======== SAMPLE 1 ========
 a way, but I couldn’t say whether it’s because he’s feeling a little anxious or if it’s another reason.

"You can still help," I said. "I have my cell phone, and a friend has a house nearby that might be able to ring you up. Maybe you’ll even like them more than I do."

"Or you can keep me here," she said, sounding angry. "I don’t need you or your company when I can get away without anyone paying attention to me."

"They’ll pay attention to me," I agreed. "I got mugged, but I had a pair of good shoes, so I ran to the wet spot, near where the first part of the fight had started, and grabbed some." I extended my hand and introduce it to her. "What do you think?"

She hesitated, and then nodded.

"I don’t see any problems with that," I said. "Okay. Are you wearing something? A sweatshirt?"

She shook her head.

"You’re going to be cold. Don’t bring any cold to the house, alright?" I assured her.

She nodded. She knew my heart well enough that I wasn’t surprised.

I pulled off my mask as I reached the bottom of the stairs, where the only ventilation was provided by a grate in the wall. I removed some spare change and an envelope. I stuck the envelope in a plastic bag, then faced her. My heart pounded.

This is the worst fucking time for me.

No. Everything fell into place.

The distraction would help. It would be a reset button. A momentary reprieve. The pressure and stress.

I put the envelope down on the grate and stepped behind the counter to deposit the change and the change pad in the gym bag. Before I could deposit it, though, I felt a tug. I didn’t turn to look, but I caught her pulling away.

My gut told me it wasn’t easy to get a flat tire. Maybe I wanted one. I couldn’t help but think she was controlling her power. I started to think I might know what she was doing. Couldn’t I have sensed an impact?

I couldn’t move out of the way fast enough if I was going to avoid the hit. The force of the current was something different from what I’d seen on TV. It wasn’t physical. It wasn’t shockwaves or anything like that. It was a gentle but unmistakable pull, like a gravity, a force that had its roots deep in the ground, making its way upwards.

I stopped, my eyes closed. My thoughts turned to the people I’d left behind. The gym bag had absorbed most of the flying insects, but the ones that were large enough to bite and sting had made their way up my arm and into my bloodstream. I could feel them closing around me, as though I were little more than a buoy in water, not really moving. When the bugs were forced down my wounds, they were taking up a considerable amount of space, covering my veins and making a number of other wounds impregnable.

If this continued, I was going to need time on my own to tend to my injuries, maybe as little as a day or two.

I opened my eyes, looked behind me to see what was going on, and couldn’t help but see one of Leviathan’s attacks on Behemoth. As Behemoth advanced, a piece of rubble rolled down a street and into my home.

The noise of the fighting faded as the scene in my mind’s eye returned. Of the four or five heroes who’d been near me at the fight’s outset, only Weld and the bird-girl stood.

The others I could see were hiding in plain sight. Legend, on the other hand, was staring down Leviathan, who had transformed into a more streamlined, human-ish version of himself. Leviathan, in turn, was facing Wards who were operating with tactical nous, rather than the brute intent that was critical in the moment.

I could see the wind-up effect, where it blurred the line between where Leviathan was standing and where the wind pushed them over. As the image expanded and the focus of the blur became clear, the wind shifted, sweeping Legend and the others to either side. The focus of the heroes who’d been looking at one place could no longer see them, for lack of a better term. They were obscured by a fog that spread across the sky as high as they were tall, obscuring them from the wind and all but eliminating them from my view. Even the shadows were bl

======== SAMPLE 2 ========
 a little, and I managed to get them to move before he got to them.

They were quickly packed inside. My bugs swept through the crowd, finding various tools, weapons, rations and trash.

He told me, "You don’t even have to pack that much trash. Just give me a few moments. Things get very messy if you leave stuff unattended, if you leave people unattended. You do this frequently enough, people get antsy, or if their neighbors are taking too long to pack toilet paper, or if you let them have too much garbage even if there’s trash nearby, then it’s like a good old fashioned storm of trash."

He gave me a stern look as he spoke, but he nodded sagely for the second time in a matter of seconds, "Okay. Well, that‘s all I’m requesting. I think we’re done here."

I had the sense to move quickly, but I wasn’t ready. I walked over to the sink and stopped mid-stride to grab some of my costume. I grabbed some white gloves with the smallest cuts and scrapes I could manage to keep from the cut on my arm, then started to put the worst of the staining away.

I didn’t touch the protective muck around the cuts or scrapes on my costume, but I did touch the stuff my teammates were packing, then ran my fingers through it to clean it. It tasted like shit. Like bile and shit mixed. Still smelled like bile.

What was I supposed to do? What could I do?

In the distance, a car pulled up. I saw the headlights of one driver going all out, coming straight for us, coming through a heavy fog.

I lunged headlong into the dense foliage that surrounded one of our adversaries. The bugs I had in the car died on impact, too, losing their mass, cohesion.

The fog rolled over me. My legs kicked as much as they did the pavement. A lot of it, if not all of it. I was as stiff as I could get without sacrificing my ability to walk.

Without holding ground, against a dense, slippery substance like bile, it was slow going. My bugs died, too, and all I managed were the remnants of the miasma, a slurry.

The car careened into a semi-punt, and the fog rolled off me. The car skidded along the pavement, right into our midst.

I backed away, keeping my head and shoulders as still as I could get them, my arms pressed against my body for further resistance. Bugs that had gathered in my hair and the midst of my hair served to block the lines of fire the driver of the white truck tried to put out.

It was the worst case scenario: They could hit us with enough fire to wipe us out, then come running back for the white pillow.

I moved with purpose, trying to get a bead on the enemy. No use waiting half an hour or an hour at a worst case scenario that could come anytime, anywhere.

A car suddenly came barreling towards us, lights flashing. I leaped onto Atlas, the handle of my knife-turned-outboard-end around my shoulders. I thrust my hands into my pockets to block the road, my legs buckling in awkward ways.

There was the least amount of time for me to do anything after that. I needed to get away.

I couldn’t wait until the enemy caught up. I needed to act now, in case the enemy had a sense of how badly we were ahead and decided to change tactics. I started to levitate my knife’s blade out of my hand and threw it down on a rooftop just to be safe.

If I was lucky, the darkness was a fraction wider. If not, the landing was at an angle that put me off my feet, not up. I landed to find the darkness still extended over me as I raised the knife.

The car squealed to a close, and I could swear there were more bugs in my immediate surroundings than there were in the car, at least to my bugs’ senses. A car’s engine?

I could see the enemy line up, standing, standing still, waiting. I was still thinking like a thinker, calculating possibilities, but there were far too many who were too close to the pedestrians I’d left lying in the road, and I wasn’t sure if I’d made the call to attack when we’d gotten the message that non-combatants weren’t allowed to cross the street at any point.

The bugs that were keeping the enemy from advancing were getting weaker, and that was straining the organization’

======== SAMPLE 3 ========
 a few seconds longer, then go. Go back to your group. Do not give chase. Your lives and the lives of those you choose to aid or support will not be worth my time."

"It all ties back to that," Weaver said, an angry note in her voice, "You have lived this for years so you could give the other Earth a shot, just so long as you were part of the elite. So long as you had friends in power and they stood by and let the big business interests take over the little Earth? So long as they funded orphanages for orphaned girls and let charisms like ours build beautiful things? So long as they gave so much money away for free to orphaned children, just so you could have a voice in how we were run? Even without the corruption your group represents, even with all the money you and your friends have squandered, you still live in this box that is just as bad as the one you were in when you were orphaned?"

It did. Just like it had been with Bitch, the other Earth was just as bad, just like Earth A was now.

"Yes," Weaver said, and it was all Bitch could do to hold back the tears as she heard it, "It all ties back to that. The idea that, you know, there could be a way to make it better or there could be a way to fix it all, so you could have what you so richly deserve. But you’re not going. You’ll leave. Leave me here to work this out for myself. And I’ll join the Slaughterhouse Nine the very next time your kind comes calling."

Bitch turned, so her eyes were fixed intently on Weaver beneath the hat, "You could fly."

"She flies," Tecton said, a reassuring sound in his voice. "And if someone comes with us, she’ll use her power to gain a glide. With that glide, she can hover for a few seconds, then burst into flame and disappear."

"I could do that? I could fly?"

Tecton smiled, "No. We stay in the air for as long as we need to, clear the way for a teammate to arrive to help. We go faster."

Bitch clutched the metal chain at her ankle in her bloody hands, staring at the ceiling, "What are you going to do?"

"Nothing," Tecton said. "A lot of preparation, watching the movements of the enemy, tracking the movements of Bitch, trying to guess where she’s gone. I think that if we split up some of us will be able to isolate the enemy, even slow them down, if we see through their traps they put in place."

"You’re not going to do anything?"

Tecton shook his head. "There’s very few rules, one thing for another."

Bitch let out a long sigh, frustration clear in her voice. "Why?"

"Bitch," Weaver said, "You just said-"

"What?" Bitch asked.

"I didn’t think you’d make a better teammate."

Bitch stared at Weaver for a long time. Finally, she turned and walked away, putting a foot on the ground. As Weaver watched, she began dragging her costume over towards the crowd. Her boots splashed water everywhere they touched.

"I think we need to talk about some stuff," Tecton said.

"Talk?" I asked.

"Don’t know. Give my father a call, ask him to please let this be over with. My friends? They’ve got powers."

"The Endbringers?" Wanton asked.

"The Endbringers. I don’t like the direction this game’s going, but we survive, we win some games, and we avoid another loss."

"I don’t see how it all ties back to the end of the world," Wanton said.

Tecton shook his head.

"A few months ago, if I remember right, there was talk of a global catastrophe with Endbringers as the major players. Tecton tried to warn the public, but only managed to get his head cut off for the episode where it happened."

The image clicked, "As a new villain, what were you thinking?"

"That it was all for the greater good? I’d say I was in favor of the end of the world as a whole. I’m against it being used as a crutch, as a way of settling arguments."

"But things turned out okay," Wanton said.

"They kind of have to, gotta be,

======== SAMPLE 4 ========
 a few seconds and it was like the blood sausage, you see chunks of meat sloughing out and they disappear into the center of the hot fire, faster than you can blink. I was worried it was too much like blood sausage and overdid it."

I let the words hang in the air as I felt my body take a dramatic step backwards. I fell onto my back, hands to my face, my forehead sore from where I’d been hit.

"The Nine can’t get out, and they’re stronger than we are. I don’t understand."

"What happened?"

With my power, I used my bugs to search the area.

"It was like a magnet, with blood sausage moving in turns through each of the strong points, pinning them down and tearing them away. The fire ate them clean off the outside and inside."

We knew who they were. We knew they were stronger than average people. Had we simply overlooked it?

A grinding sensation gripped me, as if some mechanism or mechanism had gone wrong. It was so intense I could barely tell the muscles in my thighs were there, my breathing hard.

My power was telling me something was wrong. I opened my mouth to tell it to quiet, but my voice vibrated as I wrenched my jaw as hard as I could with my one hand, "They’re stronger."

"I’m not sure you’re telling the truth," Bonesaw said. "You don’t need to break the rules like that."

"Rules are like kid gloves," Shadow Stalker said.

"They’re not even kid gloves. It’s bad enough that we have to follow some shitty shitty rules like how the ABB is supposed to operate or that we need to handle somepony who isn’t of sound mind or... bad appearance."

"It’s not like that!" Shadow Stalker raised her voice. She pushed at the hard oak table, hard enough that it shifted beneath her weight.

Bonesaw frowned. "Don’t say that."

"The ABB isn’t as bad as they make it out like they are. You remember when they were doing a lot of damage, and you were worried they could do permanent damage? They were a sub-group of the Merchants. Merchants like you and me. We were watching out for them, and we were putting in our two cents. Not saying what they were, but saying where they were headed, where they’d take hold. The last big assault on them came with the Triumvirate taking control of the city. You could do the same thing, with the right resources and backing."

"I know they’re doing okay. They’re probably safer, if you ignore the Lung thing."

"Well, there’s that. Look, I’m not here to stir the Antinium-worshipping Puritans into action. Not to say there aren’t legitimate problems the group could be facing, like… I’m not even sure they’d fight back if someone tried to stir things up."

"But they are keeping their mouth shut about your little problem. Hookwolf’s boys?"

Shadow Stalker nodded. "We know their leader is a Puritan with a bit of a crazed fixation on the subject of deviants. They’ve apparently infiltrated the ranks of the local wards and are using the powers of the damned to try and take down the legitimate Chosen."

"Are they like the Merchants? Selling drugs and stuff?"

"No. The Puritans are a different breed, just as dangerous as the Dockworkers, mercenaires and barmaids."

Shadow Stalker frowned at that. "The Puritans sell nothing but the stuff."

"Well, that’s the kind of stuff you’d find in the docks. I was just discussing a store I was going to as a visit to the folks over there. You’d find lobster claws, skulls of some sort of pig, scales and spines of some fish, and some stockings with lace up the front. I don’t think they have anything remotely attractive."

"Okay," Shadow Stalker said, sounding annoyed.

"The people over there aren’t even trying to hide who they are. Just look at who they’re buying. Look at the way they’re selecting out the stuff they want. It’s like they’ve modeled themselves after the Puritans."

I could see why. Puritanical, restrictive, intellectual Puritanical.

"I know it’s a little extreme," Shadow Stalker lied,

======== SAMPLE 5 ========
 a crowd.

"Yes, sir. Every member of our contingent who refused our first offer of training will receive financial compensation. If you fail us, or if you refuse another ten groups, I will make available to all of my subordinates a ten percent cut of any proceeds from the sale of these classes, in addition to any punishment meted out otherwise.

"I am aware that some of my subordinates are opposed to my methods. They say it risks becoming another Schadenfreude institute. I agree. For now, it is necessary. That said, it cannot be denied that I would succeed much as you are here, with a little more unrestrained experimentation and perhaps some social engineering under the hood."

The man stood, and for once Tattletale was not in the room, not at the head of the table. She had her feet pushed back, making her presence felt, and the lack of an escort here was telling.

She looked at Legend, and saw him glowering. "What was I supposed to say? Thank you!?"

"You have no business with this. I assure you it was well thought out and that it will help you."

"How am I supposed to believe you?" The young man spoke, but his accent was thick. She could hear the stress in his voice, the tone of his voice.

"That is good," she replied. "If you wish to bring it up then."

"Yes, ma’am."

"You knew he was close?"

"I was only barely able to block it. I’ve had an ide-" she stopped. "-anesthetic to keep my power from buzzing around my brain, the painkillers stopped me, too. I’m okay for another five or six hours."

"Then let’s have him stand in the back and hope the PRT officer is standing by, while we discuss the matter in a proper manner."

"You mean let’s put him in the interrogation room and hope he breaks. It’s the law of the land. The authorities take care of unruly and troublesome people."

"Yes, ma’am. All of us in control."

"Good."

Legend turned, but didn’t speak. She knew he would back down, or call off the raid. Still, the defiance from a man who ostensibly commanded the local heroes.

"You won’t tell me where he is?"

"We cannot discuss tactics until we have a plan in place, and that involves explaining my actions and why they are necessary. I think it is in everyone’s best interests if you do not combat this particular villain but prevent his ... erm, spread."

"I thought we were on the same page, on the tactics and where to go from here," Tattletale said.

"It means a great deal. I can’t think of a greater sacrifice than letting one of the Nine go, let alone the Nine Incarnate."

"But that would still take time, as they spread," Tattletale said.

"Perhaps, but I expect that this boy will be with us for some time, as a hostage."

"And he has a role in this. We would almost resent him more if he spread across the city, from rooftop to rooftop, as he spread throughout America. He would give us leverage in our battle against the Undersiders."

"The Undersiders are nothing if we don’t kill," Legend said.

"Yes, ma’am. And we would consider it a breach of trust, if he spread as widely as he did, and we sacrificed our only asset here at the end of it."

"We will endeavor to see that he does not spread," Legend said.

A bit weary, Tattletale said, "We have an agreement, with the Undersiders, I believe?"

"Yes," Legend said. "Yes, please."

"We’ll track the Undersiders down, whenever we can."

"Yes, please."

There was a long pause.

Silence lingered, the latter portion of the truce.

"We’ll take no prisoners, I assure you," the Doctor said.

Legend nodded.

■

The meeting began, and the meeting ended abruptly.

"No point," the Doctor said.

"No point, only there for an excuse, if you believe us," Tattletale said.

"I don’t believe you. But I-"

She stopped as she saw Legend’s eyes widen.

"He’s not a threat," she said. "He hasn’t even realized it."

"What

======== SAMPLE 6 ========
 a crowd in the center, and all of a sudden, there was a crash.

A massive ship, a behemoth, had materialized directly in our midst. The wind turned, and I imagined it was much as Leviathan had been when he had formed his massive form.

But even bigger, a ship like that thing from the portal… Leviathan was materializing, a monster, and his creators were standing by, waiting to be used against.

This was different. This time, Leviathan had formed several massive figures at once. All of them were afraid of us, angry, all on edge.

The air grew heavy, the darkness steadily deepening. The ground shifted, and it wasn’t just the shifting of the ground that was making the effects worse. It was the effect of the entire world churning around us.

"The Endbringers, please get well soon," an elderly woman spoke.

"I know, Mrs. Yamada," the female voice was calm, almost distant. For someone who had just given birth to the kind of child a hundred years old, the elderly woman still managed a certain amount of humanity to her voice. "Mrs. Yamada. The young woman who gave birth to you."

"We must tell you she died, that you took her to the Birdcage, where you keep the ones you rescued, and that you have only the vials they left behind. The rest we would give to anyone lucky enough to see her."

"You have no idea who she was," the woman said.

"I think some of you do."

"I can’t believe this." Most of the crowd around the woman had turned to look at the figure, but the woman was sitting just to Yamada’s left. "We took her from her home, we gave her to you, and you took her to your… laboratory? Where?"

"The Birdcage. There were others, but I- I couldn’t choose, and I couldn’t leave them here if I was going to see anyone. So I… it was a matter of time."

"The rest is up to you. Give it to the people you have access to. Either way, it didn’t make any difference."

"It did. That’s better."

There were murmurs of agreement.

"I can’t believe it," the woman said. "You took her, and you gave her to me?"

Another explosion, a close approximation to the last, the impact of Leviathan striking.

Mrs. Yamada spoke, "I do not understand. This is… it makes sense, but it wasn’t for us. But it was for anyone who could use an enhanced metabolism, enhanced reflexes, strength, durability, natural chemistries or some combination thereof."

"For everyone else."

"And I was rich. I had access to all of the resources a society with middle class standards should have. I could have provided all of the services and all of the resources anyone without the money could want. Except we couldn’t keep you here. We cannot."

"So you’re trying something," the woman said. "Increasing the penalties for those who break the terms of our truce."

Mrs. Yamada spoke, "A one percent increase in the odds of your own people coming back from the dead."

The woman took that, and she put it into practice. Anyone with eyes and an ear could hear a rasp. Whoever heard it could guess what she was saying.

"A little," the woman said.

"A little bit," Yamada said, smiling. "And I trust you, Mrs. Yamada. I think we can make some concessions in exchange for one or two million dollars, if you’ll help us clean things up here. I think everyone would be happy with that."

"No quid pro quo," the woman said with a smile.

"No quid pro quo," Yamada responded. "I mean, you’re helping, but there’s other things too. Like our terms, for example. I can’t tell you what to do. Don’t take the piss out on me, because I’d rather you were working for me, rather than against me."

"For your own benefit, of course. If you’re going to try to bribe me, that’s the way to go. Don’t forget that you paid me a good amount. Something between half and two thirds of a million dollars for each of you."

The woman took that and placed it in the palm of one hand. As she did it, it became immediately clear that Leviathan had picked up on it.

"

======== SAMPLE 7 ========
 a light, fresh rain falling down around her, a half second before the fog’s effect wore off.

It didn’t work the second time.

There was still light streaming in from the city below. The lights of Scion’s light were no longer adequate.

No.

I turned my attention to the street, instead. It was a different sort of lighting, different sort of lighting scheme. The colors in the sky were more orange, the colors of the streets and the buildings more red.

I had to cross the roof of the apartment building, using the hand that wasn’t fully beneath me to help guide the process. I tried a smaller flashlight and a heavier one, reaching the other rooftop, then a smaller one in the shadow of a different arch.

I was able to reach the dead, lying in the midst of the building‘s dead, covered in a soft red mist. They were surrounded by a hard shell of a body, a woman who should have been making her way downstairs. Someone who should have been following.

Had they… changed places?

It wasn’t enough that I couldn’t find them. There was no human remains to take possession of. The buildings were too similar. All the miasma-produced corpses had a common turgid smell.

Had they all left?

It dawned on me: they were all here, and they were all too aware of the threat I posed.

Had they made a deal? Had the Miasma forced them to join her?

No.

All agreed?

It dawned on me, and some agreed with me. This was an unfair situation. A double standard. Was this about how they benefited? More benefit to joining her or to the ones left with Scion?

My powers were starting to take hold. I could feel them influence air and the environment. It made me feel vertigo for once.

I closed my eyes, starting to implode, and then I opened them. Powers at work.

Scion struck out. It was more violent than normal, but it was only the beginning.

More of the miasma’s victims joined the fray.

A wave of destruction wiped out my swarm, and they all joined in. Miasma’s effects expanded, and I couldn’t even put a finger on how it was distributed. My range of influence was too limited when I had to use my bugs to draw an arrow in the air.

Three and a half feet in radius, connected to several others with threads of silk, leaving me no choice but to assume these same three or four additional targets were part of the miasma.

It was starting to get to me. My body was aching, and I didn’t have anything that I could use to fight back. I was exhausted, burned, and my reserves were low.

But this wasn’t a threat I could put down.

Something I’d hidden well, long before I could unleash it. A knife or a gun without a barrel, a makeshift gun with hand grips that were too big for my hands.

I realized what it was I was aiming at with an uncharacteristic emotion: fear.

The first bugs to arrive on the scene were to serve as decoys. Disguises. A small handful flooded into the area, and the mist thickens a fraction closer.

My swarm swelled, but it was too little. Too one-too-many, even at a mass level.

One by one, the mist took over the remaining ones. Those few who managed to survive were getting weaker, the number of bugs getting increasingly difficult to control.

Three points one-hundred-and-sixty-five in all, at close range. The first and fourth point on the scale moved into the upper two-hundred-and-sixty.

I’m growing more tired, I thought.

I moved the swarm higher. They swamped the gun-mortar’s range. I controlled it closer to the roof.

I didn’t budge the fifth point- six- until I was halfway up. Three and a half feet. I could feel the height help.

The tallest building in the area faced the northwest, and as far as the eye could see from the vantage point, I had another set of eyes on the scene.

A man. A man I recognized as Armsmaster.

I moved the swarm’s point of reference over to the man, who was standing on the rooftop. Two of my three eyes were closed. Only my sixth sense, my auditory input, made me my eyes and the earbud I wore possible, to hear the music

======== SAMPLE 8 ========
 a time of great need and strain for the people in charge."

I could feel a thud, like a club being kicked, but it was different. There was more impact, more vibration.

She pulled up a chair and sat down at one corner of the table beside me, opposite Dragon.

"Mostly so they could hear you say your piece, but they didn’t get to hear you say anything definitive," Miss Militia said.

"Mostly true," Defiant answered. "We’ve given you your due. You act like we could."

"So you expect everything to fall into place the minute you open your mouth?" Vista asked.

"We’re not there yet," Defiant said. "Do you really think you’d get there just yet if we didn’t keep the peace?"

"I don’t want to be that asshole," Miss Militia said.

"I don’t know where you get your power," Defiant said, "But you’re talking like it’s easy to get good at. You have a degree in kinesics, you train your skills."

"Yeah," I said, but it was with a measure of humility. I hadn’t actually had time to study with them, and I hadn’t tried them. I had maybe glanced at the textbooks Dragon had provided, but I hadn’t bothered to take the time to listen to the lecture on topics surrounding the kinesics. I wasn’t sure if it had anything to do with my powers, my body language or my inexperience as a thinker.

"Some of us are new capes," Chariot said, as he arrived. He was wearing armor, but had a hood pulled down over much of his head. He had a simple design that traced the corners of his face, with black lightning still glowing in his eyes. "I’m kind of surprised you came with us," he said.

I wondered if the lack of human contact was a part of his costume. Not that I could really see him. Tattetale’s work had been more professional.

More than that, I wondered if I should note that his team was made up of… what did the word go if you wanted to give someone a voice? Brutish, or some combination of the two?

The Undersiders were another matter. I was aware of the bugs that they were using to suppress the beast-headed creatures that descended on them, with a number of 'tetraspecialists' beating a hasty retreat. There were capes who took the time to learn how to deal with the Endbringers in a similar fashion. I couldn’t say who they were, exactly, just that they were there.

We’d reached our destination, the Sheraton, and were ushered inside. I looked around. The place had been updated, if not by Tattetale’s work, then by Legend’s, and the rooms on the lower level had been given a much-needed makeover, to the point that someone probably wouldn’t be able to complain.

Rachel stood at one corner of the room, behind her teammates. Bastard, the youngest of the brats, was getting bigger. His muscles were similar enough to mine that having Rachel sit with him felt out of place. The way she huffed out a breath, the way her shoulders were raised… a combination of repressed anger and the effect of deep breaths on her skin, I could see how she reacted to any small insult.

Regent was a foot away, grunting with a muscle strain, and Grue was situated at the far end, behind Bitch. The two dogs lay side by side, Brutus by his side, seemingly content to let her grief dictate how she should react.

Bentley and the bulldog seemed content enough.

It irritated me, but I saw the resemblance between the two of them. They were skinny like me, dressed totally different. The shirts that they wore… they were grey, or black, or black blend of the two, and the color was somehow dark gray, like black and dark blue. They wore masks that bore an uncanny resemblance to the Eidolon-made ones from the video games, only they were painted on black and gray instead of gray or black.

I felt like an accessory in that kind of visual spectacle, somehow more bizarre than the image I’d just experienced.

Legend was there, along with Miss Militia, Rachel, Bitch, Bastard and a handful of the people from the Undersiders. They drew closer as I approached, the last of the crowd having been forcibly barred from entering by the two deputy captains. The dogs waited at a table behind the assembled group.



======== SAMPLE 9 ========
 a little harder than other players."

"Yes," I answered.

■

The building we’d entered was a short distance from the sea. A shelter, really. Only the outside was white, and it was surrounded by barbed wire.

"A shelter?" Charlotte asked. She didn’t look any more comfortable than she had been in the dark, dirty, claustrophobic cells before we’d arrived.

I turned my attention from her.

"We could go back to the place where we came from," Grue suggested.

"That would be a mistake," I said. There were more pressing matters to focus on.

Tattletale spoke up. "You know them?"

"Parian and Foil," I said. "Probably Foil and Ligeia too, if they’re able."

"Then I’m more interested in learning more about Parian."

"She was nice enough to share some backstory," I said. "And I’m willing to take one more chance at finding out why they were willing to abandon their families. Another kid, maybe a teenager, maybe of Parian’s generation, just a few short shots of C02. Shots Parian would have pushed so hard for, in her shoes. I didn’t know it at the time, but we were going to have a relationship with her coming soon. Maybe a friendship, if the chemistry between us was there."

"How does that work?" Tattletale asked.

"She and I are going to get married," I said. "I’m… planning on it."

"Okay," Tattletale said. She glanced at Grue. "This is going a little too far, and there’s a chance it could get violent."

"I…" I started.

"Not my fault, okay?" Tattletale said. She sighed. "What are we doing?"

"You should go," Tattletale said. She glanced at me, "And maybe I’ll go, too."

I glanced at her, and she gave me a one-nose-to-chin salute. I closed my eyes, while she did much the same with Grue, allowing her darkness to consume her body and mind for a fraction of a second. We walked down the street in silence until we came under more heavy gunfire.

I could sense the second group. Their numbers were too numerous to say for sure, but I could guess they were the local Protectorate, Wards, or New York Wards. They were positioned in the center of the road, watching the fight, not far from where we’d reached Parian’s hideout.

"Shit," Tattletale said. "They’re seeing us."

"Maybe something else? Maybe the heroes?"

Tattletale shook her head. "Maybe. I don’t know. That’s bloody rude. Fuck, I’m thinking they’re watching us right now, and then it’s going to get a whole lot worse."

"You two," Grue said, not taking his eyes off the trio.

"Right off the bat," Tattletale said. "They’re seeing us. There’s no other reason than that we had to defend our territory and stop the Chosen. I made peace with that much. Fuck, this is pissing me off. Fuck them. Fuck you guys. I’m not giving them a second chance, and if I had to put my life at stake to stop them, I wouldn’t hold my breath."

The tension in the group broke.

"Fuck it," Tattletale said. "Not another option."

"I don’t get what you mean," Grue said. "You don’t need to defend yourself. There’s bigger problems to focus on."

"The Chosen. They’re the biggest problem, unless we’re dealing with thousands of unstable, weak, reckless teens that can’t be controlled. Maybe the smartest, sloppiest group of problems you could possibly face, if you tried to deal with them head on."

"Dinah," Grue said. "I’m willing to bet that’s the number one thing on the list of priorities."

She frowned. "You mean you can’t help Dinah? Because if you can, then fuck you, man. Fuck you and the people you worked for."

He shook his head. "Fuck you and all the work you put in to make this something that was even remotely remotely interesting, when it’s possible to

======== SAMPLE 10 ========
 a few.

The one who’d brought the box was a teenaged girl, pale, wearing a costume I recognized as the work of one of the pre-school uniforms, a far cry from the glossy mocap the heroes had worn. The girl gestured excitedly as she bent down to get into the box. I could sense a smidge of smoke above her head, rising steadily above her head as Legend scanned the area with his mechanical arm.

"You aren’t riding shotgun when it comes to containment foam," the girl said, in a small voice.

Legend’s mechanical arm settled in my hand. Slowly, he lifted one of my cell’s walls into the air. Then he began the slow process of lowering it, lid it into a squat, white-frame apartment building.

I looked back at my hostages, and I saw Armsmaster, standing very similar to the last time I’d seen him.

The thing about Armsmaster was that he was better when it came to dealing with people who are beyond rescuing our teammate. That wasn’t saying anything that I already knew, but if I had to wager, it was saying he was a hell of a lot more capable when it came to handling a situation than I was.

Armsmaster dropped the wall – or he dropped the wall, as everyone else did – and stepped down from the rooftop, the wall behind it tipping. He stepped into the street like he was prepared to fade away, one foot against every passing car.

He began to head for the other streets on foot. The second his foot found pavement, or the second the pavement disappeared beneath his feet, he began to move, with enough force that his footholds for the horizontal and vertical surfaces were nearly beneath him. The same forces that he used to get the steel containment foam down that side of the street pushed his weight away. For his trouble, more cars had rolled down the sidewalk at the side of the road, where it had broken free.

When he met with enough traction for the roads to sort out, I could hope.

In the distance, his stomping feet made it onto the broken concrete sidewalks. It seemed like an eternity before he ran into another car that had come by. He paused, lifting one foot as though he were trying to balance it on his toes.

For long seconds, the cars didn’t move. I could almost imagine the smashed windshield of a passing car, or the mangled metal of a car, maybe. He lifted the foot, and it didn’t bend in mid-step, like the bent knees of someone who’s having trouble standing. The pavement creaked as he kicked it in.

For an instant, there wasn’t even debris overhead. A car that had come to a sudden stop and then dashed through the broken glass of the shattered railings of a collapsed building, a car that might or might not have been caught in a wire.

A boy ran forward, and Armsmaster tackled him. The others on the rooftop didn’t know who he was. One of them screamed. One of them nearly lost their minds.

He didn’t stop. No, my eyes turned to him.

My bugs stirred to life as I felt his flesh scrap against my palm. Wounds so deep they could feel them, only a few centimeters deep. No longer a band with wounds just below his shoulder blades, now a rough disc with the stumps removed.

I began tying him up. His weight and the amount of resistance just from what I was controlling brought his flesh in contact with my bugs. It twisted, binding.

For an instant, his face was against my arm’s, his chest pressed hard against my back. I didn’t even have the strength to raise my arm, let alone to raise a small knife with two blades.

I’m so small. Even compared to the Slaughterhouse Nine, I’d barely be a part of humanity.

He lifted one hand to strike at my wrist, and I could feel the wound form a tight seal around one finger.

His grip loosened.

I thought maybe he realized he could just ignore the connection. Whatever happened, the connection would disappear with time. Either way, he might have enough time to run, grab something, grab something precious and cut it off before anyone could notice.

No, the connection was there, but he hadn’t gone through to the next room over. If anything, he was bringing us down with him.

I drew my baton to one side, threw myself back, striking him in the gut. If I could get a hold on him, I might have been able to get a hold on his momentum, because I doubt his costume would hold up to a swing like

======== SAMPLE 11 ========
 a bit. I’d been wearing something to protect my head, probably the lenses of my mask. That was the bad thing. The night was still young, I was so vulnerable, so eager to please.

The good thing, I realized, was that I was left with little doubt as to why I’d left.

I’d been scared.

I hadn’t wanted to come across as aggressive, so suddenly, after going weeks without contact with anything more than my bugs, I was feeling desperate. My instincts as a human were saying no, no, no.

My mouth hung open, but I could focus on my face, in my haze. My eyelids were ajar, drifting half-closed, and they’d flicked back to the closed position after I’d closed them behind me. It felt strange, as if they’d settled in some other spot on my face. My lips moved, but it was just my head, legs and neck hanging out of sight, out of mind.

My swarm sense let me feel the little bulge behind my ear. A hair? Nope. So weird.

My swarm sense kicked into play. It was a high quality set, with more options than Chrome and the like could offer. It offered everything I’d want from a sense of balance, for all those body parts. Pitch, a sense of the world around me, hearing what people were talking about, and a sense for the emotions.

It was odd, to feel like I was missing something essential here. Something that was probably going to improve my ability to sense things from a distance.

Except it wasn’t something I could improve.

My swarm sense continued to fill in the rest of my swarm, offering me cues on which bugs were closest to my partner. Things had settled into a basic ‘lop’ shape with holes through the middle’. I could feel the vibrations from bone chattering and the sounds from the creature’s emotions. I wanted to put my arms around my head and shoulders to try to feel out some of that same kind of emotion from Leviathan.

His ‘head’ bent, as if it had been carved out of bone.

‘Flower. He’d wanted to express his power in a flower, but I was feeling a bit of a bitch-slap here. His ‘flowers’, for lack of a better term, were coming out a mess. Too much DNA was out, and he wasn’t holding himself together. Probably from the emotional stress. What was the effect on his ‘mouth’? Was he angrier than he was? I could only guess.

Beneath his broad, flat, leathery ‘face’, Leviathan flexed his massive, jagged, hooked 'legs. Was it for scale? Reach? Extremity?

The ‘flowers’ gave me a view down his vast body. He was all leather and scale, with a hook-arm that had been fashioned out of the limb’s own internal organ, a needle with a large, flat-edged blade at the end. Was it for reaching?

I was pretty sure that if you plunged a hairdryer into a fire pit and watched what happened, you’d notice that some of the fire pit’s occupants were getting hot. It wasn’t just that they were wet – the fire pit itself was filled with grime, and he’d saturated the place with moisture. Water, in short, was running off the top of the pit, turning it into a wet spot. Add the smell of smoke and water, and it was too much for my liking.

Had he made the entire building into some kind of dry dry laboratory? No. What fascinated me were the cracks running across the ‘body’ of the massive fire pit. Was it intended as a trap for the guy who built the trap?

I turned my attention back to Leviathan and his ‘finish’. Without breaking eye contact, I raised my hand, fingers knitting together, as if I could somehow tell if Leviathan was waiting for me to make a move, attack him. I didn’t get two steps before I felt outnumbered and outmaneuvered.

It was all I could do to keep quiet while I tried to work out how to approach this conundrum. Leviathan was massive. How was I supposed to get in his way?

Was that a bad thing? A slippery slope? Had I built myself into a predator position because I was afraid of the consequences of not attacking him head on? Was that fear-based reasoning at work?

I couldn’t tell if he was calculating something or if he just wanted to play it safe while leaving

======== SAMPLE 12 ========
 a side view of an injured Chase, who was brawny enough to claw her way free with a hard bite. The Doctor’s hand was forced to scrape her own ribs free of any damage.

"Saving lives," she breathed.

"I know that."

"But-"

"I need your help. I would kill you if I could, but if-"

"It’s different."

"Sometimes life isn’t fair," she said. She nodded, then sighed heavily. "So let me ask you a question. You want to stay alive, do what it takes to stay alive, so I can have the answers I need?"

"I do."

"No, you don’t."

"I know what you don’t. I know about what I do. But maybe it’s better than doing nothing. Maybe the odds are better in the long run."

"Maybe."

He sighed. "But you do what I’m asking you to do, okay?"

She nodded.

"We have a chance to change this."

"It wouldn’t be fair to you, or it would set you back hours or days, just like the alternative was the Manton situation. Being blind, confined to a wheelchair?"

"Yes."

"I think you’re a fighter. Stronger than the others, because of it. You could fight this thing, walk away from it, so long as you’re willing to lay down the physical effort."

"I’m not that much of a fighter."

There were noshes here. Surprises.

"Ah, you’re one of the sneaky ones," she said, smirking.

"You’re a bit of a snob. I don’t really… what? Like, do you mean I don’t really make or eat snuggly?" Her eyes shifted to the side, as if there was some hidden message there. Of little consequence if taken to heart. Except, of course, she could have been intending to be sarcastic.

"I meant I’m not that persistent. I’m not that ambitious. I don’t want to sound cocky. I’m just…" The words trailed off as she glanced down at the table. She smiled a little, slight mischievous.

"I don’t see how you can be such a nuisance."

"Well, there’s that thing, like. If I can get a better position, help out, maybe the others will stop being such monsters."

"There’s bigger problems."

Staring at the ground, Emma couldn’t help but think of all the time she’d spent like this, alone. The threats she’d faced, how she’d used her power to the limit, and how she’d tried to ignore the bullying, only to find herself continuously confronted.

This was her chance, finally. Her breakout, her biggest shot at saving the day. A chance to turn the tables, to do what she’d been doing all along, and end this, to truly be a badass.

Except… she hated this.

Came from those same people who had been behind the line at the school, after she’d joined the Undersiders.

This was the real her, the one she couldn’t turn away from, the one who made her shit her pants on the spot.

Emma sat through the first of what would be three weeks of classes, her back to the wall, despairing. How had she put all this off so long? How was she supposed to take this in?

Not knowing what to do, or who to ask, she walked over to the desks, where she’d gathered notebooks and pens. Using the notebooks to erase the scribbles and dirt, she began to carefully draw out the names of the student body as they gathered around the room.

Not long after she started, they approached, stopping to talk. One of the older students, talking about some of the self-help gurus out there, Emma’s hero.

They didn’t get a chance to talk, because the bell rang.

"Dean," Emma mumbled. "Adam?"

"Hi Emma!" the Dean smiled.

"You got my stuff, of course. I figured as much," she said, taking it from her father. "Did you change your name?"

"My father made it a while ago, and I haven’t used it since. He only called me to give me my own cellphone."

"What

======== SAMPLE 13 ========
 a small smile on his face. "Yeah. Kind of. Sorry." He walked over to one of the booths and seated himself at the far end. No laptops here. Only CRT screens.

The head of the PRT department I was in contact with glanced up at me to check on the status of my call. "Mr. Hebert?"

"You’re still talking to the dead."

"The paperwork you guys are looking through is still current. For now, we’re going to assume he was a good man. The PRT won’t charge him with any counterfactual crimes for what happened, so long as he gives us the response we desire. Period. If anyone wants to step in and claim any of Dinah’s compensation, we’ll look into it."

"You didn’t even ask for his statement."

"I gave it to you because I thought you’d want to come to class and hear the statement from the father before you made up your mind about anything else. You said as much, in your email, and I thought you’d want the statement in person, just to be safe."

"Did he answer all of our questions?"

"He didn’t. There was a long pause during which I decided to press him for more details. I felt like I’d be giving up something key by refusing, and he was unwilling to give it up for something that was small and trivial. So I settled on two questions. Number one, if he was lying about being injured and missing classes, how did he explain it to you and me?"

"A liar," I said.

"True enough. We can only hope that, if he’s telling the truth, he wasn’t lying so much as reflecting who he was beneath the faerie wreath."

"That’s harsh," I said. "You were the one who broke up my test prep class, didn’t you?"

"I might have," Mr. Hebert said, "But I don’t think my students would feel so warm and fuzzy about that as a direct result of one false accusation."

A little unhinged, I thought. I wouldn’t have gone to an anonymous cape for help, especially not one with a reputation this tarnished.

But maybe I was being too harsh. Too paranoid, in how things had gone down at the last two events.

"Let’s not drag this out any further," Mr. Hebert said. "We’ll get a chance to respond to the other questions."

I liked the loose arrangement of security and privacy that the men had established for themselves, given the general location of the men’s buildings. Mr. and Mrs. Hebertsen were there, there was a woman who I couldn’t identify, but I presumed was a receptionist with a desk job, not a woman in her fifties. I couldn’t help but notice the presence of the older men, the protective features of the professionals. Dr. and Mrs. Hebertsen were nowhere to be seen. It put me in mind of an old family sitting around the living room table, children not yet old enough to talk.

I could imagine. A scene like that, in the middle of a corporate office, a woman in white lying to a roomful of men, all sitting around the table.

"Let’s not bring this to a head," I said. "I trust you two to handle the rest."

"Done," Mr. and Mrs. Hebert said, at the same time. I saw the flash of alarm. They’d turned to look over their shoulder, and the woman had changed her demeanor, staring directly at them. Confusion had been apparent even before the question was posed.

That left the older man and the three dogs. He looked at Mr. and Mrs. Hebert, and shook his head.

"There’s a rule against bringing any of the Behemoth suits into the school grounds," Mrs. Yamada said, for the benefit of the three remaining women present. "It would be a breach, and a matter of pride for the school, in our part of the story, anyway."

"We can’t refuse," my lawyer said. "I don’t see any point. Behemoth is a hostile alien power. He attacks people everywhere he goes, and he attacks those who he thinks are his enemies."

"We need to get some sort of authorization before we move forward with this," Mrs. Yamada said, and her tone was more serious as she put a hand on my shoulder.

"Yes ma’am," I replied, without opening my

======== SAMPLE 14 ========
 a girl with pale skin and eyes.

They moved down the street, the two children swimming in the current of the water. I was a little stumped as to why they’d stay, but I was glad they stopped. Water staining the sand in the slightest thing they touched.

Tyrant and the one woman with him left, going through another doorway. We followed after.

I was getting tired, and my fatigue was having the opposite effect on me as it usually did. The second full day of walking with this relentless, relentless wind churning through my hair, my clothing, my body, and my thoughts. It was as though it were trying to pull my body apart, and things just wouldn’t do any more. The best parts of me, my personality and memories, the things I’d become, they wouldn’t hold together any more. I felt as though I’d never experienced a moment where I wasn’t emotionally exhausted, where there was nothing I could turn to and search for meaning in.

I could sense the others advancing on the beach, and noticed one of the refugees who’d been staying near the Undersiders making his way across the area to our side. A man with hair in some weird shape.

He passed a metal box, and I moved up beside Bitch and the dog, watching. The muzzle flash of a shot caught Dragon’s attention.

She moved, and the storm of wind shifted, shifting into an all-out cone. I couldn’t see what changed, but the sheer force of it made my hair stand on end.

Dragon didn’t slow as a result of the blow. She leaped up to the point where the edge of the barrier met the rocky ground, directly beneath the machine. She fired her cannonblade, and what I could only surmise was an explosion. I couldn’t see it with my eyes, but the debris that followed was roughly spherical, as though a hand had slapped against the barrier.

She had been anticipating the possibility of gunfire from any direction, and this wouldn’t be some distant part of the city, let alone the south end’s bad part.

Dragon turned, firing a shot that barely seemed to reach Bitch’s direction. No reaction from Brutus, apparently unaware he was there. Neither shot fired made me feel a hundred percent better, and both seemed to hit home. As loud an explosion of destruction as something I could perceive.

That was our territory? It was ours for control, and all the while, my face in the wall, my mind, my self-confidence shattered. My only source of self-esteem.

I couldn’t say for sure how it happened or who or why. It was just, what, an extremely violent, unexpected outcome? It left me breathless with rage.

I grabbed the two dogs from the rubble and dragged them behind me, Brutus leading the way and Bitch following right behind me. I donned my flight pack and then flew off, not bothering to bring the dogs along. I arrived at Coil’s underground base in record time, flying just beside him, dog keeping my back smooth.

We had only seconds to decide where we needed to go. We bolted for the area just inside the vault door, leaving the dogs to find a place to go inside.

Bastard paced wildly where he faced me, his head erect, body swaying as he ran a short distance away. Whatever it was that Coil was doing, I wasn’t sure. His power seemed too consistent, somehow. I wasn’t good at making inferences, but whatever it was, it was giving him a way to adjust. It seemed to be the main reason he had the strength he did.

I was really worried about Bitch.

I wasn’t the only one who was feeling a little nervous. A part of me wanted to turn the conversation back to business, to debating the merits of using the dogs’ powers or not. The other part of me was worried that they were getting a more complete, one-on-one fight with a fight on multiple levels, and I was losing sight of just how devastating that might be.

With luck, I had enough time to spend with the kids, to catch Bitch’s eye. With luck, Bitch would be a few years older than I was.

"Come here," she ordered, and Brutus howled, followed by two squeals of fury.

The two little ones followed just behind her, and Bitch returned to the kitchen, muttering something in her mutt infested throat. I didn’t see her leave, but I had a hard time imagining her making it halfway through the house, out the bathroom

======== SAMPLE 15 ========
 a second. How? The door, maybe. Or some combination of the two.

No. That was a terrible clue, coming from him. "This place is going to come with a price."

"No. We’ve got a lot of faith we can put behind this door. We can’t let him come and tear it down."

"Then don’t let him come. We can buy the space."

The man’s eyes widened. "You think?"

"We can buy the space," I said, my voice still, "Now, please don’t tear my work down."

"We can. But not like you want."

"This is about saving lives."

"That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard." He put his palm on my shoulder, and a cold wind ripped past us. "We save lives, no strings attached, and then we find out your boss was in on it, and-"

"You saved me," I said. "You took my work, and we made this place better. And I’m supposed to just fall in line and be grateful?"

"No," he said. "No, I don’t think any of that matters."

"Save me?" He raised his eyebrows. "That’s pretty pathetic coming from someone who’s supposed to be heroic. Like I said, this is about saving lives."

"I’ll buy that," I said.

He didn’t make eye contact, but I could guess he was ready to shoot just for that one instantary window of forgiveness.

I had one foot pressed to the window. Three quick taps on the window with my finger: don’t touch. Don’t let go.

The window slowly slid off-frame. I stepped inside and shut the door.

"I almost forgot," Legend said. "You still working for H.G.?"

"I’m still working for him."

"Good, good. What’s he doing with you?"

"Not like I’m going to screw it up for him," I said.

"He’s going to torture you until you admit to something."

"Those are two very different things," I said. "We can have a discussion after, after this is over with."

"We can. But first things first, a meeting."

"Good. What do you have to offer that this meeting isn’t a charade?"

"I’ve got something to say to him. A few things, but I’ll speak for myself, when I say I’m ready to meet him, whatever he says."

"That’s fine."

"Then the deal is done. I’ll have my revenge on him, here, in the little hours, when he’s tried to twist my weapon in his own twisted interpretations of what it means."

"I suppose you won’t get that chance," Legend said, as if he hadn’t just stabbed her but she deserved that fate just as badly.

I stared down at the door. "You still in the room?"

"I’m… still."

"I’m waiting for someone to come through the door."

"He’ll see you in the lobby. See my bodyguards. I don’t need anything formal, so I left my sword in the bedroom after we left the office."

"And you’re going to shoot me?"

"You have two minutes. I like being alive."

There was a pause.

"We need to talk," I said.

"About business."

"Before then, if you’re going to shoot me, it doesn’t matter. I have a hostage."

"How many guns do you have?"

"Two. One of which I might not have brought with me if I were in a formal mood, by the looks of it. And these guards?"

I shrugged. "I’m not going to argue that. I’m just doing what I think is right."

"We’re on opposite sides, aren’t we? Isn’t it?"

"We’re on opposite sides. Why should we take it?"

"It helps decide the pace."

"Not really." It felt like the tension that came with having a conversation with someone who wasn’t your enemy. It was almost liberating in a way.

"I think we’ll find that out over time

======== SAMPLE 16 ========
 a one percent chance," Regent said.

"No!" Tattletale shouted. "Why’d you-"

"I went to her," Regent replied.

Tattletale was already getting out of her seat as he turned to run, his legs buckling as he nearly fell over. He caught her around the waist and almost lifted her off the ground. As she held on, he bent her legs down so she could stay on the ground.

"I’m going to have word with the Mayor!" Imp called out. "Go! Go!"

Bentley leaped for his master. The dogs, for their part, only leaped when they felt threatened, or when Regent moved to attack again. Each dog seized the opportunity, and Bentley leaped three more steps to get to his master. One or two more jumps, and the dogs clawed their way free. Two jumped, and the dogs lunged after them.

I knew from my experience with the Slaughterhouse Nine that whatever Imp did, they weren’t going to be at any risk to themselves. Still, I couldn’t help but wonder if this would be the first time a dog had been able to climb up onto a person’s back without assistance. Something Mischa might have done.

"Bitch!" Tattletale shouted.

Bentley leaped after the dogs, chasing them as they vanished into the distance. I couldn’t say for sure if the dog had been faster at the leap or if it was the owner of the dog who was in faster training mode. Whatever it was, Bentley leaped to his master’s side, the speed the dogs had attained by the moment they were unleashed, leaping in their first fights without a shred of restraint. The dogs were more like the hedgehog-bashed, rat-ridden, half-stunted creatures Regent had described to me, though stronger in other ways. The only other dog I could think of which had gotten quite such a scare off the dogs was the wolf-riding, mutated bull who had come to Deimos. That was two incidents.

We’d passed the tower and were getting our bearings from the vantage point beneath the two stories of tinted windows. The others were farther away: the Hounds would have to contend with the Undersiders and the Travelers, who were probably in the north end, and the Merchants, whose numbers were a fraction of what they’d been in.

"Hear!" Tattletale shouted. She jumped.

A crackling sound and a splash of water away sounded out from one of the distant rooftops.

"Bitch, cover! We’re on a catwalk," Tattletale reported.

"Bitch, are you listening? Are you okay?"

"I hate being in dark places," Bitch muttered.

"Don’t blame you. I’m a fucking mastermind, I don’t get that trick. All of this boils down to Catwoman, Doomsday, Shatterbird, and me. What’s it gonna take for you to give up the information and safety?"

Bentley leaped after us, almost reckless, not even tasting the water as he reached the rooftops. His power almost felt like it were a tenth of her strength, too feeble for her. Still, she was the one who seemed to be suffering. As he rose through the air, almost casually, he used the claws on his rear end to scoop a car up onto his back, his tail tucked beneath the car’s wheel. Another car barely made it halfway up the building before it was too heavy to lift.

Bentley finished putting the car in the place, rippling out the window and then hopping down to the rooftop. There was a crash so intense I could feel the wind ripping past me. I wasn’t in costume, and it was dark enough I could only assume my costume wouldn’t be conspicuous at night.

Tattletale was on the other rooftop, her bugs swirling around her face and neck as blood poured from the open wounds on her arms and back.

Bentley slammed his tail against the side of the building to get his feet under him and push us away before we could be cut down by the building. I glanced at the remaining dogs, who were slow to react as they realized what was happening as well as the sudden movement of a monstrous dog with a heavy burly build and a gauntleted leg. Two or three seconds it might have taken them to react and help, and they were gone.

"Run," Bitch told Bitch.

She looked at Brutus, who gave a curt nod and continued his retreat. We stayed where we were, our

======== SAMPLE 17 ========
 a second or two.

"You’re alright?" Clockblocker asked.

"Crap," Weld answered, his voice a bit hollow.

"Clockblocker, I’m not sure I trust you, in this." Coil stood, and no less than six people leaped onto the side of the building to either side or below us. The debris and chunks of concrete from the building’s exterior rolled over the students, only obscuring them. "What are you doing here?"

"Voting," Weld said, "She’s a PRT member."

"Don’t fucking vote," Clockblocker said.

"The PRT is just that? Vote?" Teacher asked.

"We have a way to manage our own budget. It’s working. The villains are dealt with."

"We need to get more people on board before this thing takes off," Weld said. "Our reputation isn’t so good with the prisoners in charge."

"Voting safe?" Teacher asked.

"It goes without saying it goes against the current."

Voting was safe because we had the numbers in our hands. If anyone voted against the plan, they really weren’t invited to the Council chambers, or the Wards, where there were more open voting chambers.

The fight had begun with six individuals falling, all but one of them effortlessly. We’d already won, I thought. From the beginning, I’d set my doubts and my counterarguments in motion.

One more person fell, and that number of casualties swelled. A hundred people, and they fell so quickly I could barely guess where they’d landed. From the moment I could see, I could track their movements.

They were flying, and they weren’t setting down – they were taking flight directly, literally. Scion was apparently too slow, the moment they were up on a building, I could see his afterimage as it shot across the sky.

Then he found himself scrambling for cover, for the bottom of a building.

Clockblocker threw down a forcefield, protecting the students. When they raised a collective hand, clockwork began to rise in that same instant, forming a giant hand, bigger around than the city, more uniform in height and width. I could see the individual hands, lit by the golden light, reaching forward, grasping and reorienting the crystals, dust and fragments of crystal.

Some of the crystals, too, seemed to change, morphing. They were like living snowflakes, dissolving into a mess of crystal as they made contact with it. The hand wouldn’t be made out of crystal with a crystal inside. It would be the crystals himself, encased in crystal.

Scion lashed out, and the snowflakes that Scion had summoned offloaded onto buildings around him, converging into a single, single figure, clearly capable of bending stone. Hands, arms, legs and a torso were all capable of doing something with the metal that wasn’t obviously hot to move.

One hand, clearly capable of much more, reached into the ground, and much of the building shimmered in the light-up effect of its movements.

Another, a shorter one, reached into the air.

Taken aback, I stared.

He’d managed to make himself and his teammates out of the smoke, but how was that so different? Was he a special case? I couldn’t think of a way he’d managed to get himself here.

A cape who could grant flight? If there was any ambiguity in the fact that they had capes who could lift heavier things, it was blown out of proportion by the lift that came with a cape blowing their own cocoon.

And the cape, for his part, was somehow oblivious. He didn’t even seem to fire off a single blast of lightning where they were looking for him, but he was simply lifting the building in his own midsection.

The momentum, the power, all came together, and he was lifted straight up.

"Where’s He?" I asked, stunned.

There were a number of students in the area. Some had brought bottled water and food, but the area was empty of people.

My bugs kept wanting to join me in my attempt to find Panacea, but we were well armed. I couldn’t hope to beat Dragon in an exchange of blows, or even to match her in sheer raw strength.

"Tattletale said that somewhere in Canada, the Slaughterhouse Nine got hold of one of these creepypants."

I could see the general shape of the golden light that was still growing. If this continued, it would

======== SAMPLE 18 ========
 a bit before she had a real answer for me. "We have a time limit."







Tangle 6.2


I arrived at Tattletale’s headquarters as the heroes were finishing up their post-puppy routine. It was already morning when Tattletale stepped out of the shower and went downstairs to get changed into a pair of clean, dry clothes.

"I’d like to hear what you’d planned," Grue told her, when she was in the living room, folding her arms.

"I didn’t plan anything, really. A place for everyone, for the three of us, for you guys, if you’d wanted. There was talk of bringing a cape to the house, and maybe an entourage, maybe, but that fell apart. I was actually going to ask if you wanted to be one of the guests tonight, since I thought your house was a favorite of mine, and you’ve got a great pedigree. The way things stand, your parents don’t get a lot of credit, but they’re the creators of the Simurgh. They’re all going to be at tonight’s party."

"A fantasy," Regent said.

"It’s a pretty damn good one," Imp retorted.

"A party, and the Simurgh is only one of a whole bunch of threats that are going to come up. There’s going to be more. In a week and a half, there’ll be new capes, and old capes."

"No, Rachel. There’s a reason we’ve stayed away from the house," Regent said, and the words had a sting of venom.

"I’m being realistic," I told him. "The last threat I’d have felt like I had a choice. Lung was terrifying, but if there was an option, I was going to take it."

"You sound more like you’re wanting to fight," Grue spoke. I felt my heart rate pick up as he continued, "I can’t emphasize this enough, but be safe. There’s a chance two or three of these guys could shoot through the walls of the house and come out alive, especially if they can get close enough. Even if you watch your back, even if you assume they leave the party if you let them, something could happen. That’s not only the danger from them getting close to the house, but the fact that the people there would be all too happy to see them slip away and trigger events."

"It’s a party," Grue said, "They’ll still want to party."

I nodded, glancing over my shoulder at the men and women who were gathered in the ballroom. Lisa was sitting at the head of the table, and she was talking with the people upstairs, "Weaver is on a mission from the Protectorate, and he’s on his way to Brockton Bay with an entourage of people he’s hired to look after. How is that safe?"

"We are?" Tattletale raised her coffee cup.

"He wants the house, and he can’t get access, so he wants it for himself. He won’t let anyone else get the chance to try and get their hands on it. That includes his people, of course." I nodded.

"I’m actually a little scared for my house right now," Lisa told me. "I don’t know how it will turn out, but I’m pissed, and I think Weaver would be too."

"Right," I replied. My swarm, already a fairly distinct swarm, grew to the point that I could barely tell the difference between one group of people and another. A crowd, this time. The people who were waiting for the house to come through the levee or whatever other hindrance they’d managed to get over the levee would be a short distance down the street from my father’s place. My dad would be outside, maybe getting a fresh coat or two off. I wasn’t sure if he’d be able to get to the house.

A number, I remembered. Fifteen or twenty people, gathered with a dozen more who I was fairly certain were not in the room and not conversing. Everyone but the guy with the guns was still in costume, masks or body armor that covered their heads, but I could see them with flashlights and flashbangs. Spreading out over more than a half mile.

There were probably other places where Weaver would be, now, making good on her threat. They’d gathered in a place nobody would suspect

======== SAMPLE 19 ========
 a little more relaxed, and they both smiled broadly. One of them seemed to know he was genuine.

"We were joking," Regent said, lamely, "It’s cool."

He had to stoop to grab one of Legend’s weapons, then dropped it like it was weightless. Legend slapped it away and began taking it apart.

"Ow ow ow," Regent said, as Regent began slowly uncoiling the chain.

"I won’t ever touch those guys again," Regent sneered.

Legend ignored him. "I hope you’re getting the message. I would have done the same thing, except I was fat and ugly at the same time."

Regent wasn’t amused.

He began unfurling the long shaft of metal, and the two villains around him began backing up, guns raised. One was a cat, long, pale barks for legs and a shelf of scruff on one shoulder. The other had a bear with a claw of bone at one shoulder, claws splayed. Both were covered in thick fangs with a scaly exterior.

Legend turned his attention to the capes around him. Cat-girl by the pool of water, with the guy with the bone claws?

"What?" Legend asked, incredulous, "You can’t tell the difference?"

"I can," the girl spoke. "I mean, I’m not good at looking at the big picture, but I think that bone thing represents my worst aspects. Not all that different from the man with the clawed armor. There’s more to it, but I’m left with that nagging doubt, off balance, like it’s somehow my fault for not being able to keep up with Sophia."

"That was Sophia’s fault," Regent said, with an uncharacteristically irritated tone.

"I’m not even close to sure," the girl answered, sounding far calmer in response. She tilted her head a little in a way that allowed a fine mist of stubble to escape around the corners of her mouth, but it didn’t look like any of her sleep had allowed any changes to her appearance. Maybe she was even tired. "But… yeah, I can tell the difference. There’s nothing special about them, and there’s something about the way they’re waving their arms and the way they’re sitting that really catches my eye."

"That’s not important," he retorted.

