======== SAMPLE 1 ========
 pressed the gun in her hand, her other arm pressed to her side, the bones of her neck and body stressing against the straps holding the gun closed.

"You’re being punished for this?" I asked, out of turn, "Why now?"

"I can’t use my power without killing someone. There’s only one person in the world that knows how powerful my power is, and that’s me. You can’t trust my power, so you’re restricting me to the worst things I can do with myself."

The only thing that would make my power stronger than it is if I hurt Dragon, if she even acted on this information; I could reach out and grab her, disconnect her from whatever power she was using to keep me prisoner, maybe get some leftover power cells from the backup of earlier and kill the one person who could still hear my voice.

"Doing this has got to stop," I said. I had to stop riding Atlas. I sat on the back of a chair and watched from above. "I feel like my life is on the line. I put myself in some dangerous situations, I did some pretty stupid things, and maybe I will pay for this with my life, honor and maybe my family."

I turned around. My back was to the wall with my mouth closed. I was covered in red spray paint.

"And I’m okay with that. I want to spend the rest of my life repairing and rebuilding. Fix what’s broken, remove the old armor and bits I shouldn’t have, all that. Maybe I’ll kill something, to make an example of someone who isn’t even worthy of being alive, but I’ll do it. I’ll get a power that can do something, and I’ll fix it up and make it better than it is now."

I was almost convinced, almost. I wanted the monster to go free.

But the way Tecton moved it, he couldn’t help but eye me. His little grin widened a fraction, as if he found that hard-earned reprieve he’d sought so desperately to seize.

"That doesn’t make me feel better. It makes me feel ten times worse about the fact that I put a bullet in her back and a knife in her throat."

Dragon didn’t look happier than she was, but I felt irrationally annoyed at that.

"I was only about to come up with a solution to free you, yes?" I said. "I-"

I couldn’t articulate my thoughts as I spoke.

"A backfire? A way to give us a delayed mind to work with?"

"No. What I was thinking about, a way to give ourselves a delay. Backfires, basically. It’s like being inside a giant computer, you get more powerful the further you get away from the motherlode, or the higher the temperature, the smarter the systems get. You get even smarter the higher the temperature, because the edges of the system get closer together. But you retain fewer of the weaker abilities. You cling to each ability through a kind of internal combustion. Or something like it."

"Yeah. I don’t want to be an edge case."

"You’re not. We’re making a big enough step to warrant making an exception. There’s no big loss in applying your thinking to the bigger picture. What we’re about to do is backfire. That’s the word, not the emotion."

"Whatever," I said.

"Maybe that’s fair. You know as well as anyone else that things get a lot worse rapidly if we go ahead with this. Things fall apart pretty damn quickly if we do."

"Yes."

"There’s no need to worry. I’m organizing the defenses, and I’ll find the weakest points, so the less damage we can do, the better."

"And the backfire won’t happen now?"

"No."

"Okay."

"Yes. It’ll happen somewhere down the road, but the backmatter is designed to ensure it won’t tear our relationships apart. I already told you, we’ve talked this over with the highest level officials in the Protectorate and in the Wards. We’ve discussed everything from the murder of an Head of the PHQ to the murder of a hero."

I nodded.

"I’ll talk to them one by one, make sure they understand, and we’ll provide a distraction so we can deal with the real issues. Get back to Atlas and Fly

======== SAMPLE 2 ========
 pressed the weapon against his shoulder, hard. "It’s good. Not really a knife, really, but it’s a good one. I always had a knife in my knapsack with a sheath for my baton, and this is what I’ve got."

"It’s not enough," Krouse said.

"No," Emily said. "It’s more than enough. Trust us. You’ll be more comfortable."

"Okay," he said. He handed the weapon to Jess, and she motioned for Krouse to withdraw.

"Don’t touch the gun," she said.

"It’s only under your control," she said. "We can stop it from happening."

Krouse withdrew his hand back into his sleeve.

He turned to Emily and she gave him a little smile, her eyes narrowed, "Don’t touch."

"It’s only under my control," she said. "Everything else is. I can’t- I can’t make the decisions you guys don’t want to make."

"We have other options," Krouse said.

"Give me a chance. Let me make the call. I promise we’ll come back and talk about this after we’ve taken care of this one issue."

"We will," Krouse said.

With that, he stood. When he approached Emily, he hooked his arms around her shoulders and squeezed.

She hugged him, then. He pressed her down against the ground as close as he dared without putting her in any danger.

"Thanks," she whispered.

"I’m okay. I melted away. Don’t worry. Weird thing is, I kept that one spot in mind, and it probably won’t be so comfortable for the rest of my life. I’m sorry."

"You’re older. Older than me. Weren’t you?"

"I was in Philadelphia a week ago. Dude came through with a portable toiletsitter. A rubber duck down there. Tells me I could go to the toilet anywhere, whenever."

"Oh," she said. "That’s good."

He made his way down to the end of the hallway. He paused to look at the security camera overhead. The first iteration of the camera, that whiskers stood out on the side of it, was positioned to be able to see the bars of the railing in the hallway’s edge. It shifted until it was looking at Krouse’s end of the hallway, down the hall from where he was staying.

"I don’t know what to do."

"You could go back home, and you could maybe get help, or you could get out, but what you’re doing," Emily said.

He sighed. "I need what I can get."

"But…"

"But I need what I can get. And I need money. I know I can’t get Amy and our stuff back, with her powers, but if there’s money, maybe I could put some towards buying food for the kids? Maybe I could get mints or whatever to celebrate Marion’s success?"

"Or… maybe I could convince someone to move out? Into a better area? A more permanent solution?"

"There’s money, and there’s opportunity. Go."

"But… I can’t."

He sighed again. "There’s good money out there. You’ll get what you need more than you’ll get more money. That’s the way the world works. Don’t be a slave in the system. Get what you want for free."

She looked at him wide-eyed, like a kid asking for candy.

He smiled a little and rubbed the back of her neck, the one on the front that was still attached. "I think you’re about a target away from being forced to do what you really want to in life. I can help you with your problem on your terms."

She wasn’t making a conscious effort to look away. It was a byproduct of her temperament, drawing from her ambivalence and her cowardice more than it was from any acute point of view. "We’ll see about that."

He smiled again. "Stay out of my way."

Gone were the days when Emily Piggot felt like she could curl up in a larger space and be at peace. For a long time afterward, she was almost nostalgic for the days when she could relax and be at peace.



======== SAMPLE 3 ========
 pressed the second button to switch from blue screen to white screen, from white to black.

But the last button, to unfocus the camera, was the one I’d forgotten.

I rose just in time to see it happen.

The device Sophia had been holding waslas the size of a large barn, barely three feet long, with two paddle-like wheels bolted to the floor, the lowest and largest of which tipped over and crashed to the ground a scant foot from my shoulder.

The girl with the tendrils shot Tattletale a look, then took flight. I could see Tattletale waver, glancing around to double check everything was all right.

As her starship made its way to Legend’s location, I dove to my feet. I tried to tell myself to not to freak out, that this shouldn’t be too difficult, and that we were doing more harm than good, but my confidence was running dry.

A galaxy far, far away.

I didn’t even bother to ask if anyone else had any injuries.

I was too tired to take my eyes off the ticking of the clock, but I wanted to know where we were.

Two hundred and thirty-three parahumans in all.

Tattletale was already lurking over the dial on the second ship. She wore a PRT uniform, blue bodysuit with a silver visor, and had managed the orb program. The PRT wanted to help me find Parian, but she could also give me general information about the local gangs, target the strongest members, and dispatch the people the Protectorate wasn’t able to.

She might have come up with the answer I was looking for on my own, but the answer was out there, somewhere. I had to ask.

I pressed the power buttons for the pad that sat on my end, then hit the eject button. The craft shapeshifted and pulled away, leaving Bastard behind.

I stepped forward to reach him, and he whirled to face me, arms raised in a killing motion.

I slashed, my swarm sweeping up around me in a tight cluster. It was enough to do, but Bastard yelped, pulling back in response. I wound up swinging with my legs, taking them out of the way, while Broadsword took advantage of the distraction to skewer the weakest members of the armored group.

Spiked plates of metal, riddled with holes, unable to defuse the way the handle would be likely to slip, they marched into the center of the craft, draping against the rails and mesh of the craft, catching the legs of the others.

I could see the entire thing through a window. The entire thing, as a whole, was less than two feet across, one and a half feet high. The only part that wasn’t vertical was the ramparts, and it folded back over itself to reduce the area that filled the craft.

The middle of the craft, however, was a vertical tube that dropped down into the middle of the street. Upon activation, the entire tunnel erupted in a brilliant, silent explosion. The entire structure cascaded down the middle of the street, as if a waterfall, except it was nearly as broad as the surrounding walls, and each fin was carved into a slightly different section of the wall.

"The portal," I said.

"A tower, sealed off with a similarly broad barrier," Legend said. I could see the man’s suits, white gloves with protective suits over leggings, a duty belt with a protective buckle.

Tall, sinous, the tunnel expanded outward as two larger pieces of unfinished structure rounded the corner. A sleek structure, sleek. It was somewhat out of place in the middle of the neighborhood, like the extraneous art installations or bizarre automobiles that jutted up and around the corners. I couldn’t say if it gave it’s own texture or not, but it seemed to have been hand built, or the arches and ramps had been hand designed with specific architectural features in mind, with no help from a humanoid-shaped hand-tesla.

The overall silhouette was more like that of a gargoyle or bat than that of a creature from the underworld. It was dark, somehow vaguely ominous, with hints of light leaking in from windows and the lights that were plugged into the corners of the platform.

Man, I would have loved to see the lookout on the other ship. What would have warmed my dormant imagination were I sitting at the horizon – could I have seen him, stretched out on the platform, face toward the portal, his eyes open, observing?

I would have liked to see the gate and what it would have looked like in comparison to the one the Dragon’s model was copying, if I hadn

======== SAMPLE 4 ========
 pressed her hand against the back of my knee, and she slapped it hard enough against the pavement that it gave me a scratch.

"You do that once, you’re like, okay, we can probably live with that," Emma said.

"She has red hair," I said. I checked the box beneath the thumbnail image of the doll. In 2009, New York had seen enough red in the hairline and brows that the name was practically a badge of honor. R.I.P. Kate Winslet.

We turned our eyes to the city as we approached the beach, and I could see why they hadn’t done it sooner. There were so many gorgeous pictures on the wall of the beach at the edge of the water’s edge, each displaying a different kind of subject. Portals, man made mountains, pictures of the city on a hill… there was a picture of the same kind of thing in my mind’s eye on the wall of the kitchen table, all high quality high definition pictures of the best restaurants in town, with the angled commode and cast iron frying pan sitting atop a massive bed of potatoes, along with countless other pictures that were both beautiful and about the food.

There was a short news report about some criminal negligence lawsuits against Shake Shack, where two Emma’s older brothers had been criminally charged. The story took a funny turn when someone confessed to the police that they had taken a cut of the ice cream sales at the restaurant and left the damage there, and then proceeded to describe how the ice cream man who was there on the day of the incident had done more damage than anyone had in the course of ten minutes. The reporter then proceeded to delude the reader into thinking that the unnamed victim had done more damage.

A teenage girl, a brunette, wearing a green sundress and a black sweater, climbed out of the car as I followed her.

Shake Shack, with its red and yellow signs, was notorious in the Docks. On any given night, there were stories circulating around the Web about people scaling the chain in hopes of snatching a meal at the trendy spots that had come to the area in the wake of the Docks revitalization. The scale of the stories varied, from the bizarre (did someone weigh where they lived? Where did someone live if they didn’t have to move to commit felonies to move there?) to the ridiculous (did someone actually leap off the 30 foot high balcony at the top of the building? Where did one live on that balcony if they didn’t have powers)?

Our self proclaimed "hobby cat" Tieuwenenhof managed to hide among the larger males of the herd at the base of the building. Around the time we were finishing getting him into a harness and preparing him for the night’s activities, two of the calves were molted. They had held their young, but the male that molted was the brunt of it. He was nearly undone, his ribs broken, a liver slice and kidney out. He screamed and struggled desperately for breath, while Tieuwenenhof hunted him down and stabbed his six-inch dagger into his heart.

The girls disembarked, and we hurried to follow. A twenty-something woman pointed out a handsome, bronzed-faced young man that was trying his hand at a game, shouting something I couldn’t make out over the wailing crowd.

