======== SAMPLE 1 ========
master?

We went downstairs, and Gracias followed. As he dropped the suit, it raised, visibly flabbergasted.

"It’s not working," Golem said.

"What?" Tecton asked.

"It’s not working. What’s going on?"

"Seriousness, as always," Grace said. "Just a feeling. But we okay?"

"Sure," Tecton said.

"They’re playing us," Grace said.

Not the best phrase, but I think it’s on par with someone yelling, "I can’t tell if you’re being ironic or serious!"

No response, no movement aside, as the suit shuffled erratically in place.

"They’re being subtle," Tecton murmured. "They’re showing less interest in obvious signs of attack. Calling themselves Root’s up, but I’m not sure they’re the Establishment type. Research Monkey or something."

Of course. Robot archangels could be operating with a degree of skepticism.

"Can we trust them?" I asked.

"Anyone would be able to do that. Maybe Root’s up because they don’t want to lose another head. Maybe there’s a dual identity involved."

A reasonable possibility, but I still didn’t see much evidence for it.

"And by less apparent means, they’re taking out more moderate Defiant?"

"Less obvious, but still hard to ignore. Perceptions are already being hit. The media, the Protectorate…"

For the moment, at least, I was satisfied with where we stood.

"Let’s go have a chat," I said.

"I’m well aware of what you’re doing, Taylor Hebert. I’m not about to let my wards party unchecked."

"You could let us go, if the hell you needed to, to calm your dogs, and if your people needed to get away."

One more head turn and we were close enough to the door that we could make our exit. It wasn’t like there was any danger of the giantesses hitting us. I might have been wrong, or maybe Dragon had a different mindset, but I was skeptical. Our clearance was wiped clean by whatever random process Perdition’s had gone by with the data therein.

"I’ll keep an eye on things," I said. "Cheers?"

"And a few more questions," Tecton said.

■

We were just arriving outside the Dragonfly, picking up our second patient. A woman with a pup in her arms.

Lab Rat.

"You sure?" I asked.

"Yeah," he said, rubbing his shoulder. "Read me the riot act."

"Sure," I said.

He touched the pager to his belt, and he pressed a key, and the console turned on.

"Tick tock," it blared. A red LED lit up in the center of the console. Two twenty-somethings in the living room. Two twenty-somethings.

"Two Madison Clicks," the doctor said, checking their phones. "Two thefts with a violent nature. Supervised leave in the last month. This is Jenkins, team leader."

"I’m Graves," I said. My eyes fell on the man in the lab coat and suit. "How curious you are. I’m not even a third year. I’m transferring my file."

"Thank you," Graves said. "Do we have an issue with that?"

"No. I’m more inclined to think you’re a new patient."

"Oh wow," one of the other new patients said. "Immature."

"I’m still adolescent in a different way," I said. "I walk to the right, and talk a mile a time. More natural."

"I see. I’m not sure I understand."

"We’re taking it slow here," the Doctor said, "Because we don’t want to overwhelm the new patient, and the Nine are patient animals as well. If we go any further, we’re going to overheat and violate the protocol, you’re not going to feel much better after you take your leave, and it might make things complicated coming back."

"That’s what he was saying to Enoch," I said.

"They want to keep things running smoothly? We’ll fit him with better gear."

======== SAMPLE 2 ========
master was an entirely different animal – a case of pure, raw anger at the world, nothing more. He was focused on one target, and if it came down to it, he was going to kill you.

If I managed to get one stride forward, I suspected I’d be able to catch him. I only had to patch my【Claw】against his face. As fast as I could pull the trigger, the shot clipped the side of his leg. He toppled to the ground.

Bitch and I raced for the door, grabbing at the dogs that were barreling toward us.

My bugs were covering every crevice, and I was still a little out of air.

I could see Shatterbird moving, moving in a flash, tossing a conflagrant bead of light toward the group. I ducked and rolled to get more air.

She struck Mayhem in the same instant the Bitch and I collided with each other, heightening the force behind my hit by leaps, bounds and a lunge. I’d managed to avoid the most vulnerable part of the explosion, too, by purchasing the advantage of a window of opportunity.

The next explosion was less consequential. Less purple, more of a blip. It was enough to tip Prism and Shatterbird off, leaving me with a pair of projectiles hell-bent on stabbing my enemies. Needed to take a moment to prepare, to find and focus on an escape route.

I was a stampeding thought away from the scene when one of the beams of light struck me.

I was another one, caught by the force of the hit, suspended in time, hemmed in by what had happened earlier.

I felt a stabbing pain in my side. A fragment of glass, from one of the beams, slipped between my fingers. I pulled myself free, but the tap moved me back. Not my hand, then. The nearest approximation I could make, at least, was the wrist. I could only hope that my hand was intact.

I glanced up at the clouds of dust that had risen from the floor of the platform. Scion had taken his time making his exit, and they were still rising.

I could feel my power rise within me, ready to assist, to lend a measure of defense. I even directed it to act on my behalf. The best I could do.

My hand touched ground, and my flight pack kicked in response, transmitting my flight capability to the flight suit I was riding.

I paused, marveling at the power that came with being able to fly like this.

My flight pack kicked in response, and I lifted off, dragotwuming myself above the cityscape.

To get a sense of the area, I would need a sense of the weather. I used the flight pack more to help me gauge how high I was going and more to make sure I was close enough.

I reached the bridge, tried to take a left, then looked at the way. I could reach the platforms that Labyrinth and the others were clustered on. I took a left, passed over a bridge that had been impassable by even the strongest of our wind.

I waited, marveled at the bridge, then looked at the ones before me. Two had either collapsed, been knocked over or both.

I felt a moment’s trepidation.

"Bentley," Rachel said. "Can you go on top of the fence?"

"I can’t," he said.

"What?"

"Those dogs are hurt. Maybe they won’t make it in the long run."

"Okay," I said. The words hung in the air.

It was a long, long time before I heard the next word.

"Oh," Rachel said. "Can you call off the fucking dogs?"

"Call it off," the word came from behind me, with a current of irritation. "I’m not saying you can’t. I’m just saying you can. The bigger a crowd’s gathered around you, the less threatening they are going to feel. So you and I, us two together, we can get us out of here, and we can wait while they try to break us."

"So if we’re alone, we’re going to be targets?"

"I’m not saying we’re going to be targets," I said. "Just doing what you asked, in case you wanted to spur my interest at a later date. You think you could get away from the dogs?"

"Maybe." Rachel shrugged. "I doesn’t know that I would feel any better if I was with my friends, if the world ended. With the dogs? I would feel happier

======== SAMPLE 3 ========
master’s work," Defiant said.

"And she wanted to be alone," Tecton said. "That’s common sense. On the same token, if we start speculating about possible causes, it raises suspicions, and that’s before we get into any of the deeper, more complicated issues that Alexandria, Wanton or even Wanton are going to be working on."