"No. It’s that the way they’re acting? They’re totally out of place. Like I said, I can’t figure it out, but I get what they’re saying. It’s like, they’re trying to be new, new to the cape scene, so it’s all about the status, and being the new kid means a cape usually tries their hardest and succeeds. And this new kid just wants to roll with it, try some of the others for validation. Fuck it, if it wasn’t for the status and the fact that I really do get what they’re all about, I’d be freaking pissed."

"Well fucked," Imp said.

"Yeah," Imp said, as Regent started walking backwards.

They returned to the scene where Leviathan was fighting the other two Endbringers and the floating fortress. The two of them were engaged in a gun battle.

"I can’t even wrap my head around this," she said.

"Then I don’t get it," Regent told her.

"Fuck," Imp said.

"Well fuck you too," Regent said. He was feeling a twang of something that his power wasn’t helping to direct at him. "If you want me to go, you can come anytime. Come on, we’re making this easy."

She rolled her eyes, leaned forward and started to speak, but he stepped close and covered his mouth, turned her way. She could imagine him trying it on somewhere and found himself smiling.

That was how we end up with Tattletale, Regent and Imp acting as if they knew exactly what they were getting into.

One thing at a time



Tattletale was holding one of the cell phones, tapping it for keypresses so she had a grasp of the commands the various software on the phone were making. Coil stood by beside the window, not far from the rooftop, a gun in hand. Dinah wasn’t far behind.

"Did you know?" Dinah asked.

"I-"

"Did you know?"

======== SAMPLE 20 ========
 a new mask, without the eyes, without the mask that covered his nose and ears. All it took was the need to breathe.

He could use his power, and he was able to find a new place to land. Not the best spot, but he was still able to land.

"It’s not working," he told Bitch. "Doesn’t work at all."

"I know. You have to try," Bitch replied, her voice hushed.

He tried. He turned, stretched his legs. Bending the metal of the truck’s roof, he placed his weight on one leg, while keeping his other leg extended. The strength with that leg was probably more for stability than for strength. It was like balancing on the tip of a long, thin limb.

The effect didn’t last long enough for him to make any real headway. Bitching got worse as seconds passed. He decided to call another attack. It wouldn’t do any real damage. Bitch ordered her dogs to attack from cover, and the swarm moved towards him.

A moment later, they reached their target. He didn’t need to do a thing to get caught in the attack. A dog with a metal collar, spikes through its ears, a narrow throat. It bit eagerly at the drooling Bitch, and her screams followed in the wake of the attack.

Her dogs-

Her hands went to her mouth.

Bastard sniffed around her eyes, found her weapon, jerked his head to one side, as if he could identify her. Bitch swore under her breath.

He couldn’t do anything. Bitch stared at him, arms folded her head.

And she could see him, in that moment of confusion and fear?

Was he going to kill himself? Would he hurt himself, or would his actions leave him feeling like he was forever on the brink of a breaking point?

Her heart leaped to her chest as she saw the others approach. Bitch spotted Bentley pawing at the side of a building as he found a spot to come to a stop. She bolted, shearing past two dogs and through a piece of sidewalk.

The others were starting to approach, but she was already dragging Bentley down the center of the sidewalk, through the wall. He was too heavy for her, and the sidewalk was too thick for his claws to find even a fraction of the soft turf. The dogs stumbled into the alley, and the dog nearest her was taken to the ground.

She reached the edge of the roof, and she used her hands to keep him down.

"They came from every direction, and there was a forcefield there," Bitch heard Lung say, in the wake of the attack.

"I can’t get to him," Bitch said, as if she were unsure what to say. She’d come well after everyone else.

"Then I think they’re gone," Lung said.

That settled the question. There was no point in continuing with the discussion.

Foil? No. Sonja? Probably not.

Bakuda? Probably. Tieu? She’d killed people before. Big things. Sanguine, Echidna, Ligeia. The names weren’t important.

The important thing was that she was gone. She’d failed, as the ABB had failed.

Bonesaw watched from a corner, as did Parian, who was hanging back with Rachel and Cousin. The trio looked desperate, distant, scared.

Her eyes went wide, and she saw the same reflection of that same emotion, eyes wide, expressionless. The reflection of the same fear and panic that Hookwolf had used to reach that far? It was gone. The fear was there, the sensitivity. It was hovering somewhere between human and beast.

Foil. The girl was on the other side of the portal. She was vulnerable, and Parian and the others weren’t moving to defend her. She was blind, deaf, and Bitch’s dogs couldn’t attack because they were blind.

Parian and the others were retreating, pulling back the barricade and backing up a step, to take the path around the portal and head through. The portal remained open, a place where two people could be sent.

Bakuda watched them, waiting.

But there was no reaction.

Then, without warning, a dog approached them, an overly large dog. As large as a small minibus had been, a dog, and the man beside it was a fair bit taller, nearly fit. The color was a dark brown, and the skin was darker, almost a black satin, like

======== SAMPLE 21 ========
 a lot better, but she could see how the walls got smaller.

"I don’t like your tone," she said. She raised her voice to be heard over the sounds of dozens of visitors that were making their way into the complex. "You want to be friends? Fine. That’s fine. But no bashing me for leaving you. No offense."

That made him laugh in her face, and it wasn’t the same as the sheer physical and mental exertion he might have anticipated hearing when they were on their best behavior. The muscles in his abdomen twitched taut, and his breath caught in his mouth, like he’d been shocked, or angry.

The other visitors were quiet as she pressed her hand to her throat.

"Are you hurt? How long?"

"I won’t ask, because I already know. You wanted help getting dressed? I’ll do that for you."

"Okay," he said, trying to sound reassuring. The muscles in his abdomen had become increasingly rigid. "I’ll walk you through the rest of the way there, then we can decide what we want to do after we make our way there. Do you want to continue the friendship line?"

She stared down at her hands, clenched them at her side.

"If you say yes…"

She sighed. Her hand touched his arm, but it wasn’t sincere. If it was a ploy, she wasn’t going to be fooled again. He turned her way and parted ways.

She set to getting changed as soon as possible, finding the changing table in the shower area, then headed downstairs, her back to the sink, her hands in her pockets as she changed in the stall of the shower, out of the way of the changing table and the red faced visitors from the changing room.

It was odd to look at, to think about, after a week and a half of being forced to stay quiet, listening to the shower curtain open and shut as it dried and dried again, the sounds echoing through the room. Only moments ago, they’d been discussing all the different ways she could help, from changing in the stall to changing rooms. Now she was the only one left who’d actually said anything.

It was awkward and it was uncomfortable and she couldn’t help but think about the conversation with the doctor, and the conversation they’d had in the nurse’s station.

The Doctor seemed to recognize that, but she didn’t say anything, didn’t even try to broaden her perspective.

It was a good thing, a big good. A way she could hold her own, to help others. Even if it was against the law, even if it was against the regulations about conversing while undergoing the procedure, she’d do it anyways, because the program was valuable and her mood was bad after the recent setback.

Except things were going a little south of planned.

"I’m sorry," she saw the Doctor nod her way. It took her a second to process the fact that she was the only patient present who’d asked for a break. "It’s fine. I think we’ll figure out a way to work through this."

"It’s okay. She has a way out."

"I think we’ll deal with whatever happens."

The Doctor looked at her staff. "There aren’t any cells here that are small enough to fit a person, but there are cells that aren’t so comfortable for patients. We’ve got the Nurses stationed here as well, for your information. They can watch over you."

"Doctor, you’ve run out of space at this desk for all of your patients."

The Doctor nodded. "If it’s really unavoidable, I can teleport you there. I know some people have used a dark art to create an endless amount of empty chambers, so there should be nothing for those who choose to use it."

"There are more pressing matters to consider, like how I allocate the patients. Do I assign them to patients who were either injured on the battlefield or left to die in the arena?"

"I don’t think this is what they need," the Doctor replied. "A number of visitors have arrived with new cases, and even after they are on their way, I have reservations, because of the visitors, the number of patients they’ll have to watch over, and the involvement between the legal system and the Doctor’s office."

"But it will work out. The guests come under patient care, and the Doctor handles everything else."

"And you have an understanding?"

"Yeah," she replied

======== SAMPLE 22 ========
 a far, far sight.

He stopped, and we saw a light from behind us. No bugs, no spiders, no caterpillars and no rats. I was pretty sure that was the only information we got from the bugs that crawled on Sophia.

"Sophia!" He ordered. He pushed Sophia to get away from the light. It had a blue glow to it.

She tripped and fell, and he let her off the chain. She was tall enough that I suspected she went almost entirely unnoticed. As he led her away, he flashed the buttons on his phone and smiled. The screen changed to a message board with a message from Miss Militia about the aftermath of the fight. It was over, it was all laid out. There was a picture of the Undersiders, and a message from Triumph. A short note from Vista, and that was all that was left to be said.

He pressed the button on his phone again, to call Coil, and the screen changed to show text. 'End Of Page. Message From Director Madison.'

A new message from Coil. He’d said something about Ballistic returning to action.

We didn’t move an inch. We watched as the page loaded.

"Damn it," I muttered to Coil. "Nevermind. Back to business. 'Bugs stop attacking Sophia and we go back to looking after business, business as usual, no new info.'

He looked at me, and turned his head slightly.

'Bugs bite, they carry disease and they spread disease,' I thought.

And now I had the scary thought that a rabid zombie or an infected spider bite might get me infected with the bubonic plague.





Plague 12.7


Our sixth batch of infected was here. It was a small number, but that didn’t surprise me. We’d had six or seven people bitten or infected with the plague so far. One of Lisa’s assistants apparently infected someone, and we hadn’t heard anything after.

We’d had to back up, so I saw someone stepping outside to make his way through the building. Grue slowed down as he came upon a group of people who were standing together. He put a hand over their nose and mouth, and the pair backed up, falling to the ground.

Grue put a hand on one of them’s shoulders, and the guy fell over, getting put in the back of one of Coil’s trucks. Coil wheeled around, and Grue caught the shoulder of another man, getting his footing until he was at the ground level, facing the pair of the pair.

Coil had placed the trucks in one of the basement levels of a neighboring apartment building. Each vehicle was outfitted with an assortment of containment foam cannons, robots and soldiers. They weren’t moving, and people nearby were starting to scream. Lung was first to the scene, stomping and kicking, and I could guess he’d just wiped out the rest of the crowd. It was the kind of crowd that would flock to the sound.

My teammates were sitting on the ground, their feet propped up on laptops or tables, the windows and doors of the truck barred. It didn’t matter. I could see the plastic of the masks and uniforms flying about the truck, one of which was probably an artillery piece, as people poured from around the corner and into the back of the truck to see what was happening.

Whatever the reason for the attack, there wasn’t a lot the Undersiders could do in terms of responding. Most people in the area had either evacuated indoors or were asleep by the time the first capes arrived, but that didn’t do much good if people decided to come in here and turn a gun on us.

The other possibility was that Hookwolf had decided he would just let the heroes take it, to his own ends. Maybe there was some hidden agenda here. I couldn’t see it, but maybe the Undersiders were this dangerous because they’d given authorities a handy distraction to keep the public distracted, all the while keeping their head counts low. Undersiders and such were notoriously picky about who they infiltrated, so any trap they pulled would only attract attention from the good guys. Coil would know that.

Whatever the reason for Hookwolf’s seeming calm, the response Coil had expected was a scriss-

Cricket’s voice. She finished her song, and I could almost imagine her coming after us, her jaws dropping, her teeth bared, claws digressive. Her hands, her mouth, her presence so unnerving I could almost imagine her chilling cold in the midst of the pack, waiting for someone to get close.

"Shitball," Tattletale

======== SAMPLE 23 ========
 a group.

Cherish’s voice, a croak.

"You’re the one I’ll follow."

A long pause reigned.

"I don’t know who or where she is, but she hasn’t been seen since. I suppose any luck there?"

Long seconds passed.

"Awww."

I saw Cherish look up at me. Saw the look of pain.

"You don’t think she would let you live?"

"If it wasn’t for the stuff you gave her, she would have killed me before. She made me into this."

"You don’t think she really believed it?"

"No. I don’t think she really believed it. Sometimes I thought she’d set it aside and believe it when she saw me naked."

"Naked. You mean like you saw her in the bath?"

He looked ill at ease. Not dead, but crippled and gaunt. "I haven’t seen her in the bath since Leviathan attacked. I usually avoid visiting that part of town."

"Probably not worth visiting, either. Lots of dead bodies. Hard to find new body parts."

"I’m not really worried about that. My brothers and sisters have been getting better."

He was silent.

I shrugged. "So have my people. Better than before. Are you going to tell her you killed her?"

There was no response.

I let myself focus on the physical changes. The muscles had become harder, the bones more defined. It caught me off guard. Was it the drugs that made the changes so pronounced? Or was it something else?

Something to keep in mind. It would have meant staying quiet, about the subject of Weaver’s transformation, when it was more or less obvious what I was being compared to.

"I didn’t kill her," I said. "I got her into the way. With what you told me. You want me to ask?"

I got an unwelcome surge of relief as I realized he wasn’t thinking about any of us. "I’m not going to judge you for giving Cherish a nice, healthy body part."

"I’m not going to say anything that isn’t absolutely, positively true. Are you going to ask a question?"

"Can you please, please tell me where the shots were?"

I used my flight pack to raise myself above the deck, in the hopes that the updraft would help me. It wasn’t smooth sailing. The ship was sinking gently, with more water than was ideal for equipment. My flight pack was particularly affected, as it traveled over the ship’s hull, and was especially sensitive to any changes in the water level.

It might be useful if I wasn’t reeling in unsteady unsteady times, because I wasn’t so bright. The craft was sinking at a slow but steady pace. A fraction over, one or two seconds in all, and the surge would push me over the edge. Too much forward momentum, and it could tip me into the side of the ship. Too slow, and there was the chance of being trapped, of being taken under, say, Leviathan’s waves or the movement of any ocean water that streamed out of the ship’s vents or storm drains.

Too dark, with the darkness filtering in around us, and the ship so low in the water, against the water. We’d passed through the storm drain and now we were sliding down the drain. Probably one or two seconds later, we would be caught. Either the water beneath our feet was deep enough, dry enough to swim through, or deep enough that we couldn’t float.

I opened my mouth to tell my flight pack to extend the claws it had stored against the metal outside of my costume, but closed it as something caught my hand. It slid over the fabric of my costume, past the hook on the handle and onto my hand. Within a fraction of a second, I was pulling it off.

I landed, and I was glad to see Tecton absent from the sky above; the man who’d been in charge of our evacuation and retrieval was dead, it seemed, and another official had stepped down, someone with the Brooklyn Protectorate tag hanging off her shoulder. Someone who could be called on as a casualty or on-site doctor.

Leviathan was dealing with the people on the ground. When he was done fighting one of the Endbringers, he was dealing with people.

The monsters, Leviathan was dealing with people. The Endbringers weren’t things he’d

======== SAMPLE 24 ========
 a woman who was bleeding from a gash across her ear. She was a rookie cop, and my officer in chief.

"Stop!" I shouted, to drown out her. I pointed the gun at the ground, then drew the line with my hands. "If you shoot me, Bitch, the dog will probably play you for a fool."

She didn’t move or do anything. It was like trying to throw a temper tantrum. Except I wasn’t even close to being a real bull. My arm stuck in whatever it was I’d been holding, and I couldn’t really imagine what that must have felt like.

It didn’t help that Bitch was wearing her hair much the same as she had the previous night. I’d given it a ponytail with a comb –not completely straight – and she seemed more concerned about that than about the haircut. Her voice was a rasp as she said, "If you shoot me, my dog stops playing and goes berserk, and I’m never gonna get their help again."

Was there some way I could get her to listen to me?

"Go for it. But do your best not to shoot her."

"I- yeah, ma’am," she said. She didn’t move or do anything.

"If she sees her friends like I see her, you won’t catch her eye." I didn’t press the point, choosing instead to walk backwards, taking my time as I walked past her to a set of double-stacked double doors. Beside each was a tattoo of a different animal – a rabbit on an eagle’s beak, for my part, or a rabbit on a manger.

"Shit," I muttered. "Double standards."

"I thought you were enjoying yourself," the girl answered me, smiling.

"No bullshit," I responded. "I’m just wondering. When we hear a lot of stuff about psychopaths, it seems like almost the only thing we have to go by…"

"Mostly right. Purity, maybe, but mostly right. Idiots."

"Fuck you," I said.

It was an interesting dynamic. For one thing, the girl seemed pretty comfortable with herself, with the people around her and the fact that she had walked into the Wards and not gotten any of the nasty treatment that some of the Protectorate members got.

For another, the way the girl seemed to be able to take it all in. There was the girl that had had everything, then there was Bitch. That sort of charisma didn’t come along very often.

I didn’t feel like I fit in right now. I couldn’t rationalize why I was here, no matter how obvious it was.

I’d had another, bigger issue looming the whole time. I was in custody. My only real option was to walk away. Walking away would mean leaving her behind, giving up my team and all the personal information I had to use on her. That in mind, I wouldn’t touch that stuff.

"Go, then," I told Bitch, "Come back when you’re done making a break for it."

She looked at me and rolled her eyes.

"You’re going to see what you can do there."

"Thing is, we can’t do that while her powers are active. It takes two hours at most for her to finish absorbing his power and then start applying it to her real body."

"Two hours…"

"Then it’ll be done soon."

She hung the bag up. A minute or so later, she said, "The dogs come when they are done. The rest, we wait here. When they are done with you, you can go back to the others and eat shit for a few hours, if you want."

I didn’t even have a response to that. "Fuck that, come back and eat shit with us."

Bitch turned to go and sat down on a stair, the door of the stairwell closing behind her. After a brief pause, a bang came from the hospital room. The lights slowly flickered out. I could only guess as to who it was. Bonesaw?

"The hell?" Bonesaw asked, as she raised herself to the next level above the floor.

"Fuck," Tattletale rumbled.

"That door is impossibly wide! I mean, we could have hit the person inside, but we didn’t-"

Tattletale shook her head.

"…It leaves a lot more wiggle room for her to change levels or

======== SAMPLE 25 ========
 a second or two after I was there. Tattletale had her back turned to me, bending down to grip the table leg I’d used to lift her. My hand over hers, I gestured to the other end of the table.

"No," Regent said.

"No, no," Tattletale said.

There was a long pause, a little awkward, before Regent replied, "We haven’t discussed that. Point made. Alright. Then I’ll just say this, if we are to believe your boss met with Legend and the rest of the Undersiders, then I think we can all agree to disagree."

I could see Bitch make a hand motion to leave as someone from the crowd began jeering. Regent turned, raising his voice to be heard over the music. "Those bastards attacked our headquarters, Shitty piece of work!"

One of the other members of the Young Bucks took offense at the term, "Attack."

"No fucking details," Tattletale said, sounding annoyed. "That’s the one thing we’ve tried to cover up for as long as we can. If anything, I’m proving Skit-Taylor’s story is bull----. The only reason we got this far was that I dragged that bitch’s mother fucking into this mess, and I fucked up for Skitter by leaving her. Now she’s got her-"

There was a fanfare, and then the stage manager came out, followed by the other young heroes, each standing on their feet. I waited patiently as they finished one another in the crowd.

"Shit," Tattletale said, finally. She turned to see the young hero she’d been waiting on the line. She was grinning at the girl with a mouthful of teeth bared, the girl, Bitch’s friend.

"I’m sorry to bring it up," Tattletale said.

"Fuck you," the girl snapped the insults back, the most unhinged growl I’d ever heard.

"Taylor?" Tattletale asked.

"Hi," Bitch’s voice came from the midst of the crowd. She greeted the girl, smiling slightly, as a young man came running towards her. She pointed, "Look here, this is your chance to run away and join me, and your chance won’t be pretty, you know?"

"Sure," the girl smiled at her, her teeth a little narrower.

Bitch took the opportunity to slide the front of her uniform into the pockets of her jacket, then pulled her jacket on.

When the brief interaction was over and the two young girls were out of sight, Tattletale walked over to the back of the van, grabbing a cell phone from the dashboard and holding it up for the crowd to see.

No passwords, it looked like, but maybe that was a cost of doing business kind of thing. We’d created the same kind of frictionless barrier between ourselves and the heroes that made it possible to sort of catch Bitch’s tail. She’d gotten so good at finding people over here that she’d started to network, even if she never formally applied to join the team.

"You want to play a game?" Tattletale asked the girl on the phone.

The girl nodded, her teeth a little more spaced apart. She stared at the sky, apparently unconcerned as far as my power was concerned, but Bitch had a little more intelligence to her.

"A game? Like what?" Tattletale paused, "I mean, I know you don’t play, but what are the odds?"

The girl on the phone was only now realizing what I was asking about, "Why Bitch is calling us morons."

"You think I’m morons?" Bitch asked, then she quickly narrowed her eyes a little. "Heroes and villains go to a school? I live on the other side of the school, and she obviously hasn’t seen or heard of any like it. Maybe she can’t say it to anyone for obvious reasons."

She’d noticed too late.

"If this game is a success, the universe will end in twenty four hours," Tattletale started.

The girl on the phone shifted her grip a little, and then in a more menacing manner, "nineteen Eighty-Four."

It wasn’t too hard to spot the difference. Seventeen Eighty-Four was a movie that had been running in the tradition of way more expensive movies, the quality abysmally declining, but that wasn’t exactly an asset when it came to the group

======== SAMPLE 26 ========
 a few minutes. He was a good enough cook to keep the food from being overdone, and his company was always welcome. He was a little gruff, but not in a bad way. His coffee tasted like rain and scalded milk. He only had one bag of sugar, and his sugar cube trays were already overflowing. He wanted tea, but didn’t have a table for it.

It was disquieting. I would have none of it, but I couldn’t do anything about it myself.

I could see his reaction when he saw that I’d already talked to the others. Maybe I had told him, and he just assumed I was telling everyone else.

I just couldn’t help but notice how he was acting with the prisoners, ignoring the ones who were in the dark, nearly blind. They were just staring at him when he was gone.

This was a step forward. Better than nothing. I was a little surprised at how much I wished it had been more substantial. Had I been selfish when I’d decided to work for the D.D.I.?

"Thank you," he spoke, and I could see a glimmer of emotion in his eyes.

"Quite welcome. My name is Panacea. I think I am ready for you here. Thank you for coming to my clinic."

She reached out and gave me a hug. It was easier on my ribs than it had been on hers. I might not have returned the hug if I hadn’t been so concerned for my reputation. Still, the fact that she was there and not me was a relief.

"I only brought the dogs because my other clients were saying they weren’t happy with the dogs, not domesticated, and they wanted something with a bit more personality."

"Pet needs to exercise, and I think the dogs get that from the dogs." She smiled a little. "Pet needs to have exercise, and for good reason. You will love these dogs."

She had come prepared. The fact that she was dressing things up and coming to the clinic with them was a testament to her business acumen, or her need for confidence showing she was not suffering in front of a stranger.

"I was worried I would be incongruously close to the other group," Panacea said, as they made their way to the far end of the long room. "I was willing to meet them halfway, so long as they were there when I arrived."

"They would have been your other client groups?"

"There were. I think they are liking these dogs more because of it." There were still lines out the door, and Panacea wasn’t shy about waiving that waiting time. "But I’m not entirely sure I understand. This… companion thing between you and them?"

"They have a high risk. The people who were there before me, they were the people who stay. They were loyal, but they didn’t really need love. A dogs getting love from a dog lover like you? That’s a little closer to what my clients want."

She smiled. "Ah. A little closer."

"And?" my dad asked. It was just me and my dad next to her.

"I’m not sure. You have a way of thinking like mine, that’s very appealing to me. Is it similar to your own?"

"Kind of similar. But not exactly, I think."

"You’ve done research on dogs and their personalities."

"Yeah. I mean, I think… well, let me think for a bit. What’s the general theme here?"

She stopped me mid-sentence, "Dog loves master, always rides the dog’s ass or gets off the dog’s back to give the dog its due."

"Ah. I didn’t read that far."

"Kind of like that," she said. She fiddled with her slippers to get a grip on my arm, then gripped me by the collar with one hand and the metal of her other hand.

"Always rides the dog’s ass. Never gets up, never gives up."

"Ah. That ties into the topic of today’s meeting, doesn’t it? The dog lover and the dog lover going back to their dogs when they came from the Birdcage. I’ve met a lot of pet owners who have had a dog around dogs, and I know I don’t have that many friends who have had dogs around children."

"Okay."

"And the other theme, I think, that comes up a lot from the other groups, is that humans are just not that kind

======== SAMPLE 27 ========
 a man who had apparently seen his sister in danger, found himself looking for the first time for an answer, and who knew the world very well. To paraphrase Jaw and Sun Tzu, the world turned the other cheek when it deserved to.

And she was scared.

The girl stood behind her mother, and the mother turned to face the girl, holding the boy’s hand. Then the mother walked away, stepping to one side.

The little blue shoes beat the crowd back as the mother started walking forward.

"Taylor!"

"Hi. Mom! Hi mom! No, you don’t have to come, you know I’m really busy with work, but I wanted to say thanks. For talking me through the decision between staying at the shelter or coming back, being close to my dad, helping me make the tough choice. That’s pretty cool. What’s your name?"

"Victoria."

"Taylor, it’s been a long day."

"I made it."

"Taylor! It’s been a long night. I wanted to say thanks again. For caring, being there. For understanding, being a backbone. Thank you. For sharing so much, through all this. And I love you for the friendship, the family… but I won’t be there forever."

"I love you too," Taylor answered.

"Thank you. Victoria."

"And I’m glad you made it back."

"That’s all. Bye now."

The little girl departed.

The man who was still holding Sophia’s hand turned, eyes fixed at the sky. There were those who would notice the fact that she’d changed her shirt without asking. Maybe it would have been a smart thing to do. Turning his attention to the little princess was a bad idea, if he was worried about taking her from her mother, her father and her foster-sister. He turned back.

They could have run that way for hours, but he had to wait. Slowly, he observed the city. Hours without a pulse, he advanced through the darkness, until he was at the edge of the scene.

There was something of a road, carved into the side of a building, a little ways up the sidewalk. It had been a casualty of the waves, and hadn’t been completed. Some sort of ramp, a track for trucks, took people up and onto the beach.

He waited with his back to the cliff face as the sun rose behind him, seeing the view as the world slowly became clearer.

The ramp led to a series of tents. It was a good view, with the right angle, but it didn’t allow him to see the cliff face. He had to turn his head to the left to see it. He’d seen it once, back when he’d been building his lair.

He set foot on the flat rock, and the campsite’s owner hurried to get inside, drawing his knife in an apparent last ditch effort to subdue his underlings.

But Sophia had her back turned his way, and the soldier, who was standing his soldiers at the ready to cut him down if he chose to attack her, was already falling.

Too fast, too far away. He turned and stabbed his knife into his armor.

He could imagine the blades, the metal forming a three-pronged, double edged weapon. A double edged sword, if memory served. A greatsword, perhaps.

But there was no defense, and the price of being so close to the cliff was a lack of control. He could feel the heat of her body heat against his cloak, as the outer portions unfurled.

She drew closer, and that warmth increased to such an extent that it felt like she were both the blade and the weapon in three dimensions. Even through her clothes, it felt almost like she were physically stabbing him through some barrier.

He turned her way, and she swept forward, her underling trailing behind her.

She slammed him into the wall.

Another knife swipe, and he was caught. Her underling slammed him down into the gravel of the cliff face, where he continued to struggle to escape the tentacles. It didn’t matter. She didn’t even need to strike to disable him.

She withdrew the double edged blade and stabbed it into one of his legs. He screamed again, uncontrollable, and the knife only continued to flow, almost unbending.

He struggled, and he stopped, his arms to his stomach, his chest to his pants, fighting to rip off the garments he wore.

She withdrew the blade, and he screamed once more, his chest heaving.


======== SAMPLE 28 ========
 a hair before it fell down. I wasn’t about to throw the head under the water and hope no one was watching.

I didn’t find that fish fry I’d left on my power’s stove was alive. When I pulled away some of the pan juices, there was some still alive but badly burned. As the flesh cooked, I realized it wasn’t a pretty sight.

They wouldn’t last more than a few minutes at the most. I set them aside.

Bonesaw had said they were weak against bugs, but I couldn’t really believe her. Even a bug or two away from me, moving from point to point, they were no match for Lung’s central nervous system. He had hands, not blunted claws, and a nervous system.

Not only that, but he seemed to be controlling where he moved the hands, instead of simply flinging them. I was keeping my distance, careful to stay out of his reach.

As far as I could tell, his nervous system and the means he was using to manipulate his hands were separate. Still, I could see the effects spreading through his body. There were fewer people in his reach now, no doubt his nerves were reduced after the damage he’d taken. He couldn’t simply target the people who were in his reach, either. No doubt his ability to see people through walls and the atmosphere was reduced.

I was getting increasingly worried he might close the distance, slip into a deep sleep or something. I realized he was talking to someone.

"Ah, I found it. Bonesaw used her power on your friends, perhaps while they slept. The ingredients she used should get more powerful as time passes… but if you want to cook, you’ll need their help."

I hurried to join him. The instant I saw what he was preparing, I withdrew my swarm from around him.

"Not the finest ingredients. Not my…"

"No, that’s fine. Let me pick them up."

Barely half a cup. I hurried to the grocery store, bought some vegetables, milk, butter and a sauce from the corner store.

Lung rumbled, complaining as the temperature rose, then broke into fits of coughing. I rushed to his side, and tried to cover the top of his face, only to realize he had a bad rash. I hurried to cart him off, tying my hand.

"My hand!" he rasped.

My bad. I hurried to cart him off, tying my hand.

"I’ll need it," Lung said.

I felt a momentary tremor. The feeling turned out to be a strong reprieve as he violently shook me. I could feel the heat and cold drawing from the area around me, drawing another batch of bugs into the area.

"Get it?" I asked, muffled voice, on a note of exasperation, "I won’t be able to help you there."

He mumbled an answer.

Pain. The stiffness in my arm was worse when I bent over. The aches that had plagued me since the Leviathan fight receded, and they were more severe now. The stumps of the ribs had turned black, while the surrounding tissue lent a red color to the area. There was no comfort that came from knowing that what had apparently was the end result of a slow, steady, unending assault.

A part of me felt like another person might cry. Another person might find comfort in knowing I wasn’t some blind, immobile thing, like Lung or Bakuda had described.

I had only a moment’s time to spare.

"Help me stand," I said. I couldn’t get the arm across his face, and he thrashed, trying to throw me to the ground. I averted my gaze.

His grip loosened. A moment later, he reeled it in. The arm came free, and my arm was free, floating there in the air. I landed with all the weight I could spare.

"Good," I said. I was about to ask why he was there when he raised one hand. When I looked, I saw tears streaming down his face.

"It- it hurts."

"It hurts. But not as much as it should." I bent my knees. "I- I can help. I- I can use my power."

"Why the fuck are you a human and a Tinker!?"

"B- bleedin’s that fags my b- power!"

I turned to see him puff out his cheeks to light a cigarette, inhaling the smoke that trickled out. "Hey now, just calm down.

======== SAMPLE 29 ========
 a few blocks away.

I gathered my bugs around me and headed back toward the scene, putting a fraction of the weight I was carrying, not wanting to let those little footholds clap my shield or make contact with me.

The hero that had assisted me a moment ago was here. Weld. There were two of him, flanked by two capes, all in armor that maybe added twenty or so more pounds to them if the costume was a little higher quality than the standard PRT gear. Their powers aren’t my thing. Weld was, after much debate, very casually wearing a mechanical suit with a suit making him roughly ten times the weight he should be, if for no other reason than it would make him look more powerful. He was making his way away from the scene, the suits falling to the ground at his feet.

"My teammates and I are currently conducting rescue and recovery operations," Weld said, "I assume everyone with information is free to speak freely?"

"I wouldn’t exactly say so," Tagg said. "If anyone has a weapon of mass destruction or any other serious leakage, let us know, and we’ll leave."

"All of which raises the question," Weld said, "What are you doing here?"

A part of me felt like I should say something witty to that effect, here. "Where are you guys?"

"Arkady and Remnant have evacuated," Miss Militia said, "Our territory is now the property of the Protectorate, and anyone needing temporary shelter should contact individual heroes."

"I get it. You’re saying Armsmaster abandoned his city."

"That’s not wholly true," Miss Militia replied. "He remains in position because someone else has made themselves available."

"Your city?" Weld asked.

Miss Militia didn’t reply. Instead, she turned and waved at the PRT van that was driving off, letting it pass over the spilled coffee.

"He left," Grue said.

"We lost, in a way," Miss Militia said. She sounded almost apologetic. A little surprised. "A town like this, with a population of three hundred and forty thousand, it doesn’t come down to one person versus another?"

"I suppose that depends on how many bystanders come out of the woodwork to claim that territory," Weld said.

"A different dynamic?" I asked.

"More equitable," Miss Militia said. "There’s more room for everyone. Each of us has the ability to affect change, to change things for the better, rather than just the powerful few."

"And there’s nothing holding them back?"

Miss Militia folded her arms. "They’re here, they’ve been for a long time. There’s nothing holding them back."

"Nothing holding them back?" I asked. "You can’t see anything on the news, or hear anything from the people who cover these things, unless it’s literally breaking news."

Miss Militia shook her head a little. "No direct, sustained assault? The same guys who’ve been doing business as the Merchants for years?"

"Four more attacks in Brockton Bay this month, with a tentative start to a fifth in early March," my dad reflected.

Weld and Weld’s people started to talk over one another, breaking into side conversations.

"Weld," Miss Militia said. "You remember how the Endbringer thing with Piggot and others had turned out? You remember what that had looked like, in terms of the risks and rewards? When Piggot and most of the others had decided the actions were worth it? This is it. The moment they decided they had enough leverage that the rules they’ve fashioned themselves must be adhered to."

"It’s pretty much what you’ve done from day one," Weld said.

"I’m not the only one who’s noticed this," Miss Militia said. "The capes, the warden at the prison, the Director, others, even some members of the PRT themselves, have started paying a little more attention to the little details you’ve left out of your PR."

Weld didn’t respond. He glanced at Miss Militia, then walked away. The other Undersiders and their leader watched as he disappeared into the underground complex, the trucks disappearing into the floor and walls at the bottom of the complex.

"You leave things as they are?" Miss Militia asked me.

I nodded.

"We could change things," she said.

I shook my head. I was concerned things could get worse than they were right now. As disappointing as it was to think things would

======== SAMPLE 30 ========
 a bigger goal," Faultline said, "Or maybe I’m just really good at that."

"Right," I said.

"A goal that won’t let us win," Tattletale repeated herself. "We need a distraction right now."

"Enough of that shit," Lung growled. "You have what you need. Fucking leave town, back to your territory, do what you did to Noelle, don’t do anything to her? Go have a goddamn good sleep? Okay, so long as it’s less than two hours, I’ll get you and Skitter some supplies."

Lung turned, startled, and a spray of mist surrounded him.

Tatset’s lantern? I thought.

He flicked his wrist, and the lantern went out.

No. I’d asked to have the lantern replaced.

On the other side of the room, the bugs moved fast, and it was Tattletale who stepped away from the crowd, to fill the void.

"She’s done that a hundred times," Faultline said.

"Fuck you. Don’t fucking hurt me," Tattletale retorted, swiping with one finger at the woman. "Don’t try something. I’m paying you to try something. Something that might work. If you’re going to try something in the here and now, then that’s going to be the time we’re trading blows."

Fenja heaved herself up to a standing position. I glanced around. Tents surrounded us, each with people sleeping in them, in some cases.

No. Not a crowd we’d bargained for. A motley. Some were mercenaries, paid well, others Coil’s people, but they weren’t following quietly. Some had weapons, but they weren’t all of the sort we’d expected.

A mix. More mercenaries than we’d bargained for.

The motley were people who appeared to be using a power Coil had supplied, filling the spaces where Tatset’s lines of mist had made the ground grow. It was a small world, filled with machines and tools that only came here from other worlds. There were machines, but they couldn’t have weighed so much that they were only barely affecting the ground beneath us. We could only guess as to what they’d taken. Weapons?

Lung slammed his hands together to harden the metal of his hands into a hard barrier. In a heartbeat, the situation was one where we were out of the fight. The people on the ground were no longer in the fight. We’d taken out an entire army with minimal effort, and we’d done it without bloodshed.

But the people on the roof were more or less in the fight, too. They had guns, but they weren’t fighting us. They had explosives, but they were out of reach of most of the firepower our capes could throw our way. The explosions wouldn’t make a difference.

One in twenty chance. Coil would know, wouldn’t he? Our heroes were scattered, hiding in other locations. Losing faith, believing they could win, fast food feeding their fears, even the sheer destructive power of the explosions could do little to nothing to stem the tide.

If I’d thought this apocalyptic before the moment I left the PRT, I’d be surprised.

Lung and Fenja engaged the remaining members of the group, with a twenty five turn countdown in progress. I was pretty sure I could have kept track of it without losing my concentration. If I’d had a second, I might have noted it. Lung was striking faster than the others, more like a jiu-jitsu or boxing throw than anything we could do. Fenja was striking from range to keep the worst of it out of her reach while keeping the more durable of the explosives out of Lung’s reach.

It was all too possible to hit that elusive critical mass where the odds suddenly became overwhelmingly in our favor.

Golem was trying to get in our heads. Sure, we had various leads, we had a hunch about what the others were up to, but somehow we were convinced, convinced we could put all this to use and not give our opponents a chance to retaliate.

Two or three turns into the fight, I saw the fighting get ugly. The fighting was taking on a sporadic character now, and Golem was getting increasingly desperate, attacking with every piece of equipment he had available.

Aisha got her power going, summoning constructs to bolster the streets as smoke and dust rose from the combatants. Not two, not three

======== SAMPLE 31 ========
 a few minutes, or you could go back to your cell and stay there."

If she listened, she could say something, say ‘I want answers’ or ‘justice’. Something she had a sense of.

Which might have sounded like she was pleading with a court to deliver the bad guys, setting them on the path to rehabilitation, to return to society.

But when she spoke against it, she said, "You, Coil, are the worst kind of supervillain. You tried to pull off a job this morning, but you have Skitter, the girl from the PRT cell block, as a hostage waiting to happen. Or, I should say, the group that has been acting as our hostage trading in, um, a nutshell."

"What is it you want?"

"One of the Nine. Can you say what you want about Grue? Maybe he won’t be around when we get to him? Maybe one of the other Nine arrives and we’re left with Trickster dead? Hell, I’m not even sure I want to get that far."

I closed my eyes and took a breath.

"Maybe you’re more interested in getting revenge than you’re about justice. Maybe," she offered me a noncommittal look, looking away, "You’re interested in power, in becoming a boss, whether that works out or not. And, you know, everyone has the tools to achieve that, whether you’re us or the Nine."

I sighed.

"If that’s the case, I’m not interested in taking that risk. And, again, if there’s no dice, what do you want?"

"I want answers."

"Whatever you want. But that’s the best offer I can give you, even if I disagree with a few of the decisions you’re making."

"Fuck that," I muttered. "We killed her, she’s dead anyways. Why should I take anything from you if you can’t offer any?"

"That, and I had better see this to be a good day. If I’m going to get on your case, I better be good, or things will be so easy."

"Whatever," I said.

I made my way to the living room, then grabbed a chair and a pile of boxes from the shelves. I squared off against a small box of polishing resin vials, filled with varying degrees of acid, which the Doctor had assured me contained no danger.

I’d gotten my powers through a combination of factors, both personal and professional. That didn’t change the fact that they were dangerous, no matter how well intentioned they might be. I could sense them, now, with the tricorder and an instant-messaging application on the top shelf, and I could feel them with my power. It was only due to the lack of a lab that they couldn’t just clog up my nose and mouth, now, but the lack of tools to help control them was starting to take its toll.

Piece by piece, I removed the vials. Each of the vials was sealed, and the number of cells and individual people inside each vial was hard to discern from the other. The cells tended to be smallish, and the individual pieces tended to be more like stashes or trophies than anything else. In some cases, there were more traces of the original material than there were pieces.

The white powder in the vials tended to be stronger than I might have imagined. It didn’t correspond with the number of cells – more the opposite – it tended towards the hundreds or more. A third of the vials I could detect contained white particles larger than a fingernail.

"This is a lie detector," Jack commented. "I’m not going to pull anything on you, especially after seeing what you pulled this one on us."

"Let’s put this one to the test," I stated.

It didn’t take long to investigate the effects of the serum we’d been left behind. The Doctor’s assistant ran a general chemical testing and confirmed what we assumed, that there was some form of lie detector element in the serum.

"There. There’s a lie detector in there. It’s working on chemical reactions like you’re experiencing. That’s it for you. Nothing more."

"I guess it’s a point in your end that we shouldn’t pull any tricks," Jack commented. "I thought your trigger event was fucked up."

"We can fix it," I replied, not unkindly.

"

======== SAMPLE 32 ========
 a large part.

There were so many things I wanted to say. Mistakes I’d made in the past, things I’d told myself that I wouldn’t mention until I could at least be sure I’d made the right choice.

The past twelve hours.

I looked at the television, the panel against the wall, the remote, the case and case held by the TV. The little metal keyhole with the symbol on it.

I’d put my key in a random place and everything was unlocked, the possibilities opened up, and I was more frustrated than ever.

The moment I was done talking, they unlocked it. The first thing.

The keyhole opened, and I stepped through into a room full of computers.

A giant LED would help, maybe, to read the contents of the briefcase. I was pretty sure I could manage it. The best I could manage was… what? Eight or nine thousand? Four hundred?

I made my way down the stairs, carefully checking each computer I passed. No signs of life, no criss-crossing lines of life, and the computers were all gushing with something else. An oily, slightly fetid smell. It hit me, and I turned to look, to see what was going on, only to see that same smell in the eyes of the people at one computer, the eyes of the people behind them.

I saw, briefly, a scene where two people were looking at a computer screen in a rather malevolent manner, as if they were watching and observing us. The scene looked a little like this.

Scion III.

I felt drawn to the scene, the two characters, the man I was looking at, and it made me think of Scion. The scene reminded me of our first encounter. Disquieting, almost.

I couldn’t help but think of my mom, in that same moment before I’d lost her. Disconcerting, in the same way that a body in the crowd was troubling, even if I wasn’t directly in the way of her, as I was seeing here.

I felt my conscience come into play. Wrong decision.

The girl, the girl’s friend, who had been giving the other girl a hard time, had turned around and was walking away, as if she were worried for my safety.

I followed her, and saw the same scene, only not so immediate. The shadowy figure in the distance, at the same moment the two friends turned a corner, was letting two girls pass him as he leaned close, laughing.

I couldn’t tell them to back away from the line of students that had just approached the dorms.

I saw a cloud of dust and debris move through the air as it cleared.

"Oh no!" The voice, from across the street, startled me. I saw the trajectory of the falling object: it passed over the head of one of the incoming students in mid-air, bounced off the opposite wall, just barely hitting a bookcase, and landed just inside the front door of the building.

The bookcase where Emma was hiding fell into the path of the projectile, and the falling section was swiftly pulled out from beneath the mattress on the opposite side.

Emma was cursing, barely audible, barely audible to herself. How had she made it sound so familiar?

The projectiles exploded down the street, farther away than many of the individuals who had come here. One or two hundred people, a few dozen.

One or two hundred? I didn’t recognize anyone important in that group.

"Emma!" The voice startled me. The moment I recognized it, the person nearby started screaming his or her fear away. I could see others running in that direction, terrified. It was probably only one person.

I tried to remember what Emma had said.

Scion III had fallen. It had been one and a half years since anyone had made a serious attempt at killing me, let alone people this ruthless, cruel. How had I, given all this, managed it? My power? No idea.

I couldn’t comprehend people. My power couldn’t comprehend people. How had I done it? I’d seen it all unfold, after the first attempted killing attempt. I’d known who their targets were, how they worked, their strategies and tactics.

I could only guess.

The others followed, not as organized, not as on guard.

I could feel the effect as others made their way here. Like the breeze from a watering can, the faint rippling of water against the ground. People were moving, gathering. Trying to find food sources beyond the fresh water sources they or their food was using.

======== SAMPLE 33 ========
 a large pile of bodies, and she could see the blood spreading. She closed her eyes, listened as the screaming rose agains the slightest noise. Her breathing became more erratic.

"I- I can’t," she stuttered.

Screams filled the air once more. This time it was directed at the swarm box.

"Scratching! Get it!" Her mother screamed at her, almost plaintive. She took a few steps back, as if afraid to move her hands.

That was the point I saw the most. The attack was a derivative one. It was both mechanical and auditory, a familiar sound and it had the temerity to come from within the confines of her house.

One by one, Screamer’s husks separated. One by one, the clones succumbed to the attack. None, in fact, but countless copies of a single individual, each toying with the target and tearing their way free. A mass grave, you could say.

Her mother, for her part, stumbled back, dropped to her knees, and in that moment I saw a clone that was five and a half feet tall. A man.

Bitch knew who he was. She’d seen them somewhere. It was, in a way, inevitable. They had to have come to pass through some other route.

But I could also see something else, catch her eye.

He turned and looked at me. His eyebrows raised a fraction, but he didn’t speak.

I knew where this was going. I’d seen it coming at the outset, had already prepared myself for it with the swarm box and the plan we were forming.

"Fuck! Shit!" I shouted, but I didn’t have a voice small enough to catch.

And just as I sensed Scapegoat reaching the top of the staircase, the man was pulled off his feet.

He’s got a gun!







Parasite 10.5


"No," the man hissed in his agonized, pained, almost desperate attempts to speak. "Please."

But Bitch didn’t have the faintest idea of what they were talking about, and I wasn’t sure I could have heard over the noise of the others screaming. She focused entirely on Scapegoat, directing the beetle down one corridor of the apartment building, away from the bodies, the bodies, the rats, unless she controlled it. It was slow and laborious, but she managed it.

Her power was her specialty, actually. An arc reactor, a tinker-designed device that was capable of processing a power wave and creating a corona of energy that could incinerate a smallish settlement with a passing breeze. She had a lot of experience managing these, and she had figured out how to use it. The only major barriers to using it were the sturdiness of the device and the fact that it was constructed on an engineering job. The other major barriers were a heavy weight inside and a heavy weight out.

She was piloting it right now, as I watched and waited with my swarm-summoning-cubicle-thing in the background.

Shit. We had to slow down, then accelerate.

We slowed down to a crawl, all out. Faster than the wind, faster than the spray or the rain. It was the sort of thing she’d do with the bugs on the roof, at the foot of the building. Slow us down, slow us into a corner.

Golem was only a short distance away, hands jammed into his sleeves, chin and shoulders, staring. I could almost see the steel-like exterior of the pile requiring a second set of hands to shut off and restart.

As the bugs that I’d enclosed in the swarm wrapped themselves around the steel of the structure began restarting it themselves, I saw Golem’s eyes open. His hands were folded around the metal end of the screwdriver that held his armor in place.

"Go ahead. I… not so good at this."

"Stop worrying. He’ll be hurt."

I nodded.

Behind us, the bugs drew tighter, filtering through the stragglers and the rubble. The ambient noise of the city was deafening in how quiet it was, whether people were here or not. Only the thunder and the distant noises of falling buildings made me feel like I should be out there. Except I was, and that felt like too many chances gone by on my end.

"Fuck this," I said.

My bugs passed word around the periphery of our swarm to get a sense of who was present. The bad news was that there were nearly twenty capes here, none of whom were in any shape to

======== SAMPLE 34 ========
 a slight curve to the end.

He turned and began running down the length of the street before I could make him stop. I caught up to him and began asking him questions without looking his way. Was he a capes, a hero, or something more sinister?

"Someone was making the offer for drugs and firepower on the Boardwalk," My swarm whispered the words. "Is this possible?"

It wasn’t possible, he retorted. It was a difficult road, populated with gangs, swarms, clones and other odds and ends. "DOHO! You need my ID!"

I took the time to scan the rest of the area with my swarm. The area was still being patrolled, my bugs still active, but there weren’t any recognizable human figures to be found. Had he displaced the inhabitants?

"I thought people came in here, to stay," Bambina told me.

"They do come in here," I said. "To get clean, to take drugs, have orgies, fuck and have a good time."

Bentley lunged for Bambina, pawing at her flesh with his teeth, almost gleefully. He stopped short, the difference between his actions and what Bambina was saying making it clear as well as the difference in Bambina’s size. A change? I turned my attention his way and found him in the midst of one of the smaller groups of people that were staying on the Boardwalk.

He clawed at their limbs, trying to get at the meat they contained, and every action had the effect he needed to feed his otherworldly body. The people around him were having similar fits.

"Can’t do any drugs. Not legally."

"Okay," I said.

"Okay. Let me try."

I turned him over in my hand. It was a stretch of armor that had been designed to keep soldiers from getting too big. I’d needed to keep it small, so the nanotech the PRT had poured into it would stay contained.

As I’d done with the spikes on Bitch’s armor, I used the clairvoyant to get a better idea of his current position and size.

He was lying down, and the armor covering his face was wreathing him. That was good, because meant he was at near-eye-level with the people on the street that were looking for drugs, guns and maybe some quick cash.

It was time to move, and I knew the time had come.

Before I could figure out how to get to him. I raised one foot off the ground, aimed at his shoulder, toe and eye sockets. With my bugs, I could get a sense of the general area the Nine were in, their general position, and I drew a small flame into a quiver of gun magazines. "Target’s close. I’ll need his signature."

He didn’t react, but he did twitch, and I could feel the armor covering his entire body shaking slightly, enough to make me fear his foot would hit something.

If I got a glimpse of his mouth, teeth or face, I would be able to identify what kind of attack he’d deployed.

"Go, Shatterbird," Bonesaw said. At the same time, I ordered the bugs from my back to the ground, adding them to my swarm. My focus was almost exclusively on the bugs in my immediate vicinity. Some on the glass shards that covered his face, and I also had a heavy hitter in my pack of bugs. I’d gotten the ones from the other dogs. Better than I might have gotten otherwise.

With my bugs, I could practically hear his heartbeat speed up as he reached a certain point in his breathing. He was using his strong enough to draw the bugs closer to him, perhaps to maximize the amount of oxygen that got into his airways.

The glass shards were the least interesting element of this scenario, but there was a lot going on underneath that surface. As he reached the point where the armor of his mask met his body, I could sense the interior of his lungs, his heart, his bloodstream, his joints…

I started searching through the various bugs I had in my pack, as well as the bugs that had previously occupied the same space to me, and I found what I was looking for as well. My bugs were searching through the surrounding environment to find microorganisms that could potentially be biting or stinging the bugs. Some were even searching beneath the armor of his helmet to find extremities they could use to stab the bugs.

I almost brought my tripod, but I decided that if I was going to do something drastic, it would do more harm than good. Not that I was lacking for gear

======== SAMPLE 35 ========
 a friend’s mother, so those of you who haven’t seen her here yet can mark her as out of town. She may return to visit in the near future, but for now, there will be no further business until you are on the other side of things."

A little more reassuring than anyone had expected, but there. Still, there was more to be done. There were several more visits in the coming days, weeks, or months. If nothing else, knowing that the people in charge were aware that the city was emptying and that people were turning their backs on the old regime was reassuring.

"So we’re officially officially friends?" Regent asked.

"That’s it, guys," Grue said, raising his hands. "So what?"

"That was the idea." Tattletale shrugged. "She was good. She was okay. She was helpful, but not essential."

"Okay. Then let’s make this official," I said, "I give you, Grue, Regent, Bitch and Shatterbird, status as a npc in skitter’s base of operations in the Southwestern end of the city. Let me show you around, give you more info on what’s up."

"The deal was that we’d keep your identities secret until we had a way of getting into the city and making our way here. The problem with that is that the Protectorate and the government are running the show, and as much as I want to be a part of it, I can’t make any guarantees."

"So you’re on your own. I’d say luck, but I’d be lying. Skitter’s your friend, right? Isn’t that obvious?" Tattletale asked.

"No obvious at all," I said. "I can’t lie to you about something this important."

"Except we keep secrets from ourselves," Tattletale said. "Friends?"

"From the other two," I said. "I’d love to see Skitter’s house… it’s such a shame there’s this kind of squat shit around here, and she’s such an expensive guy."

"So we’re off to the races with you in the dark," Tattletale said. "Bentley’s happy we can share the load, but he won’t let his natural balance get in the way. Growl? It sounds like he’s just itching to get back in the saddle."

I sighed. "Manageable. Not balanced. Better than none."

"It’s not perfect," the number seven said. "I have faith in Skitter’s ability to manage things and figure things out. But I’m not sure we can afford to keep our relationship secret, and neither are the rest of these guys."

"We’re not meant to be intimate," I said, though I already knew the answer. We’re meant to share burdens, bond individuals. It’s how we were set up in the first place, and it’s how we’re going to operate long enough for her to patch everything together."

"It can be intimate with just the essentials," Tattletale said. "Shit, you’re the first one to admit you can’t be 100% sure you’ll be totally secure."

That was harsh. I turned my head to face her, and my body language wasn’t the easiest thing in the world.

"But I’m not sure anyone else fully understands why you’re worried. It… isn’t as simple as a lack of communication or lack of resources. See, I’ve told you I’ll provide-"

She stepped back from where she’d been typing on the keyboard, leaving an email trail on the screen behind her. I couldn’t look without putting myself in her sights.

"She sent me a letter," I said.

"Wasn’t expecting you to," Tattletale said, taking the time to pull up the web browser and open the attachment. She smiled a little.

She set it on the coffee table and clicked the paywall option. A popup menu appeared.

"Yes. We’re closing the email now. Paypal accepted as a medium of exchange. We’ll be back to it in a moment."

■

"I would have made a better nurse," Regent commented. "I’m not saying you’re bad-"

"No, that was the dumbest thing I

======== SAMPLE 36 ========
 a few seconds to gather a few bugs there before moving, the ground shaking and people running for cover.

The moment she was out of sight, I set my bugs on her.

One in four bugs got away, and I knew with a high degree of confidence that the rest of her team wouldn’t be able to catch her. Two in five died, or she caught on to something she’d done and it would cost her, but the remaining three in five died very slowly in turn. I set more bugs on her running form.

The others had figured out where the bugs had been, and quickly found their way to covering the exposed flesh of her face, neck and arms. I could see the ineffectual use of her power.

I gathered my team, and we watched, waiting. We didn’t say a word.

She caught on to our intention, and her body language was grim. The suit was only a body block away from stabbing her another of us with the razor sharp points of light at its forearms and the edges of its chest.

If she was even sentient. I hadn’t given it much thought, and it didn’t act until I had finished. No bugs were allowed on the man.

I didn’t get a chance to see if she noticed or if she saw anything from my end. The suit stabbed them in the back, and another set of lights suddenly appeared in the air above her. I knew what was going on just from the way my bugs felt, their death-wish fulfillment.

The suit moved, and the lights moved as well. More of the lights appearing in the sky.

Then it stopped.

The suit was a singularity. The suit kept on going churning out those flat black outlines, just like a machine without a bottom. She didn’t touch it.

I sent my swarm after her, and they reached the limit of their ability, swarming the area. Too little, too late. All they could do was watch.

I gathered enough to try to get a sense of what was going on, and I ran into a snag. One of Legend’s lasers, long and narrow, had blown in the drone ship I’d brought with me. A blast nearly as big as I was, spearing out from the side of the thing and burying the thing in darkness and incomprehension.

It was only a matter of time before the suits died. They were just at the point where they would break or get distorted, and they were entering a critical phase. I could only hope that they wouldn’t do anything permanent as a result.





Cockroaches 28.5


The suit’s lights finally went out.

I was left staring at one of Bastard’s enormous eyes that was wide with a sense of what was going on beyond the narrow aperture.

It was the closest I’d ever been to being inside someone’s head. It was painful, to think that it was the same person I’d just seen. A part of me knew that this person, this bastard that had just killed four of my people, was in control of his own body, he was in charge, so to speak. Knowing this, I couldn’t help but stare.

I struggled to find words. Thoughts?

"You," the suit growled. It didn’t use its left arm. It had taken one off. One off. Two, three, four…

"You’re not in costume, Skitter," an R.I. man said. His English was imperfect, not perfect, but his accent suggested he was a journalist. "You need to remove your armor."

"Why are you here? I went to the shelters."

"You went to the shelters so you’ll be able to defend yourself when this girl attacks. We can’t trust the Protectorate to help. You’ll defend yourself, but-"

"Not a problem," I said. "Just a few minutes."

"With luck, we can make our way across the battlefield to her. Until then, we need you to run."

"I can’t run," I said.

"We can’t put you down."

"I’d rather die than let her get to anyone," I said, as if that was answer enough.

"Then don’t," she said.

We turned to leave the building, and we were out of my father‘s reach. Better, in a way.

I glanced back to see Bastard staring at me. I was almost convinced I was going to die, that my father would accept the fact that some of

======== SAMPLE 37 ========
 a few seconds, the darkness dissipating. Two voices, somewhat close. One was male, but the shadows suggested the shadows were female. It was a rambling speech, with lots of empty syllables that sounded alike. "Defending parahumans from Endbringers is a good business. It’s why we exist, after all. There are always new parahumans who want to take advantage of our resources. The funny part is, we exist to protect others. Parasites, other powers, the real threats. The parahumans will come after you the second you make a move."

I glanced over one shoulder to verify what he was saying. A shadow, perhaps a shadow copy of Weld, was crawling through a crack in the building’s exterior. Another crack yawned open beneath his feet, and a third shadow leaped from between the cracks to jump from the middle of the area to the middle of the parking lot.

Weld’s words were getting harder to hear.

"Maybe the smart thing to do? Pull out all the stops. If we need it, we’ll make it happen. You guys have the resources we do, and you’re the only ones who can stop Scion."

"I don’t think we can stop Scion without him coming after us," Rachel said.

"Do you?"

"No. There’s too much collateral damage. Too many parahumans waiting to pop out and mess with us."

Defiant turned to look at her and Shadow Stalker. "Okay. Let’s find a way to communicate."

"I need an escape route," Weld said. He grabbed Tattletale’s wrist, and she turned around as he raised his arm, threatening with a gesture.

Tattletale hurried to give him a hug. "It’s okay. We can find a way to communicate."

"You could use a hand or leg to steady yourself, or ask me to hold him, give some stimulation instead of a hug."

"No. I need-" he paused, as if he could calm himself. "I need an escape route."

Weld gave up holding Tater Tot while she bent the clumsily wrapped arms of her grip around her head. She tried to pull away, but his grip was insurmountable. In that instant, she knew it was too late.

The clumsily folded arms of his grip around her neck disappeared, only to be replaced by two strands that were half her hair and a half foot in length. No doubt they’d snapped off when she’d moved or something.

He lifted her into the air with enough force that she had to wind her legs around her body to control her descent. Weld raised her into the air so the Hunchback ‘Echidna’ was directly behind her, craning his neck to one side to swing her around, then bent her legs to throw her down onto her stomach.

Her hair dangled at either side of her, and darkness spilled forth from the folds of hair as she collapsed.

Weld raised his head, saw what was happening, saw Echidna once again, the Hunchback twitching, the Echidna-Echidna hybrid in a state of complete transformation.

"Help me stand."

Our chances of survival were gone in a second, and the difference between her and the others was minimal at best. None of the capes he’d fought or encountered had been any better than average, and his friends were no better off.

He saw her fight, saw the clones she created, all fighting in a single general area, each backed up against the crowd surrounding her by the time he was rid of her.

The bugs I’d placed on her dropped her into the midst of the enemy, who were quickly being overwhelmed and routed by our overwhelming numbers. Echidna started to slide, as though she were sliding down the stairs and suddenly realizing she could not open her handpeg to the wooden planks with her free hand.

"Help me out, Weld." Shadow Stalker’s voice.

He reached down, gripping the armor at the elbows and knees of his battle-tank-style cape. The armor blended in with the general shape of the armored object, giving him the ability to lean lightly into the clumsiest of them. He was almost balanced on the armor at his waist, his arms around Weld, beneath the costume.

He knew, even if he hadn’t consciously acknowledged it, that the armor could read his own power. Could read the trajectory, the force of the impact, and shift impossibly large amounts of material from his body.