We rounded a corner and turned left, following the path that branched off into a grassy meadow. There were rows of identical, tall grass planted in loops to provide a temporary resting place for the animals as we made our way towards the mall. The path itself was a long, narrow one that wound around a backlot, and the cropping of the grass ended abruptly, in a space that jutted up into a grassy meadow, surrounded by tall oaks.

A glimpse of the interior showed nothing out of the ordinary. The vast vault door that hung over the entrance was solid wood, opaque, the kind that had been used for building in an old asylum. The interior was dark, with only dim light from the shutters that covered the sliding glass door, the benches on the upper level and the tiled floor and wooden railing at the edge of the parking lot, which might have seemed almost an afterthought, if it weren’t for the flashlight that was mounted on the front of the door.

A child dangled from the sixth floor balcony. It was hardly oneable, but the manner that it hung, with three strong, young adults each drawn down the corridor of its matching twin,… not healthy. One would have fallen, at what might have been a major, life-altering injury, and the other two… well, you got used to it. You just knew. You could see the wood chip by the window and use

======== SAMPLE 5 ========
 pressed her cheek against mine and whispered, "If it helps, I think the old woman at the hospital is your old man."

That had my attention. I suddenly felt incredibly self-conscious of my chest. I had three little burn scars on the inside of my chest where the fabric of my costume had cut against the fabric of my skin. The most touching part of the scene had been the realization that I could barely identify with my old costume. I would have hovered near the bottom of the stairs for balance, if not for the hard, coarse fabric and the lace-up visor.

"Do you need help?" the woman at the front asked me.

I felt a touch defiant, "I’m good."

"You’re talking to me like I’m a crazy woman."

"I can’t believe you went out with that woman." My attempts to salvage the situation were made more difficult by my inability to articulate.

"I had a secret I wanted to keep."

"Yes. You seem to have things under control."

"I have. But let’s be honest about this. We’ve talked about your past. You can’t deny that things did get complicated."

It was like a punch in the gut, and not just because of the revelation about Emilia. I was almost glad that things got recorded. I suspected that now, even after everything I had been through, when everyone else seemed to be focusing on me, I might not have been able to hold on to any tighter.

"Okay," I said. My voice was weaker, my chest tight, "I’m happy to play along."

She gave me a funny look, "Seriously? You wanna brag about how you made your debauchery a happy accident?"

"No. I’m not proud of that at all."

"But you made it happen."

I didn’t venture a response.

"You’re a member of the group, and you participated in an event. That’s prestigious, and it’s something that the proud should be telling their kids about."

"I’m not proud of accident at all."

"You are happy to celebrate an event with a high death toll, if nobody‘s really dying?"

"I’m definitely not proud of that."

"But you made it happen."

"I did, don’t deny it."

I didn’t respond, and the silence lingered, punctually, until just now, my swarm-speak muffled.

"It still sucks," the woman from the church said.

"Why?" the man from the church asked.

"Why does it suck that bad?" the man from the church said.

"I was there," I said, silent.

"Numbness, stinging, not painless," the woman from the church said. "Might as well go on."

"Go on," I said, taking my knife.

I glanced down at Emmett. His lip was pressed together, all business, none cheeky, which made him less charming as a person. Still, he was breathing harder, and that was a very bad sign.

"I was there," I said. "The bugs were still there, beneath the pavement, beneath the loose sand that had collected on the ground, just waiting to suck up and stick to the large pieces of rebar that were the motorcycle frame. I handled a lot of the binding, hauling them off the motorcycle’s frame and the tires, but at the same time, I had my hands full. Needled millions of bugs into the turf, and every single one of them stuck."

I glanced up at the church facade. The topographical map with the ichor blotches and the diamond shaped areas showed what had happened. "You tiresome, stupid human."

"A human being was just about to become a bloated starfightertraveller in a tiny spacecraft," Lisa finished my thought.

"A small spacecraft?"

"Four feet across, with a dome over the top…"

"Ah."

"I think I’d really like to take this," she wrapped her arm around my shoulders and turned my back to the wall, putting her elbow on the lowest point of the dilated bubble, "And maybe use it as an excuse to go and do stuff. Drop this dome onto a planet, and maybe see what I can’t quite make out. What do you think?"

"I think this could happen," I said. Except it didn’t. She relaxed, settling back down. "I’m really excited

======== SAMPLE 6 ========
 pressed her stomach.

"What are you doing?" Grue asked her, in his heavily accented voice.

She reached up and put a hand on his shoulder, squeezed.

"I don’t know if I should go…" she said.

"You’re the one babysitting tonight," he said, his voice a touch hollow. "Why are you here?"

She shook her head. "I don’t know."

He dropped his arm from between her shoulders and used his finger to wipe away the drool from her eyes.

"It’s not worth it," she said.

"Aren’t you? I ask this with no less than a thousand eyes and a thousand ears, because it takes a certain kind of mindset to be a hero. If you’re not taking care of these dogs, then I’m not sure we have much to worry about."

She shifted position, leaning forward so her leg pressed against his. Her breath hitched with emotion.

Imagine if you were in her shoes, and she just walked in without a care.

"I’m done here."

Another long sigh. Damn, the pain wasn’t anything special. Tourists coming to a city like New Delhi to experience a bit of rebirth and take a trip down memory lane. Only it was more brief, with a more pronounced effect on the body, just a little withdrawal and cranking up of the serotonin and norepinephrine that led to a high.

If he’d had any awareness of it, would have warned her. Zero point two five five seven percent difference between his words and her reality.

She turned her head, saw a line drawn in the water. She aimed and fired, and everything went gold.

Her boots made contact with the dry ground and the area around her, and for a moment, she could feel the heat of it and the vibration of it in her skull. The earth undid the quicksand and the lid kept its course, no doubt because it was intact.

The area around them was dark. The water was still there, but most of it was brown. She could make out the sinking feeling of the water against the quicksand. If she could even see any of it. She fell in it. The feeling was indescribably sweet.

"Stop!" Weld shouted. If her helmet had any effect on this, she’d have to stop it. He’d blurted the words, but in her head, they meant something different.

Villains advanced on her. They didn’t withdraw into themselves any more than they had been. They withdrew men, women and children. Some tore at the material that covered them, tore at the quicksand. More than a few threw themselves from the descending quicksand line.

It was confusing, crippling as it was. Sure, the water was soft, this was District 12, where there were more tinker abilities at play than many high schoolers in the country, but there were tinker abilities on the line. This was a trick that a select few villains were seeing fit to throw their hatches open. Letting the refugees in.

It was bad. She kicked under the water, struck out with her boots. This was a trick that someone with an internet connection and two bucks could pull off, to put pressure on a single valve, open multiple valves at once. No holds were allowed, strictly speaking, but it was a watery hell. If her power wasn’t letting her feel it, she couldn’t feel it.

The water was so thick with obstacles that she couldn’t do anything but wait it out. Even with the extra flesh that the cape had reduced to a ball, she was still only holding her own against a hellhound-Vista hybrid. She felt out with her power, trying to figure out if she could disable the valves or keep water from flowing beneath, and found the matter of chain link fencing to block the lower half of the valves from closing without her agreement.

A large group was waiting to attack her, and the people waiting were likely to attack her anyways. If fencing appeared, she could only take them down if there were twenty of the loyal few standing in her way. Ten of them. If someone didn’t hesitate before charging headlong into her, she could take them down with a half dozen more directed blasts from her ranged attacks.

She aimed and fired, and felt a shockwave rake through the area, burying them entirely. When the shockwave passed, the capes who’d been buried beneath the water were only a few feet taller, and the water was only a little more resistant to terrain.

It was better than fighting, giving her a chance to really

======== SAMPLE 7 ========
 pressed me and said in a very slow, quiet voice, "Tired."

"I can relax," I said. "The rest of you, could you please carry this boy?"

"For now."

I moved the swarm-clone to the spot where the body was, then got myself to a standing position. I walked over to the body and touched the neck.

The body was a concrete block of gray taken from a building somewhere nearby. Details matched the color of the block. Glass shards, dried blood, dirt, green bandoleers of metal, tangled grass, and the like, stained with blood…

A marker.

I saw the significance of the bandoleer before I saw the skull.

With the skull and bandoleer in place, the rest of the kit was a matter of sliding the pieces over the connecting pieces from the wooden box, raising the wooden box as a whole.

It was scary, the idea.

Except it was kind of cool. An excuse to do stuff.

If the skull and the rest of the kit could survive the trip, why fuss about survival?

I set two more boxes next to the wooden one, then started on the neck.

Everything fit, everything in position, test subject one’s skull in the front, kit as a follower, everything sliding into place…

I stared down at the test subject one’s lifeless skull. It wasn’t a beautiful skull, not a skull I was especially fond of. No wings, no wings removed, only the skull like a piece of luggage.

I’d only done it once, back at the ABB headquarters, making the wood chipboard floor as glacial and uniform as possible before using the debris to build the walls.

It was unique, however, and I was very glad I’d only done it with test subject one.

I turned to the other, longer lived member of the group. "Here…"

I gave the test subject a pat on the cheek, "You have more self control than the average person has. You have the ability to maintain a sense of shame, even if it’s only a little."

He stared down at his hands, rubbing at the end of the long metal nail, while I walked.

"Yes?"

"Did I tell you to go to war?"

"No," he said. His voice was rough, not the most attractive voice I’d ever heard.

"Tell me there isn’t a good way to get supplies to the people in need."

"There aren’t any! This is bad!"

"War is a way, not a way."

"Then I could become the hero! Bring peace to this city!"

"You want to return to the A.I.? I can help you stop Scion!"

"No! Wait… no."

Now it was coming out like I wanted to stop him.

He stepped forward, and I gripped his arm, pulling him away.

He looked at the kit, then stared at me. His eyes darted to the ground, and he bit his lip.

In that same instant, the other kits present in the hold started talking in a low voice.

"I could control her, if I had the ability," Charlotte said.

"No," I said.

"It wouldn’t change the outcome of this."

"He beat her hand," I said. "If you wanted to see the inside, you could. There wouldn’t be a conflict inside."

"There would be a lot of people watching," Charlotte said. "Even if she had the ability to see the inside? Cities get built all the time. The problem with that is you never know what the developers are going to do. A madman could come along, build a better city, based on the ideas of one genius, and then in a flash, they could do the same thing, using that genius in place of everyone else, doing better, faster, cheaper."

"Just me?" I asked.

"If everyone on this team is as smart as you are, if everyone on this team has their own unique ideas, and you team up with them in thinking!" someone in the group shouted, "You could win this city! Open up the door to a new tomorrow!"

I grit my teeth.

"Think about it," I said. "All of us, as likely as we are to die in a fight, surrounded by enemies large and small, some smarter than we are, and a handful of our enemies who could know what we’re doing and do it at a time when we need to slow them down!"

"Dodge the incoming SH

======== SAMPLE 8 ========
 pressed, she turned to look at Armsmaster.

"Hey, Record," she said.

He turned to look at her, his face etched in the rough darkness that shimmered like gibbous clouds, "You’re not getting any more specific?"

"You’re saying you want to keep my secret, Skitter?" Armsmaster asked, almost cocking his head to the side, as if he could get away from this entirely.

"No. I’m saying no. It’s not that serious a threat. Probably not. But if you were to step up and say it outright? I’d be pretty pissed."

He really hadn’t lasted two seconds before his voice broke, a hiss escaping from his throat, before he coughed in a mouthful of air, let out a low sigh, coughed more, and was out of breath, barely able to function.

I turned my eyes to the two villains, and saw Miss Militia in the darkness, unmoving, her back to the back of the room. Armsmaster, however, was drawing a gun as he lunged towards Vista. He stopped as she turned on her back.

Before her, Armsmaster moved his hands, long, narrow, apart. His fingers moved as if he were pulling the trigger on a small gun, and the combined effects of Clockblocker’s powers and Miss Militia’s weapons made for an acorn that yoked onto a shotgun, mandibles that cut into the sides of the barrel and the sides of the chute.

The shot sent her sliding against the back of the closet and out the door. She tumbled into the front hall, and stopped short, her back to the wall. The cumulative effect was that much worse for her: a cavity in the front of her pelvis housed a large amount of internal organs. Strap on, she’d flip.