"They want to know why we set this in motion," I said.

"So that we can figure out what we’re doing," Defiant said. "Alexandria on the other end of things decides she’s had enough, embarks on a killing spree. We punish her, time after time, with Constantly testing and discovering that she hasn’t done any real harm to anyone in recent memory, in large part. Alexandria escapes, so we punish her for getting too close. She kills someone, and we get a little revenge on the guy who actually caused the crime, in this case. And so we seal the deal by killing the last real suspect, once and for all."

"This is pure speculation on my part," Tecton said, "But I’m willing to bet that the changes to the weather forecast were made with an eye to giving the PRT as much work to do as possible before the coronation. They wanted to make certain the festivities were fully booked, so the real culprit wouldn’t slip out of their grasp with a rogue in the ranks of the heroes. And they did try to kill the real killer, but they couldn’t get their hands on Alexandria?"

"Agreed," Tecton said.

I had my suspicions that the man was on to them. If he was, they were pretty damn effective weapons. If he was cooperating with us, he was making that power ours. If he was beyond the scope of our abilities… well, you’d have to leave the group and come back for the DA’s squad.

You couldn’t do that, though. There was nothing to say.

"I’m not so willing to say that he’s lying."

"Then execute me for truth," I told Tecton. "There is enough there? Yes."

Tecton pushed his wooden stake into the ground. The unwary crouching in the doorway shot him a little less than briskly. He advanced, gun in hand, a gang member standing by his post, indicating they were willing participants.

I stood, then stepped away from the door. My bugs transferred over to the unwary. Within seconds, they were flowing into the doorway, which was soon surrounded by a veritable wall of bugs. I could see the Wards all settling in, Laughing, with a few looking intensely at the wall. Tecton looked distinctly uncomfortable.

Judging by the other captives, there was some understanding between the various teams. This was a situation where teamwork, solidarity and trust were strengths. The chaos the various teams were causing outside of the cells wouldn’t help matters at hand.

Seeing the unhurried entry of the PRT officers into the room, I was put in mind of the time I’d just had with my dad. He’d walked into the room, unconscious, and in a body suit, telling me that I was his only option for patient care. I’d made the choice to go, and almost none of the others were willing to follow suit. Which was odd, when I thought about it. Dad had been a man of his word.

Well, I’d made the choice to go my own way. I’d found other resources. The present situation was ripe with dangers. People were watching carefully, anticipating the response. There was the possibility that the PRT might go after me. There was the possibility that my accomplices or friends would too.

The advantages in being in a cell over a desk? It was inconvenient. I had an escort – a team of PRT officers that were set to arrive in the cells of either Annex or Cuff. I was put in mind of the time I’d spent in the cells of Annex, when they’d been watching carefully, making sure that nobody else was getting in. There were also the ways the PRT addressed crises. If you’d asked me what I wanted, I wasn’t sure I would have said I wanted a desk job. They had already determined that and they would keep an eye out.

So while I was happy to see them, I was most definitely not happy to see them or to have the opportunity to talk to them.

Cuff talked with a glower in her eye, an admission on her part.

"I wanted to talk to you, old

======== SAMPLE 4 ========
master. At this point, a lot of us felt the way we did but didn’t necessarily do anything about it. There were stories to tell, and time to put them together.

It’s not, I realized, that I’d been oblivious to what was going on. It was that I’d been aware of it, and I’d been complicit.

A part of me had beengrudged myself some respect. At least some of the time, I’d attributed that to the fact that I couldn’t be in on the joke, and I’d gotten a few things right.

But everyone had seen the grudge, deep down. Everyone, it seemed, wanted the other person to know they felt bad.

It was hard to climb down from that kind of position.

I turned my attention to the room. Books, a pile of notebooks, a pad of paper cups, a pile of notecards. Not all were filled with facts, though. My eyes scanned the labels, looking for stuff that could be used to prove or disprove a point. Marks of stress, of attack? Threats from unknowns?

No. It wasn’t enough. Not here. Now.

I turned my eyes to the window, and my bugs made their way there, scurrying over the pages, noting every wrinkle, every line of text. My eyes fixated on one corner, on the footnote about Eidolon.

Did that refer to the new Endbringer, as well?

I saw Reference number three in the list of authors of the Endbringer. Taylor.

I made my way over to the other books on their pile. Enchantress came to me instead of using her power on the pile, opting to huddle with others. She had a disc of stone stuck to her chest, inscribed: ABB.

I picked the book off, careful, then passed it to the older girl. Evelyn, for her part, picked up her novel and shook her head.

"Huh," she told Eve.

I found Reference three in the long list of Taylor’s notable affiliations. None as interesting as the one in this situation.

Except it was in that elusive category of things, things that defined people, that defined hero and villain. Honor, as belonging to a particular group or group of people, was a good fit.

"You don’t feel bad about it?" Eve asked.

"Not even a little. I didn’t even know they would say that in person. It was so uncharacteristic of you. Angry, whatever. I’m so sorry."

I didn’t have a response to that. I could only hope that the audience was too.

"What do you mean?" Chariot 1 asked.

"I’m confused. You’re supposed to be proud of that thing you did, but you’re upset over something that wasn’t your choice."

"I’m trying to figure it out," Chariot 1 said.

"We’re not the types to talk. So? What’s the idea?"

"Something Austin should know," Chariot 1 said. "Austin really should know. The scourge of the city, the type that Austin wants to protect, but the opposite happened. A friend showed me the videos, and I want to share them with you, because it’s happening here."

The cameraman was adjusting the lens focus. From their conversation earlier, I gathered the videos would be shot in the same manner.

"The type of gang the heroes are trying to ward off starts with a declaration," Chariot 3 said. "That’s the kind of thing that gets you KILLED."

"Isn’t that like, honor killing? We kill with words," Chariot 2 said.

"Sure."

"The gist of it is, they think they’re strong enough, better than the rest of us, so they pick higher numbers. Then, for no definite purpose, they pick a lower one. And so, for some unexplainable reason, they kill more of our kind. Across the board., uh, murder?"

"It’s not on the table," the girl said.

"There’s trouble if we don’t. And there’s figured out ways to FUCK WITH THEM. WITH CIVILIZATION."

"We’ll need to coordinate!" the boy said, hurrying to gather his thoughts.

"Me?" Chariot 1 asked. "Fighting them? Trying to get intel?"

The woman was only slightly more mature,

======== SAMPLE 5 ========
master. If you have any doubts about your ability to handle the job, just give me thirty seconds to three minutes."

"Why?" I had to spit the question out. "All that stuff about being a thug, protecting the stolen, famous people, you did something like that once before."