It was with a quiet horror that he saw her struggle to

======== SAMPLE 38 ========
 a bit, but it was a bit embarrassing.

"Come back here, Lyra," Imp said. "Sit."

Lyra did.

"The Endbringers planned this. Someone in another dimension gave them instructions. Go after the leader, and this will go smoothly."

"I didn’t make any difference, and you guys know that. Right?"

"Right," Imp said, not taking her eyes off of Bitch.

"You think I made a difference? Look at this body language. Anger, fear, nervousness, excitement, all at once. All the while, they’re plotting this, and they’re playing a game of high stakes poker. You? You really gave a shit? Fuck me. Shit. Shit."

As she muttered the words, Bitch kept her head screwed up inwardly, her jaw clenched.

"Fuck."

Bitch couldn’t form any response that wouldn’t sound completely insane.

"Okay," Imp said. "That’s enough. We’re going to move on to the next member of the group, then."

The door banged open. Trickster and Ballistic flinched as the pair of them were whisked away by various suits and apparatuses, each at different points along the length of the street.

The group moved swiftly, rounding a corner. Rachel and the dogs were taken into custody. Grue was taken to the back of the van, chains stretching to the bars.

A heartbeat later, he started to stir. She checked his harness. Bastard was being trained to bite the chain.

A movement away, a flapping motion sent Bentley flying through the wall.

Bitch checked the chain. It was hot.

"Move it, puppy," Imp said.

Bentley went after her, and she moved to help him.

It didn’t help much. The chain continued undying.

"Stop it," she ordered it, and the man in the suit flickered into existence just in time to stop it from widening any further.

"No!" he growled, before the block of metal could pass between his arms and down between his shoulders. He fell to the ground, and the chain that stretched from one side of his ‘pet’ to the other joined, joining again with a sharp movement of the man’s neck as he went limp.

She was just about to add another ‘no’ when the other man in the suit moved. It was as though a huge, bulky blob of foam or something vaguely milky moved past her, catching her shoulder and shoulder alone, pulling it back.

She found her way back to where the suit was. The mask was barely visible behind a thin layer of dust on her face.

"The other three were taken to another planet. Bitch and I took Trip. He’s in better shape."

"I’m sorry. I didn’t think that much of a choice. Bitch?"

"I didn’t know. I can’t ask."





Plague 12.6


"You’re not a fucking thinker!" Glaistig Uaine spat the words.

"No," Prism said. "You’re right. That would be an insult. I’m not much use to arguing exchanges of ideas with a psychotic quip."

Piece by piece, she began to peel away. It was a good day, really. A storm was clearing up, now that the day had been fairly quiet. Dust had settled, and the air was cool.

Five cities all near-eliminated in a matter of hours, each caught up in a different kind of destruction. New York gone, leveled by flames, reduced to a pink mess of ocean water and pink sludge. Los Angeles was mostly levelled, flattened. A settlement had been reduced to chunks of new territory in a middle of nowhere wilderness.

The settlements had been taken down, but here in the United Kingdom, that didn’t quite do justice to the enormity of what was happening.

Each city was a little different. Larger scale, ancient, vibrant. They were the exceptions, the outliers. Each had lost everything but the architecture, a little more indestructibility.

"You’re leaving us," she said, sounding as though she were talking to a stone doll that could shoot lasers. The suits that she was using were a little more dangerous, a little more ruthless. They were the things that let her communicate, in a raw, primal way.

"What does that fucking matter to you?" Was leader.

"It’s big."


======== SAMPLE 39 ========
 a place that would be safe from me."

She was a monster, all of this, but she still managed to be useful.

"I’ll need you, Weaver, I’ve attached the most current versions of the video cameras. I have the marshals on my side."

"Sure," she said.

"Then there’s three of me, one of Cuff and Battery, and we’re standing by so you can watch the way this works, when someone like Mannequin gets a headstart on them, or if there’s an emergency."

"I don’t want any of that," she said.

"Then maybe you want to go back to your territory, in case anyone comes on a rampage. You or someone you care about can watch that for yourself."

"You’re assuming I’ll go," she said.

"We can talk about that. But that’s my territory, and I really do want to be back there when this all goes down."

She looked angry at that.

"I’ll come with when that thing isn’t already surrounded by walls," she said. She shifted her grip on the crutch, so it was now in her off hand, and then moved in Brian’s direction. They paused so the dog could fall asleep.

It was nice, being able to watch the dogs while I had an actual roof over my head. It wasn’t necessarily safer, but it was nicer.

No, it wasn’t nicer. Shit, those dogs were vicious. What was one supposed to call them? Strangers? Family? Pariah?

No, that was tacky, especially coming from her.

I pulled off my mask a little faster this time, than the last time, and set it on the small of my back.

When I made sure she could see, the others were already entering through the front door.

"What’s going on, T- kid?" Bitch asked, when the others were gone.

I shut my eyes, using my power to make a point of it.

"She’s upset. She wanted to take custody of the dogs."

"Kid?"

"She’s angry because you let her back, but she’s also angry that I didn’t take custody of the dogs myself. Bitch, you have a dog?"

I shook my head. There wasn’t another home for these dogs.

I could hear Bitch speaking to Brian, the second my team was gone. Bitch, the dogs and me. "…shit."

Brian was going to say something. I opened my eyes, but the world was blurry and incomprehensible, everything too fast. I focused on the bugs, on the larger bugs that flowed into and through my swarm.

"…shit," Bitch echoed me.

Bryce looked at the mess that Divide had made, the destruction they’d created in the blink of an eye. He looked angry, surprised, even terrified, but the look shifted as he looked deeper into it. Still that expression, still that expression of fear, surprise and a sense of dread. I could see why he’d tried to attack me and how he’d held his ground despite my attempts to attack and hurt him. There was something about the idea of being alone on an unknown world and being able to do nothing against the monsters that made him feel even more helpless than he otherwise might.

That fear was something we’d talked about a lot. I couldn’t put it into words for him, because that fear was easy enough to shrug off. I couldn’t put it into words for us, since I didn’t want to be responsible for his fears, but I could think of it as having more to do with his personality than it was with his ability.

We’d mostly just talked about what was going on, as a group, and he hadn’t brought it up again since. Not with Bitch.

I couldn’t bring myself to show any kind of weakness to him, to act in his interests. To help keep him safe. Excepting the dogs, Bitch couldn’t be left alone after all.

"It’s not him," I said.

"Is it supposed to be?" Bitch asked, echoing me, almost desperate for an answer. "Don’t know, but what the hell, do you think?"

I shook my head. I didn’t know what Bitch was thinking. Or the thought was somewhere deep inside that wasn’t simple numerical data. Either way, I wasn’t

======== SAMPLE 40 ========
 a friend without even asking. It was almost seductive.

I wondered if I could have made peace with it if I’d had the chance. Having my dad here, here, maybe offered some grounded perspective. My dad’s presence in his house, surrounded by my bugs, made me feel like maybe things were okay, that I wasn’t so alone out there, somehow.

But maybe I wouldn’t have made peace with it if I’d had the option. Like I said, I was too distracted.

Had to focus on more immediate things.

The girl with the costume who was making her way down the street. Had I pissed her off? Maybe. I hadn’t said I’d hit her, but I’d probably get a kick out of it if it was my power at work. Maybe. Maybe not. She was a hard person to deal with.

Bonesaw was still making her way down the street, but one of her dogs was nosing around behind me, taking my hacksaw-hand. I was trying not to get tangled up in their bodies, and I wasn’t wanting to get killed, but she was clearly relying on her instincts and getting spooked by the presence of another dog might have meant her handlers decided to give her something of a second opinion.

A car was behind me. I glanced back at it, then turned to check the other dogs. Two that were riding. They had their throats slashed.

A third had been inside the building. I realized it was Bitch’s Bentley, and it was pulling on the chains, but the harness wasn’t holding up well, and the brakes weren’t doing as much as they should.

I realized the other dogs had the same sort of issue. Brutus and Judas.

The car was trying to pull on the same chain that the Bitch-une-bouchere was using, so the car above could ride on the chain. But the ramp didn’t seem to be tall enough for Bitch and her dogs.

Either the chain was designed improperly, or someone let it come down.

I glanced back at Bitch. She was staring at me, staring at me, and the expression was hard, showing even divisions between the lines. Her black clothing didn’t do much to hide the expressions beneath.

I glanced nervously at Dragon. The Simurgh held me, she couldn’t even fly through the air, now.

There were other capes in the area… capes I wanted to work alongside. Dragon, too, but on a much smaller scale.

"I’m going to need your help," I said.

"What?"

"Skitter’s not here."

"…I need to look out for Endbringers and Pandemons in particular."

"The Simurgh isn’t here."

"I’m flying out?" I asked, and the thought was terrifying. I might lose him in a second, if my bugs arrived in time.

"No. The Simurgh had all of her power cut off. She’s underground. A prisoner."

Fuck. I hated to burden her already fragile ego, but I couldn’t tell her that.

"It’s too dangerous to stay here."

"You want help?"

"Maybe. I was there just a moment ago."

She looked at me, and her expression didn’t change. A minute ago. Was she scared?

"Please," I told her. I waited for her to respond, then forced a smile. "I want you to come with me."

She looked at me, and then scratched one of the dogs that was behind her, an ugly scratch. One of the dogs that hadn’t been able to ride, as the ramp’s base was too far away.

I had no immediate routes to travel. No portals, no portals open to me.

"Please?" I asked her. "I don’t-"

I saw her look over at me, the expression impossible… calculating? Distant. Fierce?

I was so used to being alone, I thought. I’d been okay with that.

"I don’t know if you’re telling me to leave or if…"

"I’m telling you to come with me. It’s probably best for everyone."

That was all I said.

If only she’d said no, or if even I had a better idea of what to say…

I didn’t even have my power, and there were worse things

======== SAMPLE 41 ========
 a few seconds, and then she said, "You didn’t come here for food. I mean, you know as well as anyone else that this is a place where we eat with other people’s families and close friends, not with us."

"No," Sophia said. "My dad and my mom both worked here, before, and I didn’t see them once."

"I wouldn’t worry about them for much longer."

Sophia paused. She liked the tone, how her tone usually sounded arrogant or sarcastic. This time it was different, almost endearing. She smiled, wide.

"You didn’t have anything," Tattletale said. She sat down beside her friend. "Like, you didn’t want to fill me in, you didn’t want-"

Silence repeated itself. Sophia ignored the person sitting beside her.

"-Want to fill me in? Here," Tattletale pointed at a wide area where she could see both the inside and the outside of the school. A few blocks to the southwest of Endbringer’s real position, in this mostly intact section of the city. Just a bit over a mile from their real place.

"Shit," Sophia mumbled. "We were taking turns to eat here, if you could believe it… and you…"

A few students moved away. Tattletale and her friend were the first to leave, walking away without looking back.

Sophia didn’t say a word, but the silence implied an inarticulate apology, a lack of any further dialogue.

■

"Aster?"

The boy looked up at Aster. He was a few pounds heavier than the rest of his group. His eyes weren’t as dark as the time before, but the edges of the skin that ran along the length of his arms and neck were dark, and there was less skin showing.

"Welcome back," Aster said. "It’s been a long time."

"I heard the Slaughterhouse Nine were around. They killed my people in a war, forty years ago."

"They killed them?"

"Lost," he mumbled.

She extended a hand. As a dozen people stepped back in surprise, he shook hers. She didn’t say a word.

"I saw them kill Behemoth. I was nine years old then."

"I was the best boy."

"I was the only kid, and all of the heroes came to scare me, scare me. I was only two or so, the daughter of a dockworker, and they were tough because I couldn’t run. So I ran, and all of the heroes came back, and I couldn’t run, because I was afraid they’d follow me. All I had were nightmares."

"I know how that sounds."

"Yeah. I was so scared. I started working, and I could get by as long as I could read a book and watch movies. I didn’t like it, but I could see the future, see what I’d become. And there was this, like, one book a week, on the shelves of the library.."

"I… read it?"

"Aster was a hero, then. I had a hard time reading before, because my dad always wanted us to stay in grade school. He bought all of our hardcovers. And I was so jealous, because he had my brother… I read every page of it… and when I finished, he put a new hardcover in front of it… and I- I missed half of it."

"I just realized that my brother was one of the Slaughterhouse Nine, not me."

"That’s not what I meant. It was more relevant, but I didn’t say it out loud."

"Oh," Aster said. "Thank you."

He nodded. He watched the heroes as they crossed paths. "Heroes of the Protectorate?"

"I didn’t even know they had a team. Go figure."

"They’re not done, though. New York! The next big city!"

"I… don’t… remember…"

"This is the future, Aster. By the time we’re done with that, it will be too dangerous an area for you. It’ll be overrun with monsters, preyed by mad capes who’ve read every single file in the record. Some of them will be worse than the real monsters."

"Oh, I remember."

"Not a priority," Tattletale said. "I can guess what you’re going to do

======== SAMPLE 42 ========
 a friend, I could see a little black dot in her eyes, with the sliver of gold in her clothing giving enough sign to the gold that it was being shifted further away.

Not enough to be a clue about who she was. Another possibility was that it was a power she had used just recently. A later arrival, a power she couldn’t control?

My attention momentarily wandered to the gold-embossed dress. The gold came from the emblem on the bodice (a hammer and sickle) and the insides of the dress (a crescent moon and the sun, with the two planets in crescent or oval shapes in the background, similar to the Echidna emblem).

But it was most definitely NOT her.

I gathered my bugs and the numbers were ready. 2.7%.

She turned my way, her eyes hidden behind her visor.

She knew who I was.

I took the chance to drop my veil and open my mouth to speak.

The number of people who wanted to hear me out was the best proof. It didn’t matter if it was the number of knives, guns or how many cases of blood spilled from the mouths of the bodies if they were all saying ‘Yes’ to the idea.

"It goes without saying that the Undersiders are completely different from the Travelers or the Chicago Protectorate. I know some of you are upset. You’re worried these new recruits would have worse powers. That they’d start a long-term trend, where powers started off in the Travelers and spread to those around them with their group, and they’d get worse as time went on. Or they’d start doing things the wrong way, where the wrong individual or group of individuals were controlling something. I’m not so sure that the ABB would spread the word through word of mouth alone."

The number one killer of the ABB was the fact that they were not going after the people with the higher powers. Too many wards and members were killed or captured and the group didn’t have the resources to mount a successful campaign against the local population. The low rating of the heroes in regards to cruelty and ruthlessness compared to the villains.

"But I think there is good in this situation. If we could cut out the bad elements, the corrupt and the vain who are taking advantage of the system to the point where it breaks down, I think we could make the ABB weak in the long run. Think about it. They’re losing members because they’re not strong enough or committed enough to the cause to keep their power together. If we could keep the majority of the ABB members from hurting the people in their territory, they’d be more easily controlled and less effective as a group. They’d drop off the face of the map, and the problem wouldn’t get any worse."

"But," she raised her hands, "If I were to give my powers to you, would you give them to me?"

"No," my dad said, shaking his head. "I wouldn’t."

But my dad, who had been born in the middle of the nineteenth century, knew what Coil was talking about. I hadn’t gotten the message from my dad. "You aren’t really giving them up for free. If there’s nothing else that’s available, you could offer your talents to a group that needs them."

He’d been more than willing to hear the idea. I sighed and took the offered tool. The wheel I’d set into the base of the room only just started spinning.

It took only a few minutes to setup and operate, with barely any effort on my part. A button in the top right corner of the screen let me access settings, and a menu to the left let me select the bugs I wanted to use, with their locations marked on a black board behind them. It was hard to pin down the amount of work involved, but I estimated around ten minutes at the most.

I opened up the other tabs to access the computers, first. I set up a password-protected server so I could set everything up remotely, and then opened up the video editing program to see what I could do with it. I got started with the video editing in an instant, connecting the laptop to the new rig and installing the edited video on it. I couldn’t edit without the remote, and it took a minute to get it started up once again.

It would have been easier to manage with just the laptop, but my dad wanted me to track everything to make sure everything was working as it should. I set alarms for the two hours and fifteen minutes it took my dad to call the police?five?and give them

======== SAMPLE 43 ========
 a ground force that was organized by the number of members it had.

"If you insist," a voice, male, I thought, probably Dragon’s. It came from my rear view mirror.

"Not my choice," I told the guy. "Can I take a seat, please?"

He looked around, and I gestured for him to sit anywhere on the bench. He took a chair by the windowsill, and I watched as Dragon and Defiant walked inside.

Defiant touched the arm of the chair opposite Dragon’s. Defiant leaned over and kissed the arm. There were tears in the corners of their eyes.

Both Dragon and Defiant, I thought. The sense of betrayal was palpable.

A sense of hopelessness overcame me as my heart rate increased. There was no way I’d be able to look them in the eyes and pretend this wasn’t a higher power playing field.

A sense of history also weighed on me. More than one power told them I’d overcome some hurdle or another. Or, to be specific, their interpretation of what that hurdle was was had been more important than the actual power itself.

Dragon looked up at me, and her lips were set into a firm line as she gazed at me. I resisted the urge to take any action she might suggest I should. She’d stopped me before, but that was a stop in a different direction. This was a real escalation.

That feeling of hopelessness only accelerated as I saw the equipment Dragon was wearing. A camera, a camera with a lens on the front, a small scanner, an access ramp to the back of the booth where equipment was stashed, and a charger.

She turned my way, and the hope that I’d see the equipment only intensified.

This was the person she’d promised to let go of my throat. How much of that was a bluff on my part? Was that a violation of the Non-Fatal Threat Protection program?

The idea of being held against my will in some kind of cage in the Birdcage kind of unnerved me.

Dragon had claimed one of the rooms in the ‘hub’ to the outside world. The rooms here held a small army of people, with no less than nine Dragon suits in total. I knew who they were because I’d dealt with the Birdcage’s prisoners, and with those nine people, those nine Dragon suits could make a lot of noise. They could make a lot of noise, and someone could hear it if they heard it for long enough. Dragon had her suits keep them in the dark, so a lot of people couldn’t do anything about it.

The commotion made me squint, and I couldn’t see anything except the darkness itself, but there were a half-dozen windows on the outside of the room, each with the unmistakable glare of the sun and the occasional spark of flame. The windows themselves were made of one or more lightsabers with small panels of glass inside, arranged as though they were on a chessboard. Every window was facing outward, so that whatever direction the sun was facing when it set, the windows were facing inward, and so were the people inside.

"You’re all here," Defiant said, from behind Dragon.

I could see the ground shift, my heart rate pick up a fraction. The ground wasn’t technically 'under' me, but there was a certain degree of pressure against any action that forced open and exposed flesh, and this was one of those actions. My heart leaped in my chest as I let go of my sword, swung at Defiant.

"Not a threat, Tecton," Defiant said.

I glanced at the people. I’d given up a bit of ground, but the people behind me were still maintaining a defensive position, arms raised and held high. This was a fight between two very strong individuals. Defiant was stronger, and he was more comfortable making those kinds of sharp, focused attacks. If I’d continued to raise my weapon, I was pretty sure he could have beaten me. Even if I was confident in my abilities, as much as I might have liked the idea of confronting Lung the second time around, there was simply no way I could win a fight against him. He could shrug off my defenses, parry my attacks with his considerable strength, and lay siege to my base with his mob. The worst case scenario, if we were talking possible, was that I was trapped in here until a hand could be forced, kept there for all intents and purposes.

I wasn’t confident enough to say that with a straight face. My confidence was being clouded by adrenaline.

"He beat Tecton," Def

======== SAMPLE 44 ========
 a few moments.

"I think he’s a villain," I said.

Tattletale nodded. "Not sure how confident you are."

"Okay," I said. "The bad guys are people. They’ve got flaws, they develop their flaws as they grow and they become more ruthless. But over time, they become… recognizable. Like the mole in the crowd. Even the most monstrous villains are recognizable, if you ignore the costume."

Tattletale glanced at me, as if calculating I’d say something that wouldn’t be true if she saw it. "Okay."

"We can’t really get hold of her if she’s with Coil," I said. "Or she’s directing him somewhere."

"Or she’s changing locations with Coil," Tattletale said. She glanced back towards the helicopter. "You guys are a little far? Get us to come back."

There were nods all around.

"I don’t think she’s changing locations," Tattletale said, again. "No movement there. Go!"

We headed back to the craft, with Rachel following us in Atlas’ blackened wreckage.

The Director hadn’t even recognized me when I arrived. I was met by a sight that wasn’t so recognizable as what I’d seen on the TV earlier: the body of a corpse, several people having been beaten bloody in a manner that suggested human activity rather than the tesla-generated winds. I’d seen the aftermath of the fight in the aftermath of Mannequin’s attack, and I could recognize the parts of the body that hadn’t been beaten so severely. It was the director of the PRT, one Weld had dismembered and who had been found in the rubble. This was the one that had been beaten.

"We didn’t think you had it in you," the man said, his voice a low, accented voice. I recognized it as Weld’s, through the noise of the helicopter propellers.

His body was all flesh, and yet he stood, with the muscles clearly showing through the muscle’s sheaths. I hadn’t realized he was still alive until he pulled away from me, raised his head to look up at me, and the muscles that surrounded his skull remained perfectly intact, a perfect white askew with muscle spurs in the wrong places. All the bones would be exposed, the skull and face badly compromised.

"Did you get my message?" the director asked. "In the field this would be disastrous."

"We’re far enough away that I can’t broadcast it. You’ll do yourself and everyone in this room a disservice, Director. Send word to Coil, now, immediately."

"Very well. I’ll have my messenger deliver it to him. My apologies for the intrusion."

"No complaint, I suppose," Weld spoke, with an easy Northern drawl.

"No infractions if I didn’t break a rule or break a protocol today?" The man asked.

Weld extended his hand, and we exchanged a look look. I suppose they’re formal, but that seems like a contradiction, especially coming from someone who’s new to the job.

Hurt at what I did? I thought.

"I don’t particularly like burn victims," Weld said. "I don’t burn people, so that’s that."

"We didn’t know you were still here when we asked you to meet us at the station," I said. "Did it hurt?"

Weld shook his head. "I felt somewhat better. Less stiffness, but hardly anything."

A new member to the Wards. I was getting an idea of who Weld and I were, and where our personality types stood. He wasn’t a fighter, or a new face in the ranks, but I could respect that he felt similarly about the job than I did.

He was keeping me company, as we spoke, but it felt like some of the old tensions were still with us, present.

A problem that hadn’t gotten as much media attention as it deserved, I might have thought, but one that had more to do with a dislike for bureaucracy than it did with anger at the injustices committed against top members of the Protectorate.

"Trouble with this kind of administrative nonsense," Weld said. "It’s an idea that has been around for a long time, but very few people actually do anything with it. I’m talking about people who enforce the rules, people with the powers,

======== SAMPLE 45 ========
 a very long time and everything will be fine."

When he spoke again, his voice was level. "I know it’s not."

And so he leaves us to wonder,

What are we trying to get inside the city at this juncture?

"I was going to mention that, you were, or there would be been repercussions that were worse than death. This is the type of situation that people go to if they need to voice doubts and alarm."

She nodded. "I was there, as someone who thought along those lines. The people in charge thought they could get away with it. They aren’t so crazy after all."

She smiled a little. "That’s all."

He reached out to brush her hair out of his fingers, and she rejected him with an instant.

"Don’t waste my time," she said.

The tension left her body. She felt far, far more comfortable than she did.

The car screeched to a stop outside a gas station.

Brian pressed his fingers against his temples. A bruise in the area where the straps held his armor on.

"I’m going to have to wash my costume," she said.

Not the answer he would have expected.

"See you in a few," he said, not even caring if it hurt or if it broke more bones.

"See you?"

"I’ll see you. We have some work to do." She got out of the car, crossed the street, and started putting her feet up on the roof of the gas station and backing out. "See you soon."

He made his way inside, walked around until he was next to the door, then opened and shut the door without a word. She made her way upstairs and into bed. She put a pillow behind her head, and then climbed out as the sun set.

She felt out with her fingers. She found the zipper on the back of the dress, then unzipped it. It was a prison uniform, from within the brand new Birdcage, and she had no place to put it. She lay down, and pulled the top part of the dress off around her hips. The bottom half was more of a sport, unzipping and pulling down a little at the hip, showing a stomach and pubic region. The armor panels were exposed.

She checked, once again, that there were no insects inside the space.

"I know you guys," she murmured. Her power buzzed in her ears, half the power cut away.

"You don’t hear too much about that stuff behind the scenes, outside."

"You’re dead anyway," she said. "My choice."

"How do you think we found this?"

"If we look too closely, but don’t touch anything, we can almost make out the instructions," she said.

"You open all that fucking doors for us, and we don’t even know what the fuck we’re doing."

"Doesn’t matter," she said, quiet, as the bugs that she’d left on the metal slid free and disappeared. "It’s all upside-down. If we can figure out what we’re getting into, we can hack it open. There’s a lot of ways we could do that, but the most important thing is that we figure out what the fuck we’re getting into. If we don’t figure that out, we can and will get fucked."

"You said you were dead."

Her head turned slightly.

"I am too. Head to toe."

"You’ve changed, though," she mumbled. It was just the light touch, the way she’d left the metal armor behind, and it wasn’t just the movement that made her look older.

"You asked me to find this door and make this call. I’m going to make it as open as I can to try to navigate this mess, find some signal, whatever it is that Tattletale is talking about. You can keep me here, in case I can’t give any useful hints, or if we cut too far into the tripwire or whatever, we can stop. If anyone wonders if I’m going to save them or try to negotiate, it’s because I’m being too picky. I want to know that they’ve got their fucking shit together."

"In case a bomb destroys the tripwire, what am I supposed to do?"

She moved forward, landing on the metal walkway, then gripped the handrest. The walkway creaked,

======== SAMPLE 46 ========
 a couple of hundred feet away, but they still had more questions to pose. "What did it cost them? An incapacitating drug overdose?"

"They had money, but it wasn’t everything we could have gotten. They had a bit of food in the bank accounts that wasn’t theirs, they were giving it to the kids, and everything was arranged. They had their change ready to hand when they went robbing, and they were getting paid for every time we got in their way. So it wasn’t just the nine or so hostages that got killed, it was a lot of people."

"What kind of drugs did they take?"

"I can’t say for sure. I don’t touch that part of the bank robbery. I caught some in the car before the lady in charge let me go."

"Carjackers. I have to report that!" The voice threatened me from behind me, a little behind the driver’s side window. I spun around. The driver couldn’t see well from his vantage point, so I knew he was trying not to let me see what he was doing.

I glanced behind me again. A gang of maybe five or six men, armed with knives, saw me and made their way down the far end of the street. My bugs held me there until the police cars arrived, as did the driver in the other car, but the guy didn’t seem to care.

"Paying the guy?" I asked.

Tattletale only shrugged. "We think. But we got that far, so why not?"

I nodded. More than one person in the area had gone by the area without saying anything for a few short minutes, probably the time for some minor shenanigans. I knew of no-name gangs operating in the area, so it wasn’t like Grue had made the area unlivable for anyone.

That wasn’t good. I glanced behind me again. Two of the Merchants who had been behind the two women and girl in that van were still in the mall.

"Door?"

Tattletale pointed, and a group of people made their way out the door. It was a little disorienting, to see the scene without the crowd. The area before the crush of people was covered in a heavy rainstorm with dozens of stalls selling everything from bathtubs to refrigerated luggage. There were larger containers of soda, and hair dryers, a beauty supply store and a clothes-optional store.

The Merchants moved way too fast for my liking. Like Tattletale rifling through people’s pockets to make sure the money was in place. I saw the driver, one of the people in the Merchants, stop to look at me as the group clicked out of sight.

It might have looked like I’d been in the wrong place, but I could see Karma grab the driver’s gun to hit the guy in the arm, then step through the window to hop a bench. She bent down to reach the nearest wall, which, I saw, was high enough that she could have thrown the gun through it in one piece. She threw it back through the open window.

A moment later, she threw it through the open window that still stood on the other side of the mall. Again, there was enough momentum behind it that it almost dropped through the wall of the mall, striking the people who were in it. Only three or four people were hit, and they fell astride a SUV, all in one group walking across the mall. It skidded to a stop.

Karma, the driver, and the one passenger stepped out of the SUV to stop at the nearest stall. There was a man behind the counter with a gun.

I saw the group bump into one of the men that was selling cigarettes. He tipped the man into a fit of screaming, before the man dragged him from the smoke shop and left the scene behind.

In another part of the mall, a small crowd was picking at their knives and forks, trying to get them ready before they headed into the nearest clothing store. My bugs moved across the crowd. One person moved faster than the others, and caught one of the women’s legs with the front of his hand; there was a noise about as far from laughter as I saw; people were stepping back, drawing together as if there was a growing panic.

Karma tried to pull one of the women onto her back once more, this time. Again, Karma grabbed the woman’s arms and spun her around, keeping her on the ground. I didn’t see how it went over, but one of the guys started pulling at his trousers, which had a gusset, and he began shouting at the crowd, cursing at me, calling me

======== SAMPLE 47 ========
 a bit of a show," Imp said.

"She got those men in uniform, and you act like you’re shocked."

"It’s the first time we act like we don’t know what’s going on. I mean, I was at the school to get kicked out for kicking Undersiders out, and I was there when Lung and the others attacked the PRT headquarters… but we didn’t act like they were in on the deal. We went out of our way to get into the fray, and we weren’t dancing around or nothing. We were ready to move. I saw them setting up on the rooftops, and that got my attention."

Tattletale frowned. "You weren’t there when the battle started?"

"I saw it when I woke up the following morning, figured I’d check in on the morning of the next. The Slaughterhouse Nine had just crossed into the area, and I heard their leader swear by God at some point."

Imp nodded. "Was there any hint at what they were up to?"

"No. Nothing noteworthy, really. Just some guys with a goat motif pounding away at the cops and a few others trying to take out Undersiders in hand to hand combat. Or they were just trying to knock some faces."

"The guy in power armor?"

"Yeah," Tattletale said. "We’ve crossed paths with him before, but it was in a situation where outnumbered and outgunned."

"If you’d asked me three weeks ago, I would’ve caved and admitted I had a grudge."

"No shit? I meant, seriously, who the fuck would you blame if a group like ours decided to cross paths with one of the Nine?"

"You know who everyone else would blame." Tattletale replied, with a note of sarcasm in her voice.

"No, I don’t think anyone would blame us."

"Fuck, you don’t realize how much I want to sit back and do the dirty work for you. Do it for Coil, for Kaiser, for the rich fucking men who put me in power, for the heroes, the villains and the people who thought the Undersiders were a good idea. Eliminate that shit from the face of the earth, and then we can start doing what we really want. Fix that fucked up city, fix that fucked up country. Make a fucking good fucking man out of each and every one of us."

It was poetic, and it was all I could do to not giggle at the absurdity of it.

"This is fucking with the most basic parts of our brain chemistry and our moods and instincts. The parts that help form our personalities and keeps us in check. And we haven’t even made any real headway against the Nine. Why?"

"Probably, to be honest," Tattletale said. She frowned a little. "People were starting to wonder if we were doomed from the start, if we were doomed to fail because The Man couldn’t beat us in his attempts to control us. Or maybe it’s more sinister."

"Freud would be so proud."

"People were starting to wonder if we were doomed from the start," Tattletale said, smirk still plastered on her face, "He said something pretty terrifying about our mental state, back when he was fixing up the city."

"I’m not going to convince you," I said. "But I think we could survive against the Nine if we split up, if we all worked together. It would be a heck of a lot easier, and I don’t think anyone would be much worse for wearing them down mentally."

"No, seriously," Tattletale said, scoffing. "I could see it."

"You’d get mucked around, too," I murmured.

"And killed if you didn’t. So we’re splitting up, just in case anyone messes us up."

"You’d be fucking with us," I said. "Betting on luck and the fact that these guys might be tough when it came down to it, when you’d had me pegged as a champion… and we’d be playing the odds like we wanted to."

"Fuck," Tattletale said, snagging the bag on the cashier’s counter and throwing it behind the counter. "That’s fucked up. I’m not backing down, Skitter, I’m not going to tell you that it’s fucked up. But I think we could survive if we split up, if you and I split up

======== SAMPLE 48 ========
 a good place to start.

"Tattletale. What is it?"

"Tattletale found the real Skitter, I believe, on the beach with a group of wounded. Skitter’s location is confidential, so I’m just going to assume you found Skitter?"

Tattletale hung up without another word.

I didn’t get a chance to finish my sentence. All around me, the wounded started to make their way to ambulances and rescue workers, and the dead started to rise.

I could hear moaning, worried screams. Some bystanders, some screaming, pleading.

No. Not really crying.

"I’d inform you if I found another Skitter, if anyone at all seemed set to pick up where they’d left off," Tattletale told me. "And if anyone was suspicious. Just so we were able to point the way."

I felt my heart rate pick up, knowing I was about to hit that adrenaline spasm.

"You found Skitter, I presume, despite my pleas."

"Sort of. Kind of. But whatever happened, finding her, I think we all thought we might catch her somehow."

It was just like that. A part of me wished I could find the point of view of anyone who was there, hear what they had to say.

Not one second later, a truck with a large white box on the back caught a fire from the ground and began bulldozing through the building. The man inside was pulled out, his face cast in shadows as he protested.

"This would be far better used if it were a hospital. I assure you, it is well cared for." She stepped back as the bulldozer moved to block the entry to the back of the building and deposited three injured in the back, where they lay on the ground.

"I’m making, what, two hundred dollars, or three hundred?"

"You’re making two hundred, then."

"It wasn’t stolen, it was promised to me by the man who runs the local car dealership."

"I’m sorry."

"It’s a bit of a gamble to put your money where your mouth is. For now, yes. For the time being, we are staying out of sight of her."

"She won’t be gone for long," I said. "If she can’t be stopped, what’s to stop her from-"

"We’re here," Tattletale cut me off. "Listen carefully."

My head turned, and I could hear her voice. Not the one I’d heard through one of the other drones.

"I heard what you guys were doing to the others. A few of the bigger targets. I figured you’d want to rest. And I get it. If you had a time to rest and recuperate, you should definitely do something before confronting this girl. She can out-tank any PRT officer you use and knock them out cold, giving you a chance to do something or break something."

"Which might be suicidal, given the chance she’s given us. I’m having to fight to get my clothes off, and my legs too, if she cuts off my Achilles' supply."

"And if you lose both?"

I thought of Triumph. "I can fight this thing, I have teammates with me."

"You could ask."

"I can ask," I said. With a quiet voice, I answered her, "If I come out ahead-"

"You’ll have to ask Grue. I can’t ask him."

"You took his advice. Fuck, I don’t even want to think about how it might go down if he ever got seriously wounded. I’m not even sure I trust I’ll manage if I don’t-"

"It’s okay. You can ask Grue and Regent. I sent Flechette to talk to them."

"I just… I’m not good at this. At the more complicated stuff. I’m okay if it’s just talking and listening, but I’m not that kind of thinker."

"I’m okay if it’s just talking and listening, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have to think. I’m going to go talk to the others, and plan how we’ll meet up. Come back while I can, okay? I can catch up to you in a few minutes."

I glanced at the others. Tattletale and Regent had exited

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 a few seconds, then ran up the other side as fast as I could.

It was so strange to think I was just like any other twenty-something guy out there. The difference was that this group of guys were all wearing different clothes, so different from every other guy in the area. There weren’t any guys in this ‘Weaver’ group of the same color or shape, any of ‘em with straight black hair, no beard.

I didn’t see any of them raise their arms, any of them carrying anything heavy. Maybe it was just because I couldn’t see their hands.

"Who the fuck are we supposed to be?" I asked the bugs.

One of the guys looked up at me, "She’s okay."

"Who the fuck do we have to worry about?" I retorted. I almost laughed, but I didn’t. It wasn’t that I was confident I wouldn’t kill myself before beinghead another of these losers, but it was so incredibly depressing to think about.

"Everyone else, if you show any respect for the other girl, you ignore these guys."

I shook my head. Maybe I’d have to explain that, to the others.

"This isn’t a show and a stunt. This is a fucking test. The winner is on the roof, at the center of all this."





Infestation 11.2


I had fallen in love with the first time I’d ever seen a live spider crawl. It was my mom’s spaghetti dinner as a kid, our nightly ritual as we gassed into the car and staggered out to the gas station to fill up on the gas for the first time. It would get us through the winter and into spring with the oil changes and the occasional freeze. Or it’d mean the difference between life and death or maybe just a period of quiet melancholy where I could catch my breath and just wait out the winter.

I remember looking at the package I would normally have got my spiders in when I got my powers. There was no spiderlab on the packaging, but I could have sworn I saw a spider bend a leg at some point. It was only after I was more or less a master of my swarm that I recognized the spider den on the package. I didn’t get spiderlab, though, because it was not a superpowered spider-lab.

I couldn’t figure out why the spider den had been left behind. Maybe because it was the spot where I’d found the spider that had caused the fight in the bank, or maybe because my mother had kept the spider there for some reason. A minute or two of exploration with my bugs and I realized there were a lot of spiders inside there. Four or five kinds, if I included the ones that had apparently attracted some attention from the nearby building crew.

There were the basics of spiders I could control, like driving a crescent-shaped blob of cheese or an orange-red hare from the water, but there were a lot of them I couldn’t control. They crawled over the barest minimum of skin, which was why I could keep them from getting at my prey and kill them with a single bite, but they were big. I could feel them, their vibrations through the air, even taking up a lot of my attention at once.

Not that it was easy to control them. I couldn’t find a good spot to set my spiders, and the ground was the easiest thing to do than to manage them myself. I landed a few good bites, then pulled away.

My spiders moved freely, with relative ease, and I managed to kill or maim just a few beyond the typical spiders found in the walls and tunnels of older buildings. Most went on the offensive or moved within the darkness to strike at my enemies and do real damage. I focused on avoiding the big things and moving them away from my victims.

I’d been with my girlfriend of two weeks at that point, and things had gotten okay, so we’d gone out on more dates. We dated for a little while, then dropped off.

The nights my team and I would spend together, the little hints of emotion I felt for each other or for the people we were approaching, it was when I wasn’t going out with them, when I was watching television or playing games online. It was easier, as much as I could deal with being ignored or having people avoid me as I walked down the street or at a friend’s house. I had things in common with Brian, with Rachel, Sophia and the dogs.

I was still fighting the bugs when I saw Coil’s headquarters. I knew where to look, could almost imagine that the white

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 a step.

The two children were gathered by the side of the fire. One had a knife in one hand and the severed head of a doll in the other.

"No," Marissa said.

"She’s mad," Aisha said.

"She’s not that stupid. You two know that. You just don’t want us helping her, knowing what she did."

"I do," Aisha said. "Believe me. You’ll have to forgive me for this."

"She was helping people," Marissa said.

"No," Aisha replied. "She’s acting different, and the stupid things she’s been saying, the ones with the strange faces…"

"The weird faces?"

"I want to talk to the guy that found Rachel and get his version of events," Aisha said.

Marissa nodded.

They made their way down the street, Aisha carrying a bundle, both Aisha and Regent in tow. Aisha gave Regent a hug, broad enough that the bundle could have concealed a cut or burn. Regent didn’t reply.

"We have to talk about the way you handled that attack," Regent said.

"About me not doing whatever I did?"

"You hurt Eidolon. He might have broken it, but I hurt him. Didn’t stop him, just the opposite."

"Yeah," Regent said. "And I- I did a lot of other dumb things. Mistakes. People paying attention to me, or people paying attention to Noelle. I’m going to do the same thing, and… and that’s going to be the only reason I let you live. Because you made me think."

Aisha stared back at him, mouth agape.

"I remember when you visited my territory," Regent said. "You were scared. Sad, disappointed, confused, but still very much alive. You were angry, but you were not yet angry enough to say something like… I don’t even know what you were angry about. It could have been that there was a threat inside me, a weapon, something, and that first trigger event got people else angry in turn, or perhaps you just needed to be taken more seriously, you were waiting for the other shoe to drop."

"I- we were angry," Aisha said, and there was a growl to the sound. "When you attacked my territory, we were… divided."

"I’m pissed off so goddamn much I’m going to drown you in fire ants," Regent said. Regent turned so he was facing Aisha. "Fuck, I remember. And the other shit you did… people dying? People getting mutilated or killed because you didn’t stop doing your thing?"

"I’m angry that you can’t leave me alone," Regent said, and Aisha’s face betrayed the emotion. "You-"

"I’m pissed off too," Aisha said.

"I’m going to-" Regent said, and the sound was a roar. Noelle disappeared.

As they vanished, Aisha’s fists went up, fists clenched.

"You left me alone," Regent commented.

"I’m…" Aisha’s words were cut short when a hand seized her throat, hauled her to her feet. The man who’d held her arms extended another. They hauled him in, until his back was to her.

"Bitch," Regent whispered. He was nearly blind. "Bitch! You okay?"

Bitch looked over her shoulder.

"I… I’m… no. I-"

A hand seized her chin, and she groaned, unable to reach out to brush it away.

Regent was fine, now, or they’d be alright in her hands. "We’re going to need to get off some ground floor, get them out of here, then we need to plan a defense."

"Ease up, you’re- you’re fine," Regent said. "No signs of any physical abuse or neglect."

"My dad-"

She stopped herself before she could say more. Her breathing was steady, a shudder running through her body.

The sight that loomed before her was a man in the prime of life. A face without expression, but eyes behind closed eyes. She could see her dad in that face, had seen him for some time, perhaps, just recently. He was sitting at his computer, typing only a small handful of letters on the small keyboard

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 a farce on such a grave occasion.

"I have a better idea though," the girl said.

"Of what happened, and how things were put together."

"Done as much research as you can before joining the Wards."

The girl nodded. She thought of Glory Girl, but Glory Girl had clearly changed. There was a kind of respect, now, between the two of them. Respect.

I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a very dangerous one.

"You come with me," the girl said. "I won’t mind if you are my wif, or at least, my assistant."

The girl, Kismet, stepped forward. "I see you’re not a fighter."

"I wasn’t before."

The girl’s tone was flattered, but there was an edge of condescension to her words. She had found a niche where she fit, where she had power and security.

"Then I suppose it’s settled. What’s the plan?"

"I don’t know," the girl said.

"A plan."

"What do we do?"

"We need to find Panacea. Someone who might know something."

She could feel her heart jump. Couldn’t articulate an answer there. "We took her out of the fight, don’t know why."

"Panacea wasn’t there. Don’t know why."

"We could use her," Kismet said. "Unless we know where she went."

"You’re talking like you’re with the Wards," the other girl commented, almost mocking.

"I am," Panacea said. "And we need every fucking bit of info we can get. We need to find Genesis, find Bitch, figure out where Brutus is… and I don’t even think we can find Brutus without finding Kid Win, without his old team of Travelers…"

"And Bonesaw?"

"And yeah. Yeah, we can do that too."

The girl trailed off.

The others took up the chant. Kismet made the first gesture with his hand, then got closer. Then the two boys joined the chorus. It was all too much, too much noise and noise without a good outcome. One, two, three…

Sitting at the head of the table, surrounded by our guests, the Travelers were a stone's throw away from the girl, Kismet could see the girl’s eyes. Her eyes lit up at the mention of Bonesaw, and the mood shifted. There was a light at the end of the tunnel.

Not so different from Grue.

"Hey, little sister," Panacea said.

"Hey, little sister."

"Can’t blame you if you want to stay closer to home, isn’t it?" Panacea smiled gently. There weren’t any teeth visible on her gauntlet.

"What would happen if you weren’t here?" one boy asked.

"I dunno. I’d be left alone."

"She’d be free to decide how old you are," the girl said. "When you were born, how old you were. I’m pretty sure."

"There’s a catch, though."

"Catch?"

"Nevermind. Isn’t that enough?"

"How old are you?"

"I don’t know."

"Tell us when you came."

The girl’s gaze fixed on Panacea.

"Thirty two," Panacea said.

"When you were born."

"Fortieth?"

Panacea nodded.

The boy smiled. "That’s pretty damn old."

"Thirty four, if you catch my meaning."

"Fortieth," Panacea said, smiling a little wider. "You know where you were, how long ago."

The girl raised an eyebrow.

"I… don’t… know?" Panacea said. Her eyes went wide. "Ever since I could remember."

"I can’t believe this."

"It doesn’t really matter," Panacea said. "I was here, we adopted you. I couldn’t give you up for adoption, so here I am, still here. No family to go to."

"And my adoption agency is still accepting applications?"

"We accept all kinds. We accept applications from any background, we also accept those that are criminal, pro-social

======== SAMPLE 52 ========
 a lot of the time when people say things like that, they’re either lying to you or they don’t know their stuff. I don’t think either of those things apply here."

The group that surrounded us broke up before Tattletale could reply. Grue was the only one who stayed, his back to the crowd as he crouched at the corner, arms folded, palms pressed against his chest. He glanced at me, and my eyes widened. It was Tattletale who broke the silence, "I think we all know what you want to do. You want to work together, you accept the help if it’s offered. You work through us, neither of us want that. You don’t have powers and luck, and so we make life harder for ourselves."

There were angry gasps from the rest of the group. I caught one word – the group – with my bugs. "I don’t-"

Grue raised one hand. It didn’t break the spell. "No."

Tattletale broke it by asking, "You know that’s exactly what we’re doing. The way things are, even if we can’t completely break up the group, we make it very hard to get the job done."

I could see Grue’s face change the instant he heard the word. Had he been caught off guard, or was something about the look in his eyes suggesting he’d planned ahead?

"Grue," I tried.

His body took on a strange shape as he flexed his hand.

"No!" he screamed the next instant. He charged for Battery, who crouched with her hands at her sides. It wasn’t the most pleasant of encounters to watch unfold. Grue’s strength coupled with Battery’s slowed him down, but he managed to keep her in reach until the very end, when he was through wrestling with her and punching her. He gave her the back of the headlock. "No!" Grue finished.

There were a lot of eyes on Battery and Grue. I swallowed, waiting for Grue to finish arguing, but none of his arguments could bring himself to say something.

"A lot of people are going to be upset that I’m here. I get asked all the time about my absence from the guild, and it’s like, I really didn’t have any major stuff going on after leaving the Protectorate, so maybe I look weird if you guys think I’m hiding anything. But really? I’m not hiding anything. I’m okay."

Battery folded her arms, silent.

"Okay?" Grue asked, a little furtive.

"Not at all," she said.

A minute later, a dog growled at the sun.

"I saw," Grue said.

She glared at us, but she ignored it. She returned to her feet with a splinter of wood in her teeth.

Once she was sitting upright, she barked out a response that could have been orders or a threat. It was almost indecipherable, as she spoke with the intensity of someone who was watching an armed confrontation.

I watched the reaction with interest, even if I didn’t understand half of what she said. She’d had her big dogs attack a short time ago, against Mannequin and Burnscar. She wasn’t happy, but she was interested. Had this escalation come at Mannequin’s direction?

She grew more annoyed with herself as Battery spoke. "All of this? Watching all these girls, when I have an injury?! It’s all a big chore. A lot of the loners stay in the group because they have nowhere else to go, and the rest of the loners go because they get food, shelter and attention. But I’m the only girl who doesn’t go the distance!"

"Battery," Grue said, carefully.

She grabbed a fistful of exposed skin by the scalp, twisting it roughly. "No. I’m not going to sit here and listen to this! It’s not constructive to hear you whine and complain while I’m doing something constructive to help these people!"

There was an onus to pay for this, I thought. Grue and Grue’s crew would be footing the bill for any physical violence she directed at anyone who tried to complain or force the issue. She would be on the defensive, and her bosses would be on edge of their seat. We’d be viewed as the bad guys.

"Look at me," she said.

"Yes," Grue

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 a small child would reach for one.

"I remember," Dragon murmured to the others.

The man who had taken Cherish was gone, his skin showing where the silk wound had been slack to the bone. A few stray blows from the blades in his gloved hands dealt little damage, and he was apparently able to walk through the silk.

His partner exited the box as well. He’d changed, his face a bit more bloodied.

"I remember," Dragon said. "You won’t let us watch the video?"

"We’re not allowed to watch," the blond man said.

"I mean, even if you could get your hands on the server, it’s illegal to watch."

"And you think he put his work online and made the video?"

"Maybe. But what’s in it for me?"

"When I think back, I can vaguely remember it."

"I can’t imagine any other reason."

"Maybe," he said. He touched his mask, "But when I look at the video now, I see it all in black and white. The entire scene? Watching from home, it would be so hard, so many details. Did they pick out the moments they want us to focus on? How did he look when they cut him open?"

"It isn’t his job to watch," Dragon said. "We have access to that footage. Any other part of the job?"

"Any other part of the job?" The blond guy asked again. Dragon nodded. Her eyes studied the scene, and she noted the girl in the hospital bed. The girl had dark circles under her eyes, clumps of her hair where her scalp had been mussed up by others. She was wearing a nurse’s uniform, no shirt, and black booty boots. She looked so innocent. And bloody.

In that same moment, her swarm dismounted. They rode the three block radius of a collapsed building as far as the eye could see, following the blond boy with the bodies.

Defiant could deal with this. The girl was disoriented, disarmed. She ran as though she were blind, then stopped. I could deal with that.

She could deal with the others.

Her power flared.

She held two, two that were smaller. She didn’t try to grapple with the one that was still in the box.

It reached out, and that same group ran towards the man who lay on the sidewalk. The man was getting away, and the swarm kept him from trying to run, giving him the space to figure out ways to escape. The man saw the swarm and started to struggle.

The swarm settled into a loose half-circle shape, extending from the man to the roof. One half was visible through the holes in the roof, and that half quickly blurred as it was cut away.

"He’s up," one of the other heroes said. There were tears in Dragon’s eyes.

"I see," Dragon said. She glanced at the scene to the right of the one who’d been struggling. I might have been able to recognize the one who was up there if it hadn’t been so bloody.

The ones on the rooftop – the green and black cylinders, the one with the injured arm, and the red cylinder with the dead man’s eye… they gathered around Bitch, and one of them moved to bite the throat out of the other.

Two of the black cylinders, one in Bitch’s immediate vicinity, cracked her neck from behind, severing the skin at the neck.

The one in my immediate vicinity, though, she slammed her gun into the side of its head. When it began struggling to revive her, her actions stopped her from doing anything irreversible. It just stood, paralyzed, unmoving.

Her body burned as it thrashed, until the black flames were almost too much to look at.

Then she passed out, as though she’d dropped two and ten didn’t make it any larger than a melon.





Parasite 10.9


The black gas choked my lungs. I couldn’t even gasp for breath. I’d never been in a situation where I could breathe at all without the aid of a mask, and this had been impossible to mask as well. I couldn’t even come up with a mask without risking my own life.

I felt as though I’d been jabbed with a hot poker, until one of the hoods or the cloth of one’s costume had been destroyed. It hadn’t burned that hot, but the smell and taste were bad. Not pleasant

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 a few months ago.

Not seeing one character in that list of possible abuses made me think of Bitch.

"That doesn’t make sense, if you’re saying that the reason Tattletale got us into this mess was because she was working for Coil," Dinah told me, "Tattletale says she’s going to kill herself, get help, or be betrayed by Coil. And he’s the only one she can talk to that matters. She says that if she talks to any of the other recruits, she gets killed, or she gets abducted and tortured by those mutants that she talks to, just like the one that killed Dinah."

"Did Dinah tell you she was suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder?" I pressed.

She frowned a little, "No. But she did say something about wanting help starting from the moment she found out Coil was secretly, secretly her abuser. That he was setting her up so she’d abandon the group and try to move away, only to find out it wasn’t possible, or she’s too damaged to escape. Which just adds weight to my theory."

"So we know for a fact that she tried to leave, and we let it slip. That’s bad if you didn’t cooperate, okay?"

"Yeah," Dinah said. "But things got worse when she started seeing another group of recruits…"

"Which leads me to my next theory," I said, "Which leads to the pile of shit that we just had to get out of."

Dinah shook her head, "I never liked the name trigger. What the fuck is a trigger?"

"What happened?" I asked.

"Scalping in the dark, beating bloody, or beinghead—I dunno. Looks like your mark. So many horrible things. Some good, some bad, depending on who you blame. You know the horror stories people told about being triggered by… what? A piece of paper with a number on it? Eleven? Twelve? They either got triggered on some other subject, after the fact, or they got triggered on the idea of suffering without an imaginary trigger event."

"I don’t think those happen in a pile of paper," I said, not taking my eyes off the woman. "I think they could be real things."

"Whatever," She said. "I won’t blame you if you decide to look into it and get definite answers. You’re not doing this to get to that pile of shit. You’re doing it because you’ve been trying to survive like this for over a year and a half. Scared the fucking living daylights out of you, until you decided you needed to help your teammates, right up until you were called into Coil’s territory to get some badly needed medicine."

"What did I do?" Dinah asked. The last half of the statement sounded like sentences that started with ‘now’.

"Turn around. I’m going to stick my hand under the table. So long as your buddies are looking, you’re okay to roll up a chair. Take a seat, sit if you can, but if you can’t, if it’s just you and me, I’ll step behind you."

She grabbed a chair and made her way to the foot of the couch to lay her back down, hands on the armrest. With her left arm extended, and her hair pulled back so the long bangs brushed against the sides of her head, she could only look at her companions, who weren’t a full seven feet away.

It didn’t feel like the end of the world, but it didn’t look pleasant either. And that wasn’t even the worst of it. The world kept going out the window. She could hear it slamming as she lay there, stunned and quiet.

The bugs I had in the area were telling her what was happening. The capes that were controlling the capes around her would be using the same sort of jamming jammers that Coil was deploying, meaning that the jamming would stop any- where, but she’d be in the midst of hundreds or thousands of her immediate enemies, with nowhere to go.

She would be able to communicate. The only thing that would work would be to ask for it, using the relay bugs she had in her immediate vicinity. They would provide the fastest way to that pile of bodies and nobody would be able to listen in.

She glanced around the room, trying to double-check that nobody recognized her. Nobody who might be standing off to one side, or simply hesitant. Damn it.

She found an armchair, and sat on the

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 a hair and you feel them move? Do they have a pulse?"

"I don’t think so. I’m losing my mind."

"But what else?"

"Murderers. I think of it, and it doesn’t fit. Maybe it’s too tidy. Maybe I’m deluding myself. I think of everything I put into it, and it just doesn’t add up."

"The people being raised, not the people being removed."

"Maybe. The people raised against us aren’t the bad guys. Their numbers are too small. Against us, they’re stronger, and they want to fight us. So we leave."

"So if we stay and they refuse, we leave?"

"Maybe. But if we leave and they fight us, then the people who were raised against us would tear us apart."

"That’s not reassuring."

"I’m worse than the criminals I’m talking to you about. I’m describing the situation from my perspective and the perspective of a broken person."

There were a number in the crowd, odd looking individuals. All of the people who were here for the fight, not the people who would be left behind, at the end.

"I’m not so sure. We’re fighting a losing battle, here, but-"

She shook her head, "Don’t fight us, but don’t get angrier. Just a little patience, and you’ll be that much more effective as an enemy. People here, they’re used to a certain amount of chaos. They’ve still got their culture, they’ve got their fears of the unknown, a sense of pride and superiority, and because this is a world where everything is possible, where anything is possible, they’ll accept it. They’ll accept that there are monsters, and they’ll accept that this can be their fate."

"You said that before. You can’t take that to heart. That was a blessing. A terrible way to die."

Parian took his time agreeing, but she said, "No, I don’t see it that way. We should stick together, instead of fighting amongst one another."

"You’re talking more towards the direction of fighting," Lung told her.

"I’m not. I have a different idea. I believe we can work towards stopping Scion. It’s the best way to do it."

"You can’t even see it?"

"Everything depends on who decides to do the stopping. If we wait, the alternative is a death by a thousand papercuts rather than the inevitable ending of the world."

He didn’t reply.

"If you stop him, all hope is lost. If he stops him, all hope is lost again. Humanity will cease to function."

She frowned. "I don’t disagree. I was going to go say something, try and get a response from her."

"It wouldn’t get done, I know. So let’s take action. We’ve got enemies, we’re got a measure of power in this world. Let’s remove these obstacles from the way. We’re going to need your help."

It didn’t sound like a good idea. "We need more than paper cuts."

"We are counting on the heroes of this world. The Protectorate is split between old guard and new. If they are willing to give us the help, we can end this quickly."

There was a long pause. "You’re talking like you’re going to do this, Lung. If you try, they’re going to kill you. Every second you put down is time you’re not doing what needs to be done."

He didn’t respond.

"We’re not afraid," Parian said. She pulled away from the wood-burning stove, making her way to the living room, turning her head towards the television. The volume was turned down.

Lung was facing the same direction as her. As she stood, she clutched the edges of the couch. She’d be crushed between the two thick iron bars.

She began organizing her costume. A layer of her skin, her teeth, her hair – they were all packed into the gaps between her teeth, in the recesses and edges of her jaw, between her lips. Each of them were individually machine cut, neatly packed in their individual compartments. She passed them around the living room, folding them down so they were just

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 a few years ago.

The other problem…

"Weaver?"

"Not here. I’m stuck in the alley, and noelle can’t find me."

"Noelle can look," Noelle’s mother said. "Maybe there’s a spot you can get to, if we’re moving fast enough."

"I’m still stuck outside with the wolves. I can’t even reach for my knife or gun to defend myself."

"Move along. You’re more hurt than you’re feeling. Now go, find assistance, or stay with Tecton."

"Stay with him?" Vantage asked. "I didn’t do nothing crazy like stabbing anybody or anything."

"We need those dogs."

"You guys are better equipped to be the ones looking after them than I am."

"Sure."

Vantage led the way, and he was followed by his group. He was a bigger guy, obviously more muscular than I was, and he wore armor. He climbed up onto the back of a truck.

As he reached the top, his group stopped.

He glanced around. It looked like a bank, but it was also a building with multiple levels. There were enough rooms for everyone, but more rooms for all the wounded. There were beds for all the wounded that the trucks could take off in, too, to which the others could go.

"Sorry to put you on the spot," he said. "Just… were going to take the dogs out to help, would you look after one of the girls? I’m pretty low on gas."

"You can’t."

He looked at the other wounded, then at me, "Maybe one of the shelters?"

"Probably. Just let me know if you come across any trouble."

"Got it."

He headed down the ramp, and the truck veered to a stop. The ramp dissolved into the interior of a nondescript building.

I could see the people as they filed through the doors. A mix of tourists and soldiers, from both the Protectorate and the Protectorate Division, looking for a place to stay while they waited for the Protectorate to get here with more supplies. A dozen other rooms, shared by people with different injuries. A group of people more injured than the ones in the truck, who were sharing a room with a group of people I assumed were parahumans.

I could see the gold-painted door of a local bar, at the very minimum, with more coming through as they were closer.

"God damn it," I breathed, as the truck pulled into the parking spot for the building. "We have a perimeter."

"One person in custody. Report to the driver. He took the lift to the rooftop. No reason they couldn’t have taken the lift down to the street, too."

I could tell where the truck was by the shape of the body bags the group was depositing with the doors of the vehicle. A good bet this guy was one of Krampus’, Azazel’ or Regent’s. Armsmaster or one of the other villains that had popped up around the city since the Endbringer attack.

"We’re going to do this right," I said.

"Right. We’re going to do this right," Regent replied. "I’m paying you two, we’re probably on the bump for my club and PR, so there’s that, right?"

"Right. The deal is we search the people, kill any duplicates or people who look too similar to us, if they haven’t already been killed. That may be hard to verify with the way Grue’s looking over there. If it’s any consolation, the people you kill should be more or less dead, no cloning abilities or whatever."

"Got it. Good job, getting this far. Now let’s move out."

It was me who opened the door, locking it and putting the keys in a pocket by the handle to the handle of the box. Everyone else headed upstairs.

"Door, back way upstairs," I said, turning to look up at the screen.

I could see what the bugs were seeing. An arrow.

I shut my eyes, trying to suspend the fear that swelled in me, while keeping the understanding that my bugs were technically my eyes and ears, and I saw what I’d set out to find. A figure that was moving her hands, as if she were drawing them together, when she was really just tapping the ground with her toes.

"Run," my

======== SAMPLE 57 ========
 a very special feeling.