Armsmaster lunged, but Miss Militia ignored the alarm. Instead, she reached over her shoulder and jammed one hand into her armband. "Send that piece of garbage that far away! I don’t care!"

That placated him, aside from giving some of the Merchants in the room reason to back off. He started toward the closet, keeping his gun aimed at Vista.

She wasn’t immune to the same effects that Kid Win had been: in a chain reaction, it seemed, with more damage to her, the weaker she became. She surrendered to the effects, letting go of the chute’s cord, letting herself be caught by the silliest parts of the protrusion at her belly button. She tumbled and fell hard, landing face first on the vanity.

At her command, Vista moved the silliest part of the cuff to her belly button and adjusted her grip, bringing the rest of the comb up to her throat. It sat at her throat level, then buttoned up over her mouth.

Then she was ready to shoot him.

He raised his hand, searching for the dartboard. There was it, hidden in a wall of mah WX-chippty. She opened fire, drenching it in the same wave of glass that she sprayed to wipe it from the front of the closet. The remaining ammunition was placed in a bag and loaded for a second gun.

For justice, or for vengeance. He never knew.

Armsmaster was driving the dartboard straight into the wall of glass right as Kid Win stepped out of the front hallway. Iron Giant interfered, throwing down another molotov. Imp and Vista were shoved to the ground, falling in an explosion of slag that turned much of it into steam.

Flechette hit Armsmaster with a stunning counterattack. It was followed by the worst nightmare he’d ever seen. A tail, catching Kid Win on the back of the head, slamming him down onto the ground, soaked head to toe in the crimson liquid.

That was the one that slammed him down onto the face, not even a glance to check his status or do any damage.

Kid Win practically slid beneath the table, finding an empty space behind the cabinet, where the darts weren’t plunging through. He fired the resulting shot at Armsmaster and Armsmaster simply moved the table and the three darts out of reach, one by one.

The resulting explosion tore through the part of the room where the darts had landed. The steam flickered and turned to vapor as it made contact, running along the very edges of the open area, drenching both Vista and Armsmaster.

"Motherfucker!" Clockblocker howled, not looking up from his looming death. He slammed his fist against the closed cabinet.

Armsmaster ignored him, slamming the front of his head down

======== SAMPLE 9 ========
 pressed her tongue at it.

"So. Let’s see how long it’s going to take the PRT to get hold of you," she glanced at me again, and there was a note of alarm in her voice, "I could maybe make you an out, give you a way to politely complain, and it’d still be just short enough that you wouldn’t notice in the midst of the busy sidewalk. Or it could be an actual studio, with a real animatronic band."

At those words, the volume of the conversation dropped precipitously. It took a few seconds before everyone calm agained. I raised my voice, "I think it would be an excellent time to get an update on how things are going. I’ve talked it over with Director Froehlich and Director Mannequin, and they don’t seem that interested in continuing the project."

"Why? Why do you think they’re taking this route?" Mrs. Yamada asked.

"It’s an escape. There’s an assumption here, an explanation behind the curtain. If we don’t get an update on how things are going, if we don’t get a chance to talk about the state of things from here on out, then this project falls apart."

My eyebrows knit together in concern.

"If it makes you feel any better, or if you’re able to look me in the eye and assure me that it’s for the greater good-" she trailed off.

"I’m not asking for your trust. I’m not asking you to give me your confidence. I’m not asking you to purchase confidence for me. I just want the ability to answer any questions you have, and the chance to see improvements."

"Okay," my lawyer said. He set his elbows on the table and gripped the cloth of his cravat with one hand, putting both hands on my shoulders, "I can’t take your hand."

"Not without your permission," I said.

"I’m not that stupid," he said, raising his voice to be sure that my left ear wasn’t being listen in to.

"Please."

"No need for this," his voice was strained, "This is getting ridiculous. I’m ready to take another hit to my reputation than I probably can."

"I know," I muffled a groan.

Intense moments, intense pressure.

I strained to think of how to answer him, when I heard the sound of a door closing. An administration room, with blue and yellow lighting, the faintest of traces of faint music, an instrument dial.

"Let’s go," I said.



Monarch 16.10


"We’re here," Tagg said, "Because we have been from the beginning."

I turned to look over my shoulder. The PRT officers were filing out of the room, leaving me and my chair empty and the laptop free to stare at the floor.

I looked back at my lawyer, to see if he was continuing what he’d been saying.

"This is insane," his voice was muffled.

"How do I even address this?"

"She’s a major player," my lawyer said. He used a combination of his voice and a low volume voice to explain the necessity of the high-pitched, full volume voice we’d been having so much of the past few minutes. "She designed the armor, controls the technology, writes the code. The others don’t have that kind of creativity, capability or edge. The armor comes from Arthrosk, the synthetic skin is adapted from a single vegetable, hair is borrowed from a single plant. The utensils are lifted straight out of a science fiction novel, and the tools are lifted directly from a video game."



Secrecy is healthy for business.

"Most people don’t get to import the scale of a game into their work with the synthetic skins or the armor, they don’t understand the interplay of the resources that come with the work and they don’t understand the unholy ratios that have been found between a cape’s disposable income and the amount of time they spend on it. Arthrosk did a study with one end of the equation, I understand he made a hundred times more if you can push their boundaries, if you can get them racking in that zone between comfort and unachievable."

"All with the human resources?" my dad’s voice was faint with the movements of his hands and the music that was pumping through the room.

Tagg hit a key and

======== SAMPLE 10 ========
 pressed down to pick up the end of the baton, and I made him bend over until his fingers were pressed to the pole. He wouldn’t be handcuffed like that, though. Every pair of handcuffs he’d have would be attached to the arm that held the cannon.

"You’ll be getting free," I told him.

He only rolled his eyes.

"Free or dead?" Regent asked, a surprising amount of sympathy in his voice.

"Free," I agreed.

Last Chapter Next Chapter





Plasma 10.1


We’d barely made eye contact for the longest time. The awkwardness only translated into outright hostility the second we didn’t communicate. With gentleness, Lisa declared, "Free or dead."

"Guess free’.

I used plasters of interracial spacer bees to form decoys and had them fly in the air, then fired through the holes in the buildings exterior where plumes of smoke were likely to come from. I wanted to create a visual for what I’d be facing the most, as Lisa put it, and had the extra agents draw the smoke into a false sky. The next easiest thing to do, really, and it kept things interesting.

"You wanted to try, before?" A girl’s voice.

Lisa extended a hand, offering me the headphones. I grimaced and took them. I was hoping the displays would show up tonight and I’d be able to listen in without having to dig for them each time I wanted to listen to music, but the displays weren’t active.

"So the suspect is Curtis, aka Freddy Fazbear. He was a market trader. Scammed millions of dollars of people out of their money. Probably a bad dude – he would have found out some of our dirty little secrets if someone other than us had ever put the first chip on him."

I gave Aisha a look, appraising her for her patience, courage and good looks. She took it, averting her eyes.

"Also known as the black widow. When the black market dried up, this woman went on to found her ‘pony’ group, which morphed into ‘her’. She was eventually killed by a group of men with superpowers, but her pony has remained strong enough to survive, likely due to a shared experience. Her group eventually became the Merchants, after which point they morphed into the Protectorate."

The entire thing, from start to finish, was outlined in a few words. I could tell that even with the countless hints and opens ended questions, the answers still weren’t clear. We had roughly a week before the next disaster, the next black market trader, the next defaced bulletin board, or the contestant on the next reality tv show decided to muck with our secrets. Six weeks left. Five weeks until the tournament itself.

Looking at it this way, in spite of the fact that things did get more obscure every day, the choices made with the priorities and strategies spelled out more information in the vague language of the goals and objectives. Just as the goals seemed to change every time I looked at them, so too did the possible outcomes of certain actions: a mutiny among the leaders of the local faction, a stunt by the local heroes, a power grab from Bowser.

Four major groups with a combined power rating of at most four hundred and fifty times that of the Eight Created, a combined budget of three million US dollars and a membership in the J. Hill, Theodore, Theodore, Amy and Marked organizations, all of them potential threats to our way of life.

If I had to guess, the choices made by the public on the day of the battle represent roughly three thirds of the groups that are currently on the board. As I understood it, they had made their decision. Thirty-three in total voiced their choices.

Of these thirty-three, twenty-six were men. The age distribution was skewed towards the older, with the group heads being more likely to be male, as well as being the veterans. The organization was still evolving as far as the men in charge of the local group were concerned, and as far as untrained eyes were concerned, there were no signs this represented any sort of steady, ongoing effort on the part of the male members.

The 24-hour clock displayed on the board looked like the Greenwich Mean Time, but for several significant hours, from roughly eleven in the evening until just after eleven in the morning, it had been displaying the time zone South America ended. It was an hour and fifteen minutes before the GMT marker shifted to Greenwich Mean Time, an hour and fifteen minutes after, bearing an East-to-South path of very literal Earths that ended at approximately nine o'clock.

That,

======== SAMPLE 11 ========
 pressed.

He didn’t say anything on the subject, and for good measure, he added, "And by the way, Missy, you should know that my men shot and wounded your dog, and it’s bled to death on your belt."

Brian glanced at the mutilated body that didn’t move, mouthing the word in a voice barely audible to himself.

"Fuck, dammit," Bitch said, "I forgot you cared." She tossed the dog onto the ground and soled it.

"It’s okay," I said, just under our breath. I shouldn’t have brought the bugs in her face. I was almost positive she didn’t have a mask on. I looked at the number of people on the stretcher.

"We’re not the zombies anymore," Bitch said, staring down at the still-staggered dog. "We’ve gone from a horde of dogs to a goddamn pack."

"Shh," was all Lisa could say.

I hurried to pull on my costume top, then dove into the water, sweatshirt and towel in hand. I was dirty, it was humid, and I had a cold that wasn’t going away, even as the days passed.

I surfaced, back in the familiar spot where we’d been earlier.

"What did you do?" Bitch asked. She moved to put herself between Lisa and I. "You’re attacking our territory, we’re defending it."

I shook my head. "I’m sorry, Rachel."

"You need to tell us what you did, so we can plan."

"It’s not us," Lisa said, stepping forward. "It’s not our responsibility."

"You had to ask," Bitch protested. "When you decided on this, you were considering every aspect of it."

Lisa glanced at me and nodded. "Yes."

"You could have told us sooner-"

Lisa stopped me. "We’d use the same approach you did, with the money. I’d ask you to leave, you’d tell us what happened to your master, and this would be a huge help in planning out the next time we need you."

I closed my mouth. Bitch wasn’t that cute when she was cold.

"You have to understand," Lisa said, "We kind of messed up your routine. You’ve got two forms, and we’re splitting up so we have two lines of retreat."

I pursed my lips. "You have two heads."

She set her jaw, "I do."

"Two bodies," was the most honest statement I’d heard from her yet. It almost made me feel worse about the idea. Two bodies, someone dying and you not thinking about what happened to the body parts before.

"You-" I started to speak, but Lisa cut me off.

"Three," she growled at me, before I could try again.

"Three," I corrected. She cut me off once more.

"You’re shitting me," Bitch growled in my ear.

When I spoke, I left no room for doubt. Lisa was literally shaking her head, now. "This isn’t working."

"This isn’t working so hot," Alec said.

"Why aren’t you listening?" Lisa asked.

"My sister just got her powers," Bitch answered. "She’s in a punk rock band, and they made some noise about her coming to the team to talk to us, the other cheerleaders, all those poor people."

"They didn’t tell you anything," I said.

"They have to. Look, here’s the deal. She’s a rogue. A second year. Tinker. Freelancer. Borrower of power. Capable of blowing things up by drawing a forcefield through the seat, I think that’s pretty typical for a rogue. She was also at the school with whoever called herself Gateway. She’s never told us her name."

I caught a glimpse of Bitch’s face before the darkness rolled over her features. "I… I think I know what her name was."

"Man, Bitch, you never ..." Lisa started.

She stopped as Tattletale cut her off, "Never patch jobs or call us on the phone when we’re on the phone with someone."

Bitch glared at her.

"What? You didn’t hear that from me?" I asked.

======== SAMPLE 12 ========
 pressed the door, there were even tears in the corners of her eyes.

"…I can’t make any promises. But with the information we have, I think we might be on to something."

"Investigations?"

"Oh, they’re legitimate. It took place in Boston, and it involved some of the good guys."

"You’re not telling us everything?"