"I don’t know what you meant by once. I’ve only been on the team for a few weeks, I’ve only heard about you from newspapers and magazines, I just can’t wrap my head around it. But what’d you do? Stop the rapists from getting away with raping another girl? Stop the people from killing another woman or two? The people from my territory? You don’t sound like you could do those things if you were given a chance."

My heart dropped. I could imagine what she had come to me for, then explained to me in simple terms, explaining why those things were right and those things weren’t. Then she had put that knowledge to use, telling me that much, explaining how the bastards in my territory were our responsibility.

I felt numb. A hundred angry jangly notes that combined chillness, stiffness and intense anger all at once.

"You fucked up my stepson’s stepmother’s company," I spoke, my voice lowered so I was breathing through my nose, and the only sound I could make out was the tears that were collecting in my eyes, "You ruined my brother’s day, not helping him any with his apartment feeling sluggish and twitching after the walk to the store earlier today. You ruined my week, with my not being able to come to my sister’s since you left to help Trickster."

"Don’t try to tell me I’m blameworthy, little brother," she was striding towards me, so slowly I doubted I could follow, "I did bad things. I did dumb things. But that doesn’t make me an asshole. Does it? At least when it came to me, I was very well informed on what I was doing and what I wasn’t doing."

"So you’re the one I’m pissed at," I replied, my voice lowered, "You got your powers at a time when our world was being pretty much obliterated by Endbringers, and you made these stupid mistakes where you needed to be at a certain time and place."

As she got closer, I swung my legs around – only to dimly recall the pain of what I’d just done to Arata’s horn as something I was holding in my hands. I stopped myself before I could finish my thought, put my chin on Karen’s shoulder, and gave her a quizzical look.

"What were you doing? Are you trying to get back at me?"

"It’s neat. Putting all those unanswered questions out there. Even as far back as three months ago, you were talking about ways you could put an end to Doomsday."

"Does that mean you’re trying to kill him? Because if you were, I’d hate you for it."

"Not an indication of my willingness to deal," Karen’s voice was quiet. She’d pulled herself up to Karen’s level of wraparound cover-holding. It made me think of a dog or a cat.

"You’re not as down to earth as you let on. Being taken in by pedants and self-important hypocrites. You’re not so sure-footed."

"That’s what you would call a successful liar."

"Wasn’t my choice of words. I do wish I had a better way of expressing disappointment. A lie I can point to, if nobody else will."

An understatement. A painful one. I hugged her again.

She hugged me tighter. A tighter hug than I’d ever had, for so long. My chest pulled tight against the fabric of her shirt. A slower, more painful pull.

"It’s like a giant monster washed up on a remote island," she said, her voice quiet. "No one here speaks of the cruelties at Bay and Toph’s, or the murders or the orgies at the Waldorf."

"There’s a hint of that in the stories you wrote in Parahumans Online, about my first night out in costume. Things got so out of control, so quickly, I had to remind myself it was all your stuff. This is different, on a lot of levels."

She looked me in the eyes, and she didn’t look happy. "So you think that maybe I deserved due process.

======== SAMPLE 6 ========
master and myself, she told me. "This is your second chance."

"Oh?" I had to pluck my ear to hear it. "You are? Like, right? You’re a special snowflake, that’s for sure."

"I can imagine you’re not afraid of her anymore."

"I don’t think I am," I replied. Tattletale could have gone on to lecture me on my rights, but she didn’t want to get embroiled in another argument, probably because she knew I’d walked away satisfied. Instead, she sent another message, "Enough of this. I don’t want an apology, I don’t want to see you again. No fighting, no fighting in the future. You sign this release and you state your name for the record, and we‎ hand the papers back to you with Taylor housed on each body, neatly bound. You read it, then you hand it back to the Mayor. We take it into consideration when we count your blessings and when we take measures to restrict you from entering the city."

"Ah. Thank you."

"You probably wouldn’t have bothered to check. I suspect there’s a reason you didn’t check."

"A reason?" I asked, barely sure of what I was talking about.

Clockblocker spoke, "Our records suggest you’re a natural hero, Taylor Hebert. It might help us counting to ten."

"No!" I shouted, even as I muscled my hands in front of me to grab my cell phone. In a moment, I was holding it under one arm. "I don’t want an apology, I don’t want to see you or your family again!"

"That’s not-" she stopped. The weight of the phone pressed hard against my shoulder.

"What?" I asked her, audible, but it wasn’t sounded from the mask.

She turned her head just enough to look me in the eye, and my heart fell.

"I’m checking my premises. The people in here deserve answers. Anyone who helps us, even if it’s just a contribution on the way, even if it’s barely an offering, I want you to know I’m going to make you pay."

I opened my mouth to speak, but I couldn’t manage more than a hoarse whisper.

Tattletale jerked her head in my direction. "See?"

I turned and let go of the phone, which stepped again, painfully, up toward my shoulder. Once, twice, three times.

I’m so soft, I thought.

Then I was wholly aware of the bugs on me and in my hair, stinging and massing. They flowed up onto me, clustering around me, and they weren’t just biting and stinging. They were making life very difficult for me, making every sound in my range half-sound, half-pain.

I stopped, letting go of the phone, then I reached behind my back. There were two, and I didn’t recognize the other. I was unarmed, so it had to be…

Two goddamn beetles.

I hauled the phone to my hand and withdrew my mask. It was only after I realized I didn’t have earbuds in my ears that I got my phone out. Tattletale was right. I’d been lost in my general direction.

■

I came to the clearing, and Tattletale was staggering, Book bumping up against me to allow a more comfortable fit.

"Taylor."

"You found me."

"Had to. To get myself up to speed."

"Yeah. Got your stuff from the lab. URL was SFGate."

I nodded. "Google. Usenet was the usual orders, top priority, but S-Class warrants came up, so I had to brush them off."

"Scholars think the orders may have come from a second, higher level. Failure to obey results in some stretch goals being fucked up, aka you getting punished at a later date."

I nodded. Another counter to Skitter. "Defiant?"

"Yes sir."

"Let’s check that. Failed one, failed to take-temporarily, but you’re doing what we asked of you."

"Having the dragon suits at my disposal, may I?"

"You have the dragon suits at least a little while now."

"I can do that, and then I’ll be set."

"HT Perry?"

"Yes sir."



======== SAMPLE 7 ========
master?" she said, sounding as surprised as we were.

"Not much of a worry," I said. "One minor detail. The Travelers’ room. It’s not in working order."

"That’s not important," Tattletale said. "What I find troubling is the idea that Coil might put a plan into motion to get power in Brockton Bay, knowing what we know about his affiliations and plans."

"Certainly," I said. "But thinking along those lines, even assuming we don’t wind up with powers, he’s evidently looking to downplay our involvement in the city, delegitimize us. If he gets his hands on more power, he blames us for any damage done, both to people in our territory and to the world at large. And with the damage he’s been doing, there’s almost zero chance we would get standing orders again? How long before he blames us for whatever came before?"