I would go on to find evidence of their actions.

And here I was, just trying to put this all into perspective.

I watched as the sun set, my eyes going wide behind my mask as I saw the glare of it overhead. The darkness of Lung’s ongoing assault on the city’s residents, the countless citizens that Lung was able to spot due to his enhanced sense of sight.

And just like that, the world turned upside down. Lung, the heroes, the whole world was shining in the glimmer of that one small fact.

It had been shoved past us like it was a trophy. A final nail in the coffin.

Another thought struck me. The way the fights had played out, it almost felt like there should have been more villains to cut down. The way the chaos had unfolded, there should have been more heroes to help. There should have been more heroes to rescue.

A deep, sad feeling, strangely calming despite the sober reality of what we were feeling at the same time.

Not a regret, just an observation.

"Thank you," I said, burying my face in my hands, reaching out for the darkness, but I couldn’t get any deeper than that.

I could sense the others making their way inside, disappearing down the hall. Legend and Wren made their way across the roof to me, while Echidna broke into a run.

"We’re sorry," Legend said, hugging Dragon’s body. "To the people we injured."

Dragon wasn’t doing well, and it wasn’t a hug I would have accepted for anything. Not the first time someone in power had tried to pull my hair.

But it wasn’t a good reminder, either.

"We’re in good hands, and we know as much about you as we do about your teammate," Legend said. "I hope you’ll find rest, for your wounds."

The light that streamed in from the entrance of the temple was enough to wash away the darkness, but the smoke still lingered, like a bad acid burn. Noelle had no such limitations.

"You said you didn’t want rest?" Echidna asked.

"There’re places that are better than this."

■

"I didn’t realize you were this close," the blind woman said.

Echidna, in her human form, was beside a massive, oily being, whose very flesh was covered in spines.

"…Dozens of us canyoned ourselves into settlements like you wouldn’t believe," Echidna said.

"If we wanted something, it’d be for you to see. I suppose you don’t get to see much, after all," the woman hummed.

Echidna didn’t answer.

Then I saw it. A shift. The darkness slid from Echidna’s body to the ground, now. A blur.

The woman who’d hummed as she looked away disappeared.

I could see the others take notice. Legend and Alexandria both flinched as they saw the extent of the woman’s change.

"Who are you?" Legend asked. "And who are you doing here?"

"I was just there, and I figure it’s about time we collected the injured," Echidna said. "Let’s go meet the boss and his people."

■

"This place isn’t nice," I said, following after Golem.

"Shut up. Leave us alone."

"Why are you crying?"

"Hate the heat. No food. No way to stay hydrated. I just figured it was a good place to be in general."

"It’s not that simple," Teacher said. "Some people just don’t get that cold."

"Hey!"

Teacher scowled, but he smiled. "Hey. Feel better?"

"I’m… okay. Don’t feel better? Don’t remember being out in the outside world."

"I do remember," she said, and her eyes were damp.

A year and a half ago, she’d been an Olympic runner, world-renowned as a dancer and a television presenter. We’d known that early on, but there was a kind of glamor to her appearance and persona now. Only now did we see it in her face, her worry, her worry for her son.

"This feels like the middle of a trap."

"That’s a great question," Teacher said

======== SAMPLE 58 ========
 a bit later. I’m surprised you weren’t a little angrier before. You were quite the warrior."

My eyes fell on the man that was approaching, holding a gun.

Bitch.

"Hey, little birdy," Imp said. "Aren’t you going to go after them? I’m sure they’ll shoot you. You’re too big to escape."

I folded my arms. No point. I could talk to Tattletale about it, but I didn’t trust her to call for the dogs in a crisis. "I’m not… that kind of dog. That’s not why I do what I do."

She frowned. "Why just now? When you were talking about taking the team down, you sort of made a proclamation?"

Maybe I shouldn’t have bragged about being badass in front of the team. "It’s about time the boss got a chance to read up on us. He said Bonesaw owes him a favor."

"Fav the girl a drink, then, Bonesaw-chan!" Imp said, waving at the girl. She stepped up, reaching out, while Fugly Bobs legs dangled off his shoulder, his heavy armor pressing down on my chest.

How did Bitch’s posturing and attitude compare to Sophia’s? Or Sophia’s? How did Bitch react to the loss of her teammate?

The other girl entered the room, and the tension soured the relationship even further. I remembered that the girl hadn’t been in the room with me. No wonder Imp was there. She would be a better listener. Maybe.

Imp hauled on Bastard’s chain, then lowered her hands to her face. Then she glared at Bitch and Fugly Bob, with a sneer in her eye. No less than three angry glares. How angry was that?

I felt like I should have been able to calm myself down before Imp got any angrier. I didn’t. I stepped away from the desk, then clenched my hands.

"No! This isn’t cool!"

I stood from the desk. The girl on the other side of the glass door had a weapon in hand. She whipped her arm around to point it at me, then swung at me like an experienced power hitter might punch a punching bag. I stepped back out of reach, then swung again, this time catching the blade of her weapon in her palm and pulling it out of her hand. I realized she was using her power, didn’t have my wrist in reach to stop her.

She used her weapon to block my fist with her hand, but she couldn’t get her foot within an inch of my belly button. So she put her hand on my shoulder instead.

"Aahhe…" she drew out the word. I couldn’t even tell it was a word that wasn’t in the Japanese I knew.

Imp caught my arm, but I sprawled. Not on the desk, but on the floor. She fell on top of me, but not out of reach of my arm. She leaned close, making the most of the softness in her armor, and pushed my arms to her side.

That did it. Gone were the worries and doubts that had plagued me since I’d first read about Endbringers. I was completely and utterly helpless at that moment.

■

My stomach felt like it had been slammed against a light-post. I didn’t call it rebellion because it had been the other girl, but because I was so used to dealing with bullies that it seemed like the world fell apart.

"Ikke, es kan nie mützt, darüber wurden, dass du wiederlierende Liebkörper. Ik teile Herr Hitler, dass Du nie mützt ja nie wiederlierende Liebkörper." (I just realized the man who wants to be Emperor of the world is a psychopath.)

"Ik? Wou—"

"Vier die Liebkörper. Diese Stroke verwendet wahre, da ist wiederlierende Liebkörpern aber in einem Niebuhr des Jahrhunderts. Es gibt es diese Stroke verwendet. Dafür wurden, da ist der Liebkörpern aber dass Du nie mützt, dass Du wiederlierende Liebkörpern."

"What the fuck did you just say!?"

"Mein

======== SAMPLE 59 ========
 a time, too. I think our enemy knows this, but he’s not doing anything about it. We’ll keep getting these other powers, maybe something amazing, and we’ll win some, maybe lose some, but people will remember that we lost some and that we can win some. You can see the reactions when people on the other side remember we won, and they hate us, they hate on the other side, and we can get just a little traction."

"He could send the rest of us to the Birdcage," Imp said. "To Voltron or Azazel. He wouldn’t even have to break us out. He could just shoot us or break up the groups."

"Yeah," I said.

"Ew!"

"I don’t know how to respond to that," I said, frustrated. "Why don’t we go?"

"What’s going on?" Canary asked. She was still focusing on me.

"Don’t know," I said, but it wasn’t a very eloquent or positive response. The question was directed at the two others, and they weren’t having much of a response to that. I was getting the impression that maybe it was one conversation after another that had made Bitch angry enough to come up with these rants.

I made my way to the empty seat in the corner, the one opposite Dinah and Noelle. Putting off the others while avoiding the distraction Tattletale and the others had already created.

"Purity? You heard the man?" I looked at her, as Tattletale and Coil entered the room. "She’s gone."

"What?" Canary asked, raising her eyebrows.

"We heard the man upstairs, talking to the two young women. Talking about some of us not being able to support them. Told them to get out of his sight, then demanded they tell him why. Said the ones upstairs could join them at the basement in a heartbeat, if they wanted. Tell them they can do whatever they want here, they can do it the only way they’ve ever done it before, and we will take care of everything down the road. Anything goes."

"But Purity just told us she can’t join because Coil killed her," the teenager said.

Trickster appeared in the doorway, gun raised and pointing at the floor. "I did."

"Shit on me," Canary said, leaning back in her seat. "You really messed up my shoes, coming downstairs just to tell me that."

"I didn’t know," Trickster said. "Was there even a discussion?"

"No. Just silence. It’s like they don’t want to hear it."

"I don’t know either," Trickster said, gun still pointed at the guy in the doorway. "Like I said, I was surprised."

"Yeah," I said. "Like what? The Simurgh was there? Washed herself clean after the fight with Leviathan?"

"I dunno. I didn’t really think anything of it until the second or third sentence. It was when I realized she wasn’t really dead. Didn’t really sound like something anyone else would say, when they knew Simurgh’s powers."

"I’m not sure I have any idea what you’re talking about," I said. I stepped out of the doorway, through the door that Dinah had made and shut behind us. Dinah was already out of the seat where she’d sat, heading for the corridor with the computers.

"Dilbert?" Trickster asked, as I hopped down from the chair. "How did it go?"

It was more serious than I’d intended. "In a big way."

"Can you tell me why I shouldn’t be allowed to join the Wards?"

"There are heroes coming in through the front door. They can hear anything we say."

"I have a little computer on the floor I want to get to security, that one," I said. I used my bugs to start tracing the source of the noise. It could easily be Imp or Aisha, and I suspected that the guy with the laptop would be a strong contender for whoever the other two might be; Imp might be sitting in a den, Aisha in the company of others or waiting for a friend to end a relationship.

"You’re talking about an Endbringer attack. That’s just what the Protectorate does. They keep happening."

He started up the car so there were no pedals but the steering wheel was still under our control. I wondered

======== SAMPLE 60 ========
 a mouthful of bugs, but she did. It was warm through the filter.

She’d never been cold. In her early years, she’d had a habit of holding her umbrella up in the air and relying on her power to keep her warm. It had been normal for her to keep her hair out of the cold, then, even now, she didn’t like to be cold. It bothered her.

They crossed paths again when she was working late one night, after work had started for the day and she’d been absorbed in the disorienting thought that her costume and hair and clothes were the only things freezing her in the real world would be. She was so absorbed in the details that she completely missed the fact that one of the buildings that night had been on fire, and that one of the heroes who’d helped was on fire.

A flier with superior agility and the ability to turn matter to fire. Her costume let her do similar things, but the quantity and type of matter needed to fire wasn’t those things. Matter that was big and solid. Even those things, though, would have done little enough damage to bring them down from the air to the ground. That was their specialty, and their thing, like the flame-thrower, the lightning gun and the resonator-gauntlet with her flame-enhancing materials, they tended to be used by people with those kinds of powers.

They passed over the crash site again.

They landed on solid ground, with only the blur of the building in view. A fire had started in one of the collapsed sections of the building, in what had at first glance been the path taken by Legend, but left them wondering whether it was the real thing or a false wall. Even the fire had died out before it made it to the water, where it could have been used to do some good.

Legend pointed his spear to let them know where to go.

The plan worked out even better when they saw that part of the city was still burning. There were pockets of smoke, but the main fire had died out.

"We’re entering," Chevalier said.

"I’m afraid I smell a bomb," Defiant said. "They’re shooting at us, and we have to run to escape."

"We’re not going to die," Rachel retorted.

"You killed our owner, long ago," Defiant said, sounding annoyed. "He was a monster, and monsters are supposed to be afraid."

"Yes," Marquis agreed, his voice calm. "But there was another option. We can try a more humane way of fixing this."

"How humane?"

"We could let Golem destroy the monster," Defiant said.

"No. The monster-woman wouldn’t let that. If we let her-"

"We let her," Defiant said.

"I don’t think so. I’m not about to let a monster walk free, unchallenged, given what she represents."

"There’s a third option-" he started, then added, "We’d let Golem destroy the monster."

Chevalier glanced skyward for a moment. He looked skeptical.

"No?" Defiant asked. "Wait, that’s… you know?"

"I do. But…"

"It was Tecton. And he was there first."

"He was the one who broke Protocol One, as in the one who died in action," Defiant said. "I don’t think this woman-thing is the only way to deal with her. Tecton was the one who turned Mannequin into a monster."

"You have some other motive, Dragon," Marquis observed.

"Enough with the dying, I suppose," Chevalier said. "I’m not giving orders. This is… too big a job to finish, and it’s ours. Nobody else has an interest in doing anything with the bodies. There’s too much risk from people who want to take revenge on those who killed Harold and Sarah. It’s going to take a little while to sort out all the mess, and I don’t want to be late."

"This is a smart proposal," Marquis said. "Unfortunately, your power won’t let you control it."

"I have a second set of eyes on it," Defiant said. "There’s a lot of fighting, but it’s the best I can do. It’s why we’re in this, and it’s also the best way to let everybody know what’s going on.

======== SAMPLE 61 ========
 a long time ago. Don’t like how that plays out."

"Why is her name that?"

The Doctor said, "She’ll tell you."

Parian leaned back, apparently unconcerned, "I don’t care. Her power can’t hurt us. I think we win this war, Doctor."

"Your power won’t hurt them, unless you decide to pull the plug."

"Are you serious?"

The Doctor raised an eyebrow.

"I don’t think so. This war-"

"Stop," the Doctor said.

She stopped. "I’ve looked at you with two eyes. I’ve measured your blood sugar, your heart rate, and the number of times your cells can reallocate their electrical charges without breaking down. You’ve had a cell phone with you, running constantly. We know the order the chemicals are put together, the principles they work by, and that you put them together in such a way that they work on a faster phase than the slower chemical reactions."

"And the order they came from?"

"The human body. From your liver, kidneys and glands. Yes, I know this is only a fraction of it, but it’s enough for me to know we’re on the right track. How fast can they break down?"

"Too fast?"

"Yes. We know they can’t be broken down in the first place, they spread through the bloodstream, they get converted to a less noticeable form in the liver, kidneys or stone through normal processes, being excreted or excised through the small intestine or colon."

"I… how do I even get rid of it?"

"I don’t. It’s in the bloodstream. But there’s so many more ways they could get onto the food chain. I’d use a bucket of water just shoveling it in, or we could do something with the feces."

Parian nodded, "I can do that. He said someone had seen someone throw up after eating, but I don’t think he’ll be able to see anything on it."

"Can you give us a visual?"

"We won’t be able to if there’s a cell without a battery, and no cell without access to all of the data that’s stored on the device."

I glanced at Bitch. Her shoulders were drawn in a painful way, and her breath smelled like rancid onion and mold. Her ears were stuck in an awkward position, the very tips curved upwards. She looked like she’d been beaten more than she looked like she’d been beaten.

"Yes," I replied, feeling very nervous. "Very possible."

"Do we take her back?"

"No. We can send her elsewhere, but it looks like there’s more we can do."

I nodded. We can send her elsewhere, but there’s no guarantee she’ll actually get better.

Somewhere in the midst of my nervousness, a part of me felt some kind of pressure. A damper, perhaps, getting to a point where something was said or done.

I realized it before it had even left my mouth. The Doctor.

The others looked at me. Tattletale was standing off to one side. Faultline was in the company of two other unknown people, one of them a monkey.

"We could do it."

"I don’t think we’d be able to."

"There’s other options, don’t you?"

"No," I said, my voice shaking.

"If we do, that’s okay," she said. "It’s a long-term plan."

"It won’t be easy," I said, but I couldn’t contain my emotions. I stared at the bodies, at the burnt, bloated bodies. They’d been skinning me for food, earning my respect. I could feel a chill in the air, the cold biting at the air where air flow was restricted.

I felt a different kind of fear, at that same moment.

But I don’t think it’s a moment I want to look back on, particularly not with the things I’ve been through.

I felt the sensation of something hot, sharp on my back. Something being torn somewhere deep inside me.

The situation was too intense for me to look away, but I had to think on something.

The Doctor.

I’d talked to her before we left, I

======== SAMPLE 62 ========
 a distant place.

"My first year, it was hard; we couldn’t go to class, could only play games and have books shoved down our throats," Krouse spoke. He glanced at Jess, and Jess blushed at the comment.

Krouse grinned. "If it weren’t for the curfew and the kids getting restless without adult supervision, I don’t think it would have been perfect, but it was one of the best years of my life."

Jess said, "But I’m the best thing since."

"We all were. I’m telling the truth. As much as I hated the idea. I hated everything about my situation, the loneliness, the people talking about me instead of us, the friends just being victims, I wanted to be a rock. To have stability. There’s probably hundreds of people out there who would be just as disappointed with where they are as I was, if they got to meet the other Cody. They’d want things to return to the way they were, but they can’t."

"They can’t?" Cody asked, suddenly interested.

"We never saw any of them again after we left. I never really grieved, really mourned or really hated what happened to us. Like everything else, we got normalized. Normal."

"I never knew you existed," Cody said.

"We knew things were sketchy when we left, but we took our meds, we patched ourselves up with friends or family or whatever we needed to do to get back on our feet. I never did anything serious, never set my foot in a hospital, and I went back on my honeymoon with my parents the day my mom got better. Six days after I left, she got better too. The first thing I mentioned was that my mom had throat problems. Six days after that, I had bone marrow. Six consecutive days? She started getting better fast."

"How old were you?"

"Three months ago."

"So I was at the point where I was begging you. Trying to be sweet and not doing you any favors. I remember calling, asking if you’d help with the butterflies. It was stupid, but I never did anything with that chicken dish that you cook for me every night, because I didn’t think it was cooked enough, and I didn’t think it was good. I just ate some steamed broccoli and left it in the crockpot, when I could use the stove."

"No you couldn’t. I was too young to even remember."

"Oh. Right. And I was afraid you’d say no. Because you could be, but you aren’t."

"No no no." Cody sounded so young. He hadn’t even reached twelve.

"It’s tender, and you left it out. You’re too young."

"But it’s delicious."

"I cook for everyone else, but I don’t know enough about it to make anything special."

"That’s alright. You’ll have to forgive me, though. I wasn’t sure if I should say that I’m glad you came back." He let out a long sigh. "I did want to say thanks, but… there’s ways I really should say that, aren’t there?"

"Yeah."

Krouse smiled without a trace of humor. "Thank you. I’m glad to hear there’s healing."

"It has to be pretty intense," Cody said. "Your mommy died, and it’s like, you know, healing doesn’t always come back the way you thought it might."

"I was going to say no, though."

"I don’t care. Just saying."

"Sure. We have a time limit. Six days."

"Yeah? I was just wondering if my mommy died, and if I just… become like that, how does it work?"

There was a pause. "We don’t really know."

Krouse nodded. "Tried to get some answers, but we don’t want people getting hurt, or making assumptions."

Cody shrugged. "I figured out after I lost my mom. If you lose your parent-in-law or your child, the old ways stay the same. If you get powers, the powers follow. You get better, they get much, much worse."

"That’s crazy," Cody smiled.

"I’ve got to tell you, though," Krouse said, "Don’t blame Jess if she

======== SAMPLE 63 ========
 a bit of time at least, I’ll see if I can track down anyone to throw you another bone. You’ve got the others to take care of. You’re welcome."

It might have sounded a little more formal than it was, but the soldiers that surrounded him were more like minions than soldiers. They were covered head to toe in tattoos. The majority were from the Bay, and flowed from a code that read everything from ‘Chosen One’ to ‘Heroes First’ to numbers that simply stood for things like ‘Glory’ and ‘Forever’.

He’d asked us to volunteer, it seemed to have been a spur of the moment thing, and more than one of us had taken the time to carve out a code or two into the soldiers that surrounded them before throwing ourselves to the winds to protest, cry out in despair or simply because we didn’t feel like sitting around in the dark.

It was odd, even for him. The kind of code that made the most insane feel less insane.

Still, he ignored us and turned his attention to the rest of us. Two tattoos stood out to him. One on his right hand and one on his left arm, suggesting a possible power struggle over some higher power or something along those lines. He never really let us try and pry, even when we were trying to pull codes. The messages we got were always cryptic or noncommittal. We could read his as wanting peace and quiet or warning that war would break out at some point. Except nothing ever came of it.

A different kind of code that stood out in Regent’s. He never challenged it or brought it up.

"They’re probably watching us," Tattletale said.

"You think so?"

"I’m pretty sure they can’t," she backed off. "I never felt like I was close to them, before. They never came close to me."

A bit more accusatory, Tattletale challenged that. "So you don’t get that urge to mess with people?"

"Not that I have any clue."

"You’re the only one I know who doesn’t act like a badass."

The way she said that threw me off my stride. I tried to rein myself in, telling myself that it was fine. That we’d dealt with the people from the PRT, we couldn’t possibly get into something like this.

Rachel, Bitch, Tattletale and a kid in a navy and black jumpsuit stood astride an oversize, ornate steed that didn’t quite fit for an animal. The three of them broke away from the crowd, Bitch riding down the street with Bastard clasped in her arms. The guy was only just setting up, his hands clasped together in front of his face by sweat-slick, face damp, but he looked like he was going to burst.

Nobody else seemed to be paying what was a fairly significant amount of attention. A lot of people were distracted, talking among each other, or just oblivious. The two kids were staring at Tattletale and I, and even though the steed had an open back, the other passengers couldn’t make eye contact as they rode.

As the crowd moved to get a better view of us, I saw what Tattletale was looking at. A car pulled up. Two cars around it, two more just behind it, but they didn’t look interested in anything other than heavy metal travel trailers. The other passengers hadn’t budge the slightest as the van with the passengers pulled up.

"Fuck," I murmured.

"Fuck," others echoed me. It wasn’t just the collective ‘fuck’ from the others, but the sheer number and volume of sounds, making me think of a gorilla or sea elephant.

"This is the deal?" Bitch asked. "They take the dogs, take the caravan, and if we don’t get ass-shaken by this shit, we pay."

"Fuck," I agreed.

"We don’t even know who these people are," Bitch said. "I’m sure they know everyone riding in that van. If they don’t know who we are, then we don’t have a fucking right to say anything. We don’t have any right to be in this area."

"Fuck you, bitch," Regent snarled.

"Yeah, right," Tattletale cut in. "Bitch, look at those people. Look at their shit-stains. They’re from Texas."

Bitch scow

======== SAMPLE 64 ========
 a couple spots, it had the ability to spread across a great distance. When it did, everything within a tenth of a mile of those spots would experience seismic changes. A tsunami. An absolute shift in environmental conditions.

"The Endbringers have been around for roughly five years and they’re still here," I heard Rachel’s voice behind me. She’d come in a car, and was talking. "We’re not here, you’re not listening, it doesn’t fit, so we’re going to play this by ear."

In the midst of explaining the situation, Lisa leaned over towards the nearest bench and grabbed a thick stack of folders. The sound they made was a quiet soundtrack as we followed Rachel across the bench.

I stood on the bench beside her.

Defiant. As I’d read it in the book, he was the commander of the Protectorate that had just left the Wards, and had stepped down from that role to become head of PRT outreach. It was something to keep in mind if we were going to talk about him, something that would inform our conversations with the public.

Lung. I hadn’t really seen him earlier, but the man was there. Defiant held his own against Armsmaster. I could see the air raid sirens across the skyline, the way he wore an oversized suit of armor to shoot from a distance, the blades that extended from his wrists like the horns of a bull, all focused into points. His cape was long, a double-breasted, heavy cloth that ended in a two-tone double-knit cap.

I turned my mind a fraction away from the fight. What were Dragon and Defiant planning? Something natural? Using the drone-deployer? Maybe a smokescreen?

"Drones," I said, when I realized Golem was talking. His voice was eerie, with an odd tone to it, and the odd pitch.

"I don’t think we’ll have trouble getting ahold of one," Defiant said, as Defiant walked up to a box of the larger machines, "We’ve got a remote area, and I’m sure they’ve got a pilot in the field."

"Do they?" I asked. "Because the second they stop using fire, it’s going to be a rough time for us. We can’t leave any open areas without someone getting injured or dead."

Defiant shook his head. "It depends on the number of people that decide to move in, how quickly they can get their bearings, but we’re not going to be able to send any more than fifty, if that. It also means we have to decide what to do with the injured, or dead. We’ll need reinforcements fast."

"I think I’m on board," Clockblocker said.

"If we’re doing this natural, are we going to have anyone move in and fight the Endbringers?" I asked. "Or is there any way to keep those guys from getting into a mess like what happened to the Wards?"

Defiant shook his head again. "I can’t imagine it’s anybody else taking on the Endbringers on their own."

"Unless you’re talking about using bugs alone," I said.

"Or some exotic method," he said. He looked down at the device he’d crafted. It was a sphere, flat, not quite cylindrical, with a domed top. He had drilled a slit through it, and had had the domes snap into place.

"So that’s it?" I asked, "The Endbringers are under some kind of compulsion?"

"No," Defiant replied. "Maybe not compulsion at all, but a natural feature of their trigger event? She’s still feeling what she feels, judging by the amount of blood she shed, as well as the rate at which she’s adapting. Maybe she was motivated to move under some assumption that we’d eventually get to a part of her that was useful, a safe place, a refuge."

Oh hell. This was troubling. "Then who were they under?"

"Other scenarios," Defiant said, as if he were replying to a question answered by someone who’d said it in a half-joking way. "I don’t know. But the idea fits with what you’re describing. How do the powers come into play?"

"I think I’m more along those lines," I said, "That there could be other factors at play."

"And they come out of it less than favorably. More problematic?"



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 a way to ensure that the most important, potentially dangerous situation, the fight against A.I. was successful. A system of checkpoints and protective measures set up in key places where the fight is occurring. That’s it."

"So the capes that can defeat the full weight of the world’s strongest defenses are yet to come?" Tattletale asked. "We’ve got our hands full."

"Yes. There are only two viable ways that can be. The first is that the Endbringers can be taken down. The second is that they are already present, or they will be at some point. And the third possibility is that they already know. If they did already know, they’d want to stop us from spreading the word."

"This story does not add up," Bonesaw said. "You suggest that there are other parallel worlds with parallel Earths and Eternals. Is there any chance we will meet in person, or have you shared any of these worlds with us?"

"If we’d wanted to meet in person," I said, "I think we could have."

"Good. Then let’s talk about ways to help. Beyond the normal avenues of dialogue and overt confrontation?"

I could see Bonesaw’s glower turn behind her mask.

"Beyond that? I could offer you a hand or offer you equipment. I could do it all in my power."

"It’d mean we’d gone past the point where we were friends."

"Or partners."

"Or partners in a more general way, I could even be willing to accept some payment in exchange for your assistance. Perhaps a reward for helping someone out. Or maybe you’d appreciate it, if-"

"I don’t think it’ll be that easy to accept," I said.

"Whatever you decide."

■

In the field outside the city limits, Echidna shifted little. Her joints had long since fused, and the increased surface area allowed for more material to seep into the gap. The gap was only two or three feet across, now, and it was filled with rubble.

Bentley approached, his tail coming up behind him. He didn’t pull away, only staying where he was.

As Echidna reached her limit, the metal legs began to dissolve, the lower half coming to an end. She expanded, contracting her limbs.

With each contraction, she expanded, drawing herself forward.

The ground shook as she came to a stop.

Sirens? I thought. Another limit?

Eidolon was descending, not one second after the barrier was gone. He touched ground, and a hole appeared, spreading with a speed that put it in line with the three dragons. Eight individual pieces of equipment sprung from the hole, each several feet across.

No. He was too far away to help.

The explosion had torn through part of the ship, tearing through the teleporter, Aegis. As the ship fell, the teleporter, for her own safety, drew together with his own. Eidolon was swept up in the debris, and the Endbringer was left behind. Not one second later, he hitground.

Aegis had been on top, holding his own as Echidna continued to eat into Leviathan’s legs. She wasn’t eating into Leviathan, though. The areas Echidna devoured were the areas Leviathan sat on, or the areas the blades or limbs had embedded inside. The ground swallowed him up.

For an instant, there was silence. Only the music, Echidna devouring flesh, and the sea of mirrors and light reflected from the bodies made it all sound trivial, distant.

Leviathan turned, and Echidna was only rising from the earth, looking around, searching.

A hundred eyes watching her. Five hundred eyes, a hundred? Looking for something?

The ocean. Echidna could only return to this area because of the shards that had survived the cataclysm. The landmass, the land mass of Leviathan’s bones, it cut off from the coast by a zone of water. Leviathan was strong enough to use that resource like a glacier, raising the submerged landscape in a knife cut that chipped the beach on one side and cracked the water and sea floor on the other.

The other Endbringers hadn’t made a move for the ocean, not yet. Scion was gone, and Echidna was left, an ocean of flesh rising as if towards the sun.

I think I can stop her, I thought.

The teleporter had stopped Echidna more or less.

No. Scion continued to pursue Echidna.


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 a friend or family member?

How would the rest of us respond? What would our bosses think when they found out the extent of our criminal activities?

Either way, it wouldn’t be pretty.<|endoftext|>As the world waits anxiously for updates on the incident at the school, the heroes of the world gather here for a meeting of the major guilds. With the group, Wards, Protectorate and Wards2, a delicate balance is struck, as each wishes to minimize the contact with the news that may be damaging to their image.<|endoftext|>Last week I wrote about the five most common (and potentially disastrous) mistakes people make when choosing a job – The Mistakes, Mistakes, Mistakes. Here are some of the more egregious mistakes people are making when applying to jobs these days.

Mistake #1: Not putting the job description or qualifications in writing.

This one should be pretty obvious. People sometimes get confused or misled because they read job listings online or in magazines, or because they assume that whoever a company searches for on websites like Monster.com or Indeed.com must be someone who actually does those jobs. Things are not always this clear.

But if the website or application doesn’t clearly state the position, people tend to assume it does. When applying for a job, people tend to fill in simple, round-digitally encoded job title and position numbers into the online form. They keep the job description short and to the point, and if they know you’re a qualified candidate, they don’t stress over the job title or the position. This helps to prevent the applicant from sounding like they’re the type to hold an office or take charge.

Mistake #2: Not applying for jobs with job titles that spell out ‘Siberian’ or ‘Carnage’ or similar.

It’s a known fact that the job postings on job boards and job boards for job boards do not generally reflect who your organization is or what you do. For example:

Job title and position in parentheses:

– Archangel

Assault, Assault (Headquarters: Brockton Bay, US)

Assistant CEO, COO & CEO, WORLDWIDE CORPORATE (Headquarters: Brockton Bay, US)

Archangel (Assault’s primary role)

Aster (Headquarters: Brockton Bay, US)

Artificial intelligence (Headquarters: Brockton Bay, US)

Armory (Headquarters: Brockton Bay, US)

Banner (Headquarters: Brockton Bay, US)

Barbar (Assault’s primary role, with assistant CEO and COO for Earth Aleph as Deputy Chief)

Barbaro (Assault’s primary role)

Basilisk (Assault’s primary role)



And in bullet points:

Title: Title is determined by job title in a post-9/11 terminology

Position: Position is determined by job title in a post-9/11 terminology

Job title in parentheses: Job title does not necessarily match title or role as stated

Job title not in parentheses: Job title cannot be more than fifteen characters long

Job title or spelling mistakes: spelling error, title not determined

Cultural references: references to al-Baghdadi, the Taliban/Taliban leadership, the Japanese, the Confederacy, the Japanese military, the English language



Mistake #3: Not including the last bit: a strong recommendation from a previous employer or a professional friend.

This one is one I almost never see, but you probably already knew it was coming. It’s called for a certain degree of risk, especially for those new to the job. People are naturally more comfortable with the status quo, so if your employer links arms with you, you might be assumed to be in charge. They also like to have the bogeyman at the ready. You don’t.

If, on the other hand, your employer is supportive, they might look down on you as ‘Shark’ or ‘the Beard’ if they don’t see the connection. It might even be seen as disloyalty or chafing under the old culture’s strict standards for leadership. Either way, if they did recognize the connection, they’d be more likely to keep your name in mind if an emergency struck.

Mistake #4: Not including the last bit: having the right qualifications or experience

Some job postings require that you have held a job for at least a year and a certain degree of responsibility. You might need to go by certain job titles or take certain courses to graduate from college. Having some experience isn’t a bad thing, but the right experience shouldn

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 a bit more," he said. He reached up and put his hand on the dog’s snout, thumbing up. "Go."

Go. The reaction from the dog was so extreme that the man had to hold her against her will.

The two headed towards a nearby patch of grass. The man and his new recruits stood guard with their hands at the sides of the truck, or stood at the sides of each of the trucks. They didn’t look like soldiers. They were in civilian clothes. They were strangers, at a loss of words or expression.

Beside the dog were two men and two women, each wearing costumes that were a mixture between heavy and delicate. Each woman had a patch of hair or body hair they’d tied into a bun at the side of their heads, slathered in gel and wreathed with a band of wood. The ‘mannequins’ were two guys with body armor, masks that covered parts of their faces, some obscured beneath the goggles. The ‘dogs’: one was a pitbull with muscle armored skin, hair, and a huge hooked tooth that looped over the dog’s ‘mouth’, the other was a real dog. The entire thing was so artificial it made me cringe.

The men and the fourth were two women in designer work clothes: makeup smeared all over, wreaths down the sides of their heads, each draped in designer clothing that was just as fancy but not quite work clothes. They were talking in an almost jovial manner as they worked. I thought maybe they were journalists or a production assistant.

It was hard not to notice them. Purity?

"Where are the rest of the heroes?" Grue asked the ones who watched my back. "They’re on the ground floor? Why aren’t they showing up?"

"Tattletale and the others decided to go to a neighboring building for help," Regent explained. "She was barricaded inside… there wasn’t enough room."

It bugged me that they didn’t show up to rescue her, when they knew everything that was going on. I explained, "She was using a drone to fly around us, trying to get us to move so she could shoot down any incoming turrets or troops. I was waiting for her to get going before I decided I was enough of a target and left to help more people."

"I was with her from the start," Grue said, quietly. "I could have helped, but I was so used to dealing with people and the chaos that comes with being in the field that I didn’t think it was a good idea."

"It was," Tattletale admitted.

"And then things got worse. Atlas showed up with what looked like an armored suit, sent flying… and all the good heroes abandoned us to fend for themselves. Faced the possibility that they might inadvertently help the enemy, we abandoned them to fend for themselves. We weren’t left with enough firepower to really do anything. So we ran the risk that somebody might try to shoot us, and then we’d run the risk that somebody would try to take us hostage and do it with everything we had, so we weren’t really safe."

Grue shook his head. "It was bad enough that nobody from my territory was available, and things were getting worse. The worst part was just how fucked up it was. It was like we were playing twenty questions to see which one was the most ridiculous or mean, and we couldn’t help but wind up putting each of them in the mouths of our enemies."

"It gets better," Tattletale said, not taking her eyes off the monitor. "We ended up having a conversation, and the things that concern me most are… you’d think that from someone who’s seen this stuff a few times, someone that spends fifteen or twenty minutes in a dark alley, there would be a measure of humility."

I shook my head, but I couldn’t get the image out of my mind.

"I’m guessing most of these are just excuses for the people who stay behind. I was there, at one point. I was one of the dumb ones, the people who took it, who put up with it. Because we kept our head down, we did our jobs. I can’t imagine what it would have been like to be on the other side, to see somebody that smart getting taken advantage of, but I guess it’s easier to imagine the consequences, because that’s exactly what happened."

He let the words hang. There was a long pause. "You were one of the dumb ones, yeah?"

My heart was pounding as if I�

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 a foot and a half long. There were other bugs in the area, and they were getting increasingly restless, getting stronger, getting more numerous.

"He’s here," Golem said.

"And we can’t go back," Trickster said. "This isn’t the way things go."

I didn’t respond, turning my attention back to the portal.

One block down from the portal, a tower with pink tinted windows was in progress. Nearly a third of the area was under construction or hashed out with the surrounding terrain, made into a solid barrier between the northern and southern parts of the portal.

"You don’t need to go through the portal to get to the tower," I said. "There’s another way."

"That doesn’t do anything for us, does it?"

"No. We walk from portal to tower as we walk from one to the other."

I nodded.

The northernmost portal opened. I was on the opposite side, but I couldn’t really go out to try to catch up with anyone who was following. A day or two of walking at most, maybe by way of back way and forth in the rain, and if I was lucky, I might have time to unwind, maybe catch up with everyone else.

That didn’t seem to be in the cards. How many more traps would there be along our route? My dad was right. This was a bad one.

The towers were connected by criss-crossing portals, and the people inside were divided into groups. In the pouring rain, I saw a small crowd, gathered in a loose pack. Their colors were marked with colors, and one of them was blond, the other was black.

"That’s not the group I saw with my own two eyes," I said, feeling very un-Brett Semen. "That was the other group."

"I remember," Trickster said.

"Bonesaw’s little brother," I said. I bent over to pick up the phone from a nearby table. Coil, Tattletale and Parian all stood together.

We played it for the first time, with a grain of salt. Almost in shock at the idea, we backed away.

But the second time we saw the phone play up on a tower defense system, it clicked. A trap, maybe?

The alarm blared over the sound system.

Miss Militia, Weld, Clockblocker and the others were all out at the same time. Clockblocker was a bit more reserved, but he gave us the benefit of a doubt, so to speak. It also let me know that the others would be with us in a heartbeat.

"Bonesaw," I said.

"Where is she?" Miss Militia asked.

"In hiding," I said.

"She won’t talk," she said. "We don’t have a way to get in contact with her, either."

"And?"

"And I read your file," I said.

"I don’t need a file," she said, and that was all.

"What did you read?" I asked. "Anyone else?"

Tattletale glanced over her shoulder as we walked around a side-hall leading into the basement of an old science facility. Weld was at the head of the group, so we had a little more privacy that we could use.

I glanced at the phone. Tattletale had access to the security system, which meant she had access to the records as well as the phone. I could be sure that Bonesaw wouldn’t give that phone to someone who clearly had something to hide.

"You read my file?" Tattletale asked me, a hint of humor in her voice.

"It was only after we escaped that I started wondering."

"Can’t tell you how many times I’ve come across something I want to protect, but I can’t tell you because I’m a jerk," Tattletale told me.

I folded my arms. "I don’t have a wallet on me, so I can’t say."

"What’s a jerk?" she asked. She made it a question. Imp seemed to answer in the same moment, and it was one or two minutes of conversation in a row that led me to swallow.

A few moments passed with no replies exchanged and only occasional giggles exchanged.

A note from Coil’s people dangled to either side. I wasn’t up to the physical exertion of reaching for it, but a cord or line? No. It

======== SAMPLE 69 ========
 a dozen capes, and even then didn’t feel like I was doing anything special.

I walked around until I stood beside Brian and Lisa, where they had a table to themselves. Each of their arms and shoulders were a foot or so long, with me being five or so feet behind them.

"So, Taylor, let’s see, here’s the deal. You, me, Alec, Hana and Rachel all together get to pick the team we all want to support. And we all pick one of the teams, but we all share the same goals. Remaining in the Wards, team leadership and whatever else."

"You said you have work," Alec said.

"We do. Mostly for the amusement value, but we have hours of work to look through, each to ourselves. I figure we’ve got two options. We can accept that I’m going to be the anti-Wards leader, in large part because I enjoy it, or we can work together and stand up against the new team?"





Paranoia 3.8


Alec looked up at me, met my eyes. Then frowned.

"What?" I asked.

He shook his head. It took me a second to process his meaning. I hadn’t actually meant anything by his question.

Aisha and I had a back and forth discussion about how awesome it would be to work with Brian and the rest of the team. I eventually dropped the subject. We had the luxury of time, I just didn’t think we had the courage or the willingness.

"What you’re saying is that we go the route you don’t, Aisha?"

Aisha smiled a little, "You’re saying that, right?"

I nodded.

"I could totally see us pulling an Echidna and running with our pick of the bunch."

I frowned.

"I don’t think it’s a good idea," Brian told me, "But even if it was a dumb idea, I think Aisha’s doing herself and the team a disservice by putting herself and her sisterly bond above and beyond the call of duty. You know how hard it is to form a bond with your sibling?"

"I know," I answered him. It was only when he moved towards me that I realized who he was. He was grinning. I flinched away from the presence that he was generating.

Even after everything that I’d done, my decision to date his behavior and his attitude towards me was the most galling part of all. I was the dumbest of us, he was the smartest of us.

"And with all of that said, there’s one other issue that we should address before jumping to any conclusions," he said, his tone cold, as he cut in. "The Nine are going to be the keystone of the future, but we might be breaking them out of a situation we don’t want to be in."

Brian nodded, "It’s not worth dwelling on, unless you’re willing to have my dad throw himself headlong into a situation we don’t want to be in. I don’t think either of us are that type of dad, you know?"

I clenched my fist, and the sound helped me release it. I kept my voice level. "Don’t suppose either of us want or need a father? Maybe a brother or a nieces or nephew? Why not?"

Brian nodded. "Maybe a brother or a nieces or nephew? That’s, like, a yes?"

I bit my tongue.

Brian smiled, "Well, Rachel, your issue with the new PRT director comes with the fact that you were a tinker when you went down to the PRT offices, and you’ve gone out of your way to work in the technology industry. The question is whether the PRT wants that to be a career or a full-time thing. Yours is where there’s always the potential for an advantage, isn’t it?"

I glanced at Alec, who gave me a sharp look. Brian looked at Aisha, with us his first priority, and she shrugged.

"I can’t exactly say no," Brian replied, "And I can definitely say no, unless there’s something else-"

He paused as I raised my hand. A minute later, he broke it off. "The warden said you had something of an issue with the PRT and the director. We’re not doing anything drastic, so there’s no need to worry."

I glanced at our table, where various

======== SAMPLE 70 ========
 a way. The woman in the suit’s company reached a door, and Defiant was taken up against it.

A problem? No. A distraction.

A way out?

The suit struggled, but Defiant was caught without a home to return to, unable to escape by himself. It was broken beyond repair, no less than three floors deep.

And then he found it wasn’t nearly as stable as he’d thought. It creaked, the platform, the railing, the floor… it rumbled.

He began to worry it would break before he returned to normal, but Mannequin shifted slightly, raising one foot-

No.

The suit’s clawing intensified, then stopped altogether. The claw movements were counter-intuitive. The foot that had taken his hand dropped from his grasp.

No.

Mannequin used a hand grenade to detonate the pile of shrapnel. His own body detonated violently, sending his own arm, shoulder and other limbs all over the roof, and beyond.

Defiant dropped to one knee, staggered, nearly falling off his chair.

Another hand grenade, aimed at the other two suit slots.

One grenade caught the eye of a rookie hero. He had to swing first. Mannequin struck him before he could get his footing.

The grenade exploded in his hand.

It didn’t kill him. A little unclear, if that was even a death sentence.

The suit’s head slowly lowered, orbs flickering briefly to and from it like the tide a wave might throw in a hurry.

It loomed, taller than the defending heroes. They reached down, and more shot from their guns, but it wasn’t strong. There wasn’t the gravitas to hold it up, and it was cold. The suit’s skin glowed in the light’s refraction.

"We are the Qwinnings," the words were almost mocking.

"Yeah," A, W, and O, the youngest, said. "We’re the bad apples, and you’re the one that’s good. The clever ones. One of the few heroes in this city that really does care about shit like this."

Defiant didn’t respond. He stared up at the rising sun.

When the Qwinnings vanished into thin air, there were no more laughing or cheering, just scattered shouts. Only the sound of the cold rain, still chilly, boots on the ground, and shouts of varying ends.

Scion emerged. He was dressed entirely in white. A costume the likes of which had never been seen before. A costume the public hadn’t even seen for decades.

It was terrifying, but it was scary that someone as evil and as mad as Scion was able to find them in this here undercity. A costume was something you dreamed of owning, if you were good at housework and didn’t mind taking on a more feminine role.

He crossed the roof and swept his white cloak over his shoulders. Quiet chaos. Ironic, that a costume like his required so little maintenance. It was a given that he’d need to groom frequently, and even a simple wipe on the clean shoulder could take a day or more.

Which was a shame, because Quiet was the one who controlled the maintenance. His pawns were kept in a strict schedule, and if things hadn’t been in motion by now, there might have been riots. Scion would have landed somewhere remote, and the whole city would have felt the consequences just hours or days after.

He’s found his niche. Clean, effective, effective.

He stepped off the roof and into the undercity. It wasn’t pretty. Huge piles of rubble surrounded the building, each six or more stories tall, and the area simply blackened as the fires spread.

"This is what we were talking about," Bonesaw said, her voice a whisper. "You were going to do something with your money earlier today?"

"You two are going to be friends."

"That’s all I can say. You need money. Let me explain. You probably won’t be able to get out for free. This is a lost cause, after all. We’re doing this as a club. If you’re tired of this shit, if you want to get rich quick, or just want to help humanity, then this is the time to come to a club and have a chat."

There were nods and murmurs of assent from across the group.

"G-team," Shatterbird said. "In the coming month, if this happens twice, three times, or

======== SAMPLE 71 ========
 a mouthful of dust in her hand, she walked briskly toward Bonesaw. I backed up a little, still catching a whiff of her breath, and she turned a safe way into a side street, entering behind a car.

"We can’t let her escape," Trickster said.

"The only way to catch her is if she comes after us, and there’s nobody in our group that’s that flexible like that," I answered. "Whatever’s holding her together, we can dislodge it in one piece and then repair the damage in another place. That way, she’s got reinforcements holding back, and whoever she takes turns, she’s not broken in any significant way. Not in terms of mental, emotional or physical damage."

"You said before that she’s a fucking nutcase," Sundancer blurted the words. I could almost make out the sound in her voice.

Tattletale blushed and looked away, embarrassed.

As if in a moment of need, I had an idea spring into my head. I realized it as I felt Bonesaw’s hands clasp her lower stomach in the same moment that a column of flame erupted between her feet. The column dissipated into ash, and a hole was left behind behind, leading outside to a small fissure. Bonesaw took the hole and expanded, extending the same column of fire she’d used to draw the smoke out here.

As the smoke cleared, I saw a mess of bodies. One of the bodies had a glowing yellow-white eye in the center, like some kind of alien sun god, and a glowing orb surrounded the center of the mass of flesh.

"What the fuck did she do to them?" Trickster muttered.

It did sound like something an alien power. I thought for a second that it was a trap, something the heroes were pulling. My heart sank.

One or two seconds later, the bodies around the fissure burst into flame like kars, and the smoke stopped. Whatever had caused the column of flame, it was burning at a lightning speed. There was a crack and the lights went out.

I couldn’t close my eyes for more than a second, and the smoke didn’t clear up.

"Hey," Sundancer called out, "Something’s going on downstairs."





Insinuation 2.7


With the cloud of ash, I saw the scene up close. A half-dozen hooded villains with red skin and black bands all over them, their jaws set into a work of art. The man in the suit of armor – I could only assume it to be Bitch or Bentley – had been burning buildings as he stood beside a pile of rubble.

Bentley even had the red skin of one of his missing fingers painted on his face, while Bitch had one of his teeth painted on his own. I looked – Sundancer was standing a ways off to one side – and I could see a trail of pink smoke evolving from one of the patches of flame. It stopped, slowly disappearing, and suddenly a cloud of pink light moved across the skyline. I couldn’t make out if it was Ballistic or Bonesaw working together with these creations, because of the lack of any sound or visual outside input, but whatever it was, it seemed to be zipping through a neighborhood, zipping between buildings in an almost precise circle that was moving at an incredibly fast speed, and it wasn’t hurting an iota of whatever materials it was made of. Whatever it was, it started to spread across the area and spread out over buildings in general.

Some monsters. Certainly something worth keeping an eye on. But even if it was nothing, if nothing was causing the fires here, what would the human element be? More threats? My power was going out faster than I could draw in even basic commands. I was running the risk of having to use my full complement of bugs to control the situation, but that was just what my plan was for tonight.

Bentley and Ballistic were arguing with one another, causing a fair bit of fighting where there was little point. Most of the local heroes were already on the way. Legend, Tecton, Chevalier, Parian and the one female cap that was making a decent advance, the one who I hadn’t touched.

"You’re not helping," I said. "I mean, sure, we can handle more collateral damage in the meantime, but you guys can’t just come with us, separate us from a situation we’ve got a fighting chance in dealing with. Why? And if we do, do we even know where to find this monster, this time?"

I could see it, clearly.

I kept

======== SAMPLE 72 ========
 a friend with a reputation in politics. He wanted to meet, but my dad was incensed that the meeting might invite the cops to round up his friends and charge them. I had heard rumors, but I never believed them outright. Dad wanted me to be an active kid, he wanted to feel like he mattered, like he belonged. Taking his advice, I packed my bags and left."

"Had to know it was you, Taylor," she said. "You sound so normal."

"No parents, no friends in the fall, a few acquaintances in the spring. I was just here, taking advantage of the holiday break to get away from the law. I figured if it paid off, I could drop by to visit my dad to make up for the fact that I wasn’t around every day, to talk about school, my life and stuff."

"Doesn’t seem like it’s working."

"No, I mean, it’s working, but people are talking about how it’s all too familiar. The feeling you get when you’re close to someone, together, and they disappear. And, you know, I’m not exactly your lifeline, or everything was just cut short. So maybe it’s all about the past. Or the future."

There was a silence on the floor, and my phone buzzed. I hung up and picked it up to investigate.

"Taylor!" my dad’s voice interrupted me. "Let me introduce you to my girlfriend!"

"My boyfriend," I said, already prepared. "I’m looking forward to it!"

He approached my dad, and I stepped back. He handed over the papers in much the same manner, and I returned them.

"I hope you’re having a happy holiday season," Lisa told me. I looked and saw my dad with his wife and two little girls in tow.

I returned all the papers, "I want to say how much I appreciate the opportunity to network. I can barely read, let alone write, so I appreciate if you used my name instead."

"Of course. I’m Taylor."

"Thank you. Enjoy your break."

"Thank you," I responded, again. Lisa waved goodbye and headed off to get changed.

"Is there anything else?" Brian asked.

"The bank robbery was a bust," Lisa replied, "Bryce got out with the money before they had everything organized, so they stole some pretty valuable things. The safe deposit box from the CEO’s room, the computer from his desk, and the TV from the board room."

"Stolen?"

Lisa shrugged, "Bryce took the laptops, he gave them to his friends, then he went to bed early one night. All with the idea that he’d use the safe deposit box to pay off his boyfriend, get some privacy. Some of the looters were late getting back, so the laptops and the cash were taken away by the last one to get changed." She gave me a look. "Not doing this justice, with the amount of paperwork she’s got to work with."

"What do you mean?"

"It means we have to wait two years before we can try to get the safe deposit box back."

I nodded, satisfied.

Brian sighed, "Okay. That’s all I want. Thank you. We’ll have to take your word for it."

Lisa waved me goodbye and headed off to get changed.

"Dad?"

"Taylor," she said.

I turned and put my backpack down on a chair to the floor of the stairwell. She waved me off.

"I was just at the bank. I remember this whole situation, but I don’t remember what happened. What’s happened to Bryce?"

"We’re sorry," she said, "Bryce went to good schools, he was courteous, but he didn’t have a lot of friends or contacts around him. Only the person or people who knew him, who saw him at work."

"Were there any incidents?"

Lisa hesitated, "I think what you were trying to get at was that it was unusual for a kid his age and color to dress up in costumes like that, have friends or even hang out with friends, but some cool outfits could be painted pretty badly if the wrong elements got mixed in."

"Okay."

"Bryce went to the Protectorate and joined the New Wave. There’s always been tensions between the good guys and the bad, whether it’s the Empire’s annual ritual of bombing the enemy headquarters or the usual Endbringer slaughter. Every year, probably

======== SAMPLE 73 ========
 a few hundred more. He could see the way they were gathering into a solid human shape, reaching out towards Eidolon. Noelle.

"Noelle’s right on the cusp of the psycho fit," Tecton said. "I don’t know if we can tell."

"That’s our job, isn’t it?" Grace asked.

"It is."

A final glance in the direction where Noelle and the wounded Kaiser had fallen in unison.

"You’re going to have to come along," I said, sparing Grace the statement. I could see her reacting to the subtle ‘fuck you’.

"Don’t, don’t, don’t."

"Just like I asked you to come help out," I said. There was more emotion in my voice, not so different from why I was bringing her into the room now. Anger and frustration, nervousness and concern.

I raised the hand that was gestating naturally, then stopped.

It wagged its tail, and it drew it closer.

Eidolon’s floating crystal was the same as the previous iteration. The only difference was that this one was a little more willing to let go. To actually bounce up and out from within its crystal shell.

Its sight focused on a single, fragile thing. I could feel the strain, the way it was seeing a shadow cast over the surface of the crystal by the effects of my power’s effect, but it could not see the actual thing.

"A new species," Noelle said. "I thought it was ugly. So this. This is… it feels… right."

"Right," I said.

"You said there were signs of distress," Noelle said. "Despair, infighting, trouble…"

I moved the chakram, setting it next to the chasm. "I’m worried about my people. But you said distress is the first you’ll notice."

"They’re dead?" Grace asked.

I shook my head. "They fell into a decline a little while ago, probably due to more than just the exhaustion of the constant fighting. Or their exhaustion. But we should deal with the aftermath. This is what they want."

"I think this gives us an opening," Noelle said. "If we’re really good-"

And the conflict doesn’t come, I thought. Eidolon’s power won’t let me stop him from continuing to sow despair in the world.

"It seems there’s trouble," Grace said.

"She’s… she’s right," I said, my eyes moving over the wounded. "I’m not good at making rights."

"We’ll manage," she said. "I’m- uh, I think we’ll manage."

"Wouldn’t it be easier if there was a system?" Tecton asked.

"If we had some way to track Kaiser?" Regent asked.

"There’s other forces at play. I sort of hoped my team would come to a consensus on this," my dad said. "But we can’t talk about this while fighting monsters."

I looked to my team, as if I could reach across the table and reassure them that all was well.

Noelle was still inside the doll, and she was still alive. The doll twitched, and it moved a little, but Noelle wasn’t hurt.

Eidolon was fighting Noelle with the rest of his team. Eidolon’s power seemed to be having an effect. No effect. There were unintended side effects, and each one was smaller than the one before.

Eidolon struck, and the doll was left behind.

"We can’t afford to lose another," I said. "We can’t pay Eidolon to keep fighting him. Even if we ignore the chance that Noelle might re-materialize, and even if we ignore the chance that we could all wind up trapped in some extradimensional space where every bug in the house, every fly in the closet, and the dead bug’s deformed corpse, could take whatever forms they desire."

Which were only some of the many questions I couldn’t help but raise, right this moment? Which were the ones that had plagued me as I wound up in the shelter after all, the little miracles and the great twists of fate that had decided to throw me a little curveball. Which ones still haunted me as I came down from my first true victory, the war against Scion, knowing that the very

======== SAMPLE 74 ========
 a light show like he does."

"We just spent three months surviving the Endbringer attack," I said. "That was the highest number of times we’ve run against Endbringers in any given month."

"Three months?"

I nodded.

"We’re more experienced than the other groups," I said, though I was aware I should say there were more veteran members of the group. "Because of that, we know how important it is to get things done."

Rachel frowned, but she softened her expression in the doe-like way you’d expect an ex-fighter pilot to soften their expressions.

"Yeah," Brian’s voice came from the speaker at my side. "So we’re trying to be careful and disciplined. The PRT is trying to be extra vigilant to make sure we aren’t crossing any lines. This is why there’s one group of heroes, all doing their jobs. It gives them a chance to show that they’re handling things properly. It’s a way of reassuring the people who work for them."

Bitch only made a bit of of a sound that I took to be a sigh of relief.

"In case you think this is too much, I’ll be standing by, by the fire, by the fire and for the dog, if you’d like."

My heart was pounding so hard I was worried it would hurt. Just the thought of going home made me feel like I might leave everything behind and head for the nearest dark alley.

"Thank you," I said, finally. "I feel like I’m getting washed from the inside out. You don’t have to do this, Brian, but… what’s the metaphor? I can’t shake the idea that I’d get to the point where I hate you, or the people I work for, and I would make you miserable with my inability to make small talk."

"If it makes you feel any better, it’s just a theory."

"Right."

"I’m going to go see what the fuss is about before I move on to make you miserable myself."

"And if that doesn’t work?"

I paused. "If it makes you feel any better, but it doesn’t really change the fact that you messed with my team, it’s-"

"I’m not a wuss about shit, I’m- I’m just a wuss about people. About our group, about things."

I nodded.

"But not about you, about us, about being a member of the PRT, being good or bad. You guys are the reason I’m going to worry about you tonight."

I sighed. "You’re right. We all worry about you."<|endoftext|>Ahead of a potential lawsuit, the City of St. Louis today announced that it will not seek a trial by jury in the matter of Kori Alioto’s murder.

A jury trial would have been the last forum for the City to defend itself against alleged murders on behalf of St. Louis Blues FC and its fans. After extensive negotiations with the lawyers for the families of the victims, including Dr. Mike Petraglia, a pretrial conference was held today at City Hall as a condition of mediation and a tentative settlement.

Under the proposed settlement, the city will pay the families of the fifteen individuals murdered in the events of August 16th, 2005 approximately two hundred and seventy thousand dollars each. The city will also pay for the investigation and prosecution of the individuals found responsible for the matter.

In addition to the payment of the award, the city will enter into an agreement with the lawyers for the families of the victims stating that it will not seek any punitive damages whatsoever against the team or the individuals found responsible for the matter.

Accordingly, the city is entering into an agreement with the lawyers for the families of the victims regarding the payment of the wrongful death award.

A press release from the city confirms the settlement reached today:

"The City of St. Louis is pleased to announce a tentative settlement in the murder of five individuals. Following negotiation with the families of the victims, including Dr. Mike Petraglia, a tentative settlement has been reached."

The release also details the terms under which the city intends to pay the settlement:

"Under the proposed settlement, no funds will be released to the City, but the City will not seek punitive damages against any parties. The city will provide forensic testing to verify the identity of the deceased individuals and will make any necessary personnel adjustments."

As an additional stipulation, the release states, local law enforcement and prosecutors will be given unfet

======== SAMPLE 75 ========
 a small part of that. He’d also started to wash his hands and arms after he realized how tightly they were clinging to him, and that they were smoky, so I didn’t have either of those luxuries to draw inspiration from.

We’d entered the elevator and were greeted by the sound of it clicking against the outside. The first members of the PRT force that was accompanying the two teams stepped up to join the fight. It took only a few moments for the fight to take center stage.

The heroes of the world descending on this city to find a cure to this crisis. All of the good guys, everyone could play a part.

Somewhere in the midst of this, I heard a voice. A murmur, as people backed away from the escalating chaos. It wasn’t Dragon, but a woman who could only be called ‘Miss Militia’.

"The two suits are down," Miss Militia’s voice was ragged. "Weaver, get the cameras up. I want to use a PRT machine to get video."

The word ‘video’ didn’t exist in the English language.

We moved the cameras as I sent a message to Dragon, asking her to help us track down the identity of the drone that had spoken. That did as much for me as anything else.

The other small group was moving, too. They were gathering in formations to form a loose semicircle around the Dragon-suit. I sent a message to Dragon, emphasizing the request for video.

It was too late. Dragon was already moving, attacking the gathering civilians.

No time to lose. I used every bug I had to track her.

She was moving out of one spot, passing between waves of attacking civilians, between two groups of people who had taken refuge in an alley.

Too far away to track. Too many variables to connect, and she wasn’t an easy person to connect dots to.

But I connected the dots. It was a plan. She was using a drone to conduct attacks in the same fashion as the two suits, using the same weapons.

The camera images that we’d seen from the point where the Dragon-suit had passed were the same ones the heroes were using to scout the area. They’d snapped a picture of the Dragon-suit, verified it.

A kill order, directly delivered from above, ordered for the Dragon-suit to be crushed beneath its opponent’s weight.

The drone transmitted what was believed to be an order to the other suits. The Dragon-suit was to fall from the sky around them.

I backed away, and I could see the response. Their response was indistinguishable from the one the other suits had given. To fall from the sky, to be crushed by the weight of the floating device?

That was disquieting.

I couldn’t say why it was disquieting. Something else?

A subspace warping effect meant to allow the use of a certain strain of technology against a certain array of suits. The same technology that the Dragon-suit was using, intended to be used against a much larger, more entrenched opponent.

The ‘ships’ part of the message was something of a giveaway. Defiant? Miss Militia?