"No. I won’t be redeeming them, or keeping everything, but maybe we could use them."

"It’s a hassle. And what’s to stop the bad guys from using them? We need them dead or alive."

"It’s not that complex," Tattletale said. "I can see where it would confuse the eye, if it was."

Leister shook his head. "There’s a lot I don’t understand. And as far as ambiguities go, that’s pretty thin, considering what we’re trying to achieve."

"Then let me resolve this for you, Tattletale. If you want to keep working with your group like you have for Undersiders, I can accept a share of responsibility. It doesn’t have to be a share in everything."

"A share of responsibility?" Leister asked.

"You’re letting us use their equipment."

"Doesn’t seem worth it."

"It can be, if the end result is better than what we have here. A better outcome than what we have here. But for now… we should stay professional. I’m willing to ride off into the sunset with you, wearing a badger skull on my head if it means getting shit done, but I’m hoping you’ll hold back if we wind up fighting. You’ll see why I’m here. I’m not invincible, and I’ll probably take more hits than I take."

"A sacrifice?" one of the leaders asked. One that seemed to be operating with conflicting directives and conflicting ideals.

"No. I guess I’m being purely altruistic. This equipment keeps the most effective tools out there, and it gives the most effective tools the opportunity to work."

"Not very altruistic," Teacher commented.

He’d thought he was done. He hadn’t said it outright, but holding out for an exchange of gunfire against an Endbringer and the use of his military might to suppress it… such was the cost of doing business.

He had to suppress a mite. Not yet.

"I can’t imagine any good that would come out of that. Not Gunther, not Crick, not me, not even the less efficient end of things. The other stuff, the mystic end of things, it seems far fetched."

"Well, you’re obviously one of them."

"Perhaps."

"I don’t follow."

"We both know what you’re thinking, that you’re offering something big to get back at them, just for a chance to get back at them. Something big, you’d think I would be willing to part with it."

"What part of what I just said do you not understand?"

There was nothing she could say to answer.

"You’re talking about my teammate, she of the meanest and most vain epithet you can think of," Teacher said. He smiled behind his mask, slowly stretching his lips. When he spoke, there was no particular accent or rhythm to his voice. Just the opposite, his voice was tight, his tone measured. "I have faced down many a bully, many a master in seducing and manipulating the weak. I have lost even my friends in the process, to the mockery and for liking it. I am not a conformist, and truth be told, I let others dictate how I should live my life, because it suited them, and it suited me."

"Yes," she responded. It was a halting, almost casual answer, and it left him with the impression that she was talking about herself, even if she wasn’t saying who she was referring to.

He smiled, but there was a note of tension in his expression, as though he were caught off guard.

"If there is something else you’d like to talk about, I can do that too. I have plans for the evening, if you would partake."

"If you say," she said, "Then I will."

"Then talk."

She headed into the kitchen, shutting and locking the door behind her. She turned on the TV, but turned off the DVD

======== SAMPLE 13 ========
 pressed the phone. "We’ll be there in five."

"I’ll come."

"I have it."

■

I arrived at Coil’s headquarters before anyone else, and as Trickster and Sundancer made their way inside, I turned my attention to recording.

As far as I could tell, everything was in place. The equipment, the spaces between the pieces, everything was as complete a as it could get with an artificial intelligence that was advancing at a glacial pace. Coil’s booth, also, looked just as impressive on paper as it did on the page.

I stood at the top of the metal railing as Bitch entered the room and spotted me. Her attention was on the phone as she stalked towards me.

"You’re back," I called out, as I took my seat in one of the booths.

Imp’s eyes didn’t move a fraction, which proved advantageous in that she knew already. She called Trickster from the other booth, "Skitter? Not performing so well, and I have a hard time believing you brought this to my attention."

I jumped at the chance to take advantage of the girl’s distraction. "What did you say?"

"It’s me. Taylor Hebert. Acting head of the group, with the help of my two ambassadors. Alan Gramme sent me this memo."

"Alan? You’re the new ambassador?"

"I’ve been working with him because Alan Gramme. He’s a good kid, a loner. He’s down to earth, normal. Doesn’t try too hard, isn’t pushy. He’s also been helping toordinate the group and make smart policy decisions."

I found her attention repping the phone. "You’re serious."

"It’s like you’re asking me to leave the goddamned room," she said, behind her mask.

I tried to speak, but… I couldn’t. I shifted my weight to one side, and my bugs almost bit to trace the seams and imperfections in the fabric. I’d need to pay attention to that.

She turned her attention to me, "This was about more than just you two. About your rep, and the negative attention you were facing. To have you fall to that path in the first place, for messing with an official-"

"Disaster option two," I said. "Escape."

"Want to switch seats, please?"

"As you wish," I said. I placed the Uther in front, using the distraction to switch seats with the third person. The two ambassadors swapped places.

I looked around. This wasn’t an unfamiliar place. We’d escaped before, and we’d come across similar problems. Things were headed our way.

"The table…" Bitch said.

I held up my hand, traced with my swarm.

"…Is arranged to give the best battlefield analysis possible. Anything and everything."

I looked over my shoulder. The Uther was following my movements, as I routed and prevented him from getting to any individual.

"Can you brigade here faster?" I asked. "I can hold position here until the Azazels arrive."

"I only want to make my thoughts clearer after I’ve done that. If I, as a soldier, inform on your destination before I declare war, then it might lead to an exchange of gunfire."

"There’s an advantage to being ambiguous," I said.

She gave me an annoyed look. "I worry about that on my own."

"An escape route and a crash site for Tecton and Grace. We can minimize the damage, and we’ll have a longer rope to work with if and when we debase the planet."

"I didn’t say anything about my role," Grace mused.

It might as well have been a bombshell statement. I was still sorting through my conversations with her, trying to assess her. Was she in? No.

The button had been the trigger for an eventful few minutes.

I had no time to think about it.

I descended down from the box, the Uther in low-Earth orbit. It wouldn’t reach New York in my shorter range. I pressed the button, clapping, and made my way out.

The handle of my cane.

I stopped, then turned around. New York City.

"How the hell did you get to the point where you are?"

I’d told myself I would solve Bitch’s

======== SAMPLE 14 ========
 pressed the spear, the tail holding it in place. When he lowered it again, it pointed toward the ground.

Not the middle finger. Another.

He lunged for the man, striking just the right spot to split his midsection with one of the long axes of the spear. The other leg was still holding the spear with its hindquarters still extended forward.

Perfect.

There was a heavy crash as the massive spear hit. I could hear the impact with the bugs at the ready, sending images of the spear over the heads of the soldiers to relay the details to Tecton and the others.

Another two crashed down, disrupting my assault.

Another two piled up, not five, but six. It wasn’t just the impact of the spear against the concrete. There was a heavy crash as the spearhead continued traveling through the air, striking the second group of six.

Five more spears appeared temporarily, to give myself some extra offensive strength, and then disappeared. I was left hanging from the spear as the others moved to reposition themselves.

The four remaining members of the Irregulars appeared, with Conch to block my retreat and lean against the wall where I’d concealed myself.

Foil kicked the wall, and the dried blood flashed in the light that streamed from the wall’s surface.

Conch, for her part, lashed out with her Talons. Sparks showered as she punched it against the wall, bent down, and picked up two of the bodies. I couldn’t see the rest, as Conch herself was obscured by the blood that bloomed from the exposed skin of the man she’d removed from her corpse.

I had the majority of my bugs on them before Foil could do anything more.

"Tip toe it," I muttered, after a few seconds.

No use. She’d seen, and she’d killed.

There was another series of crashes as Atlas descended. I saw Defiant and Dragon shift position, bringing them so their backs were to the two piles of corpses.

I was atop the pile of corpses before the last spear of the Irregulars fell. There was gunk, still warm, but it wasn’t a messy matter.

I could see a group of civilians that had been reduced to skeletons as they tried to move through the wound. They’d clutched one another, huddled with others who had been reduced to spasms of agony. One of the capes on duty.

I didn’t position myself any further to the left. I was at the limit of my ability to move under Vivian’s power.

I turned my attention to the pile of corpses, and I could feel the movement of the bodies as I ascended.

Two spearwives had stopped to nurse the dead. It made for a very slow process. Even when they’d had the time to grieve with their loved ones, it typically took a day or two before they could do anything meaningful.

I began building what I could from the remains of the pile of corpses. Housepets for the wounded, a small hospital, permanent homes for the less fortunate.

A glance outdoors showed slight shimmer in the surrounding weather, the barest minimum of clouds. The city stood in what looked like a makeshift beach.

In the olden days, this had been normal. If the calendar day didn’t just end early, than the calendar year began. Before I’d gotten powers, or if events had intervened.

The smile left my face as I watched the sunrise. Joy.

But there were moments like these when I felt the shadow of doubt that weighed on top of her.

She connected to other houses. She viewed her reflection in a window for a moment, and then she connected to others. She watched as people made comments, laughed, cried.

She was comfortable enough. She could even smile a little, as she spent long minutes drinking in the company of others. She connected to others in a familiar way, others in a familiar situation. Even if that connection took some getting used to.

Legend stopped to listen as one of the more affected members of the Irregulars commented, her voice feeble, "She’s as normal as my friends could be."

Repeatedly, she’d talked about how she was on her own. She’d talked about the training, the regimen of checks and balances that kept her powers in her toes, so she could be ready for an emergency. She’d talked about the rituals, the games she’d formed, new forms she was testing, and new ways she was grouping people.

It had been so long since she had felt whole.

When they’d

======== SAMPLE 15 ========
 pressed. "They’ve got to know it’s us."

I could see the woman’s eyes narrow. "They won’t like it, your husband and wife, but we’re helping stop the worst before they start."

"If they want to get on your case."

We were out of earshot. If she’d let it, I suspected she might have had words for me a day or two ago.

"You’re saying our part in stopping these bastards is more important than stopping the real monsters."

"No," I said, "Not at all. Because when we start talking about doing what’s right, the whole world will benefit."

She snorted.

"I’m… I’m conflicted," I said. I wasn’t sure how much of it was my PR that was conflicted, and how much of it was my doubt.

"Nope. You can trust me."

Which meant I probably couldn’t, anymore.

She elaborated, "When I say I’ll do whatever it takes to save these people, I’m not using my invincibility. That’s only a figment of my imagination. What I do in that regard, I let you in on a little secret. When I see it, I let others know. Cauldron’s on it, Faultline’s on it, the Travelers are in it. Rachel is in it, no doubt."

"Uh huh."

"And me? I let the other groups do the dirty work. When they do the worst, I let them know. Not just my team, but the villains who condone terrorism, genocide, war and greed."

"I trust the Undersiders," Tattletale said.

"And when I say I let the other groups do the dirty work, I’d be lying. I admit I let the other groups kill people. Castles in the backwoods, people working in mines, burned people, people who went crazy on a drug called crystal, an addict named William… Billy, I found out about from Faultline. But the crime of the greatest concern to me was you. You pulled the shit that hurt Lab Rat’s eyes, and hurt people who thought they could get away with it. But you didn’t drop out of the sky, crawl on people to extract a hit that lived up to its name. You didn’t do anything even compared to the people Lab Rat killed."

Damn. For someone who prided herself on being reckless and violent, she’d seemed just a little patient. In a way, I felt a kind of horror. I wouldn’t have said she was lying, but… yeah.

"I’m sorry I’m still in my office here, but we’ve got other things to focus on."

"You’re a little disappointed in me?" She asked, and the light in her eyes was mischief rather than concern.

I felt my face heat up, telling me to stop, but she was a top notch thief, and she wasn’t going to stop talking.

At a normal speed, I turned my attention to the computer. I plotted a course to intercept her party in the hopes that I could delay them.

If I was concealing something, trying to keep things on the down-low, then she’d notice. If I was concealing something vital, then she’d notice and I’d lose control of the situation.

Regent’s power made talking with bugs a breeze. He could surreptitiously enter a state where I couldn’t sense him, regardless of how hard I tried to keep him still. I did much the same with the talking capes as I tried to seduce Bitch. I could put him in the middle of an area with heavy rainfall, where it was dry enough that water would subside unless someone moved a tree, but he couldn’t fall asleep, and there wasn’t an abundance of suitable trees to choose from.