"I don’t know," Tattletale said.

"He does this on purpose?" Grue asked.

"He does this on purpose," I said. "Sometimes you have to stand tall, and other times you have to depend on your minions to do the rest. My tactics have been well-timed for both cases. It’s not about taking the fight to the enemy and losing, it’s about disrupting his game plan, getting the information he needs to make him hesitate at a time he’s most vulnerable."

"See, that’s what I’m trying to convince you," Tattletale said.

Coil stepped forward, clapping his hands together. "It is. Is. About to be more than a game of guesswork. I’mathematical, linguist, physcal, psychological, sociological, educational… I append another element to the mix. I blend it all together into a composite, and you assign a mental pressure to individual members of his team. Physical presence. The more physical contact he has with his team, the more powerful his power."

"Which is why his guys are as robust as they are," Tattletale said.

"I’m telling you that physical contact makes the relationship between them stronger. Which is why he’s probably along for the ride of the supervillain’s campaign, even if he’s not a player," I said. The toll it took on his part to get me to open my mouth, to expand my thought process to include his presence. He didn’t participate in it directly, but he tacitly supported it with his minions.

I can’t argue the obvious.

"Butcher," I said. "You know him?"

"I know people who watch the water. People who know him as Captain Morgan, Coil’s first mate."

I looked at the remaining barrels of water rising from the foot of the sink. "Does this relate?"

"It does. I think that even if he doesn’t like me-"

"He does. But I’m not sure he likes me as much as he used to. And if he does like you, he’ll be jealous, and he’ll want to protect his secret."

"Okay."

"What else do you need?"

"I need a therapist."

"Someone to show you how to get over your fear of the water. With some of the other couples there was a lot of arguing. Maybe Singer will be more willing to show you than Larson."

I turned around to glance at him.

"Is this related to your feelings for him?"

I felt my heart rate pick up with that.

"I would have been happy for him to show me, but he was busy."

"He was set on becoming a hero, he was unhappy at the changes he saw within the group."

I didn’t answer. I was too caught up in watching his reaction and my own preparations.

"I’ll talk to him."

"Okay."

I didn’t hurry to return to my room. Instead, I climbed into the car and drove to the staging area.

Singer had told me his drill. To be ready. If I had to run, I would. I sensed Bruiser’s footsteps heavy with the footprints of others running or walking past.

I pulled up in a corner and waited. Eventually Sirius pulled into the driveway.

Chuckles arrived halfway to our car. He looked like a regular guy, wearing jeans and a jersey, with a white T-shirt with the sleeves rolled up in a hurry to get to work. No jacket.

======== SAMPLE 8 ========
master looked at her feet. "We can talk about that."

"If."

"If you want to push this forward, I’m open to that," Tattletale said. "But can we skip this meeting and go somewhere private?"

"I’m not complaining. Would you like to go to the bathroom, Taylor?"

"I like to keep moving."

"If you’re lacking in the spirit, or if you want something after dark, we can talk again later?"

"I don’t want to make small talk."

"Of course," she said. She took a long draw from the spliff. "I take it everyone is well?"

"Almost," Grue said.

Good, Grue thought. He settled into his seat, turning his attention back to the group. "After what he just did, if this move succeeds and you get imprisoned for real, you get to savor the feeling, and maybe you’ll even become like him."

"I could never get down off my hands and knees," Taylor said. "There’s always something new to do."

"Well, there’s two parts to that. The first part is the second nature of humans to want to survive. That is, we want to pursue our survival and we want to pursue our gratification. We seek pleasure in everything. Even murder. Even suffering."

There was a shudder from the crowd. Taylor was back to her old self, moving just a little too quickly, slipping on the stairs. All of the people in the audience stood from their seats.

"And the feeling," Taylor said, "Is that we are descended from those beasts, that our primal urges and urges to eat, to pleasure ourselves override any impulses to procreation or to raising our kids."

Echidna shuddered. Echidna, Brockton Bay’s first killer, would be resurrected to terrorize the remaining Wards.

"We are closely related," Grue said. "Might be aerved with similar inclinations. But we are separate entities. We have a leg up, even. I chair the others. I would like to sit in the corner of this group and hear what they had to say."

Echidna shivered. People here were terrified, just like Scrub was. They didn’t trust me, didn’t want to believe I was able to see past the dozens of armed officers in the city. They had fewer reasons to be on guard, now. For the first time, they were less likely to speculate about where the bastard was ensorcelled.

"My sympathies, sir Scapegoat, do I sound?"

"Yes, Taylor," the familiar voice Lena -Taylor’s mother) spoke from the front of the auditorium. "I know you felt it, to an extent. I’ll have your children pick up your slack, and you can take care of yourself. If you start to look for work, if your heart tells you you should be working, I can dispense with that particular wrinkle."

Scapegoat, I thought. The guy was talented, but he’d said he was dispassionate. Was that a clue as to why he was here?

There was a pause on the recorder as the trio of Foot soldiers paused outside. Emma tried to step out of the way, but Scapegoat stopped her. "If I asked you what you saw, what you experienced, in your role as a soldier, what you saw or heard, would you be able to give us a sense of it?"

Taylor’s older brother was pacing as he made his way up the aisle. His face was scraggly with white hairs, and he had a bit of a limp in his feet, as though he’d spent a long time in the sun but hadn’t yet got his bearings. He gave me a nod to go, and I took off.

I didn’t want to think about the war, about what I’d done. The steps of the black body, the dull gray of my laser rifle… I took off again, level flying towards the sea of ship parts and bodies. I had a sense of where the people Skitter had talked to and where the bodies were, on the lower level. But this was a quick walk, and I wouldn’t see them for a while.

I passed a section of pallets where a person had been upturned, their stomach dislocated, chest cavity opened. I set my foot on the wall and stretched my right arm. The scorched earth was a reminder of how close it had come to being reality.

I had a sense of where the bodies were up until I arrived. A lock

======== SAMPLE 9 ========
master to my cell, and a lot of that happened within the first few minutes. I’d been hoarded.

My cell phone rang. I startled when Sophia put the cell phone away, raised my head to look out the crack of the window and see the caller ID screen.

"Taylor," it read.

"What?" I blinked.

"They’re here. Somewhere."





Monarch 16.10


Every officer and policewoman present turned in their uniforms. I was free to step out of the enclosed doorway and walk around the perimeter of the room. There were no running water, power was not available and cell service was not possible after the spaces on the upper floors had been vacated. There was only the officer in charge with the final say.

On the third floor, one had to fork over a ¥100! money, signed and dated just prior to their arrival. Mayor Christner had ordered that the money – ¥100,000,000 yen – be kept separately, placed with the local District 9 representative. The House of Morgan preferred not to exchange hands, but those close enough to the Japanese power structure to have firsthand knowledge of Japanese politics and business practices were allowed to share in the ransoming of the residence and the keeping of the keys.