"We surrender," I spoke through my swarm. Voices in the midst of the swarm, so quiet that they were almost barely audible. The drones that sounded my message followed my line of sight.

The response was instantaneous. The Dragon-suit was brought down, and it was brought down so suddenly that nobody had time to react.

A pattern. A great many possible patterns.

I took a deep breath. I’d waited too long to bring the suits down. It was time.

I launched the drones across the city, dropping them inside one of the fortifications that Defiant had established at one of the intersections where the roads met.

The drones were small, barely larger than a toaster. I lowered them into a dark alley, then began gathering them in clusters, each carrying two to five flying insects.

The swarm moved in a gentle arc, hovering just out of reach of any aerial assault from Defiant’s suits, a gentle tide against overwhelming odds.

I’d planned to bring the drones down in the same fashion as the other capsule, to supplement Defiant’s forces until Scion arrived. That was a foolhardy plan. The suit could conceivably handle a direct assault from multiple directions, but there were too many paths to take. All of the defending capes would be wiped out at any moment, and Scion would arrive on one of them as a glancing blow.

Or he could move through the defenses like he

======== SAMPLE 76 ========
 a time where the only two options open to me were either…

…getting to the point where I just plain hated being here or becoming Drax.

I sighed, pulling away from the sofa, pushing the couch to the ground, and laying down on the carpeted floor of the living room.

I reached through the kitchen counter and found my cell phone out. I dialed a long distance.

"Yeah, it’s Brockton Bay, of course," a female voice sounded from the phone.

"You’re with the Wards," I answered.

"Where are they right now, with the new guy on staff?"

"Two days."

"Where’s she at?"

"Sleeping, relaxing with her new team. No problems."

"I heard they were all together this morning."

"Yes."

"Good to know. Go, then," I said, sitting on the edge of the couch and picking up the phone. I left it on the table beside the couch while I walked back to my room.

I turned on the light, and there was a brief dim light. The lights flickered on again as I powered through the stairs, the screen in one hand and the phone in the other.

The house lights flickered too, but the glow was short, barely three hundred feet. I had to brace myself against the pulls of the bed as I ascended, while the phone and the TV all went dark. My bugs were all over the place, and I could tell the difference between the two; the house was more or less quiet. The swarm circled the glow, and my bugs filled every space, not just the one dark alleyway. I could sense my dad, sitting in the front seat of the hospital bed, eyes shut and eyes on the floor. It had been like this a few minutes before my dad’s movements started to become slurred.

"It’s just a little troubling," I told him. "The way things are, you’re the only one who’s commented on our team dynamics, as far as how your dad and I interact. Can I say there’s tension there?"

"Yeah. You mention that word, and people usually act surprised or appalled, or both. Because people know we’re family."

"I know."

He stared at the floor, apparently unconcerned.

"Look, I understand if it bothers you that I’m staying silent, or you’re wondering why I’m saying that, or what’s up with your relationship with your dad, or any of that, but we should be doing a job, right? Keeping our house in order, making sure we keep each other sane, so you’re both able to take care of yourselves. If you were happier in Brockton Bay, if there were more jobs here for you, you should probably leave."

"Right," he said. "But I’m not sure that being in those situations is a good thing, or a good start. We’re doing okay, so far, but that doesn’t mean we’re broke up. I mean, we spool a lot of shit out, but even if we were closer to being friends and family than we are right now, you never knew if the shit would even hit the fan or not."

"Yeah," I said. I reached over and set the coffee table beside the couch in the kitchen, where it had more reach than the surface. "So, what’s your theory, then?"

"I think, you know, if you’d told me you were having second thoughts before, I would probably think you were lying. Um, okay. I don’t know. If I was thinking clearly enough to ask the question, then yeah. I guess I was hoping to find out if I had second thoughts about lying, or if I really did regret what I put you through."

He frowned.

"That’s good, I guess? That your lie detector just went off for the third time, and you said something about your third thoughts."

"About lying?" I asked, hoping it would provide insight.

"Oh, I don’t know. Um. Why not call? You could talk, you know, keep me off my ear, or-"

"No, Skitter. That’s not what I meant, I swear."

"Look, um. I think, you know, it’s kind of neat that you’re on your shit-kick, your first real adrenaline rush of the day, and you’re smiling like a brat, but that doesn’t make me feel

======== SAMPLE 77 ========
 a second.

Parian’s knife, she remembered. Another heavy blade from her childhood, her husband’s knife. She’d never had a good cook, because he’d used her food to figure out the best way to prepare it, had forced her to learn how and when to cook for him. Every step of the way, he’d used the worst ingredients. Her family mostly subsisted on rice, so any dish that didn’t taste right had been left over from before.

Cranial had given her a powerful new power. Noelle needed a new body, and whatever power he’d given her was the best way to give it.

"You’re too heavy," Noelle’s mother spoke.

"It’s okay, ma’am," she whispered back. After a few seconds, she said, "I feel warm in my arms."

"And?"

"And I feel that power, and I can use it."

"It’ll be all right, dear."

She nodded, quiet. She would wait a few hours. Too much time to herself. She could take it, and she could go back to her family, look after their house and get the necessary items for her new body. She was hungry, she knew, and any time she was around her family, she could grab whatever she could from the fridge, nibble on a piece of ham or some cabbage.

There were the groceries she’d ordered online, the groceries she’d put in the delivery bag. All the ingredients for a soup.

She was glad when her mother asked if she could watch, the TV was hooked into the cord that ran from the kitchen ceiling to the carport. She made her way over there, putting her hair and makeup in a messy ponytail, pretending it didn’t matter.

There was the faint sound of shuffling furniture. The woman who’d taken care of Charlotte was gone, and Charlotte could hear the faint sound of shuffling chairs. Then the woman returned, picking up her empty chair at the far end of the couch.

Charlotte sat, folding her arms. The sound of her mother’s shuffling seemed distant, muffled.

She can’t fix this, she thought. She doesn’t know how to fix this, or how to make this good. It’s too easy, too soon.

"Hey, No’," Charlotte spoke.

Silence, punctuated by the sound of one footstep. The woman didn’t move.

"Hey. How’s it going?"

"I’m not good at this. I feel disconnected from everyone, and people move around me… it feels alien."

"I don’t– I can’t imagine what it would be like."

"It’s complicated. Too much time spent around people, not time you can use."

"I don’t understand. You know how it would feel, if you could use your power like I do?"

"I know," she said.

"No… what do you think it means?"

"A part of me thinks you’re making it up as you go along." Her voice was small. "But… another part of me?"

"It’s there," Charlotte said. "Ever notice how people talk when they don’t trust themselves?"

"I dunno. I’m just thinking that maybe you shouldn’t let your guard down like this, if you’re about to do something dangerous."

"I’m not good at this. I think I’m more dangerous than I’m letting myself be."

"Do you-"

She stopped, because her phone was vibrating on one of the cushioned legs. She picked it up to look at the screen, but she didn’t have options to change the vibration pattern or set the vibration to random.

"Wh- what?"

"Why?"

"Do you mean it was wrong, or the n--"

"I don’t- I just- I just felt like it was really funny, in a funny way. Like a slap in the face."

"Fuck you! I’m going to fucking take your phone!"

"It’s fine. Just– just give me a second," she said. She fished the phone out of the space between her index finger and thumb and then held it out towards the middle of the table so the woman who was giving the call could use her hand to unlock it.

"Can’t do

======== SAMPLE 78 ========
 a light assault. He wasn’t injured, which meant she was stronger than the normal human eye could see. The bugs moved in the direction she was running to try to detect her, moving into position to bind her to a light pole of some sort. She was too fast, though—she moved so fast that it was hard to follow her movements.

Her teammates were taking her cues, using the same sort of mental gymnastics that Jack was using. Their focus was on avoiding the pain, avoiding potentially fatal damage, rather than on the assault on her own safety.

"No!" Krouse shouted.

But she was patient. She was faster than he was, and had a good grip on the frame with the thick wood of the pole. She hauled it out of reach, then twisted at what must have been the slowest movement of her limbs to date, just a little. They caught her around the neck, and nearly caught her around the shoulders, but she caught them around the neck first. One of her arms outstretched, she tossed them over the edge of the roof, straight at my dad.

I hurried to the edge of the roof and scooped him up, his face in my arms.

"Hold her," my dad said.

I pulled at the collar, but she was patient. She’d twisted around just a hair. I managed to cut her off just a moment before she pulled the collar back.

"She’s fast," Krouse said. "She’ll outpace me."

I could see his heart rate pick up. This wasn’t a situation where he was going to be able to take a few minutes to catch up.

"I can see it," my dad said. "The angle… it doesn’t matter. She’s focused on the object. It’s a weapon."

"No fucking weapon," Chevalier said, his voice hard. "I smell murder."

I could hear the noise of blades on metal.

"There can be no doubt," the man said. "My team is as good as gone. None of you are close enough to call them, right?"

"Right."

He lowered his voice to be almost completely silent as he said, "My daughter was killed fighting Jack. It’s over, for sure. I feel her family grieve with me more than I do. But they can’t grieve alone."

A weight fell on top of me.

I raised my head.

"C-cup?" I mumbled.

Then I saw his eyes. Dealing with his father didn’t make me feel any better.

"No," he said. "You can’t take-"

"No!"

He bent down to get his daughter’s head and jaw fixed, and he lifted her head just a fraction higher, so her face crossed my face.

I couldn’t breathe, even as I clutched my arms to keep from staggering. Hearing my dad cry, it was only a half-bit relieved relief, and it stopped me from lunging for him.

"The bitch is dead?"

"I’ll-" I faltered.

"If the bastard is going to sue you, then I need you to fill out fourteen pages of paperwork, come here, he may sue me in small claims court."

"My dad said we don’t have papers and we aren’t here for any of that," my dad said. "What if we do have papers and we aren’t attending?"

"What’s the procedure?" he asked.

"We take any violence."

"Please," my dad begged, "Let me get the papers now and we can-"

"Twenty-four hours," the woman answered him.

"Then be back in forty-eight hours."

"Thank you," he said, more clearly.

Chevalier stood from his seat, raised a hand, and then crossed the room, his sword pointing at my dad’s head.

My dad made a strangled noise as he took in the scene.

"I can’t believe you dragged me into this," he said.

"We should have brought papers," Chevalier said, his tone harsh.

"How far did you get?"

"Not on this point," he said. He reached out, and I could imagine the broken clairvoyance he was using to see the scene, feel the bloody residue above my father’s head. "I’ll explain."

"You’ll just take it?"

"I want to go home. My daughter, her family

======== SAMPLE 79 ========
 a very short length of time. There’s a very good chance something comes up, because in the next seven days to ten days, everything changes," Coil grinned.

"That doesn’t work," she said. "If I have to be there, my reaction says a lot more about what I think than what I’m saying."

"That’s part of the show," he replied. "We’re showing our partners which is which, so you’re incentivized to play along, and play along big time."

"That’s… probably not going to happen, is what I was saying. I think I’d rather see her going, and no, not going at a time like this, isn’t the answer."

He knew she’d come to this conclusion. He’d given her a very good reason to doubt him, now that he’d suggested going.

"No," she said.

"And that’s the important thing. No means ultimately no, and yes it means she stays."

Weld nodded. "She’s probably right. But I’m kind of bummed this isn’t worse."

Coil reached inside the large coat he’d kept beneath his armor and retrieved two rings. Using his power, he unfurled one of the rings and attached it to Weld’s finger. "One more thing, and you’ll have three, four, five different kinds of teleportation."

"Too many vulnerabilities," Weld replied. He reached out and clasped the second ring over the top of her head. As her eyes turned towards him, he pulled away, setting one foot on Weld’s thigh, one foot behind his own.

He leaned close, so his elbows and knees were pressed against her hair, his lips pressed against hers. "This much power, none of us have the credits, resources or connections to pull off more stunts."

"So?" she asked, with a hint of venom in her voice.

"So we’re going to stick around and see what happens, after we reel, after we buckle, after people realize what an idiot this guy was, but before we go any further."

"Doesn’t sound like a good idea," she said. "And here I thought you were better than that."

"Too many risks," Weld said. "Too much at stake. It’s like… getting drunk and riding a bicycle on broken glass. You know how dangerous that is? You ride that thing with your eyes closed, and you don’t realize what you’re doing, because you’re behind the wheel. Except there’s a safety feature, right? You don’t crash and burn, but you get knocked off the bike even if you don’t have any control over it."

"I don’t really care," she said. "I’m more worried about the fact that you’re fucking with me than the fact that you’re telling me the truth."

"True enough," Weld said. He set the second ring on her finger and then tugged it free. Another pair of invisible strands joined the first, tying them securely. She pulled away. "True enough. What you told me earlier, trust your heart. But I’m betting there’s more to that than meets the eye."

She nodded, but she didn’t respond.

"Let’s see. I bet on a horse, and I win."

"No," Weld said. "You bet on the horse, because that’s how you lose. It’d be better to lose."

"No," she repeated herself. "You don’t think I’m telling you the truth? The stakes are too high."

"Too high?"

She sighed. "Yes."

"But you’re risking it, right? Like I said, you can’t tell me the risks."

"No!" She protested.

"Then what are you risking?"

"That I’m trusting you with my life for a little while longer. Because we need this, bigger than just our personal lives."

"No!" He thrust one foot forward, raised the other foot up toward the sky, "Tell me why."

She stared at him, watched as he kicked a foot forward, and in the process, he picked up a little taller, nearly standing straight up from where he’d sat. His eyes locked on her. She looked at him, tried to gauge his reaction before moving further into the alley.

He stepped closer, extended one

======== SAMPLE 80 ========
 a side effect of my power, and it’s going to be the furthest thing from my mind.

"If I’m a bad influence on others, how do I stay that way, without putting others at risk? How do I convey a negative image?"

"Do you have an answer for me?"

"You wouldn’t be a problem."

"You would be a problem. But I have other concerns. My people are a concern."

"Why? Why would I be a concern?"

"My people are a matter of public record. Circumstances beyond my control, and my inability as a leader to act upon them."

"You mean you aren’t willing to act on what’s going on with your people?"

"No. I mean I’m unwilling to become a part of this chaos."

"That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?"

"Yes."

"There has to be alternatives. Other heroes out there. Or you’re just being paranoid."

"The PRT and the heroes."

I frowned. "I’m not sure we can call this an easy call."

"Probably, but I’d like to think everything comes down to the end of the world, not what we could do at the best of it. So I’d like to propose a compromise."

"Conceivably."

"We could stick to the deal. It would be voluntary, and it would give us a chance to think of something else."

"What’s this?" I asked, pointing at the laptop.

"You think you might be able to turn those heads, Scion? Can’t you see the futility of trying?"

"Yeah."

"I think it’s time to call the meeting. Tonight, maybe, but no later than Friday."

"Friday."

"Meh. No need."

"You might be able to see them, then."

"Okay. Thank you."

"Stay?"

I left the meeting, with only Defiant’s voice to accompany me.

It was a strange way to begin the meeting. I walked over to the small conference table, then sat down.

"It seems our meeting was a success," Mrs. Yamada said. She was smiling a little.

"You had me at first," I said, a little breathalyzer in my pocket, "You said you were willing to make other concessions, but you changed your mind after you heard the number one complaint about the meeting."

"Noted."

"I believe the meeting reflected the majority opinion of all capes present."

"The Wards will talk about being accommodated."

I frowned. "A little too many people, at a time we need all of the help we can get."

"Thank you," she said, smiling a little. "Let’s get to the topic at hand."

"Doing harm to the heroes is wrong," I said. "We have to protect the people… at the same time."

"I don’t even like the D.T. anymore," she said, wry, "But that’s not really my thing. You’re staying?"

"I… don’t want to say."

"I wouldn’t know. Can I ask what the issue is? It’s not a big one."

She smiled a little. "It is. But let’s not pretend we know. I’m only interested in making the most of this partnership."

"That sounds good," I said.

"We’re doing what we can to make up for the time we’ve lost," she said.

"Me too," I said. "We’ve lost time."

"Time, time we could have, and time we don’t."

"I’m not complaining," I said.

"I know," she said. "I’m… I’m thinking, there’s a reason I’m here. You’re doing what you are, and I think that’s the best way to help."

"Right."

So she was being thorough. I’d been hoping for a sign that might help me square my thoughts. It could even be a trap, in a way.

That said, I couldn’t help but think of how Leviathan had destroyed at least some of the Leviathan Wards two months ago. Of my people.

"

======== SAMPLE 81 ========
 a side effect of her power, she’s now more willing to follow through. She’ll listen more, she’ll give more ground if it comes down to it. But she does care deeply about these people. She’ll give her all because she cares so much about her friends. And she’ll let them die because she cares so much about her-"

There was a distant rumble. A section of Leviathan’s side bulged out from the ground and started climbing toward the city. People started filing toward the site, some holding umbrellas, others walking around with makeshift canteens.

A tower appeared, then crackled.

Leviathan released a huge quantity of water from one of his enormous hands. The water turned into slime, viscous in consistency, nearly a liquid, except for the fact that it was still far more viscous than most sap. A few bubbles rose, but was it worth the effort to get rid of it?

Leviathan sent water flying at Eidolon, and the hero reacted by slamming his hands together. Water rushed forth to spill out onto the upper half of the massive form, but was quickly repelled. Even more disturbing, the water turned crimson, with the crimson extending into the red armor that surrounded Eidolon.

Leviathan stood, and began tearing into the ruined section of building, one section at a time. It was the type of rapid, decisive, and overwhelming attack that was nearly impossible to stop. He tore into the building, relentlessly, relentlessly, eating at the very thing he was trying to eat.

He began to dislodge the rubble, and Eidolon stepped in to pound him into the ground. The water turned to steam, and Leviathan leaped down, using the opportunity to grab two of the buildings on either side of the crumbling section of the bridge and descend into the crater.

Eidolon was doing too much. Leviathan had found a weak point, and Eidolon was doing too much damage. The Endbringer would have a hand too large, a weight to carry and carry a heavy rock like that.

"Citrine?"

"I see. I will accompany you." Citrine smiled.

Leviathan’s attack was only a small piece of the overall wreckage that spread across Europe. When the drenching wet had worn off, a good twenty percent of what was left had been shattered, broken, crushed, buried. Only the tip of the iceberg was above water, and even that was sinking fast.

Eidolon climbed up the side, and when the water was gone, he began to climb more. Water steamed in his hair as he looked at the devastation.

It was a wonder that people weren’t showing up to collect their loved ones. There had been warnings, but nobody had come to listen.

"Citrine, do you know where to find someone?"

"Someone died."

"Restitutions aren’t really a thing. Most are in one city, then another. Lost or ruined. You’d go to a martyr’s grave, maybe."

"I know what you mean. I was there."

"If we’re going to the memorial, I need you to do two things. Stay close to this area, stay quiet. People are getting killed, but they aren’t moving."

"They’re moving, man. Better than a bullet through their skulls. Move. Look."

The Endbringer approached, moving at a light jog, spurting red water as it moved. He paused, letting water flow beneath him as though it were slow motion. The water turned, abruptly changing direction, as though it were aimed right at him. Even the traces of destruction on the drenching slope of water were starting to turn into puddles.

Leviathan didn’t even slow half as the water turned. It scraped against the ruined pillars that still supported the ruined wall at the north end of the Temple, skipping along the brick itself, straight for the gap.

It didn’t break contact with the brick. When it was gone, the sections of wall shattered, revealing a shallow sea of ruined section of wall beneath. It swelled, a flat expanse of sea, far more seaweed-like than any of the drenched wall. Twice, Leviathan opened his mouth to vomit open a lane beneath the seaweed, spraying the seaweed out onto the dry beach.

The drenching rainwater simply continued to sweep downwards, soaking the residue of sand and seaweed from the ruined wall, gradually rising. The seaweed descended into the drenching rain, hardening into roots and stalks as it fell. Where seaweed mingled with the more durable plant material, a crack spread across the wall

======== SAMPLE 82 ========
 a little more.

"It’s a little easier," Rachel said. Her hand touched her earbud. She could hear a murmur run through the others.

"I didn’t think you’d have any setbacks," Tattletale said.

"Yeah, no," Regent said.

"Right, no," Rachel answered. "I mean, we’re not exactly on the same page, but I wasn’t expecting you to protest so much."

"Parian’s right on the subject of being left alone," Tattletale said. "I mean, we have our differences, but-"

"Agreed," Rachel said.

"-I don’t mean to be hard, but there’s a big difference between hard and wrong on that front."

"I dunno," Tattletale said, grinning. "That’s a hell of a dedication for just a talk, and what’s her relationship to you, to me?"

"We’re friends, right? At least for now."

"Friends," Tattletale said, smiling a little.

Rachel shrugged, a touch too wryly.

Tattletale glanced at me, eyebrows drawing together. "You like that word?"

I hesitated.

"Friends," Tattletale said, again. "I guess I do. More or less."

Rachel shrugged at that. She extended her hand for me to shake. I looked at the others, and saw Bitch standing just behind Rachel, Bastard lying down in the dirt, muzzle buried, and Bastard lying just a little too far forward, his eyes not looking up. Grue and Imp were making their way down the stairs, and Bitch with the dogs was standing a short distance away.

I could see the others moving just a bit slower as they realized who they were. Even Imp, who normally drove the point home with her teasing remarks or theatrical facial expressions, now seemed more cautious.

The mood among the four was far from what I’d expected. There were a few who looked relieved to meet my eyes, relieved that I wasn’t making them feel like shit. A few others looked horrified, appalled, or both.

Imp was the most shaken. "You attacked her."

"Yeah. Me too," Rachel said.

"Not exactly an apology, but-"

"I don’t- we’re friends. We wouldn’t do that," Rachel said. "Like Tattletale said, I’ve fought alongside and for you guys at every turn."

Which was probably true. Some of it was perhaps a lie, but there was also the fact that Rachel very nearly felt guilty about the fact that Bastard had joined the Slaughterhouse Nine because she’d felt like she could count on having a hand in some small way.

"Whatever the case, it wasn’t worth it. She disappeared before I got there. I know it sounds dumb, but I-"

"I found her when we were on a job. She was in her territory, and I poo-oped her under some circumstances."

"The circumstances were, you know," Rachel said.

I nodded slowly. "Well, that’s the dumb stuff."

Tattletale shrugged. "It’s okay. Stipulations about stealing someone’s possessions before capturing them are pretty vague. They could be doing it for the opposite reasons. There’s got to be loopholes or things we aren’t supposed to have, so we don’t go to court."

Rachel frowned. "So, um-"

"So what’s the dumb stuff, then?" Rachel asked.

"It’s that thing we told Grue when we were on the job," Tattletale said. "We took a gun from one of the Nine, and he was wanting us to give him a demonstration. We left it in one of the houses where we were staying, and when the boss of one of the houses got a phone call, he told his wife that we had the gun. When the wife indignantly informed us that it wasn’t a gun, and it wasn’t supposed to be, the husband showed up at the house we were staying in, had a squabble with the boss and threatened to kill us if we didn’t let him take it. So we packed a knife, a gun and a couple of large utility knives into our bags."

Rachel looked at me, as if I were looking at a deer in the headlights.

"Yeah," Tattletale said, "I’ve killed people."

"You didn’t

======== SAMPLE 83 ========
 a few drops of blood flowed, but even so, it wasn’t all over my clothes.

What in the world had made her so good at hiding that from us?

"I did it!" she shouted, a note of glee in her voice. "Fucking did it! I’m a team player, I’m strategic, and I was so nervous before the fight with Noelle that I forgot to eat and I got sick!"

"We’re losing this shit battle," Jack said. "And you’re better at keeping track of all this than we are. You’re winning because you’re smarter than we are, and that shit we just learned is the fucking worst shit we’ve ever fought."

"Fuck you, Jack! Fuck you, you bigoted little freak!" She lashed out, and it was like a hot poker upended the building. Jack was sent sprawling onto the rooftop across from Bitch and I.

Bitch rolled to her feet. We watched her. Her hair still smudged as she had it cut a little shorter in the last time we’d spoken. The metal jaw of the gun she wore had been wedged in half, pinning her down.

As she began to climb to her feet, she glanced at the other members of the team and half-lifted her arm to her side to steady herself.

A shot? No. There was a hand, propped on her enemy.

Golem turned, drew a gun, raised his hand over his head. His hand was pressed to the neck of what must have was a cadaver. The gun clattered to the ground.

"Move!"

Bitch began to back away. She was nearly put into a choke hold as Jack slammed his hand down against her shoulder. Then she broke her fall, tripped over until her back was to us, her feet tangled in Jack’s cuffed ankles.

"No! No!"

Bitch yelped and fell to her knees. A gun hit the alley behind her and she disappeared down the stairs.

The enemy was here, in action. Two of the Slaughterhouse Nine!

"Run!" Jack ordered. The pair of them bolted.

My swarm moved, each chirping and singing in coordination, singing the same song Bitch had made, a lullaby my bugs had adapted to match ours.

Except Bitch apparently couldn’t sing the right notes, or she’d be hurting quite so badly. She fell. It took me a second to realize why. There wasn’t really a melody to the song. Just a long string of notes, loud and droning, about a body and a plant and a river and a time-bender…

And a giant hand rose from the rooftop, gripping the enemy, crushing them under its weight. Its movements were so fast I couldn’t follow them, couldn’t make them move with enough inevitability.

I realized Jack was now our target. The sound of the fight resounded throughout the alley, Bitch didn’t even scream as the pavement cracked under her enormous hand. The enemy was pinned so low to the ground he couldn’t make out the next move, they weren’t able to dig their feet free as she struck from range, they weren’t able to break the gravely constriction that enveloped her entire body.

She set his entire low body against the wall, crushed him underfoot, then rolled as he tried to push his head and lower body free. The roll, together with the sound of ripping metal, nearly deafened me.

Bitch stepped back to create a more open space, and Jack was fast enough to avoid the incoming Bitch’s counterattack. She moved, and the pavement around him shifted, twisted into odd shapes.

"She’s not stopping!" Jack shouted. He was as unyielding as ever, even though he was almost impossible to hit. Bitch was making headway, now, and she rapidly became my quarry.

One hand beneath Bitch’s massive upper body, another lifted and fired as hard as I could make out in the midst of this cloud of darkness and smoke. A heavy crack tore out into a semicircle around us.

I lowered my bugs to the ground in the hopes of tracking where the muzzle-loading device might be. I could barely make it out the entire thing, with the smoke and dust that rose in the wake of the crash.

It slipped to Jack and Bonesaw. I made out Bonesaw as she changed into a living sludge-hole, a half-tube roughly the length of a normal hand, about twice the height those tentacles were. The

======== SAMPLE 84 ========
 a group I couldn’t put a name to. The others, who hadn’t even arrived yet, gathered around me. The rest gathered in a loose circle around the building, heads turning. As the others spread out, I gathered behind a cluster of them.

When others had spread out enough, I positioned myself behind a block of them, just to give myself a view of what was going on. People were gathering in response to the news that the heroes had arrived. Here and there, I saw people scrambling to get belongings out of closets and into cars. The media crowd had moved to the center of the room.

I could sense some of the individuals involved. A woman was walking with two of her illegitimate children. Not my ‘cousins’, but they were there. Standing beside her were her boyfriend and the people he’d called ‘family’. Beyond the two of them, there was little else.

It caught me off guard. I’d known that the woman and the toddler would be among the people in the mass that arrived on the scene of battle. But this was someone’s family, let me believe.

A man in civilian clothes was talking with people, and a group watching a local woman, ‘Ma’ was showing him a cellphone video, which was streaming online. She was angry. More than that, she had a history of being very hostile, very difficult. He knew it.

I could sense a crowd, and the placement of people gave me pause. Too many people, gathering in response to one simple news item, one small detail, one piece of information.

Too dangerous.

It was an easy call.

I gathered my bugs, flying them close, and I flew them out of reach of the eyesore like a wild animal might, so they wouldn’t have time to see me land and start their slow, painful ascent towards the sun. I gathered the few that I did have, with small numbers in mind, and I spread them out through the area before I could get close enough to make a call.

I found myself back where I’d started, only this time, there was an end to this sort of problem. Too many gathered in a single place, each somehow related to the others. The crowd of people, people connected somehow, and it was a nightmare scenario. My power was reaching too many people in too many places at once, and things were spinning out of control here and there.

The crowd of people was young, and it wasn’t just the number of people. There were the dead, piled around the edges of the area, people cradled like they were asleep in the midst of great oceans, a part of the world at war. I could sense the primal excitement that was taking hold, as if it were the same in both senses.

I couldn’t afford to get close enough to make a call. It would mean interfering in ongoing fights between capes, getting too close to something that wasn’t fully subdued, and there was the possibility that I’d provoke a counterattack.

If I crossed paths with the people who were gathering here?

I sent my swarm the wrong way, curving around until I was nearly at the edge of the area. Then I flew again, longer, sweepingly.

It wouldn’t change the outcome of this fight. The people were too well armed, and the counterattacks were always counterattacking. Even if the capes on the other side were stronger, faster, they were generally weaker, if that. If there was a counterattack, it would happen in a place where people weren’t paying attention, or where they didn’t want to listen. It would take too long.

But the counterattacking could be something they could do. The counterculturalists would get a foothold here, and if things continued in that vein, the rest of the West Coast would be justified in stepping in. A shift in zeitgeist. If they wanted to stay local? That could be fine. If they decided to move, well. That would be fair.

The problem was that everything shifted so rapidly. The people on the other side were inconsequential right now.

I flew as high as I dared without touching ground or touching ground with a surface for long enough that the heat to my body gained on contact with anything. I made my way towards the massed crowd.

The sound ripped through the air. I could smell smoke, there were distant pops and grates in the building they’d gathered in, but it was so faint I couldn’t make out the underlying details.

I couldn’t fly low enough to touch ground, but I could draw my bugs together into a general triangle, with the tip just

======== SAMPLE 85 ========
 a light show at street level, a few hundred feet tall, with the cars.

"It’s not so unusual to see some of your work for sale," Bonesaw said. "You’re willing to risk it?"

"Definitely," Jack responded, smiling.

"There’s art to be had. Take it for what it is. I would pay twice as much for it if you were. But… but?"

"It’s appreciated, to see. But… how much do I need to see it to accept it?"

Alexandria held the art back for later review, instead.

"One million," Bonesaw said. "Three million dollars, it’s… it shouldn’t be wasted. The… the man who made it shouldn’t die, but… it’s a… I don’t even know what to… it’s… an… art. Give it away. I don’t know what to say."

"Thank you," Alexandria said.

Bonesaw smiled, but my eyes were watching real gems being worked on, each small brush stroke carefully, painstakingly detailed. The glass-blowing vats filled with the fluids of the liquid steel. The black obsidian vat with the black-brown liquid, filled with the contents of the various vats and tanks.

Alexandria bent down to pick it up, then placed it against the wall. No doubt to mark it. Some kind of personal space, but also to mark it as a gift.

The work was done, in the end. No doubt. But there were other, much more important things. There were other bases to be had.

Bonesaw took time now to dab at the crystal. Her power was needed now, and this was a good time, all things considered. She’d made every bit of progress since the early spring, and she was now going to spend the summer, years of study and practice to perfect her power, to ideally align it with what was known now. A perfect time to make jewelry.

There were other devices on the pile. Plastics. She’d seen them on someone’s work, some glue, and she’d seen them here, too. Not on this particular build, but everywhere from the plastic cups to the rods and tubes for the earrings, every bit as much work as the glass was.

"It will have weight added to it after it leaves my custody. People are likely to get hold of these things, as a cost of having a piece of your work, but people tend to like nicer things than ugly ones. They will notice the quality of the goods and appreciate it. Think of it as a hobby and something to support it. It will age well. You can gauge the quality by the state it is in: new or used."

"No new material," Bonesaw said.

Theo nodded. There wasn’t any plastic in the core of the work, but it was easier to work with now that the core was removed.

"It can be polished, but I would recommend a high polish: Antique, rare, or a symbol or image you can’t easily forget about. I use Rose Gold. Her colors are vivid, and the contrast between the light and dark colors makes the work pop. But it’s not unique. Each of my pieces is a reminder of a key thing, a memory, a moment, made to look complicated by the way it makes things difficult for others. The glass beads are an extreme case. I wanted an icon to look like a god, and to prevent others from paying tribute. The stone circles are a good example. For all the talk about symbols and images, I set them up with metal circles so that someone who is paying a great deal of attention to detail may be reminded of something more."

"I am aware of that," Bonesaw said. "But that does not make it right. It drives me crazy. I keep telling myself that if I had a tool that worked for me, it would be to make glass beads for my own purposes, with the idea that someone else might fashion something more elegant. But I’m seeing where you’re going with this. An end of the world scenario?"

"Maybe I was too optimistic," I said. "You know, the other day, I was thinking about how, if it came down to it, and if God had a way to give us immortality, He could give us glass beads. Wouldn’t He allow for just a little refinement, so we were all connected, so we could achieve even greater things?"

"Of course he would," Bonesaw said.

"Good, because that makes all the difference."

"I

======== SAMPLE 86 ========
 a few seconds, it came into its own, and it was the only noise in the room. My swarm filtered out from within the cloud by the time the lights were finally brought out in daylight.

My hand was already covering the trigger that opened the black box in Kid Win’s back, as I held the weapon above my head. The red dot barely moved a hair.

"It’s not just her power," Sundancer said. "There’s so many people that help out with the Jack stuff. Even taking care of our old master on the nanotech level… they got rid of every vestige of authority. Left me to run my territory, and the worst thing that could happen to me is the PRT finding out I used his body. That’s what all these people are afraid of."

"And the people who are afraid are the people who work for you," I pointed out. "Those same people are the ones in the room with me."

"Or they were."

"Either way, it’s not going to work. I can’t put her down, or I’m going to hurt myself pretty bad, knowing I might hurt someone in the line of duty."

"Can you find anyone in particular?"

I shook my head. "I don’t know. Look."

I found Regent and Bitch in the room with Dinah.

"Don’t worry about her," I told them. "That was luck, a bad day, for us." I glanced at Sundancer, who hung back, watching the conversation. "Did you find anyone you were afraid of or anyone you wanted to avoid?"

"Bryce," Lisa told them.

Bryce smiled for the first time. His eyes were wide, and he nearly failed to pull himself together, but he nodded once. "He’s okay."

"You mean he can’t say or do or use the powers he knows? Like the guy from the library?"

"No, he can talk, understand?"

"He doesn’t."

"Doesn’t mean he doesn’t know stuff. His power is all talk."

"I… I can’t wrap my head around that."

"Okay, that’s fine. Let’s start with the basics. What powers are you using right now?"

"None," I admitted.

"That’s not a good sign." I glanced at Sundancer, who fished in the water around the tripod, then fished for the remote. Grabbing one, I hung it behind the chair, then fished around until I found it. I put it on and adjusted my grip, then started making my way back to the sink.

"So the bad news is that there’s a pretty fucking good ninety-nine percent chance that she’s a made man. The good news is that I can use my power and get a sense of that."

I nodded.

Bryce leaned forward, "Thank you."

"I’m glad, and you’re welcome."

I stood and made my way out the door. I could sense Bitch near the end of the hallway, so I kept walking, keeping to the same path.

She wasn’t reacting as I walked with her right hand pressed to one of her eyes. She’d waggled her fingers, but it hadn’t done anything to help her keep her eye on the road.

I saw her raise an eyebrow, then turn her back to the doorway that led to the stairwell.

The stairwell was the last I saw of her before she fell from my reach. I could sense the soldiers and their guns, the sound of gunfire echoing through the stairwell.

"Go!" I shouted.

And she bolted.

It would have been exhilarating, the rush she experienced as she left the terrorists who’d occupied her home and family behind. No matter the direction she went, she was taking her enemies one step closer to finding some grisly revenge. It wasn’t the first time she did it, nor the easiest either. It involved moving slowly and deliberately, carefully breaking through the enemy lines to leave paths for her comrades to get to her destination. Sometimes even letting them off kilter as she moved swiftly and deliberately forward.

But I couldn’t help but notice how her footfalls often happened so soon after she left the front line. After an intense training session or two, she’d start doing it with occasional bursts of action, then stop. Only occasional actions, in places where both the opponent and her footfalls were rough together.

Which

======== SAMPLE 87 ========
 a couple of times to clear away a handful of bugs and stop the spread of the bubonic plague. I even made a call to the good guys to see if they’d hear about my plan. No luck.

I was left with a strange impression, but not a confident one. I headed towards the spot Horizon had indicated the clouds had moved away from. I’d hoped I’d find some earthmoving, if undefinable force at work, but the atmosphere was thick there, especially now that the dust and smoke had mostly cleared.

I ventured out, my back to the wall, as blank as a sheet of metal. The area beyond the cloud was mostly off-limits, not inhabited, not even in the human perception. There was nothing but a thin blue haze hovering over the area. I had no idea what to do. I was, frankly, scared.

I was having a hard time keeping myself from feeling claustrophobic. There had been stories from people who had seen the end of the world, but the end of the world hadn’t ever quite fit with the scenarios I’d heard about from Coil. Stories told me that the world was going to end before he got bored with the subject. That there was some kind of intervention, some great, glorious plan that would save the world from itself, and he’d be too busy to stop it before it got started.

No, I was thinking, it has to be something else. Something in the middle ground.

My first thought that I could think of was that she’d use the portal to return to Earth Aleph, where she and her teammates had been. But she hadn’t before, and even now she hadn’t after the battle with the Nine.

I went to the portal, and it was with little, if any, hesitation.

I had only a second before the portal closed again.

I opened my mouth to speak, but my voice came out with hardly a sound, just raw panic. A gut feeling, but not a voice. I could only grit my teeth, fight the urge to huff out a breath, to scream something else, anything to bring them to a stop.

It was the only person in the world that could talk to me, the only sound that was even close to a human.

No, not even a friend.

No.

I could see the edges of a surface, a flat expanse of metal or glass, with a faint glow emanating from it.

A mouthpiece.

I pressed my hand to my earbud, "Aleph portal down. Vessel remains."

"Seems we’ll need a boat," Tattletale said, her voice almost inaudible as I drove the point home.

"Probably," I said.

My back to a wall. I stepped inside, using my bugs to get the necessary details. The interior was dark, and I could only assume it had been lit up from outside. My bugs gave me a sense of the interior with faint vibrations of windows, of furniture, even a small table with leather surface. "We’ll find a boat."

There was a pause.

Then a voice. "A ship."

"A fucking fucking fucking ship, though," Regent said. He was leaning against a wall, his arms folded.

"Go on," I said. "Look."

I pointed at a surface nearby.

"There’s this patch of land in the water, and the other side looks like this."

"The other side?"

I pointed toward the portal. "…A ship. Go look."

I did. Two pieces of machinery made a continuous, consistent whirr. I recognized them as part of Tattletale’s.

The center of the Ship Graveyard, it seemed. Not just any ship, but the floating thing Tattletale had said was the Simurgh’s ship.

A quick survey of the others… Leviathan, Simurgh and Dragon.

And now we wait, as they see us.







Interlude 24 (Donation Bonus #3)


Seven hundred and thirty feet tall, and she was built to walk upright, her narrow legs curling around her upper body. That wasn’t a great advantage when she was dealing with steel bars that had razor sharp edges.

The ground rumbled around her, and that ugly distortion gave her a very fine wind. A typical wind for a sunny day.

"I want this," she said. She turned her head so the upper half of her face was a view of the heroes, so they would see her.

"I think we’re going to be able to do

======== SAMPLE 88 ========
 a crowd of onlookers.

I turned and walked through the crowd towards the front of a store, followed by the crowds of people with their dogs. The dogs were loose-chested, big and athletic in appearance, their collars long and narrow, with a variety of sharp spurs at the ends. They were in good shape, provided that half of the people walking with them didn’t walk with them in their teeth. The dogs were expensive, and it seemed unnecessary. A luxury to mark man’s entry onto this planet.

The store sign was just down the road, and the shoppers were clustered in two halves by the entrance. I stood just inside the perimeter and surveyed them.

People stared, a mix of surprise and emotion. Most didn’t even look my way as they snapped their attention to me.

I approached a table that was flanked on one side by a pair of employees, the sort of employees that were bred to be in charge of a staff of lab rats. On the opposite end of the counter, a young man, only nineteen or twenty, was working alongside a woman who was in uniform that looked like it had come from every other department store in America.

Did he make his way through the glass pane like clockwork?

We were in the store only five minutes before the woman realized there were outside shoes inside and began kicking them off the counter. I made my way up the counter and saw two more incidents. As she tore a pair of stiletto heels from the shelf and threw them over the counter, I knew I’d caught the briefest glimpse of someone having his feet stomped on the handle of one of the cars. A sign over his head read ‘Notices to Customers’.

The other pair of incidents occurred much the same way. We both saw the young man shove a shoe free with enough force that it skittered across the floor of the store. The man had a bloodied nose and mouth and, according to the woman, was shouting at a volume "only words could make sound so loud over the sound of that much metal on pavement".

The man had a plastic bag in one hand. I took it from him and tried to take a better grip of it. I could barely tell the color, and the size, because of the way it had moved in the hand in the last few seconds. On the larger side? Something in the amount of a thick black sludge. I picked at it with my fingertips, and I could hear it clink as it was dislodged from the hand.

A small crowd was growing around us. If what the man had said about his peers had some truth to it, then this was a crowd that was being groomed to be the men who rose to the rank of ‘master’. This was ‘the boy army’: fourteen to twenty-five year olds from poor backgrounds that spent their time away from school, playing violent video games, crafting or whatever. These weren’t the sorts of kids you saw on the periphery of a schoolyard fight; these were the sort of kids that went years between their houses with their parents and then gathered in the basement of a house or church for whatever reason. There was talk of starting gangs, of getting jobs. There was talk of violence if the authorities weren’t careful.

It hadn’t been until fifteen or so that things really took a turn for the worse. By the time we’d finished, it was clear most were getting into it over nothing. One of the older employees of the store called out a handful of insults, a response to each, and then walked away.

I held my breath for as long as I could before reaching for the bottle of orange juice. I took a bite.

My dad caught up to me at the same time I did, and I got a glimpse of the scene at work. The young guy was grunting and grunting as he got more juice onto the counter, then grunting more as he hit his limit. My dad put both of us on a half-bark, half-laugh.

Before long, all of us were in a huddle, except for the one guy who had decided to stand his ground. He was talking loudly, making crude jokes about how girls weren’t allowed to attend Sunday school and calling out names. There were even hooligans who had showed up to disrupt the group. A few of my people even spoke up to cut him off, asking permission before hurrying away when they saw him. It was, essentially, him saying he wasn’t a factor, listening to me while trying to stay out of sight.

I decided to see what was up, and the second I saw no less than three individuals who fit the descriptions given by people who knew Coil and the people who had seen what happened

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 a group of people, I would think you’d be in jail, for trying to help a friend."

"I wouldn’t expect anyone to really believe that Armsmaster was in jail right now, considering what he’s done to me at Lung’s hands. That, and, apparently, Dragon was busy with the heroes after hearing about what Armsmaster did."

"I wonder what Armsmaster’s chances are if we went to him."

"Probably not good. Again, these numbers don’t take into account that people might try to use Dragon’s help later on…" I trailed off.

"No?"

We continued walking, and I tried to keep the conversation light. What was my name again, Melody?

"It’s Taylor, isn’t it?"

"Yeah." Was there a note of humor in the tone of the conversation?

I glanced back in the direction of the alley, where Dragon stood engaged in heavy fighting with Noelle. Noelle had a tendril or chain stretched between her wrist and her armpit, so any small movement of her arm could push her into the protective barrier. From my vantage point, it looked like she might slip into one of her mechanical spiders or beetles, become another mass murderer.

I wanted to slap someone. Was that an overactive imago or a relapse to old habits? to say something that sounded nice? I put a bug down on her arm and pressed it under her armpit- I suspected my finger tips, as I made contact, were numb.

She reached behind her back and pulled a knife across my face. My mask and the padding beneath it covered my face, but she still felt secure enough that I couldn’t see her doing it.

"Stop," I ordered her.

She stopped and opened her mouth. I stepped back through the gap, keeping my fingers on the knife edge, and she gripped my wrist just under the very top of my chin. She pulled it back, and her eyes moved right next to mine.

Was it fear or the urge to help? To give something to someone I didn’t know? I felt a tremor, like a strong emotion surging through me, and didn’t use my bugs to untie it.

"I’m going to have to do something drastic or I’ll never get another chance to help you," she said. Again, the urge to help.

I thought of what Grue had said. "My dad does this. Mom and Dad together make this hard. They take care of us and we can’t. We can’t cook, we can’t even clean, and they take turns cleaning because Mom and Dad hate us for it, and it gets messy. And then there’s the crazy people in our circle-"

"I can’t believe you talked about crazy," she hissed. "I know some people who really hate you. People who are going to do anything to hurt you or fuck you up."

I didn’t reply to that. I just kept walking.

"I don’t even know if we can get into this, because it’s so much more important-"

"If you wanted to go, I could understand. But you have to understand, I sort of stumbled into this. It’s really hard sometimes."

"Okay," I said. "Whatever. I guess I’ll figure this out."

"I’m going to run that way. We take the elevator down to the third floor. Go past the heroes, past the Wards, past the heroes and the Wards, past the Protectorate and the Protectorate teams."

"All of Alexandria, New Wave and the Protectorate teams. The non-cape members who were outed?"

I tensed. This was an order I’d held out of turn with the fact that I was going to be the one to talk to Glaistig Uaine, and I hadn’t been willing to give it to her outright.

Except that now it was something of an order, and it wasn’t on my list of priorities.

"We did, in a roundabout way," she said. "We found Glaistig Uaine, with some other thinkers and escape routes. I think the heroes think they can keep us out of here, though. The girl is smart, she wasn’t stupid. She designed a way to make themselves so strong they’ve been terrorizing whole swaths of the west coast. Maybe they think they can stop us because it’s going to tear up Tinker politics. I’m not saying they can’t,

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 a ground gun that someone kept bringing to bear, each successive efforting to fire from a slightly different angle, with a peculiar vibration.

He didn’t know if it was to cue a flare or to direct a direct hit. He took a second, then fired again. The gun that had started to rise in the air, the one that was poised to be the murder weapon, started to fall to the ground.

A flicker, blinding her.

His power still had yet to reach the man in uniform. The gun she’d just seen loomed over his head, and he was caught by the wires, only his palm visible above the guns.

Golem took three quick steps, and the man in uniform used his power to clear the guns away. The tips of the guns bent to draw the grip, but when it came down to the wire, the gun on top slid out of reach, and the man in uniform used his power, too. He got a grip on the gun, and the tip snapped off.

The wire was dull white, with faint furrows marking every surface.

But the man in uniform struggled. Sparks lanced down from his fingertips, one landing halfway on one gun, the other on concrete, the surface of which cracked like glass. The officer ordered for the firing squad to open fire.

He reached back, and he seized one of the guns, as if he were brushing aside something that was most certainly coming after him.

With the other gun still in reach, the officer shouted an order, but it was too late. The guns fell to the ground, and the wires snapped to rejoin the stock as it plummeted to the ground.

The man in white walked past the fallen, still fighting hands, and he used his power to teleport away, to reach the downed guns, to the ground. He seized one-six, a minigun. The other-three were weapons she had drawn up in advance, the chains and mechanism that connected the clips together almost like an extension of himself, moving like an arrow. Her.

"Weaver," the officer spoke.

"Yes sir."

The man in white pushed his way past the fallen, and he saw the girl in gold and green on the ground, beside her. The man in green, by contrast, was blind, deaf and his own eyes were still glowing from the power coursing through his veins.

"Weaver, I think you should step out," the man in white said. The green-clad man stepped aside.

Golem noticed a tremor as the man moved into the room. Something that hadn’t happened before, maybe an emotion shifted. Fear? Anger?

But the green-clothed man did not move his hand, and only put one foot on the flat of the other armrest.

"You’re here to arrest me, right?"

The green-skinned man took a step forward, then kicked the gun away.

"No sir," Golem replied.

The green-skinned man took another step forward. There was a heavy impact behind him. Something heavy. Something big.

"Get down on the ground," the man in white said.

The green-skinned man took another step, almost falling.

"What are you doing?" the one mute spoke.

"I stopped him from harming you. Can I-"

"No."

The man in white stepped close, but didn’t speak.

"Stop him, then," the man in blue said.

The green-skinned man stepped forward, and the man in blue used his power to hide himself. He had an invisible bodyguard, like a fashion model or something. It was so solid he couldn’t be sure if he was actually there or if the effects were simply that thick around him; the effects extended over the entire length of his body, but they almost lay in wait.

"I’m having real trouble understanding," the one mute spoke.

The green-skinned man stepped away, but he didn’t speak.

The effects shifted. It was like the appearance of little lights in a dark alley, spilling out of every corner and point where they didn’t fit. The colors gradually shifted, from shades of dark lavender, some dark brown, to shades that would make skin crawl. They spread and deepened as they broke through one or two walls, and then they became black, dim and desolate.

The green-skinned man raised his arm, and the effect deepened. A glowing dot, as if from every corner where the effect wasn’t quite as sharp, traced over the man in white’s head, through the green-skinned man’s hair and over the man’s body,

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 a couple of them.

One of them was a teenage girl with thick eyebrows. She was holding two little hands, seemingly bereft of her costume. A man was running after them, with a stuffed lion’s mane and fangs. The girl was holding a bouquet of white carnations, each about as long as a football, with red wreaths strung between them. She’d nailed a wreath of white to the side of the lion’s mane. It was a bit daft, that she’d done it like she had, but her intent was clear. Her white carnation wreaths seemed to match the man, almost prostituting one element of her femininity.

The other was a woman, tall, with thick eyebrows. Her costume was white, but for a black bodysuit. A man was running after her, with a large camera. She stepped back and leaped on top of it.

The moment the girl dropped to the ground, another cape leaped after her. She ducked beneath them, but others were already adjusting their positions to follow.

I couldn’t help but notice the way they were avoiding the two capes who had been standing between them and me, behind the counter where Amy was hiding and the two shooters. I wondered if they’d been hoping to get on Amy’s case? Or maybe they’d expected her to reveal they knew about the shooter beforehand.

The camera pointed directly at me, and I did just that.

"Aisha. Want to bet?"

I looked at Brian.

"Please."

I found the little fob on the kitchen counter and handed him the change pad. He picked it up and held it out with one hand.

"What are you betting? How much money?"

"I thought you’d want me to put it on a scale."

"Really? For a game?"

"For a game, yes. Only point for point, I guess. I thought it was a pretty good one."

"Oh."

"For a game, then," Brian said, returning the change pad.

"Then I’d say a pretty handsome bonus, if you ask me."

"Good point," he said, apparently deciding the topic of conversation. He handed me his change and offered my dad a hand up. I hesitated, reluctantly, before reaching out and putting my hand under his.

He straightened up a fraction, and we lifted the change pad to my left hand. It took some getting used to, but Brian and I managed to get the hang of it. I put the change pad down on the counter, and we quickly made our way back to the living room, where the TV was on.

The screen showed the weather through a window with a slider. Sunny, but not so much that it was causing any real inconvenience. I glanced at the screen, then at the small paper map that Lisa had displayed.

"How are the others doing?" I asked Brian.

"Pretty hot. And so far, the weather…" he trailed off.

"Is that because of the storm drain, or is it because of the curfew?"

Brian nodded. "They’re doing okay."

"Does being in the cold really help you sleep?"

"I’m not much for sleep, actually," I replied, struggling to find the words.

"The point I was just talking about, that the cold is bad for your mental health, you were talking about morale, specifically."

"Hmmm," he said, his light Scottish accent somehow more humorous than the one I’d heard before.

"Sleep," I corrected him. I was getting bored with this conversation, and I wasn’t content to leave it like this. "Bad for morale."

"Morality aside, are you really willing to tolerate a cold, a bad game of cold-weather shinobi versus snowboard versus-"

"Ninety-nine percent of the time, yes. That is a no, Danny. I could put you in contact with other cold victims, who would be just as screwed up as you are."

"What about your dad?" I challenged him.

"Apparently, because Brian just gave me his number for his old apartment, and the car I’ve been using has a heater. Or I guess it used to, before I had the bad habit of staying in the comfort of my own home."

"That sounds awfully familiar." Brian spoke up, "This winter, have you guys seen the news, since the end of the world?"

I was only vaguely aware of the TV present, but I vaguely recalled wanting something that wasn’t a dented

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 a bit of slack," Coil said. I didn’t like how it translated, especially to my bugs. It seemed almost forced. Was Coil thinking about giving me less ground? Or was he thinking about what his employees were doing?

"She’s not here," Bitch reported, looking over the mess. "She was with the kids."

Coil shrugged, "Some of that could be noise control or the noise of the kids running around. Don’t- you don’t want to know this."

He was getting harder, accusatory.

"I’m sorry," I said, sounding as confused as he did. Why had I asked if it was noise or noise control? It had sounded like a good excuse to me.

"You’re doing okay?" he asked, as if that was answer enough.

I frowned, confused. I looked down at my hands, where there was the foam that had served as my hands for so long, trying to reconcile the fact with the jacket that was hanging around my neck. "What? This stuff? Was it meant for something real? Stuff that would keep people alive?"

"It had to be stuff kids could use. It’s useless."

There was anger there. I turned to look at him, and it wasn’t smiling. Anger, frustration, relief.

"Okay," I agreed, and I didn’t say anything more, not even a simple ‘good job’ or a nod if I’d agreed to share. The PRT swept us into a section of the jail that was out of sight of the main street, and I was the last to move.





Buzz 7.10


Some kids had toy guns, others were wearing real guns, or were holding loaded guns. One kid even had a bomb, with a timer running down the sides of the bomb, with a red bar that lit up.

In the hallway, there were two more bombs. One was the large blue canister that the other kid had was a real bomb, with the timer inside matching the time it took for the bomb to detonate. As the timer ran out, the kid who had the bomb was caught and taken down. They let the kid go, and the PRT swept the area and anything with a blaring soundtrack out of the area. It seemed pretty inconsequential in the grand scheme of it all.

There were also two more of the things I could see splashed, one in the corner of the cell and one against one of the walls. When the fire had hit and the room had felt like it was on fire, I could only assume the fire had also hit one of the walls. Or the window, if you will.

There was one more scene to see, and I was happy to see that it was one I’d grown out of habit. One of the kids had fallen, or was being taken down with a steady, confident ease, only to find a more human, less dangerous posture as the handcuffs came off. The second, a girl, was lying prone on the ground, one arm round and cuffed to the floor of the cell. Her eyes were open, but her mask showed only a red and blue border as she stared up at the camera.

There were some things I couldn’t see, obviously. There were others that were too light, blurry to make out. I moved my hand where I thought it would be useful – in my purse, if you could guess. In each case, I had the kid move the hand I’d fixed in the carpet and found the camera.

I ran my hand along the shutter face while I caught each of the other scenes.

The third scene was from the news. Three hundred and fifty people were on hand, now, more armed than the D.D. had been at the time of the fight. PRT uniforms, guards and one or two more were all present for the camera, as cameras showed the crowd that had gathered to see the D.D. on the TV.

As I tried to think of a way to frame this, I recalled an old comic. A guy and his pet dog.

"Well said, pet," he said.

"They’d be paying us to stand up to these guys," I said, a bit defensively. "No ‘duty to warn’, no legal obligation."

It might have been a bad way to go.



Buzz 9.5


Incredulous grunts and minor parahumans were constantly on the lookout for small things, something one of the kids whispered about. It took an awful lot of courage, knowing that it would take a lot more courage to go out alone and make a name for myself. People were intimidated to

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 a handhold, and a few seconds later, he lunged forward at me, punching his palm against the crack in the metal of the walkway.

I caught his left hand and heaved it back against the walkway, in a very similar fashion. Both actions came with a tremendous impact, slamming into the back of the walkway and the walls. I only felt the crackle of metal on metal as he closed the gap and punched straight through.

"No!" A voice I couldn’t place. "No!"

My heart leaped into my throat as I heard the guttural roar that Raptaur’s creation must’ve unleashed. It was loud enough that I could hear it through my bugs, just barely barely.

"Oh god. It’s too loud." Aisha. "I can’t hear anything through my bugs, can’t hear the noise with my ears. Oh god."

I gripped my armor in my hands again, threw it at him like it was meant to strike fear into any assholes who heard it. It didn’t make even half the difference. As my metal formed into tatters and I scrambled to pull my costume off, he lunged, fists clenched.

He hit me, staggered to one side, as if he’d be unable to maintain his balance as he landed. I ducked backwards into the wall.

His claws ripped into the surface of the wall, into the floor beneath, like a dog might tear through a wicker book to retrieve a stuck pad. As he clawed his way out, I realized he was large. A lot larger than average.

There were ways to deal with him. I started putting pieces of wood around the walkway, to slow him down enough that I could get my hands on him. I realized he wasn’t blind, that he wasn’t armored. He wasn’t just big, he wasn’t just muscular. He was injury prone, frail, with all of the physical drawbacks that accrued as one got up bigger. His brain and nervous system were both bigger then his peers, and he had bigger hands.

Yet somehow, as though it had awoken from a long sleep, he roared. Something primal, something emotional.

"Not me," his roar echoed from the depths.

I grabbed his left hand and pulled him to his feet. I looked up and realized he was blind, badly injured.

Golem didn’t respond as he touched down. Instead, he pulled his hand back, so we were both standing, injury from multiple fractures, broken arm and leg, and a shattered rib that had apparently been from a bite or some kind of blunt object.

Not that it was in any way reassuring. I clenched my fist, hard, as hard as I dared. Not my strongest arm, but a fucking light one.

It was time to act. I looked around, feeling the surroundings as best as I could, and saw Panacea standing in the middle of a ruined building. She was holding a bouquet of white flowers and a black handbag. Above her, through the dust and fallen rubble, was the twisted remains of a man that should have been the perfect height and width for a hug. The killer, the only perfect height and width to me.

"I’m going to break him."

The answer was eerily quiet. I wasn’t sure how he’d phrased it, but he’d gone quiet. Was he afraid? Or had the fear made him act?

No. He went on, "I can put things back together. But I didn’t. I helped him break him instead."

"You’ll have to do better than that," she replied.

"I did," I said. "But I’m not going to fix his face."

The pain in my ribs made me cough sporadically. I glanced at Rachel, who was leaning against a wall, eyes half-closed, hair down.

And Rachel?

And the others?

In all this time apart, I’d barely touched her. I still held her at arm’s length.

Was I unlikable? I didn’t like the way the pain was affecting me, the way it was shutting me down. Was there any truth to the rumors? None of the others?

I was losing them. Dealing with them made no sense.

No. That would be a terrible idea. The way this was going, I’d be unable to do this for the rest of my life, and I’d probably never get to go back to school or get a job. I could only hope that they could use the

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 a lot out there. The way I see it, my power works differently now, here, with the wind and changing currents and the dust and everything that’s been knocked around. I’m limited in how fast I move, which means I can’t really do anything to get back into position fast, and I can’t afford to get tangled up in another fight. So yeah, I don’t think I’m going to be able to get back to where I need to be, once the dust settles."

"I don’t see how that makes any sense."

"I did some reading," I said, "Found that the fucking Simurgh is still around. Pretty much guarantees she’s going to come back. Her whole reason for existing is to terrorize and kill those who oppose her. The only reason we can get out of here is if we can get organized. I saw what happened to Shatterbird when the other Slaughterhouse Nine made themselves an official threat, and I can’t wait until this thing is through. Let’s make this as easy as we can."

"There’s only fifty people left on the planet that’ve been in contact with Coil today," Regent said, sighing.

"Then how’s the hold up going?" Trickster asked.

"I have no idea," I said.

"That’s a shame. We’re not getting a deal done."

"But we’re getting by," I said. "It’s better than what Coil was offering."

"I think you’re getting a much-needed income," Trickster said.

I considered briefly, then sighed. "I’ll give him that."

■

We landed and found ourselves sitting in the enclosed cockpit of the Dragonfly. It was a little spartan compared to what Coil had provided, the controls not controlled by a single point like they were on in his aircraft, but I was able to ignore that, thanks to Imp.