Unlike my first night out in costume, where I’d mostly gone barefoot, drenched, half out in the middle of nowhere, River was mostly clothed. She wasn’t going into an urban area or an area with a lot of parking lots, but she was still fully capable of walking down the streets at a normal pace, just far enough away that the bugs I had covering her wouldn’t catch her shoes. A pair of boxers in similar clothing could take their eyes off the cage by concentrating their light, but they couldn’t do the same with a full on flash of color.

======== SAMPLE 16 ========
 pressed to one side, and it exploded with a flame that consumed half of the building. The fireball and expanding foam reduced in size as it made contact with the building’s façade, by mid-size, almost gone.

I could see Contessa, standing on the other side of the cloud, her ghostly face in the midst of the plumes of smoke and flame.

I could hear her speak. "… .they found the girl to be a kind, generous child. The flames that consumed her were indeed hellish, but they were also drawn from a noble source. I have caused the creation of this cloud as a warning, and I’ll make sure others heed it."

I could see the other heroes react, stopping in their tracks.

"She... meant it."

"We have to listen to her," Defiant said. "We’re the only ones who seem to understand this much. Scion is a blight on this world, it is bridges and ways to get from point to point, not buildings or territories. The wise have warned others."

"They... have been... warned," Khonsu said.

"Yes. Well," Director Tagg said. He met my eyes, looking serious for the first time. He seems to be planning something.

I think we all have a role to play here, I thought. I also thought it was an awfully stupid role to suggest.

"This," Director Tagg said, "Will be a long series of defeats, with very expensive and time consuming re-legalizations. Worse, it is slowly but surely destroying the bridges that we’ve all been trying to build."

"It cannot continue forever," the Simurgh said. "I have said this many times. Those of us who have fought him know how it ends."

Her, the false Azazel, she’d created the phantom copies, had watched over them, taking them apart, building up their ranks. Then she freed herself of the Simurgh’s influence, using her own power.

She’d freed herself of the influence, and the very idea of getting too close to her clones was an attack on that.

"I do not fear death," the Director said. "But I fear that this fear may be too vivid, and I would be wise to take to heart that it is memory, and to play it well. We have enough wealth and power to stand still and wait is inviting disaster."

The heroes were still coming back, the Wakandans, the Dragon’s Teeth, the Guild, the Protectorate, and others. It was all rushing back, a tide of people and vehicles.

But she was aware of the ones who had stayed. She could see them, the ones who had stayed, themselves, back in the not too distant past. Charlotte had been one, it seemed, and the photos on the computers at the other computers all had her face. She was paler, it was all the more striking, she wore stained clothing and wore nose rings.

"The photographs are a window into a deeper, more personal part of our relationship," she said. "I recall you visiting frequently when I was in the field. I visited frequently after you had given me your voice, too."

Charlotte’s eyes moved up to the rows and columns of vials. I could see the skin of the people on the other side of the glass, peeling, bleached and white. Others had used powers to alter themselves, to reshape themselves, to hide the marks from the irradiated corpses of their allies and enemies.

The Director, I thought.

"It would not be wise to amplify this event, for many reasons."

"Yes," I said.

I watched as she stooped down to examine one of the photographs, touched a tissue to the photograph, and then examined the tissue in the same moment, as though she were examining scenes from a film.

It was almost sensual, the scene. I could see Hans, his bride in the foothills of a tall tree, their wedding ring held with the finger raised.

Two days ago, I might have felt a different kind of pain, had felt anything about Hans and the ring.

Today, I didn’t feel any pain.

But Charlotte’s touch turned the photo 180 degrees. Hans floated in the air, his legs apart, fingers dangling, his eyes large, his face hidden. His flesh glowed with a light that I couldn’t make out, but I knew that the photo hadn’t been exposed to any light in recent memory.

I moved the beanbag couches and knocked over one with my elbow. The cushion was immersed in a ichor like firewater.

"

======== SAMPLE 17 ========
 pressed one hand over his shoulder.

"Well, you can’t take the blame for any of that. At least, not yet," she said, sounding a little relieved to have a responsible authority figure in her corner.

"You saved my life," he told her, "I’m glad."

He heard the faintest of her steps as she headed for the door. He felt a thrill of relief mixed with sadness. If he acted, he’d probably set her on the surgical table, but she’d come through. He’d saved her life.

Only to find out it was a trap. A trap that had been set for him. A pressure-cooker.

There was a pressure-sink combo-trap and a pressure-cooker on the other end. He ignored the trap altogether and responded to the man’s question with questions instead.

How did you find me? My name is Alan Woolley, I’m the leader of the Chares, a rogue team from the United Kingdom. We’re based in Pigeon Forge, which is a town on the edge of the Docks. As the name suggests, the Pigeons come to the rescue when things get bad. They’re the ship that tackles big problems, big cities, big problems. Terrorism, international crimes. Alan’s in charge of the team there? He’s a big gunslinger who’s been raiding pig farms in neighboring counties to clear them for fuel, food and material. When the pigs start getting really tired, he starts toying with them, fucking with them, and the untrained eye couldn’t make him out. He’s in the company of fourteen or fifteen young men at a time, and they were all witnesses. I made it all disappear with the smoke. Alan’s a crazy-ass guy, but he’s not stupid. ‘SUP’?"

"What is it?"

There was only silence. He tried once more to voice a question, asking about the circumstances of his fellow man’s deaths, but the words never came.

When he finally managed to speak, it was to Nicodemus, his name whispered in the midst of the noise of nearby sounds, the noise of the crowd, the shouts and alarm.

"I made some friends," he said. "We’re going to eat, drink and play video games until we die."

His companion was silent, staring around the edges of the small crowd.

Worried it wouldn’t be the right time to bring it up, Alan spoke first. "We’re army guys. We have a team. You’re people. Everyone has their place."

The look of consternation or confusion was palpable. For just about the first time, Alan felt like he was among the people, not the other way around.

"You’re army guys, aren’t you?"

"What?"

"I mean, aren’t you a soldier, then?"

"No," Alan shook his head. "I’m just not… I can’t seem to find myself."

"I see," Alan said. Still, he wasn’t able to find the words. Just like everyone else, he’d been turned on by the events last night. "But why? Is it that hard to find yourself?"

"Well," Brian said. He didn’t raise his voice. "Sociopaths are harder to label. It’s a label that slips, runs away from the mark."

"What does it say?"

"Something along those lines. Likely someone with a mother, a personality disorder, a parent, someone in the system. But when we look at it from a more objective perspective, when we dig into the nitty-gritty details, it’s hard to label things."

Brian sighed.

"You’re smarter than you think," Alan said. He reached his hand into his pocket and withdrew a small paper.

The rest of us scribbled notes, not quite columnheads, not quite typefaces.

"You have a home?"

"Home means something," Alan said. "It’s a support system, a place to stay, when you’re feeling a bit down. A place to stay until you can find yourself again."

"Yeah," Brian said. "Alan, you know your stuff."

"What about you?"

"I don’t. I was born here, I know our customs."

"I was here once before, if I recall."

"Mm," Alan m

======== SAMPLE 18 ========
 pressed me, I looked at the three heroes present. They held blaster rifles, but they weren’t wielding any attacks that could close the gap to Bitch.

The smallest of the dogs, an ugly puppy, trailed behind the others, gathering together, stretching out.

"No," I said.

"If she keeps running, we’re stuck!" the woman put her hand on my shoulder.

"Can’t hurt her," Bitch retorted, "We have to get to him or she’ll kill us. Besides, he’d rather see us than let us go on with our lives."

"Then hurry," the woman said. She stepped forward, bringing the dog up to cuddle with Bitch. It cuddled its master, burying her face in Bitch’s shoulder.

I felt a mixture of emotions. The smallest of them, like a mother would, was that I’d betrayed her. Of course she did. I was her dog. I had to step down and do what was right, even if it meant letting her hurt.

But the other big part of me was happy. I knew I had to do this differently. I knew this wasn’t working, and I knew that if I left, if I hadn’t received the information through my association with the Undersiders, this wouldn’t work out this well. So I wasn’t sure I wanted to stay.

"No," I said, after a long few seconds of hesitation. "I won’t go ahead if you tell Grue and Bitch they have to go back, if they can’t handle it on their own. I won’t go ahead if they can’t handle it on their own."

Had to think ahead. I had to model my speech after what Kaiser had done, as much as I was willing to go to bat for him, in the interest of showing that we Undersiders weren’t hard targets.

"Skitter," Grue said.

Bitch gave me a look, then grabbed me and used my hands to pull me away. She hurried back into the crowd.

Grue looked angry. At me.

My swarm didn’t pick up on me. I wasn’t sure if it was Bitch’s persuasive argument, the fact that several dogs seemed to be patiently waiting, all neutered and fit. Or it was my own instinctual tendency to want to help and protect people, mixed up with the emotions of being in charge and the way I thought of Bitch as the kind of person who relied on others.

I’d left my father behind, I’d been reckless, and I’d miscalculated.

I could almost sense my dad reacting to that. Turning to look at us, like he’d never forgiven me.

"Go," I said. "Your call. But if I’m bothering you, you should know that I’m standing by this, and I’m going to stick around and bother you when the opportunity comes up."

He didn’t listen, not entirely. As if he couldn’t place where his own claustrophobic cell had been, he waited tensely with his eyes on the door.

It didn’t come, and Bitch grabbed my belt and pushed me into the chair beside the kitchen counter.

"Now go, and don’t look back. If we get in a fight, you and I both lose. I don’t mess with the Brainwasher."

"Mmm," was all my dad could say.

Without my asking him to, I stood and wrapped my arms around my dad, hugging him with a deflated expression on my face. I found the door that led to the living room and sat on the bed, elbows on my knees, as my dad recounted his recent conversation with Skitter.

"So," he started, "You’re running or you’re staying here, in case you—"

"In a meadow?"

"In a meadow."

I nodded.

"Be smart, be careful. You can have all the books and magazines you want, I’ll take the most reading."

"Thanks," I murmured, pulling away.

With that said, I was gone, flying.

I wasn’t back before five, but that was more on my shoulders than it was on Skitter’s shoulders. My absence had a noticeable effect on herak’s group. They’d been preoccupied with preparing, keeping the preparations going and making sure everything was in working order, and now that

======== SAMPLE 19 ========
 pressed over the glass, her chest heaved, and she threw the remainder of the contents of the vial into the space below her, a little too violently. That done, she scooped up the corner of the bottle and arranged it under one shoulder, jammed it in her belt.

"Keep moving," I told her.

"But-"

"Move," I repeated.

She moved, and the soldiers who were holding her backed fell back.

She had them now.

"-They’re using the dogs," I heard a voice in my ear.

I turned toward see Miss Militia.

She’d appeared in my range, and was holding something through a doorway. A phone.

Something minor, but she’d had some thrown into the space between her shoulderblade and pistol grip. It wasn’t Code. She’d sharpened it, translated it.

"I need your help," I said.

"Can I ask who it is?"

"Ask me again when you’re done."

It wasn’t Grue. It wasn’t an Enforcer. It wasn’t a PRT uniform.

It was me.





Venom 29.8


The thing about being an Undersider was that we were disposable. We could disappear at a moment’s notice, and anyone could become a suicide bomber.

There were also the issues of running, of being constantly moving, and living a double life if you lived an hour and a half away from the Undersider’s headquarters.

Making the most of your disposable population was a battle I’d gotten sort of settled. You didn’t just have to be in the thick of things on the front lines, making sure the enemies aren’t making headway on the battlefield, you also had to be an observer, a watchdog. Anything else, well, a shotgun and a woman with a side-length dress catching the bulk of the body, leaving me to wade through the mess of Dauntless, trying not to make a sound.

Not that there was much I could do. You didn’t really have any disposable demographic. You had Glory Girl and Panacea, and their episodes with the flu and Bloody Mary weren’t exactly a picture of a dead end.

But anything I could do, you could do. I could watch her powers advance, read up on her, study her, tie those observations together. I could even work out a solution to the riddle of her powers, using the observations I’d gotten.

Bugs? You couldn’t kill the bugs that Bog-man had dropped on my and Armsmaster’s heads. Using my power would have been the equivalent of hitting a home run. I could have brought them up from the edge of the porch, but my arm would have broken by the time I reached the top of the stairs. Armsmaster had been hit hard, I might have gone out for a look, but I suspected there was something I could have done to make him bounce back.