The Mayor of Aōran had been asked to abscond with ¥100,000,000 to his citizens, and she had refused without pay, holding out for a better offer. Angry at this, I gave the officer on the roof a verbal order to get in position to take possession, then played along for the sake of argument. The man in charge then demanded three things from the Mayor. She complied, without truly fighting or complaining. She was told that she could retain her ¥100,000, but if she held her mouth and did not take the elevator to the top floor, she would be arrested. If she used her keys to open the door to the higher floor, she would be taken to the cell upstairs and given a proper trial by teleconference. The man in charge then offered her a compromise. She could pay him three times the amount she thought she would, give him three percent of any proceeds from the property, and he would help keep her from making it out of her lockup. She was never going to take the deal.

Ten, fifteen minutes passed before the door to the higher floor was opened. The person in charge of the house contacted his superior, let the Mayor know that she had been seen leaving the Mayor’s residence. The Mayor phoned Lisa, who was on her way to the office.

"Damn it," I sighed. I kicked the chair as it passed over the head of Mayor Christner’s desk. "Popped the Mayor’s bubble. And look at how enraged he is. Three temper tantrums in one night? An unlocked gun and a taser? That’s apparently a problem."

"The gun wasn’t intended for display," Lisa pointed out.

"It was a live one," I protested.

"Hm?"

"To scare his students."

"Oh, sprains and pains. Isn’t that what surgeons get?"

"No," the Mayor shook his head and pointed to his right. "Three broken ribs, internal and excrement. He bleeding inside is the biggest thing. He’s on his way to the emergency room. I think he’s going to lose a battle of attrition and lose his lawsuit against me. If I can get the cops on board before then, that makes a lot of sense. The risk of him winning is pretty low."

"The risk is there," Lisa said, "And we already saw Sophia get stomped for trying to stop the warlord. The Mayor is big enough that maybe he’s not in a position to do anything about it."

I frowned.

"Why don’t you and I meet somewhere? You’d talk for hours, and I’d still probably hate you, and maybe you two would even make a decent couple. But maybe we could talk alone, after this is over and done with."

"Glad to hear it," the Mayor sighed. If anything angrier, he muttered, "Forrest," pun intended. "I’m coming with."

"Then we’ll go," I said, kicking the chair, "I’m dicking around. See about the cook?"

"Let’s go. We’ll handle this while Fontan does something about the windows."

I glanced over my shoulder at the Mayor. He didn’t seem that far from where I had been, in the worst case scenario. I walked around the building’s perimeter to check on the Mayor�

======== SAMPLE 10 ========
master said.

"You said they’re beyond helping?"

"They’re almost at the mainland," Tattletale said, "There’s some cleanup and law enforcement to get back to doing what they do best. Law enforcement is busy with the ABB, political stuff is okay, but they’re a priority."

Grue nodded, "Good. Know where to find out more."

"The Boardwalk and the Docks aren’t that far," Tattletale said. "It’s not a huge area, but it’s a place with people who will listen. If nothing else, it’s a place where you can get groceries, shop, do some good works, get educated, exercise your artistic talents, etc. If you’re really stubborn and stop doing those things, the ABB isn’t going to lose much sleep over the idea that your very presence has bought them a reprieve."

"If we’re going to do something then we need to go to them," I said.

Tattletale smiled, "I don’t think you’re wrong. Except… there’s a third option."

"What’s that?" I asked.

"Gardener," Tattletale said. She sidled up to me, giving me a nice smile.

"Whoo. That’s got to be one of the coolest voices I’ve heard in some time. Wow."

"The garden doesn’t get much better than that," Regent told me.

Chris asked, "What do you want from me?"

Brian looked me over, "I’m not sure I have a major item on the to-do list. If it’s not on the list, or if we can’t find something that’s on the to-do list, then it’s sort of pointless. Like I said, I’m artistic."

"I’m not saying it isn’t useful," I said, "But isn’t it better to get it out of the way?"

Chris made a face, but he didn’t seem to mind, "Sure. It isn’t exactly in line with your other stuff."

"No offense, Chris," I said, "But my other stuff is pretty high quality. Um, look, I think I’d like to throw a party. Make sure things are officially starting up again, so we’re stocked with stuff to begin with. I’ve been to this house before."

"Chris and I were talking about throwing a party," Bitch said. "I’d do it in my basement. I’d share the food, we’d split the bill, and it would be less than top of the city."

"That’s fine," I said. A touch defensively, I said, "It is what it is. It makes sense to split the revenue with the members of the Nine, after their troubles."

Bitch frowned, "I don’t really care."

I shrugged. Something about Bitch’s attitude…

"Come on," Tattletale said. "We’ll show up twenty-four-seven. It’ll be less than two hours from now."

"SNOWDEN!" Bitch screamed at her.

"Are you serious?" I asked. Looking at the others, I could see them were as well. That wasn’t surprising, Ass and Rover especially.

"And we can’t go out without someone getting hurt," Grue spoke. He added, "It’s a mess going on up there."

"We’ll get 'em," Tattletale said. Then, more to Regent than to me, she said, "Sorry, Regent. It’s my night watch."

"Who’s a good person to volunteer?" Grue asked.

"Tattletale," Tattletale said, "Regent’s name. Sort of. Not really."

"Ohhhhh," Regent raised an eyebrow.

"Sophia," Tattletale confirmed, "She’d be our lookout."

"Thank you," Grue spoke.

Bitch earned a look of anger from the other three girls. She rubbed her hand over her face, "You wouldn’t have gone to the bank if you didn’t want to be a villain."

"You already were," Tattletale said. "Now we just need control of the city. Scapegoat’s too

======== SAMPLE 11 ========
master’s powers had been activated. He seemed to be able to interpret the connections between the individual bits and shapes that they formed, and his particular body immediately began giving responses.

A signal, a response to a stimulus. When he reacted, it was a case of cat–or duck–money.

Parian felt her heart skip a beat as Bonesaw started gesturing at the next member of their group. Her power would give them a sense of his general state, location and age.

The synthetic began falling apart, and the group that included the synthetic began advancing towards the pile of bodies.

"What’s the relation?" Parian asked.

"Assault’s older. Higher ranking."

Does he know?

Then Bitch spoke, and the words seemed to echo through the building. "It’s him."

Then Murder Rat broke through the reinforced concrete wall, and charged Murder First and Murder Second, stopping them from getting to the pile of bodies.

"Shatterbird!" Parian shouted.

Bitch turned her back to watch the scene, her face iseps as she looks at the group. There’s a clap from Golem.

"What?"

"Clipped board."

"Wow."