Coil’s people had whisked us off to a quay by the water.

"I sent the others," I said, already getting out, courteous as they usually were, "They’ll want to hear Jack Slash’s punishment."

The ship wasn’t docked yet. The Dragonfly was docked with the eighth and ninth ships in the Dragonfly, and we were whisked off to the area in question.

I opened the door, then waited while people filed out, a half-dozen PRT officers by the doors, all dressed up in their costume.

"What’s our punishment?" I asked.

"Assholes," Regent said. "Fuck, you’re worse than inmates."

"We got lucky," Imp commented.

Dragon’s Teeth. They were the luckiest people I’d met in this whole ordeal. They had the most experience dealing with people who wanted to take advantage of them.

A part of me felt like I’d be getting dragged into the thick of things, doing some detective work and gathering intel for the inevitable ride on the villain’s shoulders. Not as though there was any guarantee that this would actually happen.

"You did well," Defiant said. His avatar appeared, halfway up the bridge, and the ground shook. "But that doesn’t excuse the others."

"It makes up for some of the criminal elements who got away scott-free," I said. "But this is a bigger deal than any of that, you know?"

"I know. It’s not what you want to hear."

"Damn straight."

"Sierra is going to jail for at least five years. Jack deserved that far."

"Five years, Sierra," Golem said.

There was an edging up and into one of the cell blocks. People from that cell block filed out. I could hear children crying.

"You’re going to have to let Golem answer some questions, before you accept him as an accomplice," Defiant told me. "And you’re going to have to let the others handle some responsibilities while we get free. We’ve got a war on, mostly, and it’s better to take a break before it spirals out of control."

There were other voices on the other side of the door. Complaining, pleading.

"Defiant," I said. "We shouldn’t be fighting. If there’s trouble, the heroes can handle it."

"Okay," he said. His voice had a different tone to it than before

======== SAMPLE 95 ========
 a few feet away, "The fuck you—"

"The PRT was formed to serve the citizens of this city. We’re here to help combat the issues that plague us, and these small ‘villains’ are just a small part of the bigger issues that blight this city."

Sundancer’s eyes moved to the sky, as if checking whether there was any danger from the wind or the rain.

"But that’s not who we are. I don’t think any of us are that. I’m not a dictator, taking over the city. Making decisions to help the people instead of tearing them apart for our own selfish ends."

"That sounds a little far-fetched," Trickster said. "And it doesn’t make sense in terms of what you’re describing. Is your power somehow limited where your limitations apply?"

"No. The only reason my power works the way it does is because I’m under my creator’s control. I’m restricted in where I can go, restricted in what I can accomplish, and that changes when I use my power. My creator gives me the ability to accomplish what I want to accomplish, I get the results I want. Some people say my results are wishful."

"Sort of like a personality test?" Sundancer asked.

"Yes," Trickster said. "We develop a character, we nurture that through interaction, we emphasize one aspect of the person or people we want to influence. We call it that because it works best in the short-term. In the long run, we see where it leads to, and we cut out the bad elements. Powerful, powerful, powerful. I’m not one to brag, but I was once told that a three-hundred-and-sixty-year reign of terror is faster than forage, because forage requires the most for the next few years, then people start gathering, and the wheel never fully turns."

I thought of something in Mark Twain’s description of the behavior of certain Native Americans. In a nutshell, people wanted violence in situations where they had to be polite and peaceful, and violence invariably led to more violence. The people who started taking things to a more civilized level today may well be the same people who were the ones who started the genocide.

"Yes. This really is a pretty incredible power," Trickster said.

"True. And this is how we operate," Grue said. "Coil. Your other team leader."

"Yeah," Tattletale said.

"Grue," Trickster said, "We have a lot in common. We both like to play the race card. I have a power that allows me to put people in dangerous situations into a state where they could die, you have a lot of super strength, durability and the ability to move through hard objects as though they were little more than chunky twine."

Grue shook his head, "If you say so."

"But there are important differences. For one thing, my power gives me control over my bugs. I can place them where I need them, using them to track people, to injure, kill and psychologically traumatize. Your power mainly works by your subconscious, something my power avoids. Your power has its drawbacks, and there’s the possibility that it could be corrupted by someone you trust using it, but we have found that people who use their powers with some consideration to the end result tend to be more reliable. That said, there is the possibility that someone I trust could give my power undue influence, or that I could try to override your power with something else depending on the circumstance."

Grue nodded.

"My power is easier to use because I don’t have to be concerned about people knowing I control it. If the situation is critical enough to merit it, I can stay in one place for a few seconds to ensure my control is maintained. This means I don’t have to worry about people seeing me moving, my bugs reaching just long enough to catch a person in the chest before they’re out of my reach. If your enemy is smart enough to see that and try to escape, you’re probably safe from my power."

Trickster nodded. "So you have to choose what you do with my power."

"To be continued…" Tattletale smiled, waving her off.

"Trickster," Regent said.

"Fuck me," Trickster muttered.

"Hear me out. Trickster?"

"Yes," Trickster replied. "Grue and I went out to talk about this the other night. Your plan?"

"Oh, it was stupid," Regent told me. His tone was light, almost sarcastic

======== SAMPLE 96 ========
 a place where we don’t have superpowers, because if we do, we’re not going to get one here."

"There’s no sign of any villains here," Weld answered.

"Are you sure this place isn’t a trap?" Tranquilizer asked.

Weld shook his head, his chin rising a fraction. He wasn’t wearing his helmet.

"I got a report that some heroes are marching to a nearby spot to lay claim."

"Claim?"

"They said Coil is preparing to take over the city."

A city. Coil would have taken an entire army against the local heroes, and this small group was willing to die to stop him. "I don’t get it."

"There’s no way this is what he’s doing," Weld said.

I closed my eyes for a moment, as if I expected Noelle to appear any differently at any time and tapped into some unconscious defenses that were already in place. My eyelids, too, had a parahuman flair to them. Were there eyes on me beneath the visor? Even in my peripheral vision? Was my hair colored? The long black curls that had gathered around my shoulders somehow reminded me of the Black Widow from the movies.

Noelle wouldn’t show up until very late. And I was pretty sure she wouldn’t run any further than her normal half-mile in the presence of a superpowered being like Coil.

The two of us watched as a trio of villains made their way down the stairs. It made sense – they were the Wards, PRT and Protectorate.

"There they are," Weld reported.

"I thought they were leaving," I said.

"No need to panic," Weld informed me. "She’s preparing to knock down more of the edifices in an attempt to stave off inevitable defeat. The edifice should be knocked down, and the ensuing destruction should slow her down."

"What the hell are they doing?"

The trio stopped and turned to run. Two looked like they were from New Wave, the third looked like a villain group I had no business connection to.

"We need to get to the fighting," I said.

"Right. Wards, do you-"

I was cut off as one of the villains closed the distance, catching Weld and another of the Wards in the midsection. They fell to the ground as one of the other heroes catches them from behind. The villain was not only strong, but he’s almost entirely untouchable beyond the powers that the other heroes are able to disable him with. The villain’s only weak point is his exposed insides, but his costume absorbs the worst of his damage, leaving him virtually untouchable.

It would have been amusing if it weren’t for the bugs I was working in the area. The area was dotted with thousands of these tiny, horned killing machines that were churning out streams of gore as fast as I could see them. In one corner, past the pile of bodies, I could see a cluster of bugs closing the distance between two capes. A pair of heroes used their powers to try to save Tattletale, only to get their legs and heads turned toward the gelatinous blob. The other capes reached up to help, but neither tackled the gelatinous blob to get into serious range of the bullets.

"He’s turning harder," Weld reported.

"Roger that. He’s healing faster than he did a minute ago, and his power just keeps getting stronger. His raw strength is probably higher than he is, but he’s healing at twice the rate, and his power doesn’t stop him from being a tank for whatever fucked up reason. Either he regenerates faster or he just gets bigger and stronger as a consequence."

"We can get him down before he does," I said. "Tattletale, would you take the most powerful weapon you have? Or would you rather be dead?"

"I’ll take the most powerful weapon," she said.

"Good, good," I said. "We’ll take him down before he does any more damage to the city. Who’s the fastest cape in the city?"

"Trickster," the answer came back. "Does he heal?"

"And he regenerates. If we get him down low enough, he’s not going to do too much damage."

"Which weapon do you get?" Another question. "Or who do you get with the most power?"

Tattletale glanced at me, then shook her head.

"Fuck," I said. "Anyone?"

======== SAMPLE 97 ========
 a slight hesitation.

I glanced at Tattletale. "Is anyone else having a hard time sleeping at night?"

"Maybe if they just stop caring about Endbringers, they can rest easier for a bit," she said.

I nodded. "Can you blame them?"

She turned her head my way, and there was a hint of a smile on her face, but her eyes were only on me.

I felt like there was something off about the fact that she was being so patient with me, whereas Tattletale had been willing to be impatient with Bitch, to push me to the limit.

She could be leaving me be, I thought.

I frowned, frustrated. How long had I expected? I didn’t sleep a wink, but I guess time was a bitch.

I was all too aware that if I opened my eyes too soon at the end, I’d shut them again.

Barker, the old man and the fat old woman were there, watching me, waiting. I had only the chance to take a step forward, to fight or move past them. I didn’t, and I reached out with my power.

It felt clumsy at first. Then I got used to it. My feet touched the ground, and I just slid. My hands were tense, but I had control. I could move my entire body, and I couldn’t move my arms, or my legs. My fingers didn’t even touch the ground.

I thought about fighting them, and the fights against the Merchants, I could win some way. There was always going to be at least some people who were okay with it. Might even be more. If I was brave enough to fight them, they’d get tired, and they’d give me a reason to drop them like a hot potato.

But I wasn’t brave. I knew that. I tried to reason with them, to convince them that I was going to be a good guy and then stop being good. But even if I did it all right, if I put in the hours and the training and all of the restorative magic and all of the stuff that Barker and the others and I had been doing for years had taught me, it would only make me feel like a failure, like there was some greater barrier I had to climb.

I was tense. I was well aware of just how easy it was to just snap.

"I could use my power," I said. "Just a little longer."

Without waiting for a response, I raised one hand. With a little more force, I brought two of the dogs down onto the arm-in-hand walkway between the two shelters, one sitting on the sidewalk and the other on the hard ground. They were fast enough, and the dogs had to be fast for something. Not all of them would survive.

The dogs were noisy, and it was clear they didn’t like my body-checking them. Either the body language was hostile, or Barker was using his power and they were responding to his tone.

The other shelter had a full floor of people inside, and dogs like these weren’t. It was as though a wild animal had taken over an isolated human settlement, and shelters were the only place where people came to congregate. There were families sharing two dogs, couples having two or three dogs of their own, and everyone else was either out on their own, in shelters or on the streets, waiting for the shelters to close.

Sharkskin, I thought. His original costume was red and black and featured an image of a shark’s snout. Some say it was a representation of the cruel side of humanity, inspiration, a metaphor, a reminder that even the good guys could come after you after a time.

The interior of the second shelter, where people were being kept, turned out to be a little tougher. There weren’t as many windows, no food sources or water. Everything was hard ground, concrete and brick, with bunk beds, bunk chairs and bunk mattresses arranged in a mat. There was a mess of bodies here and there, but it wasn’t an onslaught of bodies. More of the dead or injured that were falling to the waves or from the flames.

Someone was hitting something hard enough to make it bounce up and out of the shelter. Not all of them were hitting the same thing.

No, their attention had been on Barker instead of the four guys and a girl who were trying to defend Sundancer. Barker was a mixed martial artist, the other two were probably Bitch or Bastard. I didn’t recognize either name.

"Barker and four girls that are as big as she is are defending her," Coil spoke, his voice almost gentle.

======== SAMPLE 98 ========
 a bit like that."

"I’d make another argument, if there was anything for me to contribute," I said, "I would like to see this as something positive."

"Again, I think that it would be arrogant and counterintuitive," I said, "to think that we should all work together to help others when we’re more divided than ever. That said, I do think it would be more constructive to at least try to work with those of us who believe in our cause than it would be to ignore the others."

"What’s your view, then?" Brian asked me.

I shrugged, "I’m not really a thinker. I tend to think more like a scientist. How can we achieve both? Science and more specific, more intangible goals should be my field of study, and I’m interested in all of that stuff."

Brian nodded. He then went on, "I know you have strong opinions on a lot of the larger stuff. With all of that in mind, I have some questions for you."

I hesitated, but I spoke up, "Let’s go, then."

I glanced over my shoulder at the guy, who was sipping at the water from the plastic container that was hanging from the wall. As I saw him looking, I realized he was a good five feet taller than me, with a bit of extra muscle on his frame.

"I’m kind of in love with the way you’re standing there and the way you’re running your errands," I told him.

He smiled behind his mask, but didn’t respond. When I glanced towards the exit, I saw he was turning to walk away.

Was I being too harsh? I couldn’t say. I was being facetious, trying not to pick at his feelings.

"Hey," Brian spoke up, "You okay with this?"

The look he gave me was the look I’d been reluctant to give myself. It was a hard one, hard to interpret. He was good at understanding complex things. It would be unfair if I didn’t point out that he was good at understanding things as well.

"I dunno, man. If I had a nickel for every time you’ve pissed me off, I could fry this page."

"A way of life."

That didn’t sit well either. As if it was fitting with a god of the underworld, the Greek god of death, it was somehow jarring with the god of butterflies. I left it at that.

"You can keep talking like that."

"I’m not tough."

I felt a bit of sympathy for Brian, seeing it that way. It felt so… shallow, however, for him, that he’d be so bothered by the idea of having someone that loved him with all of the vulnerability and heart he’d worked so hard to cultivate.

I tried to soften the blow, talking about the feelings that were clearly still fresh in my mind. "When things start getting better, the feelings will be soothing. Sometimes, in a way, it’s going to be like a drug, your body going through a kind of ... enlightenment."

I could see his expression soften at the comparison. "Like, how you became that way, and your life has meaning because…?

"Either way, it’ll get better, eventually."

Another sigh.

I didn’t want to end this when we’d reached our destination, so I kept talking, hoping to get a response from him. The way he was pacing, his hand on my shoulder, the way he was eyeing my ass, and the general lack of affection… I knew this would be the moment he turned on me and broke down in tears.

"If this is it, then maybe there’s a place for me in the group, in the group of people who’ve been through what you’ve been through. Maybe there’s a role model there."

"No, there isn’t," he said. Again, his hand was moving so his own shoulder wasn’t contacting mine, it felt almost cruel. "You’re better off alone."

"Maybe," I said, my voice a bit firm. That wasn’t exactly right. I needed to start somewhere.

"It’s all temporary, pretty much. The drugs, all of this, they take a lot longer to get to me than they do to the people they were supposed to help. Maybe a month or two, after they get to me, and then they’re like, ‘Oh shit, hello again!’,

======== SAMPLE 99 ========
 a woman. There’s an injured kid, and then there were three more people, all in all. I grabbed one to use his brain until I could figure out what he’d done. He had developed an absolute hatred for me, to the point that he’d set his dogs on me to serve as a human shield. He’d been counting on my help, and this just pissed him off."

"His dogs had gotten to him because they were used to people never giving them the respect they deserved. That was his social norm, until he lost touch with the group. When he did regain some pride, it was because he’d had someone to rely on, someone to attack. Now, with everyone so closely monitored, nobody safe to approach, there’s nobody to attack but those who are assigned to guard the blind spots. I think my dad taught me a few things."

There were nods all around.

"I think my dad was mostly right to say that everyone has blind spots. I can see a lot of damage, but I can’t see the absolute worst of it. No offense." Karen’s eyes drifted to the other two, and she muttered, "What the hell are you reading?"

"Dad taught me a few things, but I already knew what he was talking about," Brian said. "The worst stuff was already here. The next worst would be-"

"I don’t want to put too fine a point on it," Lisa said, before Alec cut her off. "The best material we have for now is what our dad saw on the news. If she’s not going to share, then maybe the guy on the news should at least let her use the phone?"

"Right."

Lisa took the phone and put it on speaker. As the sound filtered through the apartment, the tension in the air began to dissipate.

Her dad watched on the other side of the phone. "You went to the same high school as Brian. Given what happened at school, I’m not surprised you didn’t go straight. If anything, I’m surprised you didn’t go straight, because going straight would mean finishing school with a B-plus."

"I don’t even think I was straight," Alec said.

Lisa shrugged.

"I’m kind of hoping you’re wrong," Brian said, "That the person with powers is just a human with an attitude, and a B-plus is just dumb."

"Damn right I was hoping you weren’t lying about Bitch and Cousin," Alec commented.

"Alec, are you trying to get me into this motherfucking battle of wits?" Lisa pointed out. "Or are you just really fucking smart?"

"Hmph," Alec replied, sounding annoyed. He was wearing a t-shirt with the word ‘shitty’ on it, but most of the people in the apartment had it on something else.

"My point stands."

"What’s the point?"

Brian shrugged. "It seems dumb at this point to be dwelling on the fact that we’re down to the last few minutes and probably won’t make it out of this as a group before the four of us are all worn out and someone shoots us. I’d rather fight you guys than let them."

Lisa frowned at him.

"What?" Alec said, "No! Just… no."

"We don’t have to pick a side. Just shut the fuck up!" Brian retorted.

Lisa grinned a little.

Sensing danger, Alec picked up the phone and called the number on the screen. A voice guided the screen to a screen displaying the police blotter. A white square with a circle on the opposite side filled the screen.

"PRETTY SAFE, KATHLEEN," the blonde explained, "Kathleen Hanna, PRincipal. She said you were a pure-hearted young man who experienced a dire situation and drew the wrong conclusions."

Hannah’s head snapped to look at the person in the back of the car, "Jesus caphe-"

"Don’t call me that. It’s the guy who’s doing the talking. Taylor, come here, we’ll take you upstairs. And don’t go picking a fight, I’m not picking a fight with you guys."

"Fine," she said. She was really hoping she wouldn’t get in trouble? Damn this pointless shitgame. "What the fuck."

"We could press charges," Alec quipped.

Lisa gave her an annoyed look, "Fine,

======== SAMPLE 100 ========
 a lot of people who saw the video and the newspaper article were asking questions. Was this just a ploy from people who didn’t have any connection to the project that they were pissed at, or was this a blatant attempt to take credit for the hard work that was put in?

I didn’t have any time to ponder or try to work out the latter, so I sent my bugs into the room ABB had waded into in the initial confrontation. I burned the two members until their backs were pressed against the wall. If I recall, the group had initially attacked the Merchants because they were trying to rob a supermarket. Knowing that my bug-borne illnesses were going to fuck with their routines, they’d decided to attack the food anyway. I burned Eugene and got his attention.

Since my bugs were getting to the Merchants, they hadn’t been able to get far and the others had taken up the attack. The two members of the ABB who’d been leaving the Merchants to deal with that stuff had apparently changed tacks, and were now taking the easier route. People were starting to complain about the spread of misinformation, so I decided to capitalize on the attention with some countermeasures.

"What have you done?" I asked, looking towards the two guys and the dog.

"Nothing," Bakuda answered me. She had a lighter lighter in one hand and the flame went out quickly, perfectly.

I wasn’t sure what to say. Feeling like I owed her dinner, maybe if I spent a little longer, she just shrugged and didn’t say anything.

"No offense?" Bakuda asked, while I lay there on the floor of the workshop. "You really helped."

I turned and raised my face to the floor to see her smiling smugly. There were a few droplets of water on my forehead, but I would have thought I had spent too much time outdoors after six straight nights at the workshop.

"Not a threat," she growled the words.

"Thanks."

"For today’s assignment, I wanted to find someone new. You guessed?"

I nodded.

"Go get him."

I pulled off one of the sweatshirts I’d tied around my waist, then ran one piece of clothing through the pockets. A sweatshirt, a basic one-piece uniform with a few less buttons than the one I wore underneath my dress.

Bakuda bent down by the dog, grabbed it by the hair and pulled it into a bear hug. The dog growled and protested, trying to pull away, but she ignored it. When she pulled away, the growl was far from quiet, and there was no slack in the leash either.

I almost laughed. It was the first time in a million years that I had come across something amusing that somebody else had made, and it had usually been a fairly rudimentary creation that people had created themselves. The difference was that this one had had a really interesting sound to it.

Bakuda let go of the dog, then turned to me, frowning a little.

"Anyone want to make a dog? It’s pretty bearable, and I’d like to hang out with you guys for a bit."

I shrugged, then headed upstairs to my room. There were towels arranged on the bed, a pile of dog shit by the wardrobe door, and a TV on the top shelf of the shelf.

Bakuda didn’t stay any longer. She emerged from between the layers of clothing I had bound up, and stepped into her sweat pants and tank top. While she was still inside her room, I grabbed my cell phone. I’d left it in the mailroom, and hadn’t touched it since I’d left the workshop. I headed upstairs and unlocked the lockers so I could get in touch with our boss, get the materials and instructions for making our own masks on site.

I’d been in a bad headspace when I’d started my second year in college, and I’d gotten just a little too comfortable in my anxiety over things getting sorted out and getting working. I’d started wearing loose fitting clothes to class, mostly because it was easier to wear the way I did when I wasn’t stressed, a lot of it because clothing was something I couldn’t bare if I went out in public. That had changed a little while ago, as I’d gotten more serious about not wearing or being seen in the company of too many clothes. As a consequence, I dressed sloppily where I could, and didn’t go the way with the flow or to the degree that I could change things up later. I think my new haircut was sort of a product of that, and


======== SAMPLE 1 ========
 didn’t like anyone, the people she knew or cared about, but she couldn’t stand by and watch her friends die. The girl in the suit was being careful, but that might be a sign that there was a risk of the suit getting a hold on her, just to keep her prisoner and keep her from tearing the mask. She’d had enough time to eat and get her bearings.

The air grew heavy, thick with the traces of the brown-shrouded man’s power. She shook her head, pushing away the thoughts of the man who was still lingering in the booth beside her.

He seemed to come to an unconscious agreement with her. As he settled his head on her lap, his hands moved in response to a general direction, and she was suddenly aware of her power, able to give him direction in a thousand different directions at once.

"Taylor," she murmured.

"I’ll come with you," he answered. His voice echoed in the booth’s booth-garage door.

As she looked from one pedestal to the next, calculating the best position, and from one pedestal to the next, calculating how to raise himself above the crowd, she could hear the sound of hands reaching out to touch each other.

Her heart leaped into her throat. Taylor. She almost said goodbye, almost said bye, but she didn’t.

There was no goodbye like that. Not at the end, anyway.

■

"You’ve gone quiet," Alec spoke. He was sitting in a booth by the entrance of the craft. He wore his costume and mask from the last time he’d been in a PRT-issue PRT-issue cap. He sported a length of chain around his neck, identical to the lead line of a fence.

Aisha was sitting at the station just behind Alec. Their proximity suggested they were both attending the meeting.

He’d asked Aisha to stay quiet during the meeting. Aisha had protested, and Tattletale had called them "distractions" instead. Tattletale had since been replaced by Miss Militia.

"Tattletale," Alec spoke, "Can we break the silence? We have the main discussion, and there’s barely any questions left."

"I don’t think so," Aisha sounded almost chirpy. "Not unless you want to mention the topic of our discussion."

"Let’s not make this a discussion about ‘recruiting heroes’," Tattletale spoke, "We could bring it to a head with our participation, and we know it’s not worth it."

"It’s not a discussion that’s worth having," Alec replied, "It’s about reciprocation, taking orders from better than one."

"I can’t tell you how to feel proud or embarrassed or whatever," Aisha spoke.

Alec sighed, "If there’s a place where we can start, it’d be here. I’m not interested in rehashing the same old shit we’ve been through in our short visits here. Not with the potential for tragedy that lies ahead."

"Then what do we do?"

"Nothing," Tattletale said, "And that’s okay."

"Then let’s get down to business," Alec announced. He moved to the booth just to her right, ready to lay out his prepared statement. Rachel, Brian, and Alec all joined him. Brian raised his hands. "Let’s do this as a group. If two people can’t agree, then that’s it. If everyone agrees, then that’s it. We’re done. No deals."

Everyone nodded. It was hard to not get swept up in the moment.

"I got the emails through today, I have the plan in mind to break even, and we’re hoping three times out of five we do." Brian said.

"Do three times out of five mean anything to you?" Alec asked.

"I’m just saying money talks, and there’s more money to be made if it’s a big enough deal. No deals. If it doesn’t work out, well, the big reveal will hurt us, but we hope it will help sell the idea. It might not work out, but we’ll make enough money to last us for a lifetime."

"What kind of deals?"

"Government, defense industry, multinational corporations. Anything big, we’re buying from the Chinese, the Russians and the other big guys."

"It makes so much sense

======== SAMPLE 2 ========
 didn’t make it any harder than it was on the original job, I think," Tattletale replied. "But it’s not a pleasant change. I’m kind of hoping they’ll find a way to make it up to me. I can’t do much, really."

"Except sue me," Grue spoke. "And tell me we’re making enough that you step down, let go of any promises you made, and let me take control."

"What do you think?" Tattletale asked him.

"It’s not a good change," Grue answered her.

"I think you’ll still want to work for a government agency like any other employee, will want to hold to the positions you held before. However this fits into your overall plan, keep in mind that it’d likely play out over long periods of time, with the capes you’ve got on the team potentially serving as a bridge and a liaison between you and your subordinates."

"I see."

"Longer term, I have concerns about how this plays out. You already have your hands full with maintaining the status quo."

"Change is good," he answered her. "I’m excited about it."

"And I have concerns. Especially with the fact that you’ve enlisted the help of one of the two capes we kidnapped. I was pretty sure you weren’t planning on using Coil’s crew, because I doubt they’re your people."

"Whatever’s going on with Glory Girl and Panacea, I get that stuff’s important."

"That’s all it’s ever been for."

"It’s starting to feel like the changes you’re making are being driven by considerations of more immediate things than what came before. Things get more serious on the down-low, and you’re quick to dismiss my concerns about your doing so, to dismiss the whole affair."

"I do," she answered, her voice soft.

"I’m talking about your long term, and I have concerns about how it all plays out."

"You’re talking about me being the guy who’s on the down-low and your side-guy."

"Yeah," she said. "I think you’re a little lost, Skitter."

"I know, and I totally get how you felt betrayed by us, before, but that doesn’t mean the betrayal isn’t important to ensure the proper outcome of this. Think about it."

"It’s like putting the fox into the henhouse," Regent said. "It has to be good."

Tattletale shook her head a little. "I don’t get it, Skitter. Why does it have to be good?"

"If it’s because it’s Scion’s power then that’s great. But if it’s because he’s hot stuff that’s going to spark violent altercations and lead to real world problems then that’s a damn shame. My idea is to set it off in a more benign way. If it’s going to happen and people become collateral damage we’re going to have to work very hard to get people to cooperate, to get them to trust us without question, without feeling like they’re pawns in a bigger game."

There was a pause where nobody spoke for long seconds before Tattletale returned with a mound of paperwork. "Okay."

"What happened?"

"Tattletale and I managed to get someone to read the logs and stop Cauldron from tampering with them, which wasn’t easy, because they could have used the same kind of power we did to read our own logs. Regent had an idea about using his power on Genesis to see if we’re reading the same logs or reading different logs, perhaps. My suggestion, if you’re reading the logs for the second time and feel like you’re getting lost in translation, it’s easy to fix that by going back to the beginning to fix a misspelling there. I’ll explain in a second."

She gestured with the mound of paperwork.

"Here," Imp said. She dug through the pile of paperwork and found the book she had been reading in the cafeteria, where it had been stashed with the other bound titles. She reached into the middle of the page, turned pages, and found the section just after the equations.

On every page of the book, with the equations only, there was a crosshatch pattern.

"

======== SAMPLE 3 ========
 didn’t, I’d been able to find him in a similar predicament. He wasn’t so lucky. They’d shot his hands, face and legs every time he moved. He didn’t feel something on the periphery of his own power.

Had he hidden something in them that the government didn’t already know? Or was he something more dangerous? Something the public wouldn’t be able to identify with just the way they looked? The other cape?

It was a frightening thought.

"It’s alive," Dinah whispered. "I want to feel it."

She’d heard so much about feeling, about being in that dark place where you did or you didn’t feel something and then you couldn’t figure out why. It had been before she’d had a body count, after she’d had her powers, before she’d made friends, before she’d been a member of the Protectorate. This was something more basic. Something she’d tried to compensate for in life, where the experience of dreading something without knowing why had been compounded by the fear of what might come next. Her power had just given her a way to fight that fear, to counteract all of the psychological warfare.

"I’m losing it," Trickster whispered.

"You’re losing it, Trickster," Dinah replied. "You’re going to have to explain it to us? Do you want to go to Mars? Or is the universe going to kill you?"

"Mars is impossible," Trickster sounded so feeble and out of tune with reality that it was almost laughable.

Dinah had a picture bandaged across her nose. She was coughing so violently it was almost a tidal wave.

He tried to move his arm, but it clung to her body.

"Do you want us to go to Mars? Because there’s no other way to explain it than as a metaphor. We reach a threshold, and you take off, and you die. There’s no universe to enter. There’s only this grief. And I’m only seventeen. I cry over this stuff. I’m not that old, and I still cry every day, so why shouldn’t I? I grew up with you, I was close to you, and there’s nothing left to say."

"I don’t think that’s what you’re thinking," Trickster said.

"It’s not. It’s so cliché you brush it off, but that’s how you see it. I think we’re on the same page. We understand the grief, and we understand why some capes are still grieving, even though they’re older and their power is stronger."

"But you understand the science, Dinah," Trickster cut in. "You understood all of this shit that we were talking about, right?"

Dinah shook her head, not buying his argument. "Don’t. Don’t tell me there’s no other way. Why can’t we all just go to Mars, and it’s the end of the world as we know it comes true?"

"That’s a fantastic way to spend your life," Trickster said.

"No."

"What?"

"Only when everyone went to Mars," Trickster said.

He was going to say something to Grue. Something to change the subject. Then he stopped himself. He felt so ashamed of himself that he couldn’t come up with a good response.

"No?"

"It’s the end of the world as we know it."

"No, that’s what you’re saying. How’s that work?"

He shook his head. "No. Don’t you dare tell me. I won’t lie to you. I don’t want to. But I’ll…" He stopped, his mouth moving, making it sound like it was in one’s voice, but it wasn’t. He turned back to Dinah, "I’ll tell you what happens. You keep that to yourself."

Dinah folded her arms on the arm across her face.

"When the Endbringer arrives, we stop him with the tools at our disposal. Teams from around the world come after him, every day, looking for him, trying to pin him down, find other key members. I find one, and we win the day. A key member of the Protectorate comes after him in a different way than the one

======== SAMPLE 4 ========
 didn. My bugs had been too dense.

I’d been too far away, my bugs had died. The moment I moved to my hand was the moment I sensed the effects of the decoys. I started to haul them back, felt a tug there.

There was only one thing that could kill the decoys as well. Time and again, I’d run into problems when I tried to use my decoys. The moment my hand touched something, my bugs were crushed.

Maybe that was my limit to this.

I gathered my power. Holding my spear, I let it sink through the crack in the wall.

Two seconds later, my bugs erupted in dozens. My swarm, of course, but also the decoys, the other individuals.

I found the traitor. He’d concealed himself well. The only changes were minor, and they barely adjusted his armor.

I activated my power.

And another, and another.

This was just a step, a string to tie him up. He couldn’t really do anything about these decoys, or I’d be feeding him information about my location, and he’d be one less thing to play with.

"Skitter. How many seconds are they holding her?"

"Three," My bugs said. "Eight seconds."

"Can you start?" Grue asked.

"Seventeen if you count the time until the nine’s scream, I should point out."

"I don’t… I don’t think that’s very smooth. My power says she might be using a different kind of power than the rest. Maybe it’s a very specific power."

"I know. That can be part of it," Tattletale said. "But how do I get a bead on it herself?"

The thought was tantalizing.

I thought of Alexandria. She’d seemed so small, when we’d gone up against the Nine. Now that I was looking at her, I had an idea of how big she was. She could be ten or twenty times as big as she’d been a few minutes ago.

With the help of my bugs, I figured I would find out. If I didn’t figure it out the minute it became a question, I would time things, put in the distance, make it as vague as I could.

I gathered the bugs into a thick cluster.

"Nine. I’m not sure I trust my ability to remember their names, but I think I can figure it out. Maybe she’s using her power to find each one’s weaknesses, like we did with Jack’s pet…"

My bugs let me pick up the chirping of a butterfly among my bugs.

"She’s using her power to find weaknesses in each of us, basically. We could die if she doesn’t take us out. With two or three of us… that’s pretty much the entire team."

I nodded along with my teammates when I heard that.

"Then that’s as many as we can hope to take out before she binds us. You’ll have to help Armsmaster."

Grue and Bitch were arguing, and it didn’t seem to be helping. What had Bitch said? The Nine were mindless, emotionless killing machines. Even if they weren’t the type to kill en masse, Grue would kill one or two or three members of his team. They were guys who took what they could from the environment, from other people, and who they lived off of in the form of resources. If the relationship between Grue and the Nine wasn’t mutually beneficial, at least it would be indirect, non-"reproductive."

"We can beat them," Miss Militia said.

I frowned.

"What about the miasma, Taylor?" Grue asked.

"In some cases, it’s a mental thing," Tattletale said. "The clones feel the emotions of the real you, and they’re programmed with responses that back them up. But in others, it’s an organism. The clones feel and react only what their programmers think they’ll feel."

Miss Militia nodded.

"So it’s about context," I said, "If we go with Jack and the others, then it’s because we know our targets. If we go by the files, then it’s because we think our targets will be attracted to us. I’d take the miasma because I think it plays a part in the personalities, the powers and the ways they think, and I

======== SAMPLE 5 ========
 didn’t make sense to me. My power was stronger than this. I’m surprised he didn’t die, too," Tattletale smiled. The girl was smiling as well, albeit less resigned. "And you know he’d try to kill you if you didn’t get him."

The girl glanced around to double-check everything wasn’t a trap, then went on with her day. She went shopping, found a new dress for her to wear over the top of her costume, and left.

We were left with the two other girls, and two adults. We’d managed since Trickster hadn’t arrived, and both Amy and Brian were wearing their costumes. The adult was looking worried as he looked over the clothing, trying to find one that fit Tattletale and Alec.

I wasn’t entirely sure how to feel about that. On the one hand, it was a blessing that the adults were trying to instill some discipline. On the other hand, it made me wish I could get Brian a present like I got presents for my kids. I really wanted to.

"Thanks for being quick about it," Trickster smiled, "I’m going to call Lisa tomorrow and see if I can get her to let us have a late lunch. We’re not quite done, so I’ll text you to tell you about what we’re missing."

"Sure," I replied, before hanging up.

The two other Wards were at the kitchen, waiting for their food to come out. Sundancer hopped up to greet me, while Ballistic paced around the house, ignoring Grue and making his way downstairs. I headed up to the window and watched the cityscape through the few hours I had free.

The sun was just rising above the mountains just outside Gimel. The air was crisp and cool, and the golden light of the setting sun streamed down through the clear, water-filled valley.

For another four hours, we ate lunch, talked about the work and where we needed to improve, then watched a slightly different show each night.

Alec, Rachel, and their parents were there, along with their families. We’d arrived by the same time that Brian and Lisa did, and had each taken different paths. Rachel’s sister was sitting on a bench by the water fountain, a bottle of water in her hands. That was the only sign of her being out. The rest of the family had gathered at the window, smoking and drinking soda. My dad and the oldest sister had taken a slightly different route, taking different routes.

I wasn’t surprised. On the contrary, I was very pleased.

"So, where’s the work?" Brian asked me.

"I was just checking in with Trickster," I told him. I turned around, "Trickster is supposed to be the new de-facto leader of the team, but he’s been MIA for weeks now, and Trickster hasn’t been going to meetings. I called to ask if he was going to pick up where he left off, and he said he’d be working."

My dad nodded, "He just lost a fight, and that’s a big reason for the MIA."

I frowned. "What did Trickster say?"

"About a week ago, before we went out for our missions," Alec said, "He got a phone call from one of the Merchants. Apparently he’s been going around to capture people who aren’t their target or people they think the Merchants might catch. This guy mentioned picking people from your territory and bringing them to me, or convincing them to do stuff I’m not tied up in. Tasing people, killing them if they aren’t his people, or just using them to work for him and test his power."

"Or…" my dad started, "He could say he’s got other powers, that he’s a total deceiver."

"He’s not that convincing," I told him.

"I think we’d kill him for that," Alec said.

I shook my head.

"So what are we supposed to do with him?"

"Just give him whatever power makes him angry, and hope that whoever he brings to me has better powers than him," I said.

"And you won’t tell him to fuck off," Alec added.

"I was waiting for the day he was off the team," I said. "If that happens, and people who give me credit say he’s been destroying the city and hurting people because he doesn’t have anyone to blame but himself, I figure I’ll be

======== SAMPLE 6 ========
 didn’t hear the words.

A noise caught my attention. A movement of a hand, and a blob of stone erupted from the ground in front of Dragon.

I couldn’t even gauge how far between breaths it was. Half-second breaths, then longer, heavy breaths with a crackling sound. A heartbeat later, the stone began to stir again, the movement accelerating.

There was also some variation, in the movement patterns, speed and sizes of the stone balls. There was something distinctly different about the ones that responded to the noise.

It was at this point that I began to doubt whether we were accomplishing anything.

A speedster and an armless heroine made their way down an alley. They reached the bottom of the complex before making another U-turn and making their way towards the beach. An instant later, the ramp was lowered, the cape with the slowest metabolism making his way down to the beach, faster than the rest.

And the rest of us… well, nobody particularly stood out. The girls went the furthest they could go with the clumsier access routes, the guys the easiest route to navigate. A young, twenty-something man, tall for his age, a civilian with dyed blond hair and a face that was half-dark, half-pale.

"If you don’t mind," Legend said, by way of explanation, "I’m trying to convince you to leave the PRT to be a hero."

"Yeah, me too," I said, speaking through my swarm. There were only four capes in my suite – Legend, Rachel, Grue and Imp.

As the four of us made our way upstairs, Genesis strode up to my room and opened my door. She didn’t press the button, but she opened the door, and there was a sound like a sledgehammer dropping onto a flat tyre.

I had to flop over and scream to get out before anyone noticed what was going on.

"Hey!" a voice called out from across the room. Rachel had woken just as it opened. We were all standing, now.

"We’re getting ourselves ready," Legend said. "Take some damage, you’re all going to get a visit from the medics."

Grue didn’t reply to that, but Rachel was already striding across the room. She scooped up an empty bottle from the stand below, snatched it up as Legend spoke to her.

"This is our fight, their fight," Legend said. "We’re the ones who count, the ones who have to lose sleep if we’re going to get by. You’ll either hit hard enough or hard enough to affect the whole city, or lucked out and found yourself in a bad spot. You’re not even the most important thing if you’re not working on protecting everything."

We didn’t have long before the medics got our gear in order. Rachel ran to the kitchen, grabbed the thermos, and a tissue, and began sorting out the stuff.

Grue was combing through the debris with his power. Inches of fallen glass and glass shards replaced them.

"So ugly, when you’re not even aware of what’s going on, and things get worse, or you’re a hundred times worse, and you’re not in a position to help, to save someone?" Genesis asked.

"We’re putting things in a position where we can’t help the people we’re helping, and I sort of struggle with that. I have to make calls that potentially save people, and I’m kind of a slave to them."

"We’re talking a lot of money here," Legend said. "We also need Sauron’s power, we’re losing quite a bit of power from the Wardens, and you’re not filling the gaps."

"We can offer that," I said.

"So you’re saying you’re willing to turn a blind eye while hundreds die every day," Legend said.

"I could be blind!" I said, my voice a touch hysterical. "I could be blind!"

"No," Legend said. "You’re aware of what’s going on."

"Why can’t you give the answer?"

So unfair, so ungrateful. I’d had the opposite experience, worked for the system. I didn’t want war, but what did she get in exchange? Peace?

"I’m… not sure. I guess I don’t get why you have to be so distant. I

======== SAMPLE 7 ========
 didn’t make sense."

"You mean it’s imaginary."

"No."

"Okay. You’re not seeing the connection there."

"Yes. I’m not getting the drift. Real life doesn’t work like that. It’s the same in fiction as it is in reality, but the stakes are much lower. Fiction is the world that’s changed, the people, the places, the histories, and that’s coming to a close, the next cycle."

She shifted her weight, and she looked more alive than she had since Weymouth had entered her room at the Docks.

I didn’t reply to that, instead setting the bugs to attack. One butterfly, and she changed into a venomous beast.

My swarm continued to overwhelm her, and she tried to attack the swarm-decoy, launching herself into the swarm-building maelstrom as a final desperate attack. The bugs were responding well to the direction the swarm was moving, and My bugs were tearing the decoys apart before they could be worth the trouble.

It was enough. She wasn’t even pulling herself together as a cohesive mass.

"Good girl," Armsmaster praised her.

"I’m going to kill you."

"No! Please!"

"We need to set all numbers to zero or we’re fucked. You’ll go mad if you don’t get a hundred-zero-zero-zero-change."

She turned her focus away from the increasing number of bugs and towards the decoy. It was a decoy, a mask, but the veins where her armor and hair were positioned seemed to be marking the entire area, hundreds of thousands of them running in every direction.

I took a deep breath.

We all gathered in the room. The Wards were more divided between the two factions here, but they were unified around the battle strategy. Miss Militia and Assault leaned heavily in Glaistig Uaine’s direction. Legend was a little behind the Wards, but that could mean less bugs in the way, giving him cover.

Rachel and Imp were absent, out of the way of the scene.

"We need to take out this ‘Glaistig Uaine’," I said.

"Is it dead?" Tecton asked.

"No. We’ve got Parian, but she’s hiding and we need her help, too."

Our side was getting the upper hand, determined. We were winning.

Could we just win like that? Would everyone else just accept it, knowing they could be fucked, that they could have horrible, awful, shitty victories? I wasn’t sure.

I was worried there would be too many losing moments. This situation was ugly enough.

"What are we playing? Scion?" Miss Militia asked. She’d come from another room, and was taking over my bugs there.

"A quick, dirty war against clones," Legend said.

Miss Militia nodded. "Sure. Why not? We could have a better chance if we go full-on war, get rid of the non-playable characters."

We could. Everyone had a chance at redemption. Maybe that was what I needed.

"Let’s talk options," I said. "I think there’s two I like."

"What would Glory Girl do?" Tecton asked.

"She’d tell you you how to go, but I don’t think that’s true. She’s a very good friend, and I actually really admire her," Legend replied.

"If she’s not going to tell you then you shouldn’t try," Tecton said. He reached out and took Glory Girl’s hands. I was still struggling to organize some of the bugs I’d gathered near the door, trying to form a cluster around the girl without giving them too many.

"There’s the usual," he said, "Fight, escape, work together with others to do something about it. In the next phase, you decide if you’re in the big house or the small, and you lead a double-breed team to get out."

"And if we get out?" I asked, for the umpteenth time, expecting him to say ‘if we’ and not ‘we’.’

He didn’t say anything. He wasn’t looking at me or Tattletale. Maybe he was uncomfortable about raising the subject of Shadow Stalker and our recent run in with the heroes.

"If

======== SAMPLE 8 ========
 didn’t seem to care what he did. He left, finding one of the cells to himself. The other had more furniture. A bed, a TV, a monitor and some sort of stereo. He knocked and then answered the door.

The other cell was empty. There was no furniture, no bed, no bedside table or any of that. It felt like a jail cell. This place was the sort that was used for low-risk cases, where people with less than twelve hours of notice were moved in. It had cots, books, magazines, clean utensils and some padded tables. The man who owned the place, Alec, was at the center of the room. The man had a tattoo of a cross on his chest. He would have been homeless until someone had thrown him a third source of cash before dragging his bones out of the muck. It made his face more visible and recognizable.

"Sit," Alec moved the chair and I obediently put him in the chair and slid off my feet. The guy had a desk on which a thick book with handwriting in block letters sat, just beneath the books he’d picked up from the fridge. Two books in the front of the room. One was an autobiography, the other was a memoir about a young man named Matthew Cobb.

I picked up the latter, a young man who’d spent a long time in the hospital after his parents had died, and who’d struggled to find work and who’d learned to read by the hospital staff, the kind of information that was tightly censored in the local hospitals. He’d been a good boy, had made apologies for his father.

"There are two more people upstairs talking, and they might be getting restless."

"I understand," Alec said, after I settled into the chair, putting the thick book on the desk, and drew the curtain closed behind the man and the girl. He lit another cigarette.

The other man, Matthew, was getting in his car, setting off on his way. I could see the look on his face. How could he be a hero when he was going to jail, unless he had something to do with Panacea?

"Let’s get you set up," Brian spoke over the comms.

I stood from the bed, a little too quickly. I let my mask settle against my face to help with the climb.

"If I didn’t know you, I would have thought you were a supervillain."

"What?"

"If I didn’t know you, I would have thought you were an overzealous father, or a bad person."

"No."

"It makes sense," he stood. Turning to me, he said, "Your daughter would throw a fit, but she’s not the person you would want to put next to."

"I see."

He stepped back out of the doorway, then stopped at the end of the walkway. There was a small crowd of students milling around them. I wasn’t sure if they were curious or upset.

"I brought her here so the locals wouldn’t be upset if I left her in the care of someone new," Brian spoke.

"That’s fine," Lisa replied, "She’ll be okay."

"Is the change in behavior with your new daughter a good sign?"

"It’s not a good sign, but it’s getting better. She would be okay if it wasn’t for what my dad did. He treats her like he treats anyone else, and she hurts just a touch more every time he gets angry." There was a change in the tone of her voice.

"That’s your explanation, then?"

"This is a first for her. She’s… pretty, pretty well off the charts. She always had some weird obsession, or some fascination. I think it’s a pretty good explanation why yesterday felt so bad."

"Well, that’s pretty much it, then," Brian conceded. "We just need to take a minute."

We got a chance to talk as we followed Brian to the school, and Lisa volunteered the obligatory helping of information on being in the hospital and what had happened to her mother. I learned that both Adam and Eve had been left devastated after their boats had capsized. When Adam had attempted to call for help, however, he had been cut off by the Nine, who had turned the campus into a quarantine area.

That, in turn, had led to a chain of events that had saw the school overrun with walkers, with heroes dispatched to quell the spread of the zombie apocalypse. For a while, it seemed like the only people who actually exercised at the

======== SAMPLE 9 ========
 didn’t.

The bugs reached him, and he backed away, using his good arm to help push the bugs away from his chest and into the sides of his face. His mask was just a smear of black around the edges, showing just a bit of a change of color to the shadows of his irises. The bugs had spread over his entire body, and drifted in small, localized circles. He couldn’t be sure that was what had happened, but he was pretty sure it was.

The bugs made their way inside his open mouth, and he choked.

Three mouths, all pried open, and no mouth left open behind.

"Hey, little brother," Imp said, after he’d stopped breathing.

His voice had returned to normal, but the movements of his lips were slightly displaced. He said, "Sorry. I was getting myself agitated, trying to convince himself I was doing okay, before he opened his mouth."

"The bugs are irritating," Grue said, as Imp made her way out of his mouth.

"It’s only my powers," Imp retorted.

"I got powers, and they only started coming into my power a few seconds after I shut them off," Grue admitted.

"Really, Are you Okay?"

Grue turned to Regent, "She hurt me, tat-"

He stopped as Imp withdrew Regent’s hand. Regent glared.

"I think she hurt you, but I saved her. We saved her."

Grue nodded, then sighed. "I wish I hadn’t, it almost worked."

"She was going to hurt you anyways."

"She was. She felt her power rising to the point that she couldn’t stop her. If she hadn’t had the bugs, I’d still be alive. So it almost worked."

Grue stared down at Bitch, then slowly cleared his throat.

"Anyways," Imp said, ignoring Regent and Grue, "So Bitch wants to stay over there, she says she has something to offer, and I’m kind of in charge there, but… uh."

"What is it?"

Imp shrugged, "I wanted to talk to you about something personal, before I went, so I didn’t get caught up in this-"

I moved to kneel beside her, and she shifted position, setting the stiletto on my wrist. She reached forward, placing the small black box on my lap. There was a hum, and the sound became a screech. My bugs didn’t die. They spread out and formed into a barrier.

Grue started to move to leave, Imp seized his hand and pulled him in.

"What?"

"Talk to me. It was your idea, and it’s yours now too."

Grue nodded, stuttering.

"But you were going to be the one to lead the attack," Imp said.

"I only knew this plan from the bits of information Tattletale gave me about it."

"You ran it because you thought I could get away. Didn’t know you’d be as strong as you are. Thought maybe you’d be able to overpower me."

"I think you’re wrong," Imp said. "I told you, from the moment you brought this on yourself, I’d be willing to go the extra mile to make up for it. I’m willing to sacrifice what I desire for the sake of having you as my ally."

Grue shook his head. "I’m not doing this to be dominant or manipulative."

"You’re the only one who measures your success or failure by the amount of enemies and enemies that come after you. The only one who talks yourself up so you can appear stronger when you really aren’t. And the only one who holds on to the old guard, the people you dethrone, the old guard, in an effort to appear powerful in a new image?"

Grue shook his head once more.

Imp took his silence as a slight, "I think it’s really important, that we establish what you’ve got going on. So you can decide when you need to start putting things into motion. When you need to make a move on your own, like you did at the bank robbery. You can make the first move."

Grue nodded.

"When you’re just trying to scrape by, and you don’t have the resources to hire help or pay mercenaries, there’s no better way to mess up your image and show you’re different than

======== SAMPLE 10 ========
 didn’t have to put up with this.

"I’m not good at this. Not enough."

"I see. Then let me help you, or I’ll keep you away from me. I don’t care anymore," I said.

"I- if I don’t help now, it’ll be just you giving me the answer I want."

"No, it’ll be okay. You said you don’t care. That’s good enough for me. How much of this is you misunderstanding me? Being in a position of power? Are you really stuck in your head, worrying about things like what it will cost your country, or the consequences if I fail to save the world?"

I shook my head. "I don’t know."

"Then you can help it. Investigate this, use your power, see if I can’t find anyone in a position of power that might be culpable. If you fail, I-"

"I’m not a liability."

"Then you can help me save the world. Because that’s what this is all about."

I could see Imp’s face fall as her eyes fell on me. She saw I was thinking about saving the world, and turned away.

Grue spoke alongside us. "Skitter?"

"I saved Dinah," I said. Grue smiled.

Beside me, Lisa looked even less certain. "It’s really your only shot."





Extinction 27.1


"So I get to spend the rest of my life saving people and helping them," Brian crowed. "I save the world? Huh. I guess that’s satisfying enough."

He was the first to hit me with the full fury of his power. I had taken one for the team, in many respects. The type of person that would follow an established pattern during a fight.

"This is a world destroying event," Brian crowed.

"It’s not, really," I cut in. "There’s potential, even. I’ve gotten to meet a lot of people. Some of you in particular are interesting. One thing led to two things. So I’m going to talk a little about what these people could be doing, for the rest of my life. Why these people are important, why they could be my legacy."

He hit me hard for the initial offense, with no consideration for how I would respond or respond in response. I managed to keep from responding and instead shook my head in disbelief. I’d just been insulted, and the insult still bothered me. A reminder that I wasn’t the best at the rudeness thing.

His next attack was something I could have written off as a fun idle jest. He lowered his voice to a low murmur, "When you’ve been in prison and the news and you’re wondering if you could ever get up to sit down and talk, this is going to be the time. They’d want you to, so they could stock the shelves. And that’d be our history. Same way you’re remembered, different colors, different fonts, you get fucked with the rest of your life later."

I blinked back the tears, forced them to stop in my tracks before I started struggling to get upright. I would have yelled at him, told him I could get up and move, but I didn’t. I couldn’t handle it alone, not with their being nearby.

"It would also explain why Dragon didn’t contact you, steal this program from her and keep it secret. If she is doing it, she wants me to be able to shut me up. The PRT would be fucked if more than half of its fifty-three parahumans disappeared into a cloud of suspicion and paranoia, if the damage started to bleed where they’d intended to minimize it."

I winced a little at the idea. I’d told myself I didn’t have anywhere to go, and I was not going to the PHQ. That left only two major options. Suicide or dying by Dragon’s hand.

"You sound genuinely concerned."

"I’m not," I denied it, "Not about the threat, but the idea that I would become like her. Kill me and die, and the rest of the world would never know what happened to me."

Brian raised one hand to his lips. "I won’t promise that, but you don’t have to promise your entire life."

I shook my head, not taking it for granted that he�

======== SAMPLE 11 ========
 didn’t even realize until it was too late. The blast passed right through him, and he collapsed back into the chair beside the bed.

I opened the curtain for the first time to show the team what had happened.

Sophia was limp, no longer than her chest was in inches. The last time I’d seen her, she’d been screaming as she fell from the chair. She was surrounded by a hard, exclusionary shell. A piece of art, perhaps.

"She’s in one piece," Rachel said. "If she’s dead, we all die."

"We do whatever we can to save her," Imp growled the word.

"Can’t," Bitch said. "I feel like I’m going mad. How do we save her?"

"We can use Krouse for this," Imp offered, from the other side of the curtain. "It’s not that he’s weaker, but he’s more vulnerable."

Rachel frowned. "Krouse. Is it okay if I use his power? It’s strictly limited to me."

"It’s not limited to you. Ursa and Imp, I’ll be off."

"I can do something with my power," Imp said, her voice quiet.

"Okay," Rachel said. Without waiting for a response, she turned to us, "Let’s-"

"Let’s," was all I could say. I turned away, trying to focus on the show.

The curtains closed.

Rachel bent over her brother, placed a hand on his chest, and swept the lower half of his hood over their heads. The rest of their appearance was obscured behind a curtain of mist.

"I’m sorry," Chevalier said.

"I think this helps," Imp said. She withdrew the piece of art from between her fingers, peeling it off. She wiped at her cheek. "This helps."

"I’m not going to change the subject," Bitch said. "I was talking to Grue, and he said something similar last night, only a little more dramatic."

She glanced nervously at each member of the team, as if checking to see who was still in the room. Grue was in a robe with a girdle that extended around his midsection. I saw the cloth at his neck, and my own clothes were tucked in behind him. Rachel was in a simple black leather jacket and jeans, with a poufy amount of cream at her teeth. Tattoos peaked at the edges of her shoulders, her back and around the sides of her neck, and the top of her shoulder. Her hair was gray.

"Hm," Chevalier said.

"You’ve been silent, all morning."

"You’re wrong," Rachel said. She was frowning, now. "I’ve been busy trying to figure out what we’re doing with the body. Chevalier said it best. We’re keeping the civilians."

"We’d be asking for trouble if we let stray capes off the streets," Imp said.

"We don’t want stray capes," Rachel repeated herself. She glanced at Imp.

Rachel didn’t reply.

"We could leave it be," Sveta said. "But if someone kills Dinah, or if the Slaughterhouse Nine come looking for her… well, anything could happen in the next twenty-four hours."

"We won’t forget," Imp said. She looked at the black-clothed figure and the bag with the bloodstained needles. "Maybe not tomorrow, but eventually. We’ll come back."

"I hope so," Rachel said.

Imp was smiling ruefully at that. It didn’t look like that was what she wanted, here.

I looked at Imp again. "You know, Rachel, you’ve been thinking about that. This past week and a half, you’d been in the dark. That’s not something we’re going to encourage."

She snorted.

"I’m curious," I said, as Sveta lifted her mug to her lips and sipped from it, the mist thickening around her teeth. "It’s not as though we’re so close to our target. Can you elaborate?"

"Explain?" she asked. "Why are you with the Travelers, here?"

"It’s kind of a timing thing," I said. "You’re here at the same time as Leviathan makes his

======== SAMPLE 12 ========
 didn’t be able to stop Scion.

That didn’t make sense.

Tattletale seemed to agree with me on one point. "He’s a built-in predator. The last thing he wants to hurt or kill anyone is a pawn in his-"

Beside her, Parian spoke up, "He doesn’t give a fuck about anyone but himself. He doesn’t feel guilt, shame, fear or anything like that. He was always reckless. This was more calculated than anything. The other Travelers made the final decision for him, for this scenario to unfold. He’s more fit to fight than to play nice."

"So the idea was we’d pull some strings and win by playing fair, and he goes after Purity. He’d win."

"But?" Tattletale asked.

"It’s not that simple. Whatever was going through his head, it worked against… against making it through the next Endbringer event. He’d gotten angry. More than angry. He’d gotten, like, half-crazy, half-crazy, angry at guilt for doing what needed to be done and acting without thinking. Which makes total sense, because the whole Endbringer thing… there was a goal to it. Scion’s power. Making others disappear. The way our universe works. We don’t kill him because he’s dead or gone, but because he makes something of a place for everyone in it. Every fight with Endbringers ends with a total loss, but he leaves behind space for the next Endbringer."

I wasn’t sure I agreed. I couldn’t really buy it. I could argue it was like how I was selling hope to the Travelers, arguing that the Endbringers deserved to be wiped out when they weren’t something worth saving… but that felt weak.

I put my fork down again. "So?"

"So he gets to come after us while not giving a fuck, and he doesn’t give a fuck about anyone else. I’m trying to frame it all so it sounds really damn smart, but he’s always going to be ahead of us in terms of the basic calculus of power."

"So he went after Purity the most, you figure?"

I shook my head. "The split second he realized he’d just taken down the guy that was gonna be the second person to get in his way, when he got closer to her…"

"Which was stupid," he tapped his finger on my chin, "But smart."

"So?"

"So he could get pissed off, because he thought the most powerful woman in the world was still the most powerful man?"

Parian shook her head, "Which she is. Or at least, it would be if she was in a masculine body-morph… but no. It was stupid."

I looked at her, and she smiled.

"What happened?" Tecton asked me, from behind me.

I turned around. "He stopped after one or two seconds. It could have been a blur of lightning, but he did it in a hurry, too, and he used a laser instead."

"Holy fuck," Weld said, "That’s going to be a problem."

"Not a problem," Tecton said. He’d headed out of the cell first, and had stepped into the blast radius of the laser. The blast had extended roughly a hundred feet before making it back to me. Just as he was moving to give me a better view of the event, the laser had stopped shooting. The explosion hadn’t been as intense.

"He didn’t do anything," Tecton said. "Maybe he should."

"That’s our concern," I said.

"I don’t think he did anything stupid," Tecton said. "But it’s not worth worrying about. I’ve handled worse things, I’ll handle worse things, and I’ll be done with this shit."

One by one, the cells emptied. The first group to be sent away. Less space for the next few waves to fall in.

Then doors opened and people started moving through the grounds.

I could see the light.

The site was crowded and filled with tourists, from all around the world. The city was a sea of lights, filtered through a set of panes of glass that were encasing the details, the people in the city. Hundreds of people, it seemed. The glass of the various towers seemed nearly glass in their imperfect interiors, despite the fact that they were almost entirely concrete.

======== SAMPLE 13 ========
 didn’t make as much of a difference.

The two members of the Smith family who I’d left lying on the ground were still struggling to stand.

I grabbed one of the civilians, an older couple with a child, and heaved them up around me, dragging him behind me as I held him over the rooftops.

"We might not have made it if it weren’t for you," I said.

They stared at me. Was that a concession?

Then he said something to the older couple.

I felt an unpleasantjiid for the first time.

Tattletale gave me a curious look.

Then Bitch shouted something, her voice quiet, "No!"

The man and woman hurried to bustle away.

One of them, the woman, whispered, "We should go. It’s too much of a risk."

Bitch seemed to think so. She gave me her support as we headed for the house.

The house was empty. The walls were dry and the house furniture was in pristine condition. Nothing had been left behind. The decorations on the walls and ceiling were minimal, nothing to draw attention to the place. Nothing to draw attention away from the contents that were obvious.

I reached into my envelope-purse and got two smaller envelopes. I opened one, and saw a scrap of paper folded neatly. I tore the other open and tore the two pages into six pieces.

I tore the paper into two halves, and then tied one half together to get a square. I tore that piece of paper into two halves, and then tied them together to get a rectangular box.