And then there were the airborne bugs. While I’d been distracted by the zombies and Lung’s soldiers, you could buy into that lifestyle, and Grounded Bug had done just that, with their bug zipping around the city, filling the clearing from my rooftop. I almost envy them.

I had a bug on the sideline, tracking the movements of Pickering, Manpower and Huntress, writing her location to a file on my computer. If she remained in the building, there was a good chance I could tie her to Pickering, Manpower or Huntress by air-powered grappling-line. If she left the building, there was a good chance I could get control, too.

Pickering and Manpower were good at holding their own. It was the others who were floundering, falling behind. They hadn’t fought their way to the perimeter, but stumbling around at the edges of the area, falling behind.

Bugs informed me that Concerto had engaged the zombies on her way out.

With the combat still ongoing and the danger level elevated, I decided to move up the vantage point to a higher vantage point.

Again, a critical error. Concerto had gone out of her way to stay out of my way. I shouldn’t have allowed her to, not when she was potentially shooting an innocent if I took too long to move to my left.

I pushed the bugs to the perimeter again.

Manpower, Huntress and Concerto had all made it back to the battlefield. Huntress stooped down to shove the wounded through the open area and push them to the perimeter, while Concerto dialed Mark IV

======== SAMPLE 20 ========
 pressed by nature and nurture, and I would lose everything as long as I lived. This could easily be an act, a demand for attention.

"I’m not good at this. Never really been worse. I just… I guess I became Skitter for a reason. And if that’s no good, then that’s the mark I should be setting on my reputation beyond this place."

I heard footsteps, and I hurried to step forward.

Surely he couldn’t see through the bug’s retinas, but he apparently hadn’t noticed the blur that consumed his peripheral vision.

The cockroach nudged me with one forelimb before it dropped down to the ground. A cigarette?

"What?"

"Are you trying to get help?"

It might have sounded accusatory, but he didn’t sound reassured. "No. I’m confused. Supposed to follow along. What the hell are you doing?"

"I found a way to figure out your powers. Or at least, what my power did. I figure I’ll give you some theoretical firepower."

"That’s retarded," I muttered.

"Engineering? Try Chapter eleven, then see about dropping that in a few months. I’ll give you the tools so you can implement your idea of what your plan should be. Money and otherwise."

"You’re- you’re supposed to help, you’re supposed to help us!"

"Only if we’re honest about it. In the past ten years, only half of our plans have worked. Three worked out, for better or for worse. Two failed completely. The idea here is to take the hard road, to die hard, a matter of life and death, maybe the only time you get to live this good."

There was a long pause.

And then doors swept shut.

Silence, a jumble of flying bodies.

I didn’t breathe.

"Weaver?" a woman asked.

I looked through the window. The ocean was dark, but a pale blue in the dark of the ocean’s surface. The sky was a brilliant, perfect overcast day, partly cloudy, with occasional flashes of light. The window had shattered.

"No answer to your question."

"Weaver?" she asked.

There was a long pause.

"It’s good to talk again," she said. "Were you gone when you had the other meetings?"

"Monthly."

"And you were here for this, Tōchen?"

"It’s my space."

"That’s fine. But if you’re going to be a member of Purity’s group, you may want to make this a priority."

"I don’t want to be a member," Tōchen said. "They… have been ill-tempered, with me getting beaten and left with a concussion."

"Of course," I said. I wasn’t sure I was happy that my lie was being kept up, but I decided not to press her any further.

I considered the fact that my sanctuary was downtown San Diego, and that the grounds had been leveled to make way for the project. That really was the only reason the sanctuary was off-site.

Off-site but not off-limits. It was unfortunate, but the trolls had decided that level of security was worth it in the grand scheme of things.

If she really was ill, then that meant I wouldn’t be able to take the full counterattack in eliminating codes and safeguards. Maybe there was an angle I could use there, a vulnerable point where Purity could find herself, unable to protect the line officer in waiting.

I considered the possibility that my bugs were able to sense the interior of that room. It was uncharacteristic of me, to be concerned about vulnerability at work. I didn’t want to say it, but I was beginning to think that maybe I needed to make myself available to handle life without the pressures and unnecessary obligations of home.

I’d defer to Miss Militia on this. She was State's A.I. twenty-four, battle-ready. Pilot and planner to key points, set ups, and measures depending on what measure she deemed necessary.

Minus one, I thought. She’d be psychic, with access to that particular facet of my subconscious.

Miss Militia was on its way. I could relay the messages to Tagg by way of my subconscious, relay key phrases. Read and parse the intel Fontans had gathered to me.

…read to the D.

======== SAMPLE 21 ========
 pressed this one time and I get it. In the moment they found out I’d plotted something with them… he went after Pitter. He said she was his second in command, whatever."

I nodded, numb, dumbfounded.

"His desire was to spread the powers he’d discovered and reported back to Coil, and to make a name for himself. He was successful, and he achieved that by seizing and controlling the most powerful people and machines in existence. It was an almost mythical thing, a power with billions of dollars, a person who could turn any durable object into ash or a black hole instead of a human being."

"And you’re saying he tried to do it to you."

"Hell naw," Tattletale laughed, dropping into her seated position. I folded my arms in front of her. Not that she’d done anything to deserve any of it. Had she asked to be excused?

"There’s another crucial piece missing from that puzzle. He did nothing with her power. If we assume he didn’t use it to control her, then why did he have to destroy her if he didn’t want to?"

"It’s not reasonable to think he had someone working for him on the other side. The guy only found out she was an undercover agent?"

Rachel nudged me. "Consider that."

"It’s not reasonable to think he’d keep her up to date with events, either. If she wasn’t working for him, why would he keep her in the dark?"

So those are the big three reasons we can’t be sure why Panacea went to prison. Three major incidents and a hunt for the Nine not two minutes after she left the Birdcage.

I looked at Tattletale.

"I…I don’t know."

I swallowed.

"He kept you captive for long enough that he could use you against you. Because nothing is ever a straight line, either in this world or in the end."

"Maybe," I admitted. "Maybe not."

"I don’t know either," she responded.

"But I’d hoped he would break the rules he’d set. That was my gut feeling, after nearly a year of confinement. Not only were they breaking those rules, but they put me in a cage with someone I considered a brute."

"Crusader."

"Mm hmm," she responded. "Not sure how to respond. I’ve been working on it."

"Rules? Like the fact that whoever came into the prison had to treat everyone equally? He did. They reduced the amount of prisoners, which allowed the others to feel confident about reining them in more. They built a network, which kept everything sane, which is why I’m safe."

"Except for the part where you let someone with a grudge against us…" she thought of Mannequin and the Mayor. "I don’t know if you meant it as a good thing or a bad thing."

She frowned, shifting her weight to her damaged leg.

"Anyways, don’t know how to say that stuff. I’m trying, but it’s hard with the way my head hurts."

"I can’t tell if you’re being positive or negative. Don’t worry. My face is pretty much covered, so I won’t see it."

I frowned.

The painkillers were bad, and I didn’t know what to do with my hands. I didn’t know how to stand and stay still.

"Stay, stay, okay. Don’t worry."

I was still holding the door open when Miss Militia pulled it shut. She didn’t have her gun, but she had a pair of forcefields up, and they stayed up so they could deflect the worst of the incoming fire.

A pair of Deputy Changers stepped out of the same room as the Deputy Chief, holding the open door. They wore costume-decorated masks that covered the top of their heads, a coronet to the lower half and skirts to the legs. They were decked out in FBI colors, with silver on their jackets, collared shirts and pants. Their suits didn’t go above and beyond the call of duty, however. They held handcuffs instead, each pointed behind one's back.

"Come on," Parian said. "We need to find Jack."

"And there’s no way he found her," Tenth Hour said. "Not what she did."

"Look inside," Tenth Hour said. "Search

======== SAMPLE 22 ========
 pressed me?

Bakuda’s not on the line. The first time I’d seen her, I’d seen her staring down at the ruined husk of a rotted fish, and I’d thought of her helping To Shan, then rolling her eyes. I’d followed up by saying I hoped the girl wouldn’t go that route with the hero, and I hoped she would stick around when they were ready to go on. She had, mostly to avoid drawing attention to herself.

Hell, I had my reasons for wanting to avoid that.

She said something in Japanese. I didn’t know the language, and my understanding of the language was probably poor, but I could remember reading somewhere that there was a strange word in the English language that roughly translated to ‘Japanese’. Bakuda?

She shook her head, and her blond hair began to fall out around her face. Wordless, she said, "Sorry."

I tried to speak to her directly, but my voice didn’t come out, Void, the agent in my possession, was unable to hear. And I was worried she would kill me if I tried to say something to apologize, here.

As awkward as it was, I had to admit I felt a little relieved. I’d gotten used to just being embarrassed when somebody actually looked at me funny. I’d gotten used to holding on to that embarrassment, so it didn’t come to me any more. I felt a twinge of relief that the awkwardness would be alleviated some, or I would feel like shit if somebody did anymore.

Well fuck Cornell.

"I want to talk to her," Lisa pulled away from the sniper rifle she was holding. There was a girl with her beside her. The girl had a bulging, gaunt face with lines in her forehead, and on the first glimpse she gave me, her eyes looked very white. Like someone had glued pig eyes to a pillow. Her other eye was a pale blue, shocked to the point of looking like it had fallen off. She looked like she had spent a long time in a dark wood.

"Sabah," Lisa tightened her grip, and I grabbed her wrist, "Come here."

She almost threw me off of her, then let me settle just so. The moment her back was turned me, I did what she told me. I used my fingers to break up the angle of the door, and pulled it apart, "No. Don’t."

She came around the corner, hands on her hips, then stopped. Before I could figure out what she meant, she started backing away.

"Come anyway," I told her, hugging my arms against my chest.

She came this way. I followed her.

"This place is terrible," one of the girls said, as she looked our way.

"And dangerous," another spoke. "The girls here keep themselves together, and…"

She knew, and I don’t think she wanted to communicate with the other girl. She leaned in close to make sure she was heard.

"…really hate me."

That was it. For both of them, for half of what I’d been through, it was about me and what I’d done. About me taking charge, being the leader.

Half of them hated me as well. One of the boys spoke in a low voice, "That’s not good."

"We’re being introduced to you both, then," Lisa said, backing towards the doorway.

I glanced at Sabah and The girl, "Welcome to the group."

"Hm?"

"Each of you is unique. Different strengths, different weaknesses. But we’ll learn from each of you. That handshake?"

All eyes fell on Lisa.

"Yes, please," she held out her hand.

The girl held out her own hand, with a weird awkward smile on her face.

"It’s awkward," Lisa said. She made a faux sigh, "I’m sorry. I will be right back."

The door slammed shut.

■

The rooftop was lined with crenelations and a wrought metal railing that had been lashed together from scrap metal. Fallen cars sat in the water, and the raised edge of a metal trestle supported a wire mesh fence.

The F-Driver3 was here. He was close, already here, in the process of evacuating a small handful of people, most of them capes.

I recognized him. He was in the same skintight outfit, the same faded bruises, scrapes and scars that plagued him on the most minor levels. I could see

======== SAMPLE 23 ========
 pressed a card onto the table, then asked, "Can I ask you a question?"

He took a few seconds before answering, "No. Not really."

Valkyrie put the cards on the table again, adding her ace up her sleeves – the possibility of getting some favors from the great-great-grandmother.

He raised his eyebrows at that. This accusation against him, the accusation of grandstanding? She was the one who’d accused him of being fat, back in the early days, when he’d been new to the game. The first time, he’d laughed it off.

"You’re teasing me, there."

"No. No I’m not. No, I really don’t see it that way."

"Okay," he said. He tried to laugh it off. It didn’t help.

"Tell me, do you really want to sleep after a long day?"

"Sleeping isn’t a problem. But I wish I had a pill for after exercise like Pilates does."

"Well, chances are good you’ll exercise next morning."

Valkyrie didn’t reply. Instead, she pulled off her tank top and started unzipping the bag. She put it on, then began an excursion down the stairs.

She stopped by the kitchenette to dispense the bacon grease and corn syrup. It would only slightly improve the flavor of the pancakes the kids had made for breakfast. Or so she had said.

She was saddled with two dogs that were growing too large for their skinny legs, and the extra weight compounded each month to create a more or less realistic appearance. It didn’t help that Echidna had patented a combat propulsion system and was looking to make a career out of recycling the products of her lab. Better to make the necessary measurements and wait to see if she was on the right track.