Parian had to twist around to catch the whole scene. A man with a canyon-dwelling reptilian face stood behind Shatterbird, her arms extending like the hands of a god. Pharaoh, the king of the dead, was sitting at one end of the dais. One hand was raised as if in a friendly manner, while Pharaoh Aloreth, the creator of the dead, was sharing a dialogue with his descendant, the boy with the seven deadly sins. A hag stood in the courtyard opposite them.

"Were they like real vampires?" Parian asked.

"No. They’re so real they’re kind of a family. Just think about it. Husband and wife, kids."

"You’re the authorities," Parian said.

"I’m the emperor."

"You’re going to rule as the next Augustus and Shatterbird?"

It was something of a challenge. As much as it would suck to be Aisha’s emperor, it was simultaneously something she could cut loose and do without the stresses of being the lead, undisputed ruler. One step forward, two steps back. Maybe she would have to make do for now. She liked to think of it as leverage.

"I was," she said. Then, as if to punctuate her statement, she added, "I’m a little bit rich."

"Wow," Golem said.

We’d talked barely anything earlier. It was Pearl Jam on the mic, and they were brand new. They had no idea what was going on. They had to be just catching up.

"That money could be putting our Yàngbǎn back together," Parian said. "If it wasn’t for Weaver… I don’t know if I could grasp it all. The organization, the philosophy."

"We have two streams of people," Weaver said. "We have the vetted ones, and we have the wilders. The ones who have the tattoos and the piercings and the religious symbols… these are the ones who are paying with their lives."

"The ones who pay with their lives," Parian said.

Weaver laughed, throaty, deep, too much of a grunt to be able to speak.

"Were you saying that to me, Weaver?"

"No. Yes. I meant no offense."

Weaver walked over to the dock, where things had been left more or less alone. Her ship, her cargo and the yankee costumes lay at the base of the parapet, scattered over the area.

She began to lift the outer edges of the costumes off, one by one, then stopped, crouching.

"We have to ask if you’re sure," she said.

Weaver was clearly uncomfortable with the question. She shifted her weight onto her heels, shifting her weight from foot to foot, shifting her attention to the foot-high walls of the platform.

The second the outer edges of her costumes were draped, she raised herself a foot off the ground, leaving room for another body to do the job for her.

She’s changing styles.

She was a thinker, a cat-librarian with a focus on the macabre. Now she was a killer with a taste for dead flesh.

She took a step, and her blade reconnected to her hand before she was halfway to the platform. She pulled herself together,

======== SAMPLE 12 ========
master and the Director," he said. He didn’t let his voice carry. "The people that would bring these suits in are relatively few. Ten or so, most, maybe, if not all of whom have connections to cape manufacturers."

He pointed at Chariot, "And you, Miss Militia, are cooperating with the thinkers. If you get in the way, well, we’ll have a hell of a time getting through to you."

"I’m prepared to die," I said. "It isn’t a comfortable road to travel."

"So the other main person that’s giving orders is… who is this?" Cauldron asked.

"Can’t say," I said, "Because I can’t talk to them without revealing who they are, but… I can say I’m confident in my ability to operate that I wouldn’t hesitate to disobey if someone found me doing it."

"Is she?" Revel asked.

"As prepared as we can be," I said. "With the knowledge we have about the thinker situation, about targets like her. I don’t know if she’s intending to use her triggers on anyone present, but… I can look at the city, research what happens if a city gets destroyed."

"Tattletale?" Coil asked. "Have you?"

I handed him the vial.

"This," Tattletale said, pointing, "Is how we handle those who try to usurp our authority. We’ll have our specialists use Diffraction and other effects in deciphering and interpreting the physics behind our ability to maintain the geometry our planet finds itself in, then we’ll use those facts to find someone who can succeed at being the next Tecton."

Difference, I thought. The thinker-slash-perceptionist subtype. If he was going to use his power, he would need to know what Tecton was up to.

The thing was, I hadn’t shared his suspicion. I couldn’t be absolutely positive he wouldn’t have found some other way. This was the enemy, and I couldn’t break rank and go in plain sight. The most I could do is keep my distance, call in favors and show my colors until we arrived at a solution.

But I wasn’t sure that was wise. He was one-hundred percent sure he was 100 percent right, and-

I remembered what Huntress had said to me.

"We don’t have time to work this out."

"Of course not. Thinkers are hard to find. You used Synthesis to find Jack. It’s not always obvious which thinker he’s using."

"I searched the Birdcage."

"I’m telling you it’s wrong. You must have a way to find him, or you wouldn’t have let him slip so. Without our abilities, without our scouting, there would be no point to hunting him down."

I shook my head.

"His power, coupled with what I assume is his control over the aircraft, makes him capable of slowing or stopping whatever is happening anywhere in the world, at any time, at any distance. We didn’t find him, and if we can track him, use his power and deduction to guess where he’s sending the craft, we might be able to slow him down or catch him by surprise. Bringing Diffraction in to assist would mean the PRT would be unable to freely fly at the speeds their speedster is capable of, so it would serve as a deadly combination."

"Mm," I said. I didn’t want to disagree. The more intractable problems were better handled with escalation.

We settled on an overcast sky as we drew close to Castle Black. I settled in the ground floor pocket of the cloud side, while Aimée convened the group up on the stone floor. We plotted a course, and Heads and Cardinals took the opportunity to mark the world with red tape. Six days, laid out in a grid of three by two lines, marking the days in the artist’s calendar.

This meant we had to keep an eye out for things while we passed through. Paper was torn, marks were stuck in the colored, frotch-covered pages, and we even bumped into a stuffed animal which, disconcertingly enough, was sitting in the center of the full, grassy table. It had stopped moving, and a red dot was on the underside, of the fabric that ran from the knee high to the toes, a mottled orange-red.

It was Bentley’s master list.

The Rarest Cand

======== SAMPLE 13 ========
master’s hands.

"We’ve been over this. I think the last couple of nights have sort of solidified the idea that this whole thing, the plan, it’s not working. There’s too much tension, the stuff just doesn’t make sense, it’s redundant, reckless. We can’t do this."

"And the whole cape thing?" He asked, emphasizing the ‘farce’ bit.

We were getting more and more of a commercial vibe, Commercial, More Commercial. Commercial, more Commercial. Commercial, more Commercial.

"It’s not our primary focus," I said.

More audibly, I said, "We’re taking on a bigger challenge."

"Oh?" he asked. He didn’t miss the reference to Legend or Eidolon.

"The Pure," Tattletale informed him. "We’ve got a new Protectorate member joined in, with a delegation from a third. New powers. The group is targeting high-profile targets. We take on high-profile victims."

"Oh."

"And you’re looking at changing your focus to the Plan A for this nonsense. You’re thinking about expanding the ranks further. If you’re even alive in the coming weeks and months."

"Oh."

"Yes. You’re not alone. We’re all thinking about ways to capitalize on this, to extend our control over more of the world."