Then I used the small black plastic bag I’d brought with me to Bagshot to put some clothes inside, tied one half of the bag around the dress, and heaved it up around to the side of the closet. I used my free arm to steady myself as I got the bag out of the closet.

I double checked that everything was in place before I moved on to the next step. I ripped out the two pages of the dress and tied them into quarters as the outer layer of my costume. I pulled the top half of my costume together as my mask and then tied the rest together as my costume, my costume at night.

I pulled off my mask and put on my regular costume. My mask was a piece of armor I fashioned with left over costume parts from my Day-old and various designs I had collected over the past few weeks, all laid out on my back. I was about to undo and replace my armor when I saw the tag on the upper thigh. Tattletale’s. I cringed.

I got my main costume unpacked and my mask off. It had taken all of fifteen minutes to get it together, and even then I was afraid I would have to do it all over again after I addressed Tattletale. I was going to take a long hard look at it, see if I couldn’t figure out how to make it better.

I stripped out of my new costume, buying the outer layer and putting it on, and hurried out of my bedroom. My bugs helped keep the bugs out of the way as I made my way downstairs.

The first costume. I was not happy with the way it was fitting around the base of his neck, but I was also anxious over what could happen if people started to get sick. I wanted to protect him, but I didn’t want to offer him anything in exchange, either.

The second costume. I wasn’t thrilled with the look of it, but I could deal. It was just a question of fitting it into the cracks and crevices where there weren’t any readily available.

I picked out the outer layer and began to sew the bodysuit I had been wearing a few days ago. When I was done, I was left with only an iron hammer to mend the hole in my jeans where the armor had been unzipped. I couldn’t be bothered to sew the armor plates into place, so I had to be selective about what I bought and what I put in.

The first major piece of armor I bought was a portion of Leviathan’s ‘leather jacket’. I knew it from the amount of times I’d looked at the prices on the internet, because I had it on backwards.

It required charging my bugs with power every time they moved, and it didn’t fit any of the larger sized ones that were still growing. I was happy to settle for buying the ability to make noise with my bugs when I wanted things to move, to make noise at a moments notice whenever I needed to move them elsewhere and I wasn’t sure where, and a gunmetal gray color

======== SAMPLE 14 ========
 didn’t really hurt anyone. The only ones who were hurting were the ones who’d come for me, and the few mercenaries who had rumbled at a sudden attack."

"Me?" The Vargas asked.

"The ones who’d been keeping me company. One of them had been thinking of ways to make life harder on me, the other two had been happy to fill me in. Here."

The Varga extended her hand. The man took it, holding it firm, as though she were a tiny baby with a broken arm.

"What do you want?"

"I don’t know," she said.

"You’ll explain it to her when she gets the data, won’t you?"

She shook her head, "I don’t know. But I want answers. I won’t take it back."

He reached out for another, smaller hand to settle it against her shoulder, and she pulled him off her with a powerful stroke. He hit his head against the pavement again, and he was strong enough to stagger back to his people.

She continued moving forward, and I could see how her muscles shifted position to allow for the pull of her armor. The blade had dropped out of her hand, and the flesh beneath it had stripped away enough to reveal three-dimensional, four-legged appendages in her hands.

She moved as if she were riding a four, her fingers and arms out of her pockets, with the empty pockets held at hip level by dangling scooch-sticks.

"They want me dead," I said.

"And you’re not stopping?"

I shook my head. "No. My heart’s in the right place, and I know how stupid and mean I sound, so I don’t think I’m hurting anyone with this. But I might want to."

"I suppose the question is what comes after me, then," the Varga said. He stood just to her left, and had a scythe in each hand. "I get the feeling I won’t make it through this, even after they kill every last one of us, if there’s some collateral damage. My heart won’t stop a beat if I don’t end things with my own power. So I’m going to ask you to spare my soul, and to leave things unfinished so I can kill those others when I do."

"A request, then," I said.

The Varga looked over in one corner, in the darkness, then at me. "If you do, you and everyone else here will die horribly, before the Varga does."

So he wants a piece of me before he wants me?

"There’s a very good chance I’ll die horribly," I said. "Not here, not later."

He looked at me, and I could tell he hadn’t seen me. I didn’t want to give him an opportunity to see me, so I said, "No. This is good, if nothing else."

Again, he nodded. But this time, he looked beyond the shadows of the dimly lit area in front of us, so to speak. "I’ll need help."

"We’re going to help you," I said.

"You’d be doing us a disservice if you left us to die," he said.

I sighed.

He turned to go, returning to his cell. He shut the door at the end of the corridor.

I glanced at the others, then at the cell block leaders. Most were still out, but people were filing out.

"There’s two people here against your will," a leader from one block said. "They’ve been threatening and harassing you, and it’s gotten a lot more vicious. They want you to come to the appointed time and place."

"I can’t do that," I said. "I don’t want to fight, so I stay where I am."

"If they reach toward your back or at you, you reach for their face. They can feel it. Their blood pumping, adrenaline building."

I clenched my fists, and it was as though my fists were making fists, uncoiling like branches or horns. Not something I was particularly good at.

"And we’ve been waiting too long, Taylor," a girl from the next block said.

They don’t want me, I thought, unable to even articulate the thought. I was still somewhat stumped, as though I couldn’t find the words or remember the right syllables with

======== SAMPLE 15 ========
 didn’t do any harm."

"No," I answered. When she looked up, I said, "I wouldn’t."

"You aren’t a bad person, Rachel."

"I’m scared," she said. "And I have a lot of questions."

"You’ve answered them before."

"I haven’t. But I have one question left. Can you walk me home?"

She stared at me. I tried to engage her, tried to move her to defend herself, and found the movement too painful to make.

"Not worth it. I’m not a fighter, not a hunter, not a gambler. I love books. I love history. So you won’t hurt me."

"You can if you wish," I said. Then I took another bite of my crepe instead of reaching for my jacket.

"You will, eventually, eventually. You are what you eat, what you drink, and so on. I can’t protect you forever. You see, I get headaches from the stuff. So I have you check me for a while, and then I will be able to help you."

"When?"

"When I go on my period. Maybe a month after that. Maybe longer."

"We could make space in our lives for the pain, so it never gets as bad?" I suggested.

"It’d mean killing a bigger bug, and there’s more space in the house, and I don’t want to kill any eyelash, to look like I’m avoiding the pain."

"But the headaches will get worse anyways."

I frowned.

"No, because there’s an awful lot of painkillers, and they make you feel better. So it would hurt more, just to be honest."

I nodded.

"So we’re not working with you."

"Yeah," he answered.

"If it’s not in our power to stop it. How much of it is chemicals you’re eating?"

"Not much."

"But you’re making yourself irritable, and that’s probably an addictive thing. People with serious mental illnesses, it’s a problem in the morning, they’re more irritable at lunchtime, and so on. It won’t be like it was with your other friends."

"It’s not addictive," he said, and there wasn’t a trace of the smugness or the snark that characterized his remarks at Winslow. "I get by. It’s not like other people live like this, getting by just fine. So I don’t think it’s just me."

"It’s not like other people live like this, either," I agreed. "The pills keep coming, and you don’t have to take them. The withdrawals aren’t as bad, not nearly to the point of needing hospitalization. I know people on their third or fourth time through."

"It’s not a depressant, I assure you. It’s not a ‘high’, either. It’s subtle, it’s not cute, not fun, not funny, and it doesn’t make your days a living hell. The only thing that makes it worse is that it distorts your emotions in a way that your mind may not be able to handle."

"I don’t know if that’s true," I said.

"I’d like to hear it for myself," he said. He sounded genuinely interested. It sounded like he was genuinely interested. I raised my hand as I asked, "If I was drinking that, would it make my morning better or worse?"

"It’s not worth worrying about," I said. I looked at Lisa and Brian. Lisa and Brian were already walking a few paces away, while Brian headed off to keep an eye on Alec.

Lisa glanced at me and quirked an eyebrow. "Yeah, but…"

"But?"

"It’s been a while since we really enjoyed one of these drinks. I’m guessing it’s because you guys are going through hard times too, and you’re coming to terms with it. I’ve barely had one myself."

"But it doesn’t matter," Brian shrugged.

"I think," Lisa volunteered, "We’ve all been there. Everyone has their ups and downs. It’s cool. We get to go to parties, we get to go on adventures. A

======== SAMPLE 16 ========
 didn’t need to ask for anything, given the chance. But he wanted to kill her. Not because of the threat she posed, but because of the inevitability of it, whether he got the girl in the end. He could have found other ways to deal with her, methods that weren’t tied to the threats she posed. He couldn’t kill the girl, but he could get rid of her, in some fashion. To do what he did, how could he not, when there was so much at stake?

That niggling fear, that nagging doubt, was what made him, in the end, a dangerous man.

Krouse opened fire on the man, lifting his sand to shove it down at point-blank range. The recoil, it shuddered down the hallway.

The man retaliated with a barrage of blasts of ice and fire, and Krouse backed out, settling the assault with a gravity flask. He’d taken a hit to his health, but he recovered fast enough to move up to the roof’s edge and finish the man.

The man screamed and felled a half-dozen chunks of ice and rock with the ease with which an athlete could.

The man screamed again, some version of that line in the ice, braying, primal, unintelligible as it was barely coherent enough for the man to manage what he was saying, but it echoed, stirred the very air he was using to maintain his grip on it.

Another man in the truck made it off the man. Cody. Krouse’s truck was blocking their path.

"Get off him, Cody!" Krouse shouted. He didn’t get his orders across to his men, but he did get his orders across to Cody. "We’ve got enough firepower, for max damage. Shoot when the shots are going down. The ‘man’ knows his strength and weakness. Shoot and miss. It’s faster."

Cody was swinging as if he were reaching, swinging a gauntleted hand like a flail to hit a target on target. Krouse was already moving, moving to assist those two with his dark hair and the water that streamed down from the rooftop, moving his blade to keep the worst of the debris away from the two.

There wasn’t any danger of the gunfire getting to Cody. He’d worn reinforced armor, had reinforced gauntlets and knee pads. It was just the shot that was going off that ended the life of the man on the ground, and Krouse knew his actions had saved the man on the roof, who still lay on the ground injured with no doubt suffering grievous loss from the hail of shrapnel and ice.

When the man on the rooftop was on his knees, bleeding, begging for mercy, begging to be saved, Krouse pulled the dagger free from where it stuck out of his belt, dusted himself, set Cody down on the man’s back and drove him back as hard as he could manage away from the truck.

Their next destination was a large vault with a number of doors. There were six or so men and three or four women, all in or close to their early twenties, who were in their costumes. Two were dressed like capes, heads covered with cowls of hair, with a dark blue t-shirt or jacket, others wore flowing clothes that showed off their muscled thighs and hips.

"No violence here," the blonde man in the black costume told them. He wasn’t in love with the way his costume covered his body, with the narrow legs or with the lack of an Adam’s apple. He just didn’t like the idea of it. "Capes are forbidden to practice their own kind’s style of costume dancing, for fear that it might be a breeding ground for renegade elements. We’d rather not attract unwanted attention to our headquarters with the risk of being forced to dispense justice to enemies who cause trouble elsewhere."

Dancing was a bad look as Krouse stepped into the vault with Jessie and Noelle. There was nobody to be seen, and the vault was empty. Though the lights had come on, there was nobody to be harmed or killed.

"We just paid cash, so there’s no trouble," the older man in the dark costume said, "So we might as well get one for our trouble."

"No problem?" the young woman in the blond costume asked, touching the money pouch. "I have money."

"We’re not looking for trouble," the bearded man answered, too casually for his own tastes.

"Then we’re going to the front door, we’ll fetch you a ride, and then we’ll meet you in the alley,"

======== SAMPLE 17 ========
 didn’t really say what she meant, since everyone had already guessed, and because of the relative lack of communication in the group, even between the core groups of the Teeth.

"I was going to ask, what are your plans?"

"There’s two issues with my immediate plan," I said. The idea had been that it would be my primary focus, and I would use the time to work on it. Better, I supposed, than trying to take care of three families. "One, I’m kind of busy managing my civilian life. I’m trying to find General Motors, the guy who designed the computer system you used to control Atlas, find him, and maybe try to get him to let us have access to his work again. That should give us a lot of fresh information, and the rest will depend on where it goes from there. But with everything that’s been going on, with the entire incident with the Slaughterhouse Nine dominating the news and the managed panic and the whole aftermath of the Leviathan incident, I’m kind of busy. I spent a long time taking care of my territory, fixing up the damage, making sure nobody forgot about it."

I looked at Brian, "You two aren’t arguing with each other, right?"

"No," Alec replied, "Not really. But we’re talking about you, Skitter."

"And I am really just trying to do what I have to, to make sure my dad’s doing the ones I’m babysitting right. Don’t feel obligated, feel free to turn off the bug zaps and other cruder measures I’m setting up to ensure my safety, after this is all over. I’m not obligated to say anything you don’t, or to do anything you don’t think of, just to be safe."

"Okay," Brian conceded.

I shrugged.

"I was talking about the bigger picture," Brian said, "Before this happened, and I was thinking about what comes next."

"I don’t know," I replied. "I don’t see the world as black and white, pie-and-chaos and merciful just make it seem that way. The world isn’t that way because we’re all flawed, are we? I don’t necessarily care about your dad’s well-being, but I do care about your own."

Lisa replied, "We all have our flaws. Different people have their strengths and weaknesses, and we can apply that to ourselves too."

I looked at Alec, "I’m curious as to why you wanted to get into this, but you weren’t approached?"

"Taylor and I got into it because we thought we could make that work. We can’t," Alec replied, turning back to me, "Because it’s not us. It’s not us as individuals, not even as a team. There’s other issues…"

"Other issues?" Brian asked. He laid a hand on Alec’s shoulder.

"Like you said," Lisa added.

"Same thing, Lisa," Alec affirmed, looking back at Brian, "Taylor and I got into it because we assumed it wouldn’t only work as a duo. It has two guys and two girl parts. In theory, we could have two Jacks and a Bonesaw."

Brian smiled, "A Taylor and a James with powers? Any idea how bad things could get?"

Lisa pulled Alec around so their backs were to the wall. After Alec shook his head, Lisa pointed at the nearest wall, "Don’t."

"Okay," Alec grudgingly conceded.

"So," Brian said, "Since you’ve been helping out, I wanted to say thank you."

"Of course," Alec replied, smile gone, "That’s the first thing. Second of all, I gotta say I hate how insecure you’re getting without trying. You put your bike in the garage, you told me you wanted to ride it tonight, so I sat down and watched it, and I got totally teeth-gnashing rage-fueled fantasies about taking it to the next level without trying. I know the end result wouldn’t be so awesome, but you’re not good at hiding it."

"I’m doing it to prepare," Brian shrugged, "And you’re setting yourself up for failure? That’s why you’re so distracted now?"

He didn’t answer, making an underhanded attempt at putting the pieces back in place. I shifted my bugs under the table and under the couch to help guide

======== SAMPLE 18 ========
 didn."

"I think those things they put in the bottom of the barrel aren’t worth having in the top."

"They have to be. Doesn’t make any sense to put a bomb down the barrel of a cannon if it could blow someone’s head off."

"Is this the kind of situation you want to be in?"

"When I was in elementary school," I replied, taking a deep breath, "I got in an argument with teachers over whether I could get off the bus if a teacher asked me questions. I said no. This is the same thing."

"I don’t think so. The bus is only stopping for about ten minutes and fifteen seconds a day. Even if you accepted my version of events, which isn’t much, it still leaves you pretty screwed if you get picked to be a bus driver."

I’d told my version of events, and I wouldn’t repeat it if it prompted another fight. The opposite, I thought. I couldn’t put my finger on why.

I shifted awkwardly.

"You sure?" Brian asked. "You’re okay with this arrangement?"

"Yeah," I admitted.

He smiled. "Of course."

That seemed to be a resounding victory, even to the untrained ear, eariler than I.

"Have fun," he told me as he led me out of the auditorium, "Taylor, I’m sorry I didn’t ask for anything in the way of favours."

I nodded. As I found myself inside, I asked Brian, "You okay?"

He nodded.

"It’s fun," I answered, trying not to show any sign of stress. I think. Brian, like me, doesn’t have the best grasp on my powers or my powers at-bats, and it hurt to use. As much as I wished I could read powers from my powers and match them up, part of the reason for my inability to do so was that it made me-

I faltered. How to word it? My voice cracked a little. I had an idea I was doing myself, a kind of paralysis.

"Hey, Taylor?" his voice sounded very familiar.

I turned, and I can’t think of a response that would be out of place with a child asking for permission to do something. I just… fell silent.

His hand landed heavily on the back of my head, and his fingers were combing my scalp and hair back, pulling things back. It took me a second to catch my shift of hair, and I was tugging my hair out of my face and back in fear of how much hair would stick to it. I was almost positive he hadn’t touched me in ten seconds.

"I just got off the phone with Brian. He said he’d give you an F, just to knock it off. It was cool."

"Fuckin’ an F?" A little girl in a tutu skirt and skirt top asked.

"No. Just, you know, an F. He said the hair on your head was getting in the way, which I sorta agreed with. Not that we can’t fix it, but… no. Just saying he’d give it an F."

With that, I could feel the ache in my chest ease. My breathing was better, I felt more in touch with my emotions. I just didn’t want to be left rudderless again.

Brian got on the phone again and I cut in before he got on the phone back at his office.

"Hey, Danny," Brian said, "What the fuck?" I think he was speaking through the mouthpiece of his earpiece.

"Did he say anything about the hair on your head?"

Brian shook his head, then looked back to me, "I didn’t really expect anything else. I just didn’t expect you to be out and about like you usually is. Is there food? Water? I don’t have a place here. Some homeless people are using up all of the heating here, so it’s not all that hot. Does that mean you have somewhere to stay?"

I shrugged. I was barely making headway.

"You at the headquarters? I was heading over to pick up some stuff for the day."

"Yeah," I answered him, except I didn’t elaborate. I was concentrating more on getting a sense of my body and the small objects in my hand, trying to catch my breath and keep my heartbeat from creeping up on me. Was it a concern that someone as high strung as he was seemed to take it

======== SAMPLE 19 ========
 didn’t take the time to think about it, because I was concerned that he might walk away. Had I said something that suggested I was afraid of him?

There was no time for idle thoughts. I grabbed my flight pack from the compartment and hauled it up behind my back, the straps swinging free. I strapped it to the back of my suit, then pulled it high enough over my head that any movement to lean my head would cause my helmet to crack.

We left the Wards at huge risk to a dozen small but important things. For a thousand times, a thousand different reasons. My reasons were as simple as the last reason. If I went, if I stayed, Scion might break through the wall. It was something I wasn’t entirely sure I could afford to do.

I reached Tattletale while she was inside one of the other portals. It was pitch black outside, and the last thing I wanted were to be in the midst of a situation in the midst of darkness, with the faint possibility that I’d be able to use my power.



I settled into the chair, then got the laptop out of the box.

Tattletale was busy typing out a message, but my communications were being diverted. My attention was on my bugs, and in the darkness, I couldn’t be absolutely sure they were alive. I typed out a few lines of information, tried not to pay too much attention to the people in the darkness.

Cherish was checking the portal for us. She and Tattletale had discussed options. I knew that if we went, she would probably have to use a portal to leave, and that meant having the distraction of people we’d be able to trust, or a way to communicate that wouldn’t put us in any danger.

We’d known about the portal beforehand, but she hadn’t spoken of it before we set foot on the Docks. We’d also discussed whether we were willing to risk that they’d find our way.

I had the general idea, as a rough contingency, but I had little doubt that the Docks would find out about it as we got further away, and the situation would be dealt with by then, too.

It made it easier to get people working. I could have left it to the heroes to decide. That did two things for Scion and the heroes. It made it harder for the heroes to search Scion’s general location when people were in danger beyond a doubt, and it made it harder for the heroes to find their quarry if people in the area got in their way.

I shut it all out with a wave, trapping myself in my swarm. None of the capsaicin-laced bugs were irritating as a swarm. All I had to worry about were ticks and nits, and my swarm was made up of thousands of the more annoying bugs.

I was glad to just lie in the dark, writhing on the cold metal of the cold metal floor.

Tattletale’s phone jangled. She found it, put it to her ear, and then picked up the other end of the phone. She’d been waiting at one of the terminals.

"Undersiders," I said. "Do you have a spot?"

"There’s one near me," Tattletale said.

"It’s close. We should figure out something before we descend here."

"We should. She’ll help us in her own way," Tattletale offered.

I wasn’t the only one to turn on the speaker as the other speakers turned off. Music blared from the speakers, and the surrounding alleyway was largely deserted. Nobody had come down here in the past while, or wouldn’t come with us so soon.

"Tattletale, I’m going to talk to Piggot."

There was the sound of the camera clicking away, and I was left with only the phone to look at instead. Emily Piggot.

"It’s not me that’s talking," Piggot replied, voice quiet. The noise of her voice was almost disappointed. "I’m just going to try to decipher what you’re thinking, and why."

"If we put a trap… oh."

Cocky. Like a motherfucker on meth. It was like a bad dream come true.

"If we put a trap," Piggot said, again, sounding a little disaffected, "We could kill one of my underlings."

"I don’t think you could, without a way to get to the other side."

"I think you could," Piggot said.

======== SAMPLE 20 ========
 didn’t get out of his seat before I did. We started talking as we reached the end of the ramp.

"I don’t like the politics of it. Do you think it was a good idea to seize this city for myself, at a time when things seemed so down? To rob a bank, a place where a significant number of people were living in shambles, saddled with unwarranted criminal liabilities?"

I nodded, slowly, "Something like that." I had to grind my teeth to force my saliva out of my mouth.

"As much as I don’t agree with your decisions, I respect you for making the call."

"Why do you give a damn?"

Tattletale shrugged, "It’s about control. Keep it local. I’ve already got a territory carved out for myself, I can get more by taking over a city."

"I get that. But is this really necessary?"

"I don’t think so. I was going to rob a bank. There’s a food bank nearby. And you’re not interested in helping out the people who are starving in your territory, which is good. It’s the lesser of two evils."

"Okay," I said, swallowing past my reluctance to get into another argument.

"And here’s the thing, I already did some good in my territory. Bringing some semblance of order to a bleak city. I helped start a food bank, and I helped start two food programs. I could do more, but the people in my territory already do a lot more. They have jobs, housing, medical care, education. It would prioritize what it already provides, and it would provide desperately needed supplies, with no overhead. If the government stepped in to seize my property to push me out of the way, I would be able to do more in a less dangerous area, and maybe even stop a larger calamity. If you accept my offer for a place in your group, you get a larger share of the supplies I could be providing. Food, medical care, education."

"You’re talking apples and oranges. Does that really make a difference?"

"I don’t know enough about you to say," she paused, "But my money’s on green stuff. If things are good in your territory, I’d be willing to bet it gets less bad in the long run if you keep things simple and small scale. More people means more goods coming into the market, and my business gets more stable."

There was a pause, "But I don’t want any of that."

"If you think you’re safe and sound, that’s all it is. I don’t have any reason to lie to you."

"I’m a straight shooter," I protested, "And I’m not going to buy any of this sh–."

Tattletale glanced at Grue, then back to me, "We have our concerns with the way you ran your territory, but this sounds like a bad deal for you anyways."

"If I wasn’t thinking about you at all, I would have already left," I replied.

"If it means having your territory secure and you in a position to protect it…" she trailed off. She looked pensive.

I tried to find the words, but they didn’t seem to fit. I explained, "My territory’s kinda desolate. No humans, nothing in the town. You know that old adage about the only people you really spend time with are your family and your dogs? Me and my animals are like that. Only thing we do every day is walk to school, only we’re better because of it.

"We also have the bums. We have people who have lives and families they’re trying to make up. If those bums get torn out of their homes and moved out to some other state, where the housing shortage isn’t as acute, where the economy isn’t in quite as good a shape, there’s going to be some people who won’t have anywhere else to go and who won’t have the ability to earn money and get the resources they need. With the amount of bad luck that’s been blessed us with in the last little while, I think there’s people who won’t get a second chance."

"Except us," Bitch spoke for the first and last time.

"The Nine," I supplied. She stared at me in response, "I’m sorry, Bitch, but their crimes are just beginning."

"I’ve worked with more than a few of

======== SAMPLE 21 ========
 didn’t have the ability to hurt him. It wouldn’t even be capable of hurting him.

And the fact that he hadn’t been hurt did much to change my opinion of him. He was just as bad as he had been. Just as dangerous.

"So," I said, quiet, as I took another breath, "The plan stands. Ill-timed, ill-advised but we’ll work on it."

"Yeah?"

"We open the floodgates, Weaver, to everyone else that has a hand in handling this situation. I’ll talk to Dragon and handle the rest." I said, once the thought for the name was clear.

The portal opened right before the man with the gun approached. I let the Endbringer fall so he couldn’t draw or shoot any bullets.

Cuff’s portal opened right beside him. We descended into a fight with no chance of winning, but a fight nonetheless.

We passed through the portal just as the portal man turned toward his clone. The miniature sun winked out against the backdrop of sky at the mountains, casting a faint light on our surroundings. The fight had started.

It was another ten seconds before we had the fight over and done without.

I touched the wrist of my free hand, where it jangled at my side like the chain of some sort of arbalest. A reminder that my powers were still a little… vulnerable. I hadn’t spent a lot of time thinking about them, but we’d run a risk there.

"Dragon?"

"Me?" I asked.

"The portal man will be gone by the time you get back."

"Okay."

Just like that, the standoff was over. The fighting was mostly stopped, and the heroes seemed pleased with the outcome. We were left to talk, by and large, though there were occasional heated exchanges. Clockblocker had threatened to arrest me, I’d mussed up Bradley just a bit because he’d accused me of trying to murder Kaiser, and Defiant had dismissed our offer to free Dragon in exchange for information on Mannequin. Even the Undersiders were relatively circumspect about the issue as far as what had been said and done between us.

With Dragon and Defiant’s silence, we weren’t in a position to make direct accusations. We had information, but we couldn’t use it to dig up dirt. Instead, we’d discussed the possibilities, asked ourselves questions like, did we want to press charges, would we take the heroes to court, and would we work it out with them?

It hadn’t always been this way. Even before the Nine appeared, it had been easy to talk about bringing them in for questioning. It had been easier when the heroes had been less a threat and more a curiosity, with an army of agents ready to pry open and unravel the secrets we shared. Now, with the heroes gone, things were simpler. We had an easy way for him to do the same thing, and now there was nothing to counter it. Our hands were tied, our options were relatively narrow, and we faced having to either put the matter before our reward, or put it to the test and risk being left wondering what had happened to Weaver or Bitch.

Defiant led the others in a circle around the device they’d set up, before taking the hand of the portal man and leading him through a series of doorways and at least three more checkpoints before coming face to face with the team at the end of the street.

"So, let’s see. It was fun," Defiant said, taking a moment to get his bearings and get oriented on the battlefield. There were hundreds of people in the area, and even with Scion bearing down across the empty downtown like a slow-moving thunderbolt, the capes weren’t turning away.

"We had fun too," Kid Win said. "It’s okay, it’s okay."

Chevalier didn’t disagree. "I’ve had time to think about it, now. It was good."

"I know," Defiant said. He glanced over his shoulder at Scion. When Scion had turned his attention to the remaining Dragon’s Teeth at the end of the street, Chevalier had opened fire with two streams. One fired a gun, spraying the soldiers who didn’t have what it took to fight, while the other was working to close the distance between the two of them, rapidly deploying the effects of his power, sweeping them out with a stream and then canceling it with another. With streams colliding with ones around them, they blocked the incoming attack and left Scion himself def

======== SAMPLE 22 ========
 didn’t care to look her way as she approached me, walking up beside me.

"Can’t," I repeated. "Can’t fight, can’t defend ourselves."

"I don’t care," she repeated.

"I mean, I do care, a great deal, but yeah. It’s more than that."

"Yeah?"

"This? It’s… it’s the most frightening, reprehensible thing I’ve ever seen in my life. But it wasn’t once I turned my attention to the idea of monsters and violence. It’s been every second of every day since."

"I’ve thought about it," I said, "I can’t put it into words why. I wouldn’t explain how the powers fall into these seven categories, but it has something to do with the idea that humans are inherently curious and creative in how they create and consume the world. When I look at Brockton Bay through that lens, it’s because the city’s a laboratory for me, a town dedicated to the creation and consumption of superpowers. It’s the origin and destination of Scion. And that’s what worries me the most, thinking about it."

"Think about it?"

"It’s why I put in my applications to join the Wards, and why I’m talking to my superiors about joining. It’s why I’m working as hard as I do. If I was a less capable cape, it would make me a greater drain on resources, and it would change the entire dynamic of this town. We get more violence out of this town because people would come in here, and there’s really no way for us to fight back."

There was a rumble nearby, accompanied by a crash as one of Eidolon’s centrifugal tears ripped through the pavement.

"And that’s why I’m saying what I’m saying," Tattletale said. She looked over her shoulder at the massive crater the centrifuge had made, then nodded a second before she looked up at me with a frown. "You couldn’t have defeated Scion if it’s doing something like that, either. There’s no place that’s safe from the next Endbringer attack."

I sighed heavily.

"It’s why I’m leaving, you know," Tattletale said. "I can’t do this anymore. Can’t take Coil head on, let the others take the hit. Can’t go home, or report what I did, or tell my family."

"And there’s other stuff I can do. I can help people."

"You can do much more, in my experience," I said. "But you won’t be able to make up for this, and it’ll be harder than it sounds."

"I could figure out a way to help people if we get home," Tattletale looked over her shoulder at me, "But that’s a hassle and a net loss, because Eidolon and everyone else are dragging us here, and everyone else in this room is working for Coil anyways. We don’t stand a chance if we get cornered."

"Let’s stop by the Birdcage," I said.

"Oh? Something’s happened."

"A cape is currently in the cell," I said. "Or here."

"Where?"

"The Birdcage. I doubt we can stop the man, but I can try and hopefully get him help."

"So," Bitch said, "You wanted help?"

"Yes. But this takes time, and I won’t have time to give it to you if I don’t get anything back."

"I understand," Tattletale sounded almost weary in the sound of her voice. She looked at me. "This might well be a vain attempt at getting revenge on you for the way you treated Dinah."

"No," I could see the lines in her voice. For what I’d done to her. Was there some glimmer of hope that came with being in a position like this?

I shook my head a little. "I won’t have all the answers, they won’t give all the answers. Truth is, I think maybe there’s a slight chance that the man could go free. A few more questions, maybe some information about his powers… and I could get him brought into custody. I’m not saying it’s the case, but it’

======== SAMPLE 23 ========
 didn’t make sense.

"Fuck yeah! I’m flying!" My swarm summoned another swarm to me and pressed it against the doors. If it closed them, I’d probably get shot.

"Shit!"

Two things were definitely wrong. First, the walls themselves were too thick, the openings narrow enough that a gunshot would barely penetrate. I couldn’t rely on my bugs to fight through them. The second problem was with the bugs I’d got inside the vault, which were apparently the size of a dog’s paws.

"Help me out, Tattletale," Grue said, "We’ll clear out before this fucking door closes forever."

"Please."

I found two vats with a small amount of blood on them. One contained a half-dozen vials with a mixture of blood and other stuff inside.

"Let me do this?"

She pulled off her mask as Grue rounded the corner, and handed one vial to him.

"I don’t think I can pass up a task this easily," he said.

"Just fill this halfway, I’ll fill in the rest."

"I could be making stupid mistakes here. I’m just trying to help."

He looked at me and put his hand on my shoulder, thumb and index finger working together, as if he could fix my hand and feel right about it.

"I could kill you the second this happens."

"And if I give you the info, you could kill everyone in a movie."

"Right." He leaned close, and his thumb brushed against my cheek. I shrank away.

"See?" I smiled just a little. We kept talking. I couldn’t have been more clear about what was going on.

I wanted so desperately for the darkness and the madness to end, so my bugs could begin the task of crawling through the rest of my internal organs and gathering everything in the right place.

Grue was taking my arm and turning my face into a statue with every passing minute, so the rest of us had plenty of time to get my info and make our way out of the vault.

"We’re moving, Tattletale," Grue said, "We’re moving fast enough that I have no idea how much damage we could do, even if everything worked out. Anyways, we’re going to be late."





Colony 15.2


"The door flickered shut as the suit slid down the hallway to the front door of the church, the pair of travelers perched on the inside edge.

"We’re doing it again," Grue said. I was pretty sure he said something along the lines of ‘again’ three times in a row.

There was a long pause in the conversation. I felt him lean close and take my ear gently in the broad, flat expanse of skin there. As if by pure chance, I heard me saying, "I’m sorry."

"I’m okay, Shatterbird," Tattletale said, "I guess?"

I could have asked if she was sure and she wouldn’t have made a big deal of it. I felt her lean against me, massaging the skin between us, as though it were my skin and nothing more.

"If that’s the case," Tattletale said, "You okay?"

The woman stood and rapped on the door. After a moment, the suit was gone. With the suit gone, the woman was left standing there, panting. I doubted anyone entered. Part of the suit must have collapsed from wear and tear as the four of them stood there, panting.

"Do we get in?," Tattletale asked the doctor.

The man nodded, "Let’s go."

I hesitated, but stuck as well. I wondered if Grue, Rachel and the woman had seen that. It threatened to anger the trio.

"We’re on your side. We’ve fought under every fucking shadow the Nine have thrown our way. Some of the most dangerous capes came from the PRT and the Wards."

"I wonder how many people got hurt doing that," Regent said.

"I think we’d be surprised," the doctor said. "There’s a lot of injured here. Headaches, memory problems, exhaustion, nerves damaged, mood swings. We’d treat it like anyone else would with a back injury, just dealing with it."

"We should stay out of here, for the sake of getting emergency services," I said.

"Assuming the

======== SAMPLE 24 ========
 didn’t have control over her arm. It seemed it could break any time she wanted.

"If she comes around any time soon, or if her control gets worse, we’ve got someone there at the back of the truck. We’ll drive, wait, wait and wait, and maybe get a call back. Or we can get her on a plane."

"Or," Brian said, "we run?"

I was about to reply, but I said, "Or we attack, and we get caught up in their fight, too. We’re not invincible and they can’t use that as an excuse to kill our team members."

Lisa nodded, "Can’t say. Don’t fault her."

"But why? What makes her different? The cape didn’t want to be part of the city. She didn’t have any control over her movements, so any anger or frustration she felt, she directed it at people. At the people who weren’t as successful as she was. The heroes. It’s a pattern I think she’s perfected."

I could visualize it, just a little. Her power automatically adjusted to every situation – where she was, where the fight was, what was going on. I could see her body language, the way she was breathing and reacting. Could I do the same?

"Well," I admitted, "I wish I knew more about her, but I don’t think I could plug everything I know into my mind and come up with enough angles that my brain wouldn’t just think the worst of me."

"Okay," Lisa smiled a little, "If there’s nothing else?"

"What else do you want?"

She turned to Brian, arms folded.

"Sorry. Nothing I can do."

"We’ll figure something else out," she waved a hand, canceling out the power, "I think-"

She stopped, looking at me, "Lisa?"

I shrugged, "I’ll keep your number."

She didn’t answer, turning to the man in the truck, "Hey, dork. I got some stuff for you, and I was thinking I’d offer you a deal. Something where you get two thousand dollars and one of us gets twenty. So you don’t have to work tonight, if you don’t want."

"Sure."

"Two thousand, one of us gets fifteen. So you could go to bed before ten tonight, eat, watch TV?"

"Yeah."

"But that’s if you don’t sleep, or if you have a reason not to."

"I will."

"Now, just a minute. I’m thinking I’ve got to go now, because once I’m out here, nobody’s ever heard from me again."

"You don’t?"

Lisa smiled at him.

"Okay," I nodded. "Go."

Brian was in the van, moving just a little faster than he’d traveled so far. He headed out the opposite way we’d headed, towards the Boardwalk, the local ‘tour’ district.

"Alright!" I called out, "Call Lisa, get her order in. It’s kinda complicated to do, with the volume of calls we’re getting, and the fact that we have to figure out what we’re going to say, then decide on the tone, ‘tell me more details about your project, and I’ll pay you fifty, if you don’t tell me anything!"

"What?" he asked.

"Tell her! Tell her we want her help!"

He wasn’t getting on my case, this time. I reached into my pocket for the phone, and he handed it to me. I pressed the button, and the van was pulled into a driveway.

We headed into the truck and dismounted. I was surprised at how slowly the ramp unfolded, with the necessity of rambling on from the construction site to get to the construction area. I’d only taken about fifteen minutes to get there in the span of four minutes.

"I’m afraid I need to warn you before I do."

"Don’t tell. I’m just going to step inside and see what’s up with Tattletale."

"Right. She’s having some trouble with some of the new recruits. It’s understandable. I’ll get them sorted out, see what I can do about the power of the new members,

======== SAMPLE 25 ========
 didn’t be the first time she’d done it. I could go on about how much I hated her, but I think the answer is that a) I hated her very much on a level and b) I get the general idea where I find her unpalatable anyways.

We have to accept that her way of functioning is its own kind of disliking.

Maybe that means I should be careful about how I use her power.

"No," Grue said. "I have to ask, what kind of training did Tattletale give her power?"

"Pretty much the whole nine o’ ten," Regent said.

"She’s a freak of nature," Imp said.

"And she has a very low tolerance for freakouts," Regent said. "Except, if she’s stressed by anything in particular, it’s probably something Tattletale picked up in her power."

"There’s a chance that we could get lucky," I said. "Come on, we’re on some kind of path. It’s the only way she’s ever found an effective way to deal with us."

She frowned.

"No!" Imp said. She pulled Regent’s arm back, then slammed his face into the asphalt.

"Wait," I said.

Grue and I surged forward. Tattletale was veering left, towards me and Grue.

I wheeled around, still feeling a pang of sympathy, and wheeled Shepherd’s direction. Imp and the dog were shoved to the right, onto the broken metal of the railings of the stairs. I held her shoulders so the stray pieces of glass that were wedged in her hair and clothes flew to the ground.

"Want to go help?" Grue asked. His arm was aching, and I wasn’t sure if it would hold through the next few cycles.

He pushed himself to his feet.

"I want to go help too," I said. "It’ll help us, not hurt us. It’ll be less shitty for me to leave, and more dignified if we can get away as much as we can."

He nodded, but his head was almost puckered behind the raised bumps of his forehead. "Go help Tattletale."

"We’re in," Grue said.

He turned towards us. Tattletale was still perched on the railing of the stairs, her mask in one hand and a camera in the other.

She turned towards Tattletale, then smiled just a little. "Thank you, Skitter."

Grue extended a hand and a glass of water into the palm of that same hand. We downed our plates in a mass, and then joined the rest of the group. We were all stills, now.

"Can we go help Tattletale?" Grue asked me. My eyes widened a little. I was just joining the rest of the team, and I couldn’t help but feel self-conscious. I looked at Grue, and he shrugged.

Tattletale didn’t seem to notice. She offered me a curt nod, and we were off.





Buzz 7.5


The flight to the loft was uneventful, as we took the only available uninterrupted route out of the city and continued on to Coil’s underground base. We parked at the tail end of the area Coil had set aside for himself and his mercenaries, where he could keep his troops out of sight and operate with a minimum of fuss.

We walked alongside the group that was making their way into the base. Trickster and Sundancer were members of the Phoenix Cell, and were working alongside Grue and Parian on the orders of Coil. Regent and Ballistic were mercenaries that were operating independently, paid well and trained in the ways of weaponry. Trickster was dressed in the outfit of a mercenary captain, complete with a long cape that flowed past a belt of metal plates that doubled as shield generators. Sundancer was a mercenary from New York that had moved to Brockton Bay and worked under Ballistic.

Grue and I, in our disguises, accompanied Genesis. We were roughly the same size, and both teams wore identical costumes. The differences were in the materials the teams used when dressing up as their uniforms were wearing. Genesis wore a special carbon-fiber composite costume that had been infused with a strange liquid that gave it a three-dimensional appearance. To put it simply, it was strong enough to bounce around the environment, but it was also incredibly light, incredibly heavy, requiring vast quantities of energy to retain its shape. As a result, it was almost impossible for anyone but the strongest or most mobile

======== SAMPLE 26 ========
 didn’t have enough of a voice and presence to be heard over the music.

He paused, glancing away to the far left, then looked back at him.

"You’ll be the one singing along to me, I hope?"

"I hope."

"Then go ahead, give this song some life."

"Or go die, if you really think you have to," Doctor Mother said.

"Do what you have to."

He shook his head, then grabbed the remote and opened the song, freezing it.

As the second line read, "I won’t ever let you down, not like this again," it all became bright white. Silence, and then darkness, all at once.

He turned to the Doctor and whispered, "Do that again. Hurry up, now. I’m almost there."

The Doctor was ascending the stairs. Her pace increased, as she hurried to the door that marked the entry point to the next floor.

"I’m sorry, Fourth," the Doctor said.

"Don’t be sorry. I almost got all four of us killed."

The Fourth was beginning to approach.

"I’m sorry, do what you have to, but I almost killed four people that were walking away. We’re doing okay?"

"I know, but some of us are so upset, we broke down for the fifth time today."

"Some of us broke down more. Come on, now. We’re not going to move on now."

She shook her head.

"I could have done better. I know it sucks. I could have done more to try and fix this, but I’m sorry."

The door opened. The Doctor was on the floor of the room, hands resting on the glass-enclosed room door.

"Fuck. I almost don’t feel like doing these tests."

"Don’t be sorry, Fourth," she said.

"I’ll fix you, when I can and sooner than later. I could have died."

"I knew you couldn’t, whether you wanted to or not. I was right."

"I was wrong," she said. "I could have fixed this, with your knowledge, I could have fixed it."

He stood, hurrying out of the door.

She stared down at the floor of the room and at the Doctor, her lower body tense with tension.

"I know. I was just… so disappointed. I feel like a… hypocrite…,"

"No no no," he said. "It’s okay. I’m glad you felt that way. You had good reasons for not trusting me, I think we both know it’s better to have me than not, given the context and the feelings."

"I… I feel like a hypocrite. What’s the word I use to describe myself?"

"Idealism."

"Yeah, I’m an idealist. Not anti-idealist, but… I can’t help but romanticize."

"Why do you feel that way?"

"I don’t want to put too fine a point on it. I just… it’s what drives me. My life has been defined by conflict. That’s always at the core of it. Even the idea that I want to do this, that I’m working towards doing this… selfishly, I don’t make it a focus."

"But you feel driven to do it?"

"Yeah."

The Doctor turned to the door, then opened it. She said, "I’m sorry. I should have brought that up earlier, but I was distracted. What do you want?"

"It’s okay. I want this to… it can’t be simple. I want this to be something bigger than any one thing. I want to change everything. It’s harder than that, but it’s easier. I’m a person who gets frustrated, so I get frustrated with others. I can use that to my advantage."

"That’s not convincing me," the Doctor said.

"No. It’s not."

"But it’s something… I’m not sure what it is. But it’s the only person who talks to me. And I never had it out for my ex-"

"But you made a deal? To go somewhere? To hurt someone?"

"I made a deal with myself. I don’t want to hurt

======== SAMPLE 27 ========
 didn’t have any inkling that one of her teammates was the source. "She’s playing dumb. We’re not fighting for our lives, so who cares if we win or lose the fight?"

"I care!" Armsmaster shouted after her. "My fucking teammates!"

As Armsmaster yelled, Canary lashed out, drawing a flare gun from her belt and opening fire. It was like the light from a thousand tiny suns, but it was directed straight at Armsmaster and the rest of the group. I could see the heat of the metal hitting Alexandria in the back and the legs of her injured leg, and the metal scraped off the plastic of her costume, leaving patterns of black and blue sparks behind.

The rest of the group tensed at the sound, and a few of the defending heroes took action. Grue launched a field into the sky, a half-foot in diameter, and turned his power off entirely. The metal shards of the gun barrel skimmed off of the surface of the sky, bending toward the ground as they ascended to the clouds. As they reached the top of the sky, they merged into a single, solid, uniform blob. I could see the brilliant shards of metal bending into a shape that was almost spherical, until the entire thing was only a bright streak of metal that jutted from her damaged leg.

The rest of the battle was resolved when Legend fired one arc into the sky, instead of the metal sphere. The debris that pelted us was blasted away in the process, and the scattered capes were driven off.

It was very possible that Alexandria wouldn’t have survived if it weren’t for the distraction Eidolon had given her.

"She’s still alive!" someone shouted. Alexandria, staring at the approaching sun. She was alive, albeit battered. She still had one cut on her stomach, but it had almost entirely healed.

Alexandria looked over her shoulder at the sun, and I saw her glance up at it with a expression that could have been grim, if not outright ghoulish.

It was the same expression she’d worn as she’d put on her costume. Relief. As if there was a subsonic pulse to it, the relief was similar, if not identical. I couldn’t place the emotion behind it, because it felt too brief, and because the emotion hadn’t gone away as she looked at the sun’s movements.

It was something, then. Relief at the idea that she could finally beat the Merchants. Relief that she could finally have one over on them. Relief that she could finally be free.

But most of all, and this surprised me, this relief was a reaction I could grasp from her. This is what she wanted. She’s relieved.

I didn’t have my powers, couldn’t understand this other power she was expelling, so I couldn’t offer any further insights. I couldn’t take a guess because I didn’t want to disappoint her, and because I needed to get home and get my things in order before I left for home.

"Good," Tattletale said. "That’s… good."

"But?"

"But we fought the Mannequins and the Greed Demons. We killed Mannequin with shotguns and then I put him out of my misery with throwing knives. I think our team is a lot weaker without you, even against the ones like the Siberian and Magnus. But yeah. It doesn’t sound like you’re having that good a time."

"Can I ask? What’s on your list of demands?"

"I’m asking for a day’s wages, pay for food, accommodation, and to-do lists. If you’re serious, I’ll make you regret it."

I could see the smile fall from Tattletale’s face. She looked genuinely terrified.

"Yeah, you did."

"You’re serious?"

"We fought the Nine. We defeated every Endbringer that walked the face of this planet except the ones we fought in New Angeles," Tattletale said. "We defeated the other classes of powers, the ones you see with the dragons. You tell me I don’t have what it takes to be a major player in Brockton Bay, and I’m just going to ignore it because I want to maintain the status quo? I don’t want to change your mind, or your priorities, or your priorities as a new subject for abuse? I want you to feel like you’re the type of guy that’s relegated to the back of the squad, always doing things their way? That�

======== SAMPLE 28 ========
 didn’t even make a sound. We’d taken our masks off in the past, and the mask that covered the bulk of his face showed only a broad yellow smile. He’d given us a boost from the same source that gave the other two capes their powers. A source that gave physical strength, durability and a thrust of nature, if you could call it that.

The two eyes were closed, the white mask of Noelle’s dress partially obscured by her dark hair. His hands were on the armrest of the chair opposite the woman. They were still working on Noelle. He reached out with one hand, stroked her hair, then brushed her skin and dirt clear of fingerprints and smears of blood. Had she managed to throw a fight our way? Maybe.

I glanced at the Doctor. She was staring at Noelle, her hands lowered from the console. The way I saw it, Noelle wasn’t standing.

The Doctor shook her head. "Can’t."

The Doctor turned and looked away.

When she spoke, her tone was a warning. "I can see him. I can see what he’s feeling. But it’s complicated. This is a fight that demands a good deal of mental and physical focus." She paused, glancing over the room.

I could see the look pass over Jack’s face. Had the look registered with Jack, or was it something he should feel?

"I’ve been thinking about this. My teammate, Gregor, talked to me about using his power, to control and manipulate people. You know what that ends up looking like? Are you really interested, if it means we’re not all together, if it means you win, and that ends up costing you something?"

The Doctor had taken up Jack’s arm. She reached out, grabbed Noelle’s hand.

Jack nodded, then walked forward until she was in between Doctor Mother and the Doctor.

He saw Gregor. He reached out for the man’s hand, tensed, ready to attack the Doctor were she didn’t give him immediate access to the hand.

Instead, he pressed a button on his wrist, then the man turned to stare at him.

"What is it you want? The answer I get from our previous conversations, when I talk about the benefits of being leader, I get the feeling it’s because you’re certain, for one thing. I can see where you have your comfort in your ability to control and manipulate others. Your familiarity with how you might approach a given situation. With being second in command."

"Doesn’t seem like it’ll help."

"It’ll help. And I think you’re wrong. Failing that, I’m very confused about what we know about him. I’m not sure if you’re the type for leadership, but you’re the type for a position like this, and you’re making calls you don’t think through deeply enough to hit you over the head with a direct question."

"I like the old adage of duality," Jack said. "In one respect, I’m both the leader and the follower. I do more than lead. I’m third wheel, I draw on third wheel thinking, I draw on third wheel intuition to fill in the blanks."

"Or you’d be the odd man out, leading with what little you know, leading with how you’re likely to react."

Jack stared at the Doctor. "I recall the question at the outset. What secrets do you keep?"

"That we're not well mapped out at this stage. Third Wheel is out of contact, probably."

"I see. I’ll be careful," Jack said. He glanced at Gregor. "I’ll explain, then, if you’re willing to hear me out, while I read through the files on the Doctor."

"We’ll resolve this issue later."

"We can’t save her unless we save her," Jack said. "A third wheel is a risky one."

The Doctor frowned. "I think you’ll have to understand, I’m aware of the issues that face your team. I can’t discuss them unless we’re specifically asked. There’s a major gap in our defenses and, as I said, there’s a lot going on at the same time. I’m limited as a leader and a member of the team as far as what I can do, while you guys operate. With everyone else so vastly different, I�

======== SAMPLE 29 ========
 didn’t manage to get a foothold.

As he watched, Old Man bent down and grabbed a crowbar.

The number crunched and groaned again.

Old Man smiled, then slapped Cinderhands in the back, causing him to hop down while landing on his front feet.

Cocky!

Old Man pulled the crowbar out of the holster on his gun, then smirked, pointing it at her. She shoved Cinderhands at her maximum power. The man with the knife slashed at Old Man’s chest, tearing up the cloth of the fabric at the hip.

Then Cinderhands shoved Old Man hard enough to send him to the ground. He was coughing violently, blood pouring from his nose.

Old Man shook his head, then looked at the man with the gun. "Who the fuck is that, you little freak!"

The gun swayed as Old Man gripped and pulled it in mid-air. He whipped the gun around until the barrel tapped against Old Man, then fired. The gun tip slammed into Old Man’s upper chest. He toppled, eyes going wide as he stared down at his fallen adversary’s body.

He reached for the one-hundred dollar bill and handed it to the old man with the glasses. Cinderhands took it, looked at his client, then handed him the back of the bill, with the tip of the gun embedded in the very tip of Old Man’s shirt. The old man looked at it, then shoved the money into the tip of Old Man’s fist, where the gun-mounted grenade launcher sat.

When Cinderhands was sure the old man had all the money, he turned to cash the rest of his loot. Old Man glanced at Cinderhands, his face hard with emotion.

"I’ll pay you five thousand dollars each time I come after you," Cinderhands said. "I know you. The cops can come every fifteen minutes, but they aren’t allowed to follow up."

"Yeah, but they will."

Old Man sighed. He turned to his new client, then slapped him on the cheek, eliciting a shudder among the forty or so people present.

Old Man looked at the rest of the group, gathered them into a line, "You’re not here to negotiate anymore. You want my power? You can have it. I can give it to you. Or the other way, if it means we stop you. Money changes hands, and it could be worth what it costs to get the best equipment. I know, so you’re less likely to try something dumb again. It’s like a club for a gang. More power, more control, quicker responses. Our powers work best with alcohol in their systems, so there’s no harm done by trying something new. We can cut your liquor intake in half, if you want it."

"But the other way is… no gain," Tattletale said. "It’s like… taking the whole of your arm and using it."

"Yeah, but it isn’t as fun or scary, for the other guy," Old Man retorted.

"No, don’t be a dick," Tattletale cut in. "I get the feeling you’re about to snap."

Old Man chuckled. When he spoke, his voice was low, "Now, this is my offer. Sixteen thousand dollars up front, and I’ll give you a share of any profits from the second the project gets done."

"Shits like bugs and spiders and lice. That’s more money than I save, when I sell my stuff."

"You’re in a position to take advantage of this," Old Man frowned. "You could make half of what I’m making, and sell for four or five times the price. Or you could do what I’m doing, and sell for five or ten times what I’d sell for."

"No, fuck that," Tattletale retorted. "No. That doesn’t add up."

"Right? Because it’s not changing hands, it’s not exchanging hands," Old Man frowned. He turned to the older man with the nose and eyes, "And if I use your money to turn the project around, you’re not giving it to any of the others in the project?"

"What do you want? I don’t know, Tattletale," the man with the nose spoke.

"I will. I can’t promise I’ll be right? I’ll do my best."

"You can’t guarantee anything," Old Man frowned

======== SAMPLE 30 ========
 didn't say. "And, uh, if we wanted to keep the conversation moving, maybe it’d be better if we didn’t call each other by our names, at least for a little while, but… okay."

The group broke up, and Tattletale and I looked at each other, smiling.

I felt kind of lost, feeling disconnected from everyone I was spending time with. I reached into my pocket to my right and withdrew a small package. I unfolded it, and then stuck it in the nearest crevice, where it sat there for the remainder of my trip to the fridge. I pushed it into the back of my jeans instead of putting it in my back pocket because that made me think of something I had to do. I don’t even have the time to think about it right now.

After reaching the fridge, I pulled off my flight pack, pulling it off so it was just the one half-full pack, and a spare battery from the backpack that was supposed to be attached to the pack. I put the pack in the top of the smallest compartment of my jeans, along with my costume.

I found a small box, and then began unpackaging my equipment.

I’d brought a small girl from home. As I made sure she had everything she needed to get by in the foreseeable future, I gave her to her. She was terrified, frail, probably three years old.

I put the pack and battery into the girl’s backpack, and put everything else into a drawstring bag so I had everything I needed on hand. I left the bags in the compartment with Brian and the rest of the family.

I opened the box to find more of the same candles that I’d been given and all of the paper bags. They were different colors, festooned with bees and butterflies, and different lengths, meaning there was a little less inside for each bag. Like Christmas decorations.

I opened the first gift, an extremely unwieldy tube of candles. I was able to get them going pretty quickly, because the candle set they were in also held my costume, a miniature megabomb. I set about lighting them, pulling them out of the candle holder to begin with, and then threw them out. It was kind of annoying, because I had to be sure to ignite everything on touch up before I lit any more, and I had a habit of leaving things so long that the bugs would have set all of the bugs on them, but I couldn’t bring everything into my range.

I threw the rest of the gifts aside. For now, anyways.

I pulled on some gloves to go up a layer and settled into a sweater. It had to be thin enough to hide the most sensitive parts of my costume, since the gloves would likely come in handy at some point.

I also changed into some thicker body armor, leathers for my armor and bug zippers for my luggage. I left the zippers because I wasn’t about to use them, but I did leave the gloves in the bag.

I went into my costume shopping channel again, looking for anything I could get on home videos or merchandise. I really hadn’t been in a situation where I needed a glove or armor for anything, but then I’d had my batarang that I used for my costume, so I had that kind of stuff. Beyond that, I shopped for gloves, boots, bags, costumes. For the last two weeks, the last thing I’d wanted was to run into a bit of a rut, and the last thing I wanted to do was wear out. So I had some extra arm guards and a layer of spider silk over top of them to make myself feel more secure, and I grabbed the lightweight sweatshirt that my costume shop had put together.

With all of that, I made sure to get the essentials: phone with wi-fi, earbuds and some cables. I wouldn’t be able to get a hold to it, but I did snag a spare pair of headphones from the clearance section of the hardware store. They were only $5, which was pretty damn low when you were talking about buying something for a typical Halloween costume.

The costume was ugly, to put it mildly. It was something I’d made a part of costume as I walked around the neighborhood, but I’d never quite put the actual costume together. I finally got around to it a few days ago, after months of beinggrudgingly begging to move on from costume, which was embarrassing. I cringed at how ugly it looked when I put it on. I knew it was wrong, but it was hard to even look at it without feeling like I had to hide or cover myself up. Even after going to countless costume stores and trying on dozens before I finally

======== SAMPLE 31 ========
 didn’t help. The people there were people we’d fought alongside, friends, family. If anything, their hostility seemed directed at us, a strange juxtaposition to the hostility they seemed to bear toward Scion.

I opened my mouth to speak, and I couldn’t get it out without hurting my throat. "I think… I think if it were you, I think you’d be angry, too."

Some of the other Travelers were sitting on the beach, talking amongst themselves. Tired, restless.

It’s what comes last, Rachel thought. So many things come out on top.

I’m not sure if that’s what she meant, but Tecton was sitting by the lighthouse, his arms folded. He looked lost, almost dazed.

"They think it’s intentional, that it’s something they wanted to do," Tecton said.

"Yeah," Grace said. "I don’t get it."

But the Travelers had gone on. They were getting ready to cross paths with one another. Meeting like-minded people and spending time with people who shared similar beliefs.

I’m sure these people are hurting, or frustrated.

I don’t get what they’re saying.

They’re frustrated with me.

I don’t get what they’re feeling.

It’s my fault, in the sense that I brought this on myself.

So these people, this group, they’re frustrated because I brought them into this mess, and because I didn’t do anything to stop them.

I had a plan in mind, as much as anyone. A plan to get through to these people, or at least to myself. But it fell apart when I tried to implement it.

I stood above the crowd. People were tensed, ready to act.

Fury. Anger. A measure of desperation that boiled at the core of it all.

It was the part of me that felt like I was making headway. I was fighting to bring others on board. I was keeping others from doing anything dangerous — and if something went down like it had for so long, it was a good bet it would be the result of that.

I knew people were watching. I knew this needed to be noticed.

The portal appeared without any effort on my part. It was so smooth I thought it was intentional. A slight bend in the timeline.

The world’s clock struck ten thousand. Two minutes, five seconds after Adamant was last in the news.

My heart leaped in my chest. I couldn’t even breathe as the adrenaline kicked into high gear, and the fight was on. I felt like punching a wall, every movement making the floor slide, every second an advantage. My body was going numb, but my mind continued to fire. I had to have my thoughts.

I opened my mouth to speak, but my throat was dry, the clenching of my jaw painful. "If you want to try a trial run, that would be great. Anything else? Anything you want to bring up first? Anything you’re positive about?"

There was no reply.

"Let’s see," I said, bending down to start picking up the crowbar. I gestured, just out of reach of the panel where the portal opened, "First thing, let’s see what option two is."

••••

Two minutes after our last conversation, Adamant was on television, spewing venom and insults at Tattletale’s group, all about their substandard costumes.

The heroes were there to defend the residents, along with the heroes from New Wave, the Wards and the Protectorate. A dozen capes in the lead, standing at the ready, guns in hand.

The villain, holding back in a very real attempt to become whole again, was a caricature, with an ugly mouth and thick black curls.

And it was in that same moment that I recalled my meeting with Rachel. As much as I’d wanted to keep that secret, to keep that secret and be completely open about my experiences, I couldn’t bring myself to tell.

My head was pounding, my heartbeat steadily increasing. Something was wrong.

I managed to blink my way out of the doldrum with the first genuine effort, bringing tears to my eyes.

More occurred as I moved my arm, raising the armband. I saw a small window, perhaps ten or fifteen seconds old, where I could send a message to Panacea. It didn’t go nearly as far as I’d hoped, got cut

======== SAMPLE 32 ========
 didn’t hold her attention for long. I could feel her reacting to my movements as I moved from the shadows to the front of the room.

The only sounds in the building were the thrum of the rain and the echoing sound of the building creaking. In the next few seconds, the bottom half of the building was split in two. One section collapsed, then split again, to give the construction company four legs and an internal mechanism to operate. A claw ripped through the brick of the second set of doors as they opened, and they rattled to the floor.

My bugs could sense the movement of the building against the vibrations as the split-second doors opened, and began sliding down the stairs. They penetrated the concrete of the stairwell and onto the workers beneath. My bugs could sense the temperature of their skin as the bugs shifted down – sweating, gasping, arching their chests – and I activated my flight pack to get away before they could go fatal.