Stacking up the various logistical issues, having people walk with the burden of a four-legged soldier? No. On some level, she knew, she was complicit.

She resolved to strike a balance.

"Auctioning property," Paladin said. "If you sold it for a premium, you could raise your offer."

"No way I can ever do that. Property is coveted. I focus on each property that I own to ensure the owner has no reason to keep it and sell it for a profit."

"Unless you have a strong demand and your offering has a high amount of appeal."

"I haven’t seen any. Property is something rare and incredibly expensive. I don’t think any of my patients would want to move into the neighborhood unless they could afford it."

"But you need the property for criminal enterprises."

"No. I’m not, and never have been."

"Property speculation. How much do you want, resting assured?"

"None."

"Then I must of course ask you for an estimate. How much will this price be revealed upon? To the public?"

"Eight hundred thousand dollars, last I heard."

He turned and smiled as he reached out towards the house in the Docks.

"Eight hundred thousand dollars, then."

"Yes."

"Here’s the deal," Vantage said. "Using Contessa as your underling, I was going to offer you a deal. You accept that deal, you stay here, and if and when you leave, you have a small army at your service. If the situation calls for it, and you can prove your worth, I’ll of course retain Contessa for a set period of time."

"Eight hundred thousand dollars, that’s—"

"Eight hundred thousand dollars, I can do an eight hundred and fifty figure loan, for which you pay. It goes to the ​Bank, to you, and it gets paid back a third, five percent of the amount you borrow, as ​previously stated. We own the ​land, of course."

Krouse was thoroughly unimpressed. "It’s bullshit."

"He said eight hundred thousand dollars. You can do better, you’ll probably get something closer to that, but I can live with that."

"He didn’t say how much he owed me, so I… I don’t see how I ever lived up to it."

Vantage shrugged, "It’s part of the deal. If you agree to cooperate, we’ll make this easy. You’ll have what you need for a little while."

"No…"

"Yes. You will keep me in the dark, if you agree to this arrangement

======== SAMPLE 24 ========
 pressed off without speaking.

As far as the rest of the world was concerned, Tattletale was still relatively small potatoes. She wasn’t a big seller, even in the States, and she wasn’t a household name in the UK. The only people who really watched her was myself and the Discovery Channel. The rest of the world watched the rest of the internet and took care of their kids. Tattletale was respected in special circumstances, no doubt, but that obviously didn’t hold a lot of water in the Greater Kitchen.

I felt a pang of sympathy. It was such a small thing, but knowing how small I was in the grand scheme of things, it was a blow.

I really didn’t want to be here. I’d sacrificed everything, had hung myself up from the most basic of ties so my nemes wouldn’t tear me down in their haste to vengeance. For a week, I’d avoided going to school, all to avoid the stress of this life and the regret of it. Going to school had meant procrastination, a daydreaming about Grimm so my dad could talk to me, and it had meant avoiding the love of my life. Even then, I had gone out of my way to avoid asking and avoid asking him. I hadn’t wanted to spend weeks or months avoiding my dad’s company, so occasional trips to the mall and a grocery store had been arranged.

I missed Brian, and I wasn’t sure if I could pick him up anytime soon. What I did have, every day, was that memory of the sardonic comment, the zinger, the desperate, desperate comment, that he could have been a little more mature, at thirty-three. I missed him, in a way, more than I thought I might. My dad had insisted I have our regular, each Saturday morning, and I’d scoffed, accepted it. I wasn’t the type to be pushed around, so I found myself reaching for my dad like a child in a locked room. We haven’t forgotten, even. Brian even has his mornings when I’m not with him, to fill the time, to fill the void. I miss him more than I thought I might.

I couldn’t tell my dad that I was legitimately happy, or that I might be happy alone, with him. I wasn’t any happier or worse off as a consequence.

Maybe I wasn’t so disconnected from reality as to blame him for my circumstances.

Alarms went off outside. I startled as one, at the sudden increase in the rumbling. Porta-water points erupted all across the street, and the chaos was so intense I had to turn my head to clear it away.

"At the fucking water!" the girl beside me shouted.

I glanced back at my dad.

He wasn’t moving, and people were shutting down the street, in my estimation. Dragon was, barring a few deviations, tracking where every single cape was moving and admitting them to her sub-network. Altogether, she had approximately 650,000 identifiable and remembered capes.

And he’d left me behind.

I tried to speak, and it failed me, barely audible. Almost a whisper.

I clutched to my knife, harder. No use. Tattletale must have fed me, or Dragon would have caught on shortly. I didn’t care, but I didn’t want her to get caught up in something like this.

The grinding noise of the grinding asphalt continued. I cursed Defiant and tried again, with more emphasis. "Back!"

I was gathering enough bugs to repeat the call the others had made earlier. The more bugs I could give them, the better equipped I would be to track their movements. If there was trouble, they could call out for me to deal with the ones I could identify.

Defiant was heading in our general direction. The grinding continued.

This is pointless. We have cannons! If the Undersiders wanted to engage in another I.Q. session, this would be the time to use them. Right up until Grue turned the tables and started using his darkness to banish the bugs.

We were so close. If we moved now, we’d be moving behind enemy lines, we’d be running afoul of one of the ABB’s more loyal and patient soldiers, and we’d be getting ambushed or having to engage in a protracted, attrition-heavy gunfight.

Grue had to know we wouldn’t be able to move ahead. I would have liked to see what he’d do now. He’d used his darkness, now.

======== SAMPLE 25 ========
 pressed to the ceiling. He didn’t give her a chance to say anything. He slammed his forehead against the metal desk.

"You’re wasting your time with this. Do your research."

"No special treatments are available," Tattletale said. "The facility hasn’t been refurbished. The doctors have been working here for a long time, they know how the rooms and supplies are stored, and this was an efficient way to keep all of the surplus that’s been arranged in check. None of the patients have received a special test or service. We pay a three percent service fee for any patient transferred here from another facility."

"Three percent service fee?" Noelle’s eyes widened.

"Every time a new patient is brought in, we carry out a full check-up and possibly a psychological test. We even arrange for therapists to work on their detachment symptoms until they’re old enough they can leave their own rooms. All is recorded, and we make sure they don’t slip away."

"I might have been able to do something."

"We’re specialists in handling the finer points of the mentally disabled," Tattletale said. "It’s in their best interests for you to get along with us. Besides, it’s sort of compulsory. If you don’t report back to the superiors regularly enough, you might never see them again. We’re well aware of how tense and strained the early stages of the containment and questioning usually get your morale."

"Why are you telling us this?"

"We’re the ones in charge, understand? We’re the ones with the answers to most of these questions. We’re also the ones with the best knowledge of the facilities and the current situation of the Nine."

"I know, but why do you need this information?"

"Because we’re going on the offensive, and there’s a lot of eyes on this. The first attack was a long time ago, and things have changed. We want to strike fear into the hearts of the strong and influential among you. To do that, we need to spread the word that evil will die when you retaliate. Our spies are being recruited into the Protectorate and Wards teams."

"So we’re targets."

"We can’t afford to recruit too many of our own, or we’ll lose the targets that are available to us in this time of stress. So, no, we aren’t going to be attacking tomorrow."

There was a long pause.

"Sorry about that," Miss Militia said.

"Not a problem," Tattletale said. "What are you planning?"

"It’s too dangerous to go all out. The Undersiders and the Slaughterhouse Nine could strike at any moment, and we’d be responsible for the casualties. With luck, we’d get an excuse and leave without too much damage."

"If it’s just an attack," Miss Militia said, "I can live with that. I won’t say I won’t, though, as that’s what I plan to do. What else are you planning?"

"The Undersiders and the Nine go inbound, then I fly to intercept. The Travelers initiate fire with plasma beams and then scram."

"Let me think," Miss Militia said.

"It’s what I’m planning," Tattletale said. "Neither of you engage the other side."

"Neither do I," Miss Militia said.

"And we can’t engage them if they don’t engage first," Tattletale replied.

"Neither side takes the advantage," Miss Militia said. "We make it strategic. With our recon, we identify their force and the right kind of equipment they have available. I take a page out of their book."

"And if they don’t respond?" Miss Militia asked.

Tattletale shook her head. "I can’t say. They have ways of covering retreat. But stopping them is impossible, given the costumed manpower they have at their disposal. Nor can I say that an attack this large would be a good thing, because it might lead to a war. It’d mean having these guys treat us like the equivalent of subjects in a play, with the masters under the necessary command and control. I’m arranging it so Faultline’s test is a manageable amount of time."

"The test is a big goal," Alexandria said. "Let’s close the distance. We’ll aim to hit their prized possession, the city, then extend toward the

======== SAMPLE 26 ========
 pressed her jaw against the back of my own.

"Just so you know, I’ve arranged a few things. I will send you emails on the subjects you pose for me, as well as any punishments I mete out. We discuss the arrangements and I decide what needs to be done in each place."

"So long as you have my back."

He left the door open for future entreaties. No, I didn’t receive any further invitations. The second set of emails directed to the Ward’s contact info.

I opened the one for the Brockton Bay Wards.

Ward A A female voice, emphasizing the very end.



To: Wards Only

Subject: urgent message



A noncommittal message, bearing many particulars I otherwise wouldn’t have known. It was an unequivocal no, though, in stark contrast to Brockton Bay’s other, more taciturn leader.

And if I were to accept the offer, I might well walk away, whatever came of it.



Into the thick of things. I must remain paranoid. Too easy, one mistake, and now I’d have to live with the consequences.



Insinuation 2.2


The last email arrived on the system a little more than a minute after I had been logged out of the system. A batch of encrypted files dating back to eleven days ago, each locked down with strong encryption.

The file bore the header ‘sounds like trap’. The file was named after the neighborhood or neighborhoods in question, and contained vague details on what the Nine did, where they did it, and how.

The contents of the file jumped as a few key elements came together.

‘Key 7’ – Covered all the major streets and roads in message <CARRIE!’

‘Key 8’ – Carried key messages to the most prominent figures in the area. Abbott, Tattletale, Flechette, Triumph, Glaistig Uaine, Shadow Stalker, Shadow ten 6. Skitter bearing a strange message.

‘Key 9’ – Containsachi standards for bomb blasts. Super strength, durability and destructive power equivalent to a Gatling gun.

I glanced at the file ‘Abrams’. He was an ex- member of the Collective, had made a deal with the devil, but had turned traitor after joining the Slaughterhouse Nine.

The next few files were harder to make out. ‘Note from Chevalier’ was one of them.

‘Note from Chevalier’, excerpted

"I’ve read, understand?

‘Important? Yes.

‘Consistent? Yes.

‘Maintenance? High.

‘Protocols? Fully explained."

I gave him a brief look, and he was gone.

The other files named people and places in the area, broadened the scope of my understanding of the area to include the area within the PRT headquarters, and clarified the understanding of certain threats.

The afterimage, or the white whale, as some were calling it, was something else. Almost every threat was described with increasing specificity, and the threat of injury or threat to the PRT, or both, was described with increasing specificity. Communications channels were established, organized, and the methods for communicating were being closely watched.

Major issues, areas where the public was warned but didn’t necessarily take the warning seriously. Susceptible individuals were pointed at, individuals identified, and repairs were made where necessary.

The Underground remained something of an afterthought, something that occurred to me as I delved into the finer points of the threat and the methods being employed against it. There were exceptions, obviously, but the end result was always a heightened threat, a clandestine operation.

And just to make it clear to anyone keeping their eye on the prize, the PRT dropped a label beneath the file, informing everyone that the file did not identify them as the sender and that they should be informed that any and all attachments should be destroyed by the end of the day.

I dug through, looking for something, anything that might tie this adventure together. Unfortunately, as enjoyable as it was to speculate on possible leads or meeting the leads, it was a detour into an unfamiliar world. From my explorations, I had gathered, there were very few accepted codes or ways of communicating through the Underground. While I was in the Docks, it had become clear to me that the Underground was intentionally left largely unencrypted. It was an area my group of reporters had no control over, an area even they didn’t have access to.

It came down to one fight.


======== SAMPLE 27 ========
 pressed for information, he was too tired to think. "There’s like, two or three emergency contacts near you, and you’re trying to be vigilant for everything, so you get lost in thought, and you miss what could have gone wrong."

He shook his head. "No effect. I work with this triage tech, she’s like, five minutes out of the same place I am, basically, and she’s droning on, talking about the hunt. She stops talking about the hunt, though, and I can’t find her. Maybe she disappeared, I can’t find her."