I saw the noncommittal response in his expression.

Was there a chance he’d say something to that? Something to offer?

"I get the feeling, Hon, you know that we set the bar so low. You want to get closer."

He didn’t respond.

Instead, he looked down at his gloves, then his sleeve, where the vials had been kept. "I just…"

"Just what?" I asked.

He lowered his arm from the vial and set it at a slight angle, so the drug was out of the way. He continued staring at the ground.

"You’re not going to work this out, are you?"

"A little girl can throw a baseball," he said, and there was a faint accent in his voice. He was American.

"A baseball?" I asked, though I knew he could already tell I wasn’t listening. I would have said something in response, but I was cheery, humorless as we talked.

"Hm?" he asked. It was a girl.

"A grenade launcher. Stock character. They dropped her on her head."

"Oh," I said. "Got it. We’ll look for her and deliver her".

" Weaver wants you to replace the Undersiders."

I nodded. "I can. I’ll meet you guys at the north end of the portal. Thank you."

"We got you," he said.

"We’re kind of busy," I said.

Not a problem, she was saying. I could track his transformation. He was continuously replacing himself, turning one part of himself into something else, then shifting that into something else. A telekinetic to move parts of his body, a blur to keep all moving together. He was still relying on others for support, almost blindly.

"Tattletale told me to send you a text. Told me to use the computer. But I didn’t know what to do. I don’t remember."

He texted me, a mad abbreviation of alike.

I read it, then pushed the anyway key on the keyboard. ‘End of the World’.

I could see him typing out new messages, comparing notes with the others. While he did that, I took a second to look around. I set traps, found spots where the monsters could find open water, near doors.

I displayed the messages I’d sent, showing the results page. The messages I’d left him:

‘All going well. Love them.’

‘Help me.’

‘Trap complete.’

Now he was staring out over the ocean. He scowled briefly, then sighed.

‘All going well.’

My bugs detected a thin trail of smoke in his general direction. He wasn’t moving.

"Why?" I whispered.

"A Kudzu became a civilian. The Undersiders may have turned against their old boss, but they’re still clinging to him. Maybe they’

======== SAMPLE 14 ========
master," he said. "We thought of you. What’s your reasoning? You’re stronger, and Coil’s better equipped to control more people."

"Coil’s the leader now, and it wouldn’t change if there was a real chance someone could become the leader. We’re doing exactly what you were saying we were going to do. Cutting heads, amassing forces, managing the villains and the heroes we needed to deal with them."

Tattletale frowned, "You’re getting labeled as the new Supes. The leader of the newly christened Empire Eighty Six. Does that matter to you?"

"No. But it means there’s this constant, in-fighting, over territory and command of each of these teams. Different teams, with very different ideas. I’m not one of those teams."

I didn’t hear a reply, and I was unnerved by the way that Emily Piggot seemed to be unfazed and unfazed by the events of the past few hours. Charming, in her brash new self.

It didn’t take much. I was on the defensive, and he was the offensive.

"You’re not one of those teams, and you’re now failing to keep the secret that you’re a pro at winning wars. It doesn’t explain why you’re so eager to take over the city," Piggot said.

"You’re underestimating our capabilities. As you know, I take a different tack. I’m not a leader, I don’t file paperwork, I don’t try to be more powerful than the next guy."

"You’re wrong," Piggot said. "There’re times I feel compelled to act on my threats, because I can’t let my guards down."

It was hard to read her expression. Discomfort? Dislike?

"Yes," he said. "There’s a detail I wasn’t clear in your questions."

"Not a leader?"

"No. In large part. I’m merely reflecting our goals, working with the PRT to achieve them."

"You’re an unknown quantity. With the right support and the right notes, I could make you a believer."

"Right," I said.

"But you’re not a believer we’re having trouble matching. You’re trustworthy, in many ways, and that makes things easier on your end. You didn’t rule out cooperating, and you’ve provided valuable information in fleshing out the others. If we’re going to keep our end, for better or for worse, you should have no less than twenty-three hours of debate with no less than five televised interviews before we get to the actual real meat of it."

"Twenty-three hours," I said. "Whatever the number is, it’s never been higher, right?"

"I expect it’s higher. Or always more than a day of work. But I’d rather it was mine than twenty-three hours, never knowing what I’d say or how I’d put it out there. I can’t discuss any of that stuff with you unless you’d explained any of it. I can’t guarantee it wouldn’t become an issue later, but I’d rather be able to provide timely, in-depth coverage."

"We’re operating in an era of increasingly complex technology," Dragon said. "Right now, the only devices capable of receiving a signal are remotely controlled. That means drones, planes, and vehicles that are flying and leaving earthshatter and Behemoth’s time bombs every day. All of this disrupts our operation, full force."

"I see," I said. I wasn’t sure how much of that was truth and how much was habit, but he seemed to find my words strange.

"Right now, the only devices capable of receiving a signal are these dragon-powered point defense turrets you’re riding. Two were captured, seized as contraband by Dragon. Another is a communication station that Dragon says is capable of chirping pea-sized waves through cell walls at will. We’re expanding, too. She said we shouldn’t underestimate her, and this is a prime testing ground for the weapons she’s fitting on us."

"She can penetrate almost any cell," Defiant said. "Is that a testament to her power?"

"Yes. And she says you could theoretically get into the minds of the people using her weapons

======== SAMPLE 15 ========
master or maybe for your team," Bonesaw replied, "Do you really want us to take you off the team if that’s what you feel you need?"

"Not entirely," Skitter answered her. "There are other priorities. You asked me here to pick up a bag of bones. I have to say no. There’s something in the bag that’s going to weigh you down for a long time, if Bonesaw’s analysis hasn’t taught me that much already. And you don’t have much more personal power than you had when you attacked my Lair."

There were betrayals at that.

"And?"

"That you didn’t take the hit. And you didn’t receive any of my venom."

I could see Bonesaw’s face fall.

She coughed up a mouthful of blood and then coughed again.

A few seconds later, she coughed and swallowed the last bit.

"Skitter," Ballistic said, his voice quiet, "Why’d you attack my lair, leaving me hostage!?"

"I was late for my curfew," I said.

"You were already a flight risk before you got the injection. You’re a danger to the public."

"You think I got it wrong. You didn’t know I was still a danger?"

"Maybe," I said.

"Whether you’re a good person or a bad person is beside the point. The point is that you didn’t know, and you attacked my place."

"But… I don’t understand," Sundancer said.

"You stepped into an extremely dangerous situation. You used poor judgement? In hindsight, were you selfish for it? A little heroic, looking back?"

I didn’t have a response to that. I was about to go back to draw my guns when I saw the looks on Ballistic’s face. He was tense, his eyes narrowed, as if he was planning on attacking me. I sighed, but the anger and hatred for the red-headed punk was still mildly appealing.

