sound, turning into a sob. Doctor Blood crashes to his knees, his scarred face a picture of misery. M touches his shoulder, then moves on. Bunny moves too. There will be time for sympathy later.
Wild, Bunny ducks and runs, letting loose with the pheromone canister along the way. Victor and Helena move down as the chaos moves upward. When she reaches the next bridge, Bunny realizes how foolish it was to leave her harpoon behind. Spraying beetles and hoping for the best is one thing, but what will she do when she reaches the scientists? Bunny catches sight of Penny, gore-covered and looking for her next target.
“Penny!” Bunny gestures, and Penny moves to converge with her.
There’s a cry behind her, and Bunny whirls. A beetle larger than any she’s seen yet has Doctor Blood pinned. He’s holding the creature’s two front legs, barely managing to keep it from decapitating him. His arms tremble, his strength giving out.
“Shit.”
Esmeralda passes below her. With heart in her throat, Bunny lets the pheromone canister fly. “Es, catch! Spray everything you can!”
Bunny sprints for Doctor Blood. She’s weaponless now, possibly going to her doom, but despite everything, she can’t leave Hector to die.
Bunny drops her shoulder and slams into the beetle linebacker style. The beetle tips onto its back, legs working as it tries to right itself. If the situation weren’t so dire, it would be hilarious.
“Come on.” Bunny hauls Doctor Blood to his feet, pushing him behind her.
The beetle rights itself, turning its attention to Bunny. Her mind races. A bitter laugh rises to her lips, and she pulls off one shoe.
“It worked once before.”
As the beetle charges, Bunny flings herself forward, bringing the shoe down as hard as she can. The heel connects with one of the beetle’s eyes, splattering Bunny. The creature reels back, pain-maddened. She raises the shoe for another strike just as Big Kahuna—in all his barefoot, stoned, and g-stringed glory—lands on the beetle’s back. The beetle bucks, shuddering, trying to throw him off.
“Just like riding a wave.” Kahuna shows white teeth, toes curling to hold his balance.
He plunges his serrated blade through the beetle’s head, then hops down. Bunny suppresses a shudder. Maybe Kahuna is too much in his element. But then, how does she look after a kill?
“Good teamwork,” she says.
Kahuna holds up a fist. After a moment, Bunny bumps his with her clenched hand, her fingers opening wide afterward and a few sequins stuck to her palm from clutching her ribs shimmer in the air a moment.
She peels off her other shoe, drops it with the gore-covered one over the edge. Just once, she’d like to wear out a pair by walking in them.
“I’m going for Helena and Victor,” Bunny says. “Gather whoever you can and meet me there.”
She steers Doctor Blood toward the next bridge. “It looks like your pheromones are working. The beetles are slowing down.”
Blood doesn’t answer, shock setting in. Bunny ro
lls tension from her shoulders. One thing at a time.
Bunny reaches Victor and Helena’s platform first. As she does, Doctor Blood breaks free, rushing toward his ex-wife. Recognition dawns on Helena’s face, becoming a sneer.
“You’re too late, Richard!” Victor says. “We’ve done what you never could. This is our time, and when our legions rise, you’ll wish you died in that fire.”
Before Bunny can move, Doctor Blood, aka Hector, aka Richard Utley Carnacki, launches himself at his former lab assistant, catching him around the waist. Shock rounds his mouth, widens his eyes, and Victor’s beetle wings beat uselessly. For a moment, the two men are poised, frozen like a frame in a pulp comic book adventure. Then they vanish, tumbling together over the edge. Before Bunny can move, Helena snarls and grabs Bunny’s dress, hauling her off balance.
Helena’s hands hook like claws, her face a mask of mutant-beetle rage. She slashes for Bunny’s face. Bunny tries to catch her wrist and misses. Helena strikes again, catching one of the long, white ears atop Bunny’s head, knocking them askew. Instinct draws Bunny’s fist back, snapping it into Helena’s face.
“No one messes with my ears.”
Helena rocks back with the blow, blood slicking her chin. Ruby is there, pinning Helena’s arms to her side.
“Hold her!” Bunny shouts as Helena thrashes.
Helena’s wings snap wide with a terrible rattling sound. Ruby ducks, keeping her arms around Helena as Bunny casts around for a weapon. Ruby’s hold slips. She scrambles, catching hold of one Helena’s wings. It rips free.
The sound is utterly inhuman, all pain and rage. Helena buckles. Behind her, Ruby is white-faced, holding the torn wing, eyes wide in shock.
“I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Bunny says. “I know.”
She kneels, touching Helena’s shoulder and ignoring the ruin of her back. The hard outer wing on Helena’s right is awkwardly bent, the delicate wing underneath completely torn away. Helena doesn’t react to Bunny’s touch, shuddering and sobbing.