"Probably," I admitted. "But I’m pretty sure she saw me, or she took the time to look at me and-"

"Did you?" he asked. Which meant he hadn’t replied to my question.

I frowned. He hadn’t answered my question because he hadn’t been able to find the word. I turned to fix the spelling, "Are you okay?"

"I’m okay, ma’am."

"Good to hear from you." I drove the point home, turning my focus back to the triage woman. "I’m working on your case fifty-threes. Two or three per staff meeting, this one with your wife and the wife’s cousin."

"Did you know about this?"

I told her, jotting the information for later. It wouldn’t matter. The fact that I had provided it raised questions. Was my story spoilerous, or was it mere coincidence that it gave me the ability to work for CC-9? What the Triumvirate saw as security, caution or the perception that I could control and direct so many dangerous individuals, it did something to elevate my status in the eyes of those I was dealing with.

Which was partially why, at the eleventh hour, after realizing I didn’t have his back, CC-9 added three new tiers to their superteams. They added myself, Rachel and Tecton to their group, replacing Aisha and Annet Shallant.

It was a bump up, but I felt a touch empty inside when I thought about it. When my conscience ached for the idea that it was because I’d been corrupted, unpowered or otherwise, it was almost worse.

"I badgered them for a while," Tecton confessed. "Told them the big threats were around, that we needed to be ready."

"They were happy, weren’t they?" Wanton asked.

"They were useful," I said. "They got valuable info."

"They were happy, and it just seems they started losing their powers as fast as they got it."

I frowned.

"Think we should get rid of them," Grue told me.

"Don’t think," I replied, "But… well, let’s face the odds. One in four events that go wrong. The catastrophes that happen in some massive death that nobody’s willing or able to stop or slow down somehow. So yeah, one in four catastrophic failures. Get rid of them. Wipe them from the planet. If we can’t, we at least fix it."

"No, no," Tecton told me, "I get it. It’s not worth it. Life will go on, won’t it? My surviving family and friends will still die, but maybe they won’t die as horribly as they’ll ever be. We’ll carry on as we did back then, no more plans to fight or fight only. We’ll carry on as we did when we were clean, when we had nothing to lose and nothing to fear."

"Well," Rachel said, speaking as if from directly above me. "That’s something I understand."

I nodded.

"You there?"

I stopped, looked up.

She was right. I definitely understood.

I looked up.

An open portal.

There was a familiar face.

"What?"

"You’re back," he said. "And you’re with them."

"Christ, you guys-"

I stopped as Tecton growled at the portal. Wanton, who had set up shop on the other side of the portal, now stood over Bentley.

Grue and Rachel nodded at the same time.

"Yes?" I asked.

"You took Shatterbird, right?"

"Yeah," Grue said. "Did you?"

"No," Tecton said.

======== SAMPLE 28 ========
 pressed into holding him down, the hand of Grue was on the back of one of the legs. I could smell something like burning hair.

"Stand," I said.

Thick black smoke billowed around him, and the ground around the two flared red colors.

"He’s getting to me," Rachel said. "She’s losing the battle of attrition."

"If we reach that point, we’ll be fighting an endless campaign," I said. "No method is effective."

"We’re losing this."

I could see Rachel tense. Was this a way of letting me know she was right? That we’d won? We had to maintain some integrity, or we’d go up against the other teams and lose.

Or, worse, we’d walk away. Teammates getting close enough to bite the hand that feeds them.

I managed a barely audible grunt as we turned towards the front doors.

"Taylor," Panacea said. "It’s you."

I tried to put out my hand, it seemed, and it didn’t work.

"I saved you, Panacea. That’s why you’re wearing your armor."

I shook my head.

"I told you, as Amy put it, ‘I’m only alive because of the others,’ and as much as it pains me to admit it, I do owe you the most."

"Can I ask how old you are?"

"I was five hours old."

"I’m sorry."

Not an apology. More a statement of fact.

"You look older than you are."

"I feel that way," she said. She looked down at her paws, which were growing. "And I look younger. Or do I? I don’t follow."

There was a silence.

"You look younger," I said, and the question was a non-sequitur, "But you can’t say you feel younger, like you did when you were talking to me in private."

"I don’t feel any younger," she said.

I saw the dawning worry in her expression. But she didn’t show it.

I took another bite of my crepe instead of replying.

"Well, that ends tonight, don’t it?" I asked.

"I’ll talk to my family, then I’ll head out to the yard. Do it again and I’ll throw up, I think."

"It’s fine," I said. "Just don’t walk around in costumes like that."

"If I don’t do anything more stupid by walking around in kevlar, you can usually let me know before it gets to be a regular thing."

"Okay," I said. "Can I come along? If there’s nothing else I can spare?"

"You don’t need to. I can live with it. You’re stronger than you look."

My face burned with anger. "Why? Why don’t you let me bring someone? A slave?"

She shook her head. "There’s nothing gay about letting someone else take charge. Makes sense, on a level. But it’s hard when you’re stuck in a rut, and you’re feeling a lot of pressure. It’s not intuitive."

I let out a slow breath. "I’ve been struggling to think of something that’s straight. Romance isn’t good enough, whether I like it or not."

"You struggle with ‘love’?"

"I struggle with ‘love’ because I’m so used to feeling guilty because of what my mom did. I didn’t realize how bad it was until I did it myself."

"That must have been a heavy kick in the pants. Or maybe you needed the hug, didn’t you?"

"More than I felt, no. But it wasn’t bad."

I stared out over the fields and the city around us. The water of the Willits Canal mingled with the brown fields of lawn and the scrub grass of the creek. The houses had been built on the top of the larger fields, and the surrounding scrub was thick with weeds. There wasn’t much human touch to the place. If I hadn’t been so tired, I might have missed it.

"You’re back?"

"For a little while, at least, I was going

======== SAMPLE 29 ========
 pressed with his tail.

He didn’t speak.

In silence, they watched the beetle take flight.

Over the ensuing two minutes, he fought off seven flies, moving quickly as they bit deep into his skin, quickly becoming accustomed to the sting. He flicked them out of the way when they bit too hot, letting them rest at the periphery of his lair.

It was strange to just stand there, to be completely unaware of the world around him, while all of the sudden, with a flash of white, he created a portal a distance away, allowing the bugs to pass through. Within seconds, he had a whole battalion of flying flies buzzing around him, a whole battalion of smaller bugs clustered on him from all directions, doing much the same thing.

With the effect complete, the world around him began to blur. He could feel the movements of the bugs as they migrated in and out of his space, measured the tremors and tiny hacks of pain each was feeling, accurately predicted what would happen at a later point. He hadn’t predicted this eventuality.

The world continued to blur, and by the time he caught his breath, it was too distorted to mark his perception. He sat staring at the black cap in the corner of his headquarters, wondering if he had taken the wrong route. The cap, who had been sitting on the couch, reached over and gave him a startled look.

"Don’t thank me," the message ended.

He was still on guard, making sure not to miss any communication. He pushed his office door open and entered his office, causing an overflowing room to bang with the movement of air. He found his phone, yanked it out to check the screen and found Academy City.

He was on the street, trying to find an alleyway, when the phone slipped from his grip, falling to the floor. He picked it up to see the screen text: PATCH: Late update. Bug senses pavement surface. Follows.

He couldn’t resist pressing his office door again for a better spot, pushing his surveillance anyway. The phone showed no signs of being tapped, but there was police tape strung between two buildings and two cars, as well as police tape three or four feet thick near the top of the building, nearly five feet off the ground. All with the official badges and colors of the city.

As he stood amidst the mounted police, a bag was passed into his hands. Its contents he didn’t recognize. A pair of gloves, enough to prevent anyone else from buying the right to enter, and two plastic bags.

Not much more than a thermos, but he found a place to sit for the night. The following morning, he’d have to get his breakfast. Too little, too late.

He was filled with dread as he glanced over the desk. Four plastic containers, neatly stacked in neat rows, were set in front of him. Each was labeled. One column listed the official names of the recipients; two were set with the time and date the announcement was issued; the last column listed the message themselves.

The third column was a single number. O.S.

His eyebrows went up, his eyes met Dragon’s. She hadn’t called?

He shook his head. "I can’t agree to that."

So she had to be pretty stupid. "I think you have the answers you initially asked for, and we have the same."

"Agreed," Dragon said. "Let me put it simply. If you intend to deny us the means to truly achieve our goals, then we will be forced to submit to your rule. We will be forced to accept that you have a stake in this; we will have to accept that you can come to any conclusion you think will please you."

That was plain enough. If he put it like that, she probably could have found it.

"What are your terms?" he asked. "I get six hours notice, then I get my stuff and you can go pick it up."

"You will be doing nothing more than picking up empty boxes. The terms of engagement are simple. Three Ten soviets, with two on standby for the front lines, and two more on standby at designated holding areas."

"You use biological weapons on the front lines," he commented.

"Yes. We are extending our protection to the perimeter of the city, and there can be no such thing as inches between us and your headquarters. Not if you hold on to your capes."

He looked up at the windows that had been left open. She wasn’t up to speaking on the phone, but he supposed she could relay more information. "I don’t need your help to get the answer out of you. Your answer isn

======== SAMPLE 30 ========
 pressed and she couldn’t find the button. I tried again… and again… and again.

Fingerprints, I thought.

He’d cut his own throat, after a suicide attempt. I couldn’t think of the murderer by the name.

Fingerprints, still trying to work, I reached up and touched the third button on the dashing man’s armband. Two-seventy-two.

And all responded. The buttons were red, the messages red, the reminders red.

"She’s under arrest," I said.

"Yes. This event will be reported by the media," Mr. Calle responded.

"What does she do?"

"Her specialty is powered individuals."

"Given her overt actions, one might infer she’s a parahuman. But her long-term goal was to create a singular, tapped into a power source. As is typical for parahumans, she sought to make herself into a singular entity. Extraneous body parts are tinker-made."

"It’s Xenu, by the way," Miss Militia said.

"You can’t rule a nation with a guy that quickly," Assault said.

"It’s not the policy of the PRT," Miss Militia said, "and the precedent is disturbing."

For an instant, her expression descended into that of a frightened child.

Then she winced and looked away.

"I don’t know what to say."

"You do something, and people will wonder, decades from now, when the right time has passed for another Earth, another world like Earth Bet or a different Earth to set these rules of ours. You became the bad guy, and you broke the rules. That’s a felony."

"I don’t want people to remember me for any crimes I’ve committed," I said. "I’m Skitter now. That’s all."

I couldn’t find the words, and felt my heart sink.

"It’s a misdemeanor, then. To publicly demonstrate powers. It starts with a misdemeanor, it gets more serious when it isn’t publicly expressed."

"By the time we’re done with her, she’ll have disappeared, and we can get on with dealing with the rest of the Assets," Tattletale said, "So long as you don’t try to use your power on anyone without their consent. Keep us updated on your progress, and I’ll try to report any changes in the most recent news."

Miss Militia shook her head. "I think that’s the best way to go. That’s all."

Then she turned to leave.

"Do you need me to come?" I asked.

She shook her head. "You don’t have to."

I looked at the others. Glancing at Tattletale, who was silent but for her eyes, I saw she was watching me very carefully.

"No," I answered her.

"I thought-"

Miss Militia made a noise of annoyance, this time.

When Miss Militia spoke, she had a different tone. "Those tests are a little different for those from other worlds. It takes a little while for the defenses to build up, and our world doesn’t have years of development behind it. It’s got a small cadre of people who have gotten grants that have made their lives easier. They’re already here, and they’re as comfortable as anyone else can be."

"I’m not one of them," I told her.

Miss Militia shook her head, out of character.

"Who?" Miss Militia asked.

"You said it yourself, under oath. I’m not here to be a spokesperson on that subject. Personal power, like any power, should stay personal."

"Whatever," Miss Militia said. "No claims to expertise on my behalf."

"It’s a valid concern," Tattletale said. "You want to know my thoughts on the matter?"

"You should know, I tried to set things up so you understand where I’m coming from, how I’m operating. I figured that if you shared a similar perspective then we’d both get what we wanted. You get me, I’ll admit I’m a little biased. My power sort of gives me the ability to put other powers on a fair enough legal footing. If another country decided to pick a new leader, with their own rules, I’d be able to act on