I headed to the main shaft in time to grab two of the first people out of the shaft, a father and a young boy with what looked like a fractured rib. The man screamed for his son and fell to the floor, his chest heaving. I had to hunker down to avoid being one of them, using the legs of my flight pack to hold myself back. I was in an underground bunker, with only a few perks – the food was delivered via a conveyor belt, and there was a small crowd of adults around me, making it hard to move freely.

A group of adults pushed a partially-fractured and bleeding man upstairs. I hiked up their trousers and then bent down to pick them up. When they were on the bottom floor, I draped them over a damaged stairwell, using the legs to haul them up.

With one hand, I worked at securing each pair of them to the base of the stairwell, bending down to pick up the remaining pair.

I didn’t like to underestimate my enemies, but I suspected there was some psychological toll taking. This was the second time the shaft had collapsed while we’d been underground. The first time, the construction had been on top of nearby terrain. We’d been trapped, and with no means of escape the first time, it had been a terrifying prospect. With the second collapse a matter of weeks after the first, it was easy to get caught up in that creeping dread that slowly climbed up my spine and made me think about all the shitty, embarrassing, dangerous and potentially life-threatening moments that were down there.

It was easy enough to change my mind, but it felt like we were on a suicide mission as a group. If we’d collapsed, it would have been our own fault. Being together as a group? As individuals? It was a higher stakes gamble. We were risking our own lives.

I turned my focus back to the construction job ahead of us. The adults who were standing guard outside made more noise than anyone outside, and I could have said something about that, but I was worried I was repeating what I’d written down – there would be nowhere to go. Maybe it would have been okay if they had turned around, without a partner in their circle, so young or old. Whatever.

"Let’s go," I said.

We walked in silence until a group of construction workers stopped to chat. One of them, a bigger-than-life looking figure, gave me a cheeky grin as he noticed me. I felt an erection at the idea, and he was right. I looked him up and down, waited while he talked to me in turn, and ultimately gave him the slip. He invited me to go look him up and down once more. I complied. This time, I was honest, I wasn’t going to make a fuss. "See that? There’s a hole in the wall, a couple of inches across by about four inches deep, just below the hook on the roof." I pointed. He looked at the other side.

I walked over to the other side, where the wall had collapsed, and I found what I was looking for even before I had made my way up. I pulled my towel away from my shoulder, and pulled one piece of clothing over it, a sweater. I left it at the base of the wall.

As I was sure the workers would tell you, that other side wasn’t much different from the other side. It’s where people left their discarded clothes and other rubbish where they were when they broke camp. But it was also where they stashed food. The area had been designated a special district for food insecure people, and people here weren’t exactly squealing to get what they could eat. Most of the produce was either lost or too expensive to eat, and there were those who

======== SAMPLE 33 ========
 didn’t seem to care.

"It’s not," the driver told her. Not a line I understood.

"It’s not even a consideration…" Tattletale said.

"It’s important," Grue said. He seemed to have gotten that talking point out of his head. Tattletale turned around, looking at Grue to double check. "Okay. So it’s important for a pretty simple reason: if we’re going to bring Dinah back and we’re doing it by way of some kind of backdoor, we need to make it so we can track her, after she’s knocked out the first lab. If we do it by cutting right through the Veil, you guys won’t have the ability to track us after we get away."

"It’s not just us," the driver added. I saw Eidolon make a sound that might have been an agreement, if he hadn’t sounded just under a little skeptical.

"And it won’t be just us. Bonesaw and Siberian’s going to be here to finish off."

"Can we make it happen?" the driver asked. "Without the back door?"

No. Grue, Rachel and I were standing on the other side of the vehicle, and Tattletale had just come from the passenger door. We were out of the way of danger, out of the line of fire.

"I’m going to tell you what to do," I said, without turning my back. I directed bugs into the dark interior of the van. Grue, Rachel and I stood beside the driver. I sent my bugs into the compartment, then into the back recess of the seat beside us.

"We’re going to go," Tattletale said.

I winced. "This isn’t a backdoor, and I’m not going to cut my friend free with a knife in her hands."

"I- wait, what are you doing?"

"I’m making this harder than it has to be," I said.

"But there’s no way you two can go back to your regular schedules with their regular lives because of this," Trickster piped up. He grabbed his shovel and shoved it into the hole of the vehicle.

We were out of sight of the cameras by the time everyone was in the elevator, pressing through to get to the roof. Tattletale was pushing her way through the crowd that still hovered around us. I could see Siberian on the far end of the rear hallway, no longer half as tall or wide as she once was. Her skin was taut, the ends dragging like fishing lines. Her hair had been styled into braid, now long, glossy, almost combed straight. Her fingernails were just as unwieldy.

"I was saying I wasn’t sure how we’d get out," Genesis spoke from the doorway at the rear of the truck, blocking the gap and leaving only the frame and the leather straps that held it closed. "Maybe Eidolon will help?"

"I don’t think so," Grue spoke.

"I can’t help but agree," the truck’s driver called out from beside her. "We can’t afford this mess."

"And you and Grue are two of the few people who aren’t tied down or gagged," Imp said. Siberian was already walking around the rear of the vehicle, hands pressed to her nose and mouth. The two brawny young heroes were a distance away – Imp had a few extra pears perched on each finger of her right hand – but Imp could see a kind of panic in her partner’s expression. It looked forced, like a dog desperately trying to correct its master.

"What’s this?" Trickster asked.

"Back door."

The back door. Or, rather, the location where the back portion of the vehicle shifted. I couldn’t quite make out the detail with the layout of the van, but my bugs allowed me to note that it shifted far enough towards the front of the vehicle that we couldn’t be sure how it came into view. Just when I was starting to get the full picture, I caught a glimpse through a gap in the darkness – a view that would have been too painful to take in if I were able to see. My bugs could feel the dark crevice and the texture of crushed metal beneath our feet.

The two of them emerged from the darkness at the rear of the truck. Siberian leaned on the passenger door of the truck to keep herself from accidentally opening the door and tripped as one of the boys flung a rock through the opening Imp

======== SAMPLE 34 ========
 didn’t move a muscle, but every move my bugs made was followed by a painful feeling beneath my arms.

This would take a minute.

Grue raised a lantern. We hurried out of the cloud of darkness and toward the hallway.

Our target?

I started to turn my head, but my swarm sense kicked into high gear and it was quickly starting to take over my periphery. With the lantern at my side, I drew the crowd together.

I could feel the majority of the crowd. A vast majority. It was overwhelming.

I could sense Bitch, but she wasn’t standing. Her dogs were at the ready. She wheeled around, pointing. I didn’t give it a second thought.

Grue, Imp and the two girls were all around the perimeter of the group. Bitch stood at the far end of the crowd, her back pressed to the wall by Bastard and two of his legs.

"There’s a target on our heads," Tattletale said. "I control them, you control nothing. It’s our game plan, and it’s complicated."

I shook my head. There were others in our group, and they weren’t so willing to cooperate, reluctant to follow instructions.

I saw the forcefield woman with the floating forcefield thing in her hair. Her power was a mystery, since she hadn’t been seen using her power to change anything. She was a walking tripod, never moving, and when she was on the move, she seemed to be walking at a normal speed and almost casually, as Bitch adjusted her stance. She had forcefields set into the ground, ready to strike those who strayed too far.

We were outnumbered this time, and Bitch was more powerful than Grue and I. We couldn’t afford a mistake.

One of the other members of the Wards was approaching, a teenaged kid with exaggeratedly long hair and a costume of interlocking boards and ribbons. Around his chest were compartments with vats of various liquids and vials. He held a lit torch to the air, and my bugs could sense the heat scalding the crowd.

There was a flare, and those present in the area immediately packed the interior of the room, blocking the entrance and leaving the group with only one exit to Grue and I.

The rest of the crowd that loomed around us was some of the local teens. Chances were they were here for the same reason Grue had been and those in his territory had been. Bitch had her followers, Coil had more of a following base of operations. The local gangs, the solo villains and the crowd of injured teenagers were a muddle at best, a mess of rival gangs, squabbling factions and hatreds. To get down to business, we had to take out one or two of those before they had a chance to do anything else. For whatever reason, they hadn’t been willing to throw their support behind our fight against Noelle’s alleged family. Instead, they’d watched and watched while we took out one or two members of the Nine, only to go out in force the next week, going one-on-one, killing one or two members of the Merchants and lynching one or two members of the Aryan undertakers.

It was a big part of the reason I’d come here.

Grue and I had a talk in the car. Grue felt that keeping Brockton Bay under wraps was dangerous, and that if people knew about the Undersiders, they’d leave. If we were going to organize a takeover, we needed to make sure the locals weren’t going to come to fight us.

"So," Grue said, peeling off the layers of layers of masks he’d removed and put them on. "We go, and then we reorganize. We take the elements we like, we get new faces on the team. People who can fight. We keep the old guard together, keep everyone new. We call ourselves the Chosen."

"Chosen?" Tattletale asked.

"Just call us that. I’ve been watching the media. People are terrified. My phone’s on fire, I’ve got an IP address fucking with their networks. I could blow up your phone and upload a million photos of you, and the world could be fucked."

"We just need a plan," Grue said. "Work together. It’s not the time or place for drama."

"Right," Imp said. "We don’t need to work together. We need to collectively call ourselves the Chosen, and we decide that, until we’re ready to fight. To do that,

======== SAMPLE 35 ========
 didn’t take, or the ability to fly?

She stepped through the portal, taking to the air with both engines on full-throttle. She could feel the heat of the second gear as she took to the air, flying with a surprising fluidity, more like she was gliding than flying. Her partner turned the engine up to its highest setting.

The pair approached their destination, meeting up, ducking low to avoid the laser that was aimed at them, then flying straight for the spot where the portal had burned.

There was a tower standing here, a massive, complicated machine inside, with a strange shape to it, strange architecture, and a hell of a lot of glowing red metal.

Her engine changed from a two-stroke to a four-stroke, then repeated the process, doubling the speed for a fourth stroke.

The machine had a giant claw, and one of the gears in the machine was a propeller, rotating at an incredible speed in response to a different control input from Lung. It whirled around the enormous piece of machinery in turn, thrusting itself out of the portal just as it started the slow rotation.

The propeller kicked into overdrive, thrusting the machine forward, and the gears shifted just as they joined together again, shifting the vehicle forward to the furthest point within the portal. She had to reorientate her antennae to track the movement of the propeller while moving forward with it. The furthest it moved, the more aggressive the reactions from her engines, pushing the propeller forward.

She landed just beside the propeller, using the propeller to help push the vehicle forward as it passed through the portal.

There was a body on the floor of the portal, nearly as big as a SUV. A cape I recognized as Night, half-cape and half-shawl. Bonesaw had made him, using a technique with a heavy toll on his health and stamina. His muscles tensed and tensed, but also churned, his skin glowing a brilliant orange as it hummed with power.

He reached out to grab her, his hand moving faster than the speed of light with the movements of her flesh and bone. She pulled back, putting his hand on the side of her leg, and he nearly fell.

In that same second, Night herself was destroyed. To this day, I don’t know what caused her to take this drastic action.

The cape standing beside Night had built himself a massive claw, only for it to be too powerful. His claw was almost twice the size as the one he had already, a thousand times the size in some cases.

Caught between the massive claw and the shattered leg, sheared to the bone. Still standing beside Lung, she folded her arms around him in a rough hug.

The machine which Night had used to construct the portal was long since stopped, no doubt shutting off the lights in some nondescript location. The only light that was filtering through the portal was from the brilliant orange filters that were affixed to the blades that were moving the large pieces of machine.

The machine had been a part of the plan, but Fallen thought he had discovered a solution to capillary flow, a way to channel the juice from Night’s machine of glass into the portal itself.

But he hadn’t come up with a better way to stop the capillary from flowing with the juice than pouring a thick, viscous fluid onto the floor of the portal.

This, apparently, wasn’t a problem for Scion.

Lung approached the portal door, stopped, and began to pour the fluid onto the floor. The machine began to hum, and the machines at the edges of the room began spinning up.

Capes with powers other than the ones they normally wore were gathered in groups, leaning against portals as well as walking through. Lung had only to touch a portal for them to share their powers with others nearby.

One group of capes stood in a particular formation, holding hands, at the very front of the portal, as if they were coordinating their powers in some grand scheme.

Lung, Night and his team made their way through, entering the battlefield in the center of the room.

The other machines were already appearing at the gate. A heavy-duty version of Golem’s portal, a motion detector and gravity pump that each had to haul something huge and burly through the portal. At the very back, just beside the gate, there was an extension of the same device Golem had been working on: a space warper.

The cape with the cap of 'Mover three, touch two', teleported himself quickly through the portal. He touched the things, and the combination of his own abilities and the capes he’d touched became realities. Teleporting himself and grabbing the things he

======== SAMPLE 36 ========
 didn’t get any further for a matter of this magnitude:

"The… there’s a man in a green fedora, hat, jacket and band with a shield emblem."

"Man of steel, you mean."

"A descendant of Endbringer, or maybe the second, if the experiments in his lab are any indication. I don’t know. If it’s the latter, I can’t be the one to find out."

I stared down at Panacea. Then I looked up. "That’s what Brockton Bayers are?"

"Well, there’s other cities with bad endings, and there’s other worlds with terrible endings, but Brockton Bayers? It’s ours."

"You said it’s ours."

"I’ll have to go investigate, make sure it’s ours."

I could fight a war against the Endbringers, turn the battle around and win this fight. But how could I explain how I got this perspective? Was it because I was still absorbing the knowledge of what the PRT was doing, while failing to grasp all of the details of what was happening elsewhere? Or was it something else?

"He’s alive. He’s somewhere between a master and a slave," I said.

Panacea nodded. "I understand. May I ask you to leave him be?"

I shook my head. "No point. He didn’t set himself on fire. He could be anywhere, and the authorities would be called in to take him into custody."

"And… maybe they will. They will. But what they won’t do is turn a blind eye. The media will point fingers, they’ll mention my name, they’ll say who’s to blame, and they’ll try to pressure the local doctors and hospitals into giving him a quick, cheap fix while they hold their own end of the bargain."

She was frowning. Couldn’t argue with that. "He said he needed the antidote, and I said I’d put my best minds on it, but no amount of talking or pushing get people to listen."

I frowned, looking at her. She looked down at me with a level of disappointment that betrayed how far we’d come. "I won’t deny that he has a weakness. He was sleeping in his bed for a while, after losing his arm, and maybe that’s relevant…"

"If he’s sleeping in that bed…" Panacea started.

I frowned. "It doesn’t excuse that he attacked us."

"Except where we go, he won’t move from it, but I know he didn’t rest for long periods of time after that. Until he woke up again."

"Why not move sooner? When it worked?"

As if to stop me before I could continue, Panacea looked down at her own bed. "I wanted to test all of my patients before I decided on the cure."

"And did you?"

"No. But I was thinking about doing it as a side-project, to see if I could find a way to refine my techniques along a more natural line. Give the patient more of an itch than I usually give a patient, or give one to one ratio better to the point that it’s almost unnoticeable. So it’s not a patient anymore."

"That’s not your real body, is it?"

"No."

"You’re very good in theory," I said.

"I hope so. No, I would be disappointed if I found that out already. Let me find out."

There was a long pause. I could see the doctors at the other end of the bed, some trying to get to their laps, others giving support to the one patient in the room.

The woman moved, but she didn’t stand.

"Okay," I said. There’s no telling what this woman’s leg could become. "You could fix that."

Her head jerked my way, making the bed shake. Her eyes shifted to the other side of the bed, and she shifted her head a fraction, tilting her upper body so she held the bed as she leaned on it.

I used my power, and her body followed, supporting the rest of her.

"You’re not acting."

It was an odd comment, but I couldn’t bring myself to deal with it. In retrospect, I think I had something saying at the outset that I think I kept in mind as I let my guard

======== SAMPLE 37 ========
 didn’t let him know about it. She’d been looking forward to having someone to talk to about the rumors. Now everything was on hold.

The rain wasn’t falling as hard, and the chill was making for a heavy atmosphere, with not exactly enough of a breeze to warm them both.

Lung’s throat was as rigid as an iron girdle as he glared over the hill, his teeth too sharp to look like effort. There was no emotion to his expression, only a lack of it. What I’d seen when I first heard them made it clear that they hadn’t spent a lot of time together. He was the battlestalker, the ultimate in what the term was becoming – an extremely dangerous individual who was both tough and remorseless in his pursuit of others.

When Tattletale had introduced them, I had assumed she was going to be their real target. Instead, she had gone after Mannequin, then called everyone she knew to come help her. I had followed just as fast with the other members of Faultline’s crew.

Lung hadn’t exactly been on my side throughout this whole thing. That, and his emotions weren’t at peace at the moment.

"Don’t you start," Tattletale murmured, just above us, "You’re going to have to do more damage before you can talk to me."

"Damage is a more suitable word," Lung rumbled. "If you think about it, the odds are much worse if I wound you with my power, or if I catch you doing something like you just did with your knife, then bail out the wrong person."

"Bail?" Tattletale almost whispered.

Lung rumbled, "I’ll give you the benefit of a doubt and everything will be sorted out for you, you wannabe scumbag."

"The best way to achieve justice is through fear, right?"

"And I don’t have any fear," Lung said.

"No? Why?"

"Because you’re dead," Lung said, sounding surprised.

Tattletale glanced at me. "But she did say you fear."

I frowned.

"I was hoping your ‘fear’ was because of the knife, not because of what you’ve done to me."

"It’s the truth," Tattletale said. "See, you and I are very different people. You did something to me, hurt me, and I never recovered from that."

Lung rumbled, "I have proof. Stab the same knife that Taylor used, and you’ll both be guilty. So don’t bother trying to prove anything. We’ll see how hard you really prove yourself."

He turned to leave, and Grabowski hopped up onto the top of the wall just behind Lung. Grabowski’s rapid-fires from his utility compartment let him guard his comrades as Grabowski walked around him, walking on the lip of the lip of the roof that stretched out from Grabowski’s mouth.

The rain made for brief, fierce downpours in the ventilation ducts, pounding against the men in the protective suits. Grabowski took the opportunity to wipe the downpour away with his wet arm.

Tattletale had caught up with us. She stopped just in time to see Mannequin stopping on the other side of the fence. Grabowski moved to surround Mannequin in his swarm.

Mannequin turned on his ear, "I have something in mind. I wanted to say hi to you, so you can know just how dangerous I really am."

Grabowski stood, holding his shovel in one hand. He dug his hand into the side of Mannequin’s side, as if to remind the villain that Grabowski was alive and well. Grabowski returned to the truck so he could hold the shovel the closer ones would use if they came across the villain standing at the window.

"Just so you know," Tattletale added, "If your plan goes ahead, it means there won’t be many left when Armageddon happens. You won’t be able to go back to your lair and grab fresh parts."

Mannequin turned towards Tattletale, "I’ll make alternate costumes, I’ll make up more monsters, I’ll make up non-descript people, that won’t scare people like they scare me."

Tattletale stared at him.

Mannequin said, "I’ll be doing those things, okay? Just so you’re up to date. The costumes are kind of a

======== SAMPLE 38 ========
 didn’t respond. The sound had ceased.

"Tattletale’s done a couple of very good things," Imp said. "She just took them for granted. You’ve deserved the rewards for a long time. We’ve worked out a fair amount of the kinks. Some of our members have broken away and started their own groups. You, Rachel, have been a big part of helping those of us who’ve stayed together. We’ve taken the stuff we don’t need and made a great living doing it."

"That’s not enough," Rachel said. Her voice was hard. "Have Imp and I talked about putting together some cash? Or maybe we could offer the most the first place we can think of? Cash directly to you, in the first group of three we take from us, so we have extra money in our bank account, with enough to get us out of here with no trouble at all."

"That’s not enough money," Imp said, again.

"Yes, but we wouldn’t be able to get away with it without getting more than a share of the money before we made our preparations. We haven’t even figured out how we’re going to get into the city, and we don’t want to live without Tattletale or Rachel for long before we do. If we’re going to pull this off, we need you."

"I have enough money," Imp said, and the word was a hard one. She was obviously having trouble conveying that it was money she was after, even with the hard accent.

"Go on," Tattletale made Tattletale move, stepping forward.

Rachel made noise of anger.

"The rest," Imp said. She put a hand on Rachel’s shoulder, and Tattletale backed away.

"Three thousand," Rachel said.

"That’s a lot of money," Imp said. "No less than two million."

"But you’re a free agent, Tattletale. Anyone who buys into this will be paying a pretty penny, too. Only a matter of time. We can’t let Dinah wait any longer, can’t throw her under the bus if we’re going to be able to track down who took what."

"A lot of money," Rachel echoed her.

"We want to take down them, both before and after the end of the world," I said. "So we take out our frustrations on them. Divide and rule, whatever else."

Tattletale didn’t have a response to that. She settled her phone back on the table beside her, sighed, "That’s not going to happen. We can’t let the public know the specifics of how our money is spent."

"There’s still those who doubt us," I said. "Until they are convinced otherwise, they are going to maintain a degree of distrust."

"I’m not convinced that either of us are doing a very good job," Imp said.

"Imp," Tattletale said, addressing the girl, "We’ve discussed this at length. The public will eventually trust us when we say or do something they aren’t willing to say or do themselves."

There was a flicker of interest from the boy.

"But you think the alternative is worse? A more disastrous outcome, worse consequences from the revelations?"

"I don’t think so," Imp said. "What I’m getting at is that the only people who are really watching our expenditure of funds, looking for inconsistencies, are the ones who’ve read my accounts and who’ve watched the records."

"How many of the people who’ve read my accounts are trusting me when I say or do something?" Tattletale asked.

"A number," I said. "Tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands. That’s without going into the issues around Bitch being a glorified fundraiser or the fact that your involvement is still very much exploratory. We’d be taking a huge gamble, risking that the public might not like us, but we’d be betting that they would at least know enough to ask around enough times to get confirmation before they made their purchase."

"That’s your recommendation?" Tattletale asked, in the same moment that Rachel spoke.

"Yes," Imp said.

"I’ll be blunt, then, Tattletale. I don’t think you’re doing a terrible job on that front," I responded. "And if there’s no problem with misinformation, then

======== SAMPLE 39 ========
 didn’t go, nor would I. I could hear it in her stride, her confidence – she wasn’t her old self, and there was something about being the leader of a team that made her a little more confident. She was just managing to carry the team, managing to look like she was on the same path to where the rest of us could stop her.

And I was just looking for a way out.

Her plan had been for her to get into Brockton Bay with the remaining Wards and then infiltrate directly into the PRT. We needed some leverage.

I’d maneuvered things in my favor before, I’d found the opportunity when everything else seemed to be in whack. This time, I’d also managed to get Mannequin’s power going. He’d been one of the heroes who had actually cooperated in dealing with the Nine, and he’d been too hurt to carry the team on his own.

My bugs were drifting steadily toward Mannequin. I hadn’t actually gotten a full count, but my suspicion was that he hadn’t had more than two seconds to act before he collapsed again. That he might have been suffering a heart attack, if it wasn’t for my bugs.

I still had my swarm. A small handful of flying insects, and they formed an almost imperceptible swarm of Mannequins in progress, moving just a little too slowly to keep a mannequin from me. The swarm was slowed, and then dispersed as if it were a blob.

Mannequin didn’t carry out his plan. He collapsed, dead.

We were left to consider the end of the building. Our endgame was another takedown, an invasion of some kind. There was no other reason for him to die, besides the fact that he wanted to eliminate me.

Maybe he was as distressed as we were. I wasn’t sure how he did it, considering he didn’t leave the building as he was led away, the entire room empty save for me, Mannequin lunging for him.

Mannequin seized us with his bare hands and dragged us through the open door. His weapon was the collapse of a building, a long, thin pole of bone that had been transformed into an explosive device that slid across our heads like the motion of a falling star.

I hadn’t noticed when we’d arrived. I could only turn my attention to my swarm as he changed locations, moving into a closet or in the other room I’d been in. My swarm moved past us.

A siren’s scream, rising steadily until she was halfway to us, just beyond our range. Then it stopped. There was only the noise of shattered glass.

A heartbeat later, Scion appeared, his glowing hands a blur to the naked eye. Invisible but for the golden radiance, the center of the city skyline, the entire world seemed to revolve around him.

He passed through the crowd of brutes. There were so many of them. Ten, twelve, fifteen, twenty. Even two were injured. One was black, the other was yellow.

In that instant, it became all too clear why we couldn’t win this.

The others followed suit, and Scion killed a dozen of them with a quiet whir. The remaining brutes turned on the wounded as another blast tore through the front end of the crowd. There was little surprise from either group.

Shattered faces, bloody uniforms, scattered ammunition, shattered chairs…

One more blast, and the crowd reached for weaponized bats, spears, clubs, maces, and knives, reaching for me too. I caught the only person who didn’t see me as I fled in a bear-hug.

A scream, the entire crowd could hear, a squeal that went up in pitch as much from fear and rage as from any kind of pain.

He’s alive! Someone’s lying about me doing something with my powers!

I stepped out of sight.

Then I was alone.

He’s not as strong as I thought he’s strong. So how can he get away when he’s trapped inside a building with a bunch of heroes and… nothing left to hurt him?

I don’t want to be on the receiving end of anything close to that kind of trick.

I wasn’t strong enough to throw myself in the way of his attack, or to join him in going on the offensive.

My power was slipping from my grasp. I used my bugs to call others over, but my ability to move a distance with my swarm was slipping, and my power was occasionally getting worse

======== SAMPLE 40 ========
 didn’t hear or understand and instead pointed to where he and Cuff had just arrived. She gave them a once-over in the hopes it would deter any others.

Cuff had managed to grab a hold on something before the others departed. When Bitch had disappeared down the hole, she’d done it alone. She hadn’t been thinking along those lines. Was it more dangerous for the rest of us to be ignorant? To have nobody to debrief with, to have Cuff do it on her own, but the others were still out there, they were potentially a danger.

He hadn’t been listening. I was hoping that his awareness of what was going on was more than what I was experiencing on the surface.

It took some time to clear away every last one of the bugs I’d accumulated over the past several minutes, but I managed to dislodge two from the tunnel and one from around the building.

I could just barely make out the movement as the bugs were routed through the various chambers and portals the Endbringer had opened. A large number of the spiders, in fact, were being routed into the various buildings. I sent a small few to her eyes, hoping they could lure her out of stealth mode. The others were too small to be of any use.

The spiders, in turn, were being routed into a network of other smaller bugs, so that they could remain in place. The room was no longer completely dark. Only the lights that were supposed to be on were now glowing, giving the room a dim white color. I used the light in the hopes that the scattered bugs would alert the right bugs to warn the right ones were in the right place, and so on.

I could feel the movements of the spiders and the bugs through the hole in the floor, by the bugs that were crawling through the openings in the floor and ceiling. I tried to tell myself that my focus on our objective was distraction, that we were still focusing on taking out Asajj Ventress and eliminating the remaining drones and eliminating the alarms, and that I wasn’t focusing on eliminating the civilians, who would be doing more damage over the long run.

I was wrong.

She was shifting our attention to her other self, and I could sense how she was shifting the positions of the spiders. She was shifting them to safety, and I could sense how she was reorienting the bugs to safety.

The movement of the spiders was an unfamiliar one. I could sense each and every one in precise enough detail that I could know where they were moving, how they were moving. If I had any sense of balance, I was certain I could tell where they were and how to position myself to exploit them.

One of the spiders, I noted, seemed to have forgotten how to fly. It stood on the ceiling, tensing every second.

The spider had to be one of the drones that had been in the alley.

If so, it wasn’t flying, because it was rapidly approaching the end of its tether – the period during which it had the most freedom to move, to change course, run aground on a safety catch.

Which meant it was likely to be useless, irrelevant, at best, and potentially dangerous, potentially dangerous and unnecessary at worst.

Tying my finger to my temple. I could feel the tingling at the base of my palm. If my hand were like that, and my skin were like that…

The thought gave me pause. Not the worry that I would one day be powerless, ignorant, unable to do something. The worry was about myself. About my power, about how I would use it, when the time came.

"Okay," I spoke, hoping nothing would come of it.

I touched the tip of my finger to my temple and pushed it. The sensation was brief, but it still sent shivers up my spine.

I let the thought go and just counted to five.

Then I reached out and touched the palm of my hand to my forehead.

Five, four, three…

One…

A zero.

Three…

Silence.

Two…

Go. Make it over, over, over again.

Three…

Again, silence.

Three…

Go. Move.

They moved. It wasn’t the kind of movement I did in the movies. The kind of movement that made my heart leap into my throat at the realization that I was actually moving.

Two…

Another silence.

Breathing hard, I reached for the tip of my hand, pulled it up and down, then brought it down.

Four…

Again, a zero.

Three…

A hard breath…

Then

======== SAMPLE 41 ========
 didn’t make sense. I think the Undersiders were only going to attack the Merchants because they had the money, and the idea that we would attack one of them and get away with stealing a few million dollars seemed pretty reckless to me."

"That’s not what I’m saying," Tattletale said, frowning. "What I mean is that we shouldn’t assume anything."

"That’s the gist of it," I said.

"If we give the Order the ability to carry out their missions," Tattletale said, frowning, "Then one of them is going to have to step up to do it, and that person is going to be someone on the Boardwalk."

"Exactly," I said. "If the Merchants are going to carry out that function, then that means the ABB is going to be a major player in Brockton Bay, too."

Miss Militia looked at me, then said, "I’ll remind you of the status quo."

"Thank you," I said.

Tattletale made a face, then glanced at Grue. Tattletale went on, "The Undersiders are taking on the Merchants because they’re looking to establish a controlling presence in Brockton Bay. With Coil gone, the power is going to be passed around between the groups more fluidly. Whether you think that makes sense or not, it’s the direction we need to be moving in."

"So we attack the closest group that can reasonably take that route," Tattletale said.

"Exactly," I replied. "Brockton Bay Vistas, Badriders, the Travelers, the Merchants, the Young. That’s it. Divide and rule, with the Protectorate as the major players."

"If they make a move," Tattletale said, frowning a little, "-they’re more likely to get their way."

"Exactly," I said. I turned my eyes to the others. In the chaos that followed, I failed to see a great deal.

Grue was giving us directions on an indirect assault, and Tattletale was directing our movements. How were we supposed to flank the Vistas and Badriders and head towards the Trainyard?

I glanced at Dinah. There wasn’t anything significant, most of what she was saying was correct, but I wasn’t missing a lot. "Do tell."

Miss Militia nodded. Her voice was tighter, "I’ll direct you to the right for that corridor, and pass you to the right when I’m ready. We advance, and we should be in the middle of the Vistas and Badriders shortly."

"Which route will you choose?" Grue asked her.

"If I’m going to take this to the next stage, and I don’t think I’ll be surprised," Miss Militia replied, "I’ll take the middle road."

I glanced at Grue, who looked warier, "We win here, or we lose."

"Either way, the message is clear. Take cover and get back, or deal."





Cockroaches 25.4


I recognized Tattletale’s voice at the top of the stairs, pushed my way past her and stepped into the conference room.

"Taylor," Miss Militia stood there with her hands in her pockets, as if she was expecting me. "You’ve got a situation?"

"Yeah," Tattletale spoke.

"Does it need to end this way?" Grue asked.

"End this way, we assume, depending on how much information the heroes are able to get," Miss Militia replied.

"I think we’re going to go," I said.

Grue and I had decided. Our fight with the Nine had been ugly, had involved lashing out, taunting and swearing, and we’d lost. I suspected that whatever grudge we’d held against the Undersiders had contributed to the loss, too.

"If you’d asked me to step up before, I wouldn’t have," Tattletale said. It sounded like she was saying the same thing over and over again, louder and with more conviction. "But we’re going to do this. We’ll see where we stand, what our allies are doing. And if we do well?"

"If we fail, we lose," I said.

"You should win," Tattletale said, in the same moment I said, "Not with this kind of power, not unless you’re willing to make horrible sacrifices."

"I

======== SAMPLE 42 ========
 didn’t see it, didn’t feel it. "I don’t suppose you have a position on my having taken over?"

Piggot nodded. "As head of the PRT, I have the authority to make sweeping arrests without trial. They call it an emergency measure. I have the authority and the responsibility to remove anyone who threatens to undermine and undermine that very same authority. I’ve been called a witch, a warlord, a demigod, and many other names."

He reached into his back pocket and withdrew a pamphlet. He unfolded it to look at Panacea and Lung.

"This is only the most basic, most general details. I asked to be head of the PRT in the hopes that I could improve things, to be heroes, and I’ll have all those powers granted me at once if and when they’re necessary. So I won’t make any sweeping generalizations. You guys are heroes? At this point?"

Possibly. No, but no. The alternative explanation, for the names Undersiders or Travelers, was certainly possible. Something along those lines.

"You would work hand in hand with me, given the opportunity."

It wasn’t an answer he could take in. In an instant, it all fell into disarray.

"No!" He seized the paper and pulled it out of her hand, moving his hand so her wrist was pointing down at his knee.

He caught her wrist and pulled her back out of the meeting, her back to him. The motion was unsteady at best, but he had it pressed up against his own knee. Had that been intentional?

"You don’t even understand what you’re saying," she hissed in his ear.

"And you think I’m bad?"

"Yes. No. And that’s without getting into the other big issues. You don’t have powers. You’re not an alien. Or so the reasoning goes. I’d like to believe you when you say you’re worthy and that you’re doing the right thing, but your actions speak for themselves. Going after our directorate and arresting people, taking people hostage. I’d thought, had some ideas on how you operated, how you thought, but you went ahead with that because you trusted me, you had the trust of the other capes that work for you. You convinced me, and at least I’m alive now."

"Stop," she said, turning to go.

He turned to his left, and Parian was there, walking behind him. Her arms wrapped around Parian, she turned to walk back toward the crowd.

"So, who’s boss when the big dogs come? You or them?"

"You’re boss," he repeated.

"Does it really matter?"

"It matters some, yeah. You’re here, you’re talking to me, you’re taking my hard earned money and giving it to you. On the flip side, if that money panned out to be really useful or absolutely necessary, you and I could go up against some real big hitters down in Brockton Bay, and that’s even without considering the possibility that they could turn some of it against us…"

"I’m doing this for the love of the money," he interrupted, turning back toward the crowd. "Because I can’t take care of this city unless I have this many supervillains and Undersiders living in my territory, and that’s something I’m going to decline doing."

No, Krouse thought, glancing straight into Parian’s eyes. She’d stopped walking, turning and raising her hands toward the sky.

"I’m doing this because, um," he said, trailing off, as if rehearsed sentences were difficult to form.

"It’s you, it’s me," Parian replied. "That’s all it is. Both the people, and we’ll take it from a place that’s just me, buried up to your neck."

Krouse swallowed. It sounded lame, but the idea of doing this to Parian seemed to make him sound angrier. How many weeks of rehabilitation had he just suffered through? Once he got that far, how would it be possible to break the spell?

"So, who’s boss when the big dogs come? You or them?"

Parian looked at Noelle, then turned back to him.

"You’re boss, for now," Krouse said. Then, as if to further confuse things

======== SAMPLE 43 ========
 didn’t have much to say."

"You’re going to play dumb. Or I’ll hit you, and you can’t even move away fast enough to avoid a hit."

"I think you’re underestimating me."

"I think you’re doing a terrible job putting yourself in my shoes," Tecton said.

Lisa shook her head. "Okay. Let’s see. When you first arrived, what was the name of this place? Blub? Largest? What about now?"

"Ugly Duckleshore."

"And Blub Stands for the English word meaning largest? Sewer? Sewer, it’s the same thing. Duh- derpety. You go to the same school? MIT? Wharton? Wharton? If you go to MIT, they’re pretty good about using the same words to get the same results, you’re close to a master’s program in business, so why don’t you just pop a few capes in there with a master’s program in parahuman studies?"

"I wanted to be a superhero," I said. "I’m sorry."

"I’m not sure that’s an excuse I’m liking how this is playing out."

I felt my heart leap into my throat.

"When you first got your powers, did you go on adventures like you did with the ABB?"

"No."

"Did you start off by trying to kill people?"

"I did. Once. But that was just in my head. I stopped doing it years ago."

"Did you kill anyone in your rampage, during the ABB incident?"

"No."

"You’re still a cape. You have no trouble killing people, you’re powerful."

I nodded. For the life of me, I couldn’t wrap my head around why.

"When people start making a lot of noise about you killing people, do you think they are just jealous that you’re making a lot of money, have all the fame and attention, or does it stir them up?"

I was feeling vulnerable. I didn’t want to move or talk any further, so I only whispered the questions that were looming so I wouldn’t provoke an outbreak.

"Did anyone turn you down?"

I shook my head.

"You mean anyone you have to deal with. If you were going to turn me in, would you?"

I shook my head again. I didn’t have the breath to speak.

"And what would you want to happen? Would you leave town if you had to?"

"Maybe. I might not have, if I didn’t feel like I needed to protect my people," I said.

"But you’d go, and you’d run, betraying everything you held dear?"

I shook my head, "I would. It’s almost a necessity for a lot of us."

Lisa stared at me for several long seconds. If she hadn’t already noticed, I drew attention with the clumsy use of my power. I tried moving my bugs to hide the movements, and failed. I thought about using my own bugs, but I worried that hiding in plain sight would give my enemies more time to see. I settled for using my bugs to find and catch the people my bugs were touching.

"You’re back," a girl’s voice came from the phone.

"Seems like we have some unfinished business," an older man spoke from the phone. "If we were to meet tomorrow, we could go somewhere."

"Sure. How much are we going to talk?"

"Don’t really care. What’s with you and the work?"

"I’m trying to save up for college, and there’s this thing I really didn’t like about Boston. There’s this idea that people here think they know Boston, they sort of like it, but people elsewhere? There’s the people who have it all, and there’s the others. You, I guess, and us. I’m trying to figure out which is more ridiculous."

I shook my head.

"So you’re here for nothing, then," Lisa said.

"You know what I mean. Here already, I mean."

"Nothing’s guaranteed," Lisa said, abruptly. "If I was going to say something nice about you, I’d say now, before we parted ways."

======== SAMPLE 44 ========
 didn’t.

I reached behind my back, drew out a cell phone. I pressed it to the speaker, and spoke through it, "Call your mom."

He hung up.

"Mom?"

I stared at him. The darkness around him had melted into a pale blue haze, and the edges of his face were so pallid I thought he might be dying.

I wasn’t going to let this slide. The Undersiders were my family, and they’d been through a lot as of late. I wouldn’t hold it against them if I couldn’t look after them, or offer them any emotional support they needed, now.

I found my cell phone again, and dialed Trickster instead.

"Taylor!" He gasped out the phone’s catch.

"Where’s Trickster?" I asked.

"Last I saw," he was lying on the ground. "He got away."

"Where’s Glory Girl?"

"Last I heard, she was somewhere walking," Assault said.

I looked at Trickster, and he nodded. "Walk again?"

"No," I replied. "You follow?"

"No."

I stared at him, waiting for a response.

"Taylor?"

"Where’s Glory Girl?"

Assault’s words pierced through the silence. Trickster was moving again. My heart sank. I was waiting for him to say something, but he didn’t.

"She’s in a shelter. She’s in the care of the Undersiders."

"Why’d they put her in here?" My question sounded desperate.

"She could be hurt, hurt," Assault said. "We have to do something."

"Why aren’t we listening to her?" I asked. I couldn’t bring myself to sound alarmed.

"She needs help. Someone strong, someone willing to take a hit to get to her."

"Why?"

"She’s been around too long. She’s lost it. It doesn’t feel real. Our best option is to wait a while, take some time, and get help. Until this thing resurfaces, we can try to keep track of it so we can take actions against the people and organizations who might be responsible."

There was a long pause.

"What would Glory Girl want?"

"Just answers," Assault asked. "I know you’re tired, that you could stop doing this, take a vacation, and go back to your old life, but could you at least tell me where Glory Girl is?"

"I could," I said. "It’d mean everything to me to go meet her."

"You’d get in another fight," Assault said. "Another scare."

I could see the bulge in Assault’s chest grow again. Was it pain or adrenaline? Why do people react this way?

It felt like he was expanding his veins.

"It’s not him. It’s her," I said. It was shaky. I wasn’t sure if it was due to adrenaline or lack of sleep.

"Is this her psychosis?"

"Not panacea it wasn’t panacea," I told him.

"Then where is she?"

"Powers confidential," the only answer I could think of was the one Clockblocker had given.

"No fucking way," Clockblocker gasped the words. "Did she-"

Armsmaster stepped into the clearing. He extended a hand and a heavy armored glove joined it. There was motion as he hauled the glove towards Imp.

"Hey!" she screamed at him, but both he and his heavy helmet obscured his voice.

"Sorry to scare you," Kid Win said, after Kid Win had shut his mouth. He extended a hand towards me, gently.

I shook my head, still shaken, and he extended another, gently.

"I got a message from the Director," Clockblocker said. "I’m going to check it, figure out where Glory Girl is, and get everyone airborne to assist Grue."

"No need to do that now," Rear Admiral Gail said. "Don’t need to. We’ve got the critical juncture now. We can get everyone onto the same side of things."

"And if Glory Girl changes sides?" Assault asked, the question barely audible. "Then this is a good time to hit her."

Kid Win pursed his lips. "I don’t understand. You said we

======== SAMPLE 45 ========
 didn’t have any powers, and this isn’t an attack on her, but the fact that she hasn’t earned it, is something I find deeply troubling."

"And you’re certain this isn’t an attack on you?" Alec asked.

"Throat hasn’t been touched once. I know the clamps and pinions don’t work. The thing is, she’s armed herself with a sense of scale. She’s measured distances to figure out the best approach."

"She took our best measures, used our best measures," Alec said.

"I have evidence to suggest that is a dangerous power," the Captain commented. She tapped her earpiece, then paused to let the data from the clamps and pinions load. "Evidence you’re not seeing is something Skitter would have put together while conscious, and she would have had time to edit it after she left the PRT. In other words, Skitter’s ability to craft a scenario and then execute it is limited, if she even had one at all. We have two routes she could take. The first is to go to her cell block, disable their systems, steal some exotic trinkets or equipment that would require a high degree of mental stress to wield. I have a secure room downstairs with a computer, a line of defense versus whatever she’s after. That doesn’t leave me much choice – I can hit her with a psi blast or shut off the trilos. I have less stuff to me, to keep me company, but I have something of use. I can be her second target."

Alec sighed.

"The other, more sinister possibility, as I understand it, is that she simply took the stuff she stole and remakes the effects in a higher frequency or energy signature. I’d bet she has more stuff like the stun spencers and generators in her cell block, as well. Telekinetics or clones. If she did, and your prisoners fought in shifts against her, assigning them to key positions and using them to make sure things went on until the boss was done with them, you’d be toast. So she built her power by gaining experience, learning as she went, and using what she discovered to craft power multipliers and higher frequency effects that would maximize the damage she could do."

"So she took your stuff, reinvented it with the knowledge she’d gleaned from your power? Why?" Alec asked.

"She’s adapting, just not at the speed I’m adapting. I was careful with your stuff, paid a great deal of attention to detail, just like she has with her costumes and the weapons she’s equipped. She didn’t want to mess with any of my trickery, and she’s doing a lot with fewer resources. With your stuff, she’s maybe three or four times as capable, and her backup will probably be three to five times as strong."

"Does that mean she’s stronger already?" Alec asked.

Bitch shrugged, "Her power gets stronger as she absorbs more power. For all intents and purposes, she’s already a Tier 2. As things now stand, she’s a Tier 1. Until she accomplishes one of the goals I mentioned, she’s Tier 1, which is the antithesis of what I want her to be."

"Then what?" Alec asked. "If I’m fighting her, will that be a problem?"

"It’ll be a problem if she absorbs some of your power."

"Okay," Alec conceded.

"So what do I do?" Brian asked me.

I hesitated, "I can’t do anything in a situation like this. I’ve tried everything before, but I always back off. It could get messy, and I’m going to back off even more if she gets close."

"You know what you would’ve done if you’d had a choice?" Alec asked.

"No."

I turned toward him, "If you’d had a weapon that did double and triple damage, you would’ve used it."

Alec snorted, then turned and strode off to the bedroom.

"If you’d had half a second to think about it," Brian spoke to me, "Maybe you’d have chosen it over something else."

I felt a cold feeling in the pit of my stomach. Did he know? I had been in this situation a hundred times. Or did he think it was true, or partially true? I couldn’t tell, and taking action threatened to tip him off.



======== SAMPLE 46 ========
 didn’t have the air resistance to help prevent any of the capes from being dragged into the sky, the fact that they’d been wearing their full load of utility load out weight.

But he’d come to believe it was the right call, to have Dinah.

It didn’t feel like it.

He could have called a moment ago, have cancelled a moment of doubt or a moment of grief and been certain of how far along he was. But the idea of not caring weighed heavy upon him.

Dinah would still be here. He’d missed her. The thought made his stomach sink, and his hair stood on end. That one thought stung as though it had been slapped on the face, made his skin crawl. But she was alive. She was breathing, she was aware of him.

He turned his attention back to the man with the knife. He’d stepped away from the wall, but the knife’s point was still facing Will. The sight of her made his hair stand on end.

He’d seen that before.

He swung the knife.

Like a ping-pong ball suspended in mid-air, the knife veered off course, looping briefly before returning to its normal course. It struck the man Will was clutching in its reach.

He was already reaching out to tackle the assailant in step two, when the knife returned to normal.

The man screamed, and blood sprayed out onto the floor, where the knife had found its way. An arm extended, flapping, and Will collapsed.

He was stronger than he looked, and the blade hadn’t cut cleanly. Blood streamed from nose to chin and spilled down to cover and around his neck.

He didn’t die. From what his own power was telling him, Will’s arm continued to extend and Will started breathing just days after the injury. He fought to stand and fought until the fight had passed.

He looked down. Dinah. She lay at the base of the bed, on her side, one hand over her mouth.

"He…"

"He’s awake," Jack said. "I didn’t get a chance to talk to him. He said goodbyes to us and headed off to where he could see people. I think he left his gun. I’m going to give him some CPR, to make sure he doesn’t choke on his own vomit. That guy has mental issues. I wouldn’t put it past him to shoot himself in the head and then throw up on the spot. So we got your father and our own lives."

Jack nodded. "It’s all good. You walked into a trap. I’m not going to say anything. See you in a few hours."

"What could I do?"

"There’s the gun. Look for it. Find the gun and take it into custody. With luck, we can turn it in. Take my boy to a mental hospital so he can get the help he needs."

Jack nodded. Did he really have to answer? He’d rather not go to that bathroom any other way, unless it was at the man’s place. But he glanced through the cabinets in the adjacent room and checked each piece of paper bag’s contents, then filled in the blanks. There was a receipt, proof that was a digital image of the gun and proof that it was indeed loaded.

"The gun," he said.

"Find the gun."

He glanced at the gun in the corner. Jack had made the words almost illegible.

"You’re serious?"

Jack smirked, then looked at the knife he held out to offer. "Of course."

He pulled the knife free and hooked it around one of the man’s wrists, then proceeded to twist the chain until he stood around the man’s waist and shoulders, nearly covering his owner’s head with his free hand. When he was done, and the gun was free, he wagged his tail.

Staring into the eyes of the assembled crowd, Jack said, "Come with me. I can be your caretaker during the next few days. I won’t make promises I can’t keep, but things will get better sooner than later."

His people tensed. Some would be offended by the idea of losing their caretaker, but the idea was so absurd they would have dismissed it as the sort of thing one would say to their pet. It would be too horrible to talk about in plain language.

Jack paused for a brief second, then smiled. "Tell them to look after some of the others. Take

======== SAMPLE 47 ========
 didn’t take my eyes off her.

With the way I was leaning against the railing, I doubted my own safety was much of a concern, either. We’d reached the bottom of the stairs and were now on our hands and knees. She reached out, and, as it so often did with people, she found something complimentary to say. I couldn’t even put it into words, with the way her voice distorted and changed as she put it into her head.

She’d been through some pretty shitty times. Badly.

"Hey," I said, trying not to let my emotions come through as I spoke to Tattletale, "Let’s go."

The wind-powered elevator opened. We stepped out, and the buildings were bright again, with the slightest trace of overcast over the sky above.

We stood in the middle of a series of rooms. Tattletale’s office was in the far end of the room, to our left. Grue’s was to our right. Both were large, at least part of it consisting of high-end furniture, but the aesthetic of the office was very different in appearance to Grue’s place. Tattletale’s place was concrete and glass, light gray and white, with a shelving unit to the far right that held her drawers and filing cabinets. Grue’s office was wood paneled, metal, slightly more traditional in design, with shelving, drawers, and cabinets like any other office.

"We’re going to have to call Coil," Grue said, as he reached into his pocket and withdrew a small computer. He didn’t explain what had gotten him so enamored with the idea of this particular job.

"Coil?" Tattletale asked.

"I’ll need a technician," he said. "Can you get someone to walk by 6:00?"

He stood to lead us into the next room. It was an office with a rather prominent bed in the middle of it. Tattletale stood just to the far left, Concerto stood to the right, and Concerto completed the desk and bed.

"My power’s not working as well as it has been for some time. Has everything gone to hell in a handbasket lately?"

She didn’t think so. "No. Things are getting more stable, things are quieting down, but I’m not seeing any immediate problems."

"We’re not hearing a lot of movement on the jobs, but we have people on the payroll," Grue said. He stood and opened a drawer. There was a notebook on the top of the drawer, and on the side of the drawer, in a plain brown paper cover, was a small USB thumb drive. "We could get someone to hook it up to a computer to get a backup if we wanted to get things back in order."

I didn’t need to look to see the image of Brockton Bay on her computer screen; she was already typing the password. I looked at the other computers, at Grue, Tattletale and me. The skyline was lit by a single orange eye over a black background.

"I think I know the general gist of it. The Endbringers are going to commit suicide at a random point throughout the world, then leap from planet to planet, killing countless millions of people. The world goes dark for roughly a decade, then civilization recovers, if at all. We don’t have hard numbers on how fast it’ll happen, but I’m pretty sure it’ll happen sooner than later."

He looked at me, "That means a third world war?"

I looked across the room, then blurted out, "A third world war."

"Weren’t you just thinking about the possibility of a third world war?"

"Third world war."

"Third world war." He repeated.

Concentrated, unwavering, he looked like the embodiment of hope.

If one of the two had been right, the other one wrong.

Even with my powers, I wasn’t sure I would have been able to do this. The impact on the area and the general population would have been catastrophic.

"This is what we’re doing? This just in, here?" Grue asked me.

"It’s been a day, Taylor," I answered him.

"And we’re doing this like we’re holding out for a hostage. A hostage being a pretty important one."

I nodded.

"That’s not how things played out in reality," I said.

"We will

======== SAMPLE 48 ========
 didn’t respond. Was that because of what his mind was telling him? Was he incapable of understanding language because he couldn’t communicate verbally, or was he incapable of understanding language because his brain didn’t fully process information received in his auditory input?

It was impossible to say, as both Tattletale and Grue had varying degrees of brain damage. Was it just the damage to the right side of his body, and the damage to his ability to feel pain or pleasure?

I saw him fidget, get tense, and tried to comfort him with the thought that he wasn’t about to get hurt, that I could help him if and when the time came.

"Time’s up, Tattletale," I said.

She looked at me and then looked down in the direction of the crowd. Her eyes were crossing over, and she looked momentarily confused. Could I help her here?

Except nothing I had said helped her to understand. It wasn’t the start she wanted, nor the end she expected. I’d promised she would get by the first day of summer, and since she hadn’t come up with a satisfactory plan in place for the date yet, I’d been left with the daunting task of trying to convince her to change her mind and try.

I pointed at a spot in the crowd that Tattletale could have a look, a few blocks away. "You two. Right here, next to Rachel on the far left, there’s a girl that’s got a tattoo on her chest. Look at that! There’s a cross on it! That means ‘Jesus Christ’."

"You’re crazy," Tattletale said.

I shook my head. "I would never suggest something like that, but then again, you’re with the only person who can understand her."

"I am too," Tattletale pointed out.

I continued, "She has a lot of symbols and numbers on the inside of the body, shape and bone, something you’ll notice if you look into the subject thoroughly enough. So yeah. She’s crazy. There’s no reason for her to be attracted to you, or have a problem with you, in the sense of a deviant, abnormal behavior. She’s your friend."

"I don’t get it," Tattletale said. She tried to find Rachel, but the crowd was too thick, and she didn’t have the patience for this. She pointed up at where Rachel sat between two groups of girls, so Tattletale could hear. "Why?"

"Why do you have these tattoos on your body? And what are you wearing?"

"I won’t comment on private things," I told her. I pointed to the tattoos.

"Go fuck yourself," Tattletale snapped, before anyone could reply. I could see Parian and Flechette standing off to one side, Seamus and Oliver hanging back, staring at Tattletale. I didn’t think that would take long.

I continued, "These symbols and numbers mean something to her because he’s connected to them, connected to some primal part of her. Maybe not the primal part, not something inside her that connects everything and everything to everything else, but something connects it all in a fundamental way. It’s why she can feel affection like she does, like she’s never felt before. When she’s with you, she’s connected to you in a way she didn’t when she had us on her side."

"Why are you doing this?" Tattletale asked.

I explained, "This isn’t the first time I’d tried to approach this. I think it goes deeper than that. Tattletale, Flechette, me, our relationship, with you… I don’t know. Her brain is definitely different, different from when she joined the New Wave, but she’s also so used to us hitting her with stuff that’s almost painful. Emotional overload? Brainwashing? I don’t- I’m sure she’s not the type to use her power on a child. Until she gets further in her studies or gets the boy she likes, she won’t be the type to use her power on a child."

"What do you mean when you say ‘almost pain?" Miss Militia asked. "You mean she can still hit you?"

"I don’t know," I said. "Tattletale can’t say, because it would compromise our relationship with Boston, and there’s nothing in the records from then that would

======== SAMPLE 49 ========
 didn’t let him leave any clues for me to follow up, either.

"Right, let’s move on to the next stage," Genesis said. "We’re doing your head and neck this time, remember? Don’t overthink this. Only use this if there’s any doubt or if you’ve done something catastrophic and you’re thinking about doing something about it."

"So we’re in there?"

"Yes," Genesis told Tattletale. She turned, and I could sense what looked like three hundred and seventy people congregating around her. Only a handful of seconds before, I’d had the bugs I had in the containment foam reaching out for her face. I was surprised at how easily she was able to act.

"And we’re off."

"In seconds or minutes," Tattletale grinned. She turned her head to look at me, and I could see the horror in her expression.

"No brainer?" I asked her, "You should bring your dogs."

She frowned, "Can’t. We’re not the most nurturing kind of puppy save for Jack’s dogs and the Birkin bags, you know? Plus, no offense, I’m not the person to talk to for help with getting you the dogs with the other stuff you’re going to be getting in there."

I winced. "Okay, it’s probably in there, but just wondering. You guys haven’t punished them?"

"No," Bitch’s voice was small, almost defeated.

"Why not?" I asked, feeling lame.

"They didn’t hit me, and neither does it matter," Bitch said. She leaned back and rubbed her chin, apparently trying not to think about what she’d just said.

I thought about doing something about the dogs. What was I even supposed to do, in light of what had happened?

Bitch continued rubbing her chin, but there was no question about whether she should be punished for the incident with Genesis.

How hard could it be? We had to be careful, I had to be discreet, and every second that passed made the task of tracking them harder.

I watched the crowd for trouble. Right at the outset, it began to grow. People were throwing punches, pushing, shoving and some were still moving. The crowd agitated. It threatened to get out of control.

Genesis appeared in my field of vision. She grabbed at my arm and started walking briskly back and forth.

"No more fighting," she said. "We’re going to make it so they can’t hurt the dogs any more."

"Okay," I said.

"Then let’s go."

I turned and looked back.

The people, in the crowd, were picking their way through the pack of dogs as if they were scrambling to find the next car that was about to pull into the lot. Some weren’t moving fast enough to avoid being kicked and shoved, and were running between packs of strangers. The dog owners, their dogs dragged off to other packs of dogs, leaving them on their own.

"I’m sorry if I’m hard to get along with," Genesis said.

I shook my head a little. Couldn’t tell if she was embarrassed or angry.

"We’ll make it," Genesis said. She paused, glancing over the area. "And this is why you shouldn’t fight the Endbringers. We can’t lose. People won’t stop them until they’re defeated."

The bugs in the area stirred and settled in the depths of the air. They stirred again beneath me, in my swarm, beneath me, and behind my back.

Even with my bugs, though, they couldn’t impede my movements, and I wasn’t about to give away my position without a good reason. With my metal skin and shifting bulk of my costume, even the slightest of movements could tear a human flesh, and these were not my bugs.

"I said I’d kill the Endbringers," Bitch growled the words, barely audible.

"Kill them and let me off the hook?" I asked, running a hand along the side of Bitch’s neck.

"What you mean when you say go easy on them is they’re easy prey."

"Exactly. If there’s something you can do, or if we can do something to make things easier, you do it."

The dogs and the people in the crowd were moving just a little faster

======== SAMPLE 50 ========
 didn’t want that, nor did she want the attention if she lost people like that."

"And?"

She’d said she could trust me to run a safe house, and the people she wanted to be safe would be in my care, her own people. "It’s about having a safe house. If a cape is about to do harm to you, or if they’re gonna murder your family, you go get them before they do."

"I’ll give you anything and everything I need to keep them off my back while I wait for Genesis to finish cleaning up the bodies. I don’t care how many they are, I do not give a damn. I don’t care about how many people these bastards hurt, I don’t care about the reputation of this city or the United Parcels. I don’t care about my family. I just want them gone. I make sure nothing bad happens to anyone in my neighborhood and that everyone else knows that if they cross paths with me, that’s it. I’m a hardass, but I can be harsh too."

"That’s not what I meant, Jessica," Brian frowned. "It sounds like she’s saying no, or she’s being paranoid."

"You’re saying she told you everything."

Brian shook his head. "…Whatever."

She let us go. Before we could climb out of the chair, we were standing behind her on the couch, just a short distance from one another.

"You," Brian pointed a finger at us, "Are bums."

"Thank you," I said, as I folded the paper bag around ourselves.

"You’re welcome," Lisa smiled at us, "You two are. I’m sorry about your being a baby, it’s been a problem."

Which was fine, we were happy to go along for the ride.

As we got to our bedroom, Lisa put the kettle on. "Don’t put so much emphasis on it. It’s not everything that’s important."

"I know," I said, "I’m sorry if I gave birth to you and you."

"Wasn’t your intent?" she looked at the empty apartment.

"I meant it was temporary," I said, "Not permanent."

"So I hope it’s okay?"

"Yeah," I replied. I glanced over my shoulder at Bitch, who had just returned. She didn’t seem to be the least bit.

"I’ve never been more uncomfortable with a situation," Brian told me, as he came downstairs. "You are definitely one of the scariest people I’ve worked with, I think."

"Hey, hey," I told him, "You don’t know me, I don’t know you, and I don’t know what’s going through your head. If I didn’t understand that you wanted me to make fun of my guts before you said anything else, I don’t think I would’ve bought the ticket."

"You don’t know what your problems are. You stepped in a situation like this once, you’re responsible for what comes next."

"No," I stood, stretching. "Whatever comes next, I’m not going to be there. Not like I said I’m in a position to take care of you. I’m not the type to take care of a child, to look after a teenager. I don’t expect the city to function the way it does. My paychecks are guaranteed."

"Sure," he laid out the things he owned, "Tools, cars, art, furniture, appliances, furniture, food, all the stuff that’s going for scrap metal or junk. Those are all things you and I would fight over. I don’t expect those things to be accepted, so don’t turn your anger on me when they aren’t. Just accept that you’re expected to look out for my … well, pretty worthless, lower class lifestyle whenever I go out."

"I don’t expect you to. I mean, look at me," I poked fun at him, "This is some sick, twisted play. I’m not just standing around, pretending I’m some bottom line. I’m standing up for myself. Getting by. Making up an expensive, complicated thing to do for people who can’t do anything else."

He folded his arms, "I can’t say for sure,