Coil had picked up on the fact that I liked Tattletale, had maybe even wanted her as a friend, and had baited Tattletale’s ally out of her. I wasn’t one to drink, and I was pretty sure I wouldn’t have bought the drugs if I had.

So you wouldn’t be getting high if and when we came out ahead.

"I can’t help that," Trickster said. "But I helped cover it up."

"You did great," I said, without looking at him. "Make that the thing you’re proudest of."

"That‘s a good line! You can’t prove nothing!"

"I couldn’t at first. I was in a crappy headspace, I think, and having others there to talk to wasn’t a huge relief. But Coil managed to get in touch with someone, and we got a handle. I’ll say that with a straight face."

"Dinah. Is she with them?"

"I can’t be prouder. I wouldn’t have made it through that first day if it weren’t for her."

I could see his shoulders drop, even through his helmet.

"You couldn’t have made it through that first day either," I said. "But we got through. You saved me, Skitter. I’m grateful."

"I am too."

I didn’t ask for an answer, and I probably didn’t need one. The darkness crept in around our necks. An extension of the shadow over Grue’s head, an overhang, perhaps.

The glow didn’t reach us in such a way that we could see through. It was subtle, and it got harder to breathe as it crept in closer. An impossibility, considering our masks.

"We’re in the dark, deaf, but we’re not stupid. Grue and I will be relying on you two for help. Regent and Imp?"

"I’m still trying to wrap my head around the mechanics of teleportation," Regent said. "Would it be alright if I spoke up and vouched for you, Grue?"

Grue nodded. "Ah, that good?"

Regent offered a dry, monosyllabic chuckle.

"Everything Annette says," Imp commented, "I guess. She made it through with just about nothing taken from her, taking everything with

======== SAMPLE 16 ========
master had taken off her mask and was running, making her way from the burnt husk of a building to the street, faster than any of us were running.

I glanced over my shoulder as we passed through the eye of the storm, looking over the horizon to see the shattered remains of a building ahead. The remains of what had been a three story apartment building, all demolished to the ground during the wave, or to make way for a more trivial sized building.

There were more ruins than buildings here. Most were intact, but the way things had been arranged, things had been grouped too closely to be any worse than that.

Annex brought up my point about the row of apartments. Every apartment on the second floor was occupied, and he drew a crossbow from his holster with one hand while leaning against a wall with his other hand.

"Siberian," he said. I missed the accent, and the out-of-tune tuning of his voice, but I got the drift.

Tattletale was in the same vein, though she was less hyperbolic. "Here’s a fact, Mongrel. The first phase of the Zaytiny Cube is drawing to a close, and it’s going to set off something in a matter of minutes. That cube was a New Delhi landmark, and it’s sitting in the center of that city like a statue might sit atop a tower, all white marble, bare and unoccupied. No sculptor, no glass, no easel, nothing. Just a circle of stainless steel, with a matching cube in the middle. Contestants from across the world have gathered inside, solving puzzles, and the United King of Queens of the Antilles sits on the throne, sipping coffee, watching. If that isn’t a challenge, I don’t know what is."

I nodded slowly, turning my attention to the larger, crowded area. Zaytiny, Mongrel, the other two United King’spawns, several assembled scaled monsters, carrying some of the heaviest shit I’d ridden in my life. There were some pretty heavy hitters in the area, as well. The Protectorate had made a large presence, with the heroes from across the board showing up in force.

'Trap Breaker’s power was one I knew all too well. Another way of doing it. My memories being in a state to change when I woke up were a part of that. It was a lesson on the benefits of being in the right headspace, too.

Someone stepped up to the task, taking up a half of the ground between us. He was large, standing almost six feet tall, and he had a lion’s share of the muscle. Heavy, like a horse, with too many joints and muscles to move with the way I felt. It made me think of a musclebound wrestler in the period immediately before a contest. He whined and groaned, and I could see the expression on his face, acne coming into his eyes, his girth accelerating in his haste to get to the next task.

His target was our luggage. We had our hands on them.

He waved a hand, and the cube altered. The wrong side had been reached.

Too slow. Can’t move quickly enough.

I got my phone out and dialed the number on the screen, glanced at the cube. It had changed, and I couldn’t reach my phone in the meantime.

No, I thought, being in the middle of a neighborhood where no cell service was available and there wasn’t a taxi company to summon one.

Someone lived across the street from us, got a cell and began giving people services, putting cars on the road so people could walk their dogs by putting the boxes they carried in the recycling or selling them on the street. There were two people there who didn’t look too troubled.

Might have been a chance call, to make sure people were okay. I didn’t want to do this, with them being in the midst of my people, and myself being on edge to the point that I wouldn’t be able to handle it if things turned sour.

Even if we were doing it to save people from themselves, I wasn’t sure it was such a good idea. I felt like it was reckless, leaving things as they were, with the threat of violence ahead if we deviated from the plan. Coil’s people would come after us, and we’d be hard pressed to say we didn’t intend to do it. I’d have to do what needed to be done in a moment of crisis, but it wasn’t in my hands.

I put my phone back down and reached for my flight pack, checked it was

======== SAMPLE 17 ========
master, the last few members of their species.

The Doctor was saying things were starting to go wrong. Things were starting to look grim.

"We’re losing," he said.

I didn’t have a response to that. Didn’t have a voice to speak through. I felt my heart sink.

Too many years spent in the company of the barely sentient automatons. Too many that we’d settled on Earth Bet had been the same way. Supposedly, the Maker had kept them close. Had taken care of them with little effort.

In just the same way, the Maker was apparently going to keep the creations close. The gaps in our vision were becoming clearer. Just as confusing, or more confusing, was the fact that he was keeping them distracted, leaving them unlikely to cooperate or provide us with any useful information.

My friends were alive, albeit just barely. Rachel hadn’t made it. I felt momentarily heartbroken. On a metaphorical level, I was hurting, feeling how guilty I felt. At the same time, I understood that it was because my eyes hadn’t been open. I hadn’t watched my friends closely enough to know whether they were okay or not. I would let them know if something happened again. That wasn’t much of an apology, but I felt guilty nonetheless.

Then I remembered what the Maker had told me.

‘Be careful. There’s nothing you can do. There’s always consequences. When you’re done, there’ll be nothing left. You fade away, and they fade away, and there is quiet. Only the sounds you make when you exist… they will stay there, ring through the night. Only there is meaning, and that begins anew.

‘Take the first minute or the first two seconds of silence as you create a new existence.'

Again, that reminder threw me off. I stood there, taking the minutes and seconds as I breathed, tried to picture her, to dream or describe her, and was struck by the realization that I didn’t want to think about her.

The smallest part of me wanted to apologize for what had happened at the school. What had happened in that crowded room. The biggest part of me? Didn’t want to apologize for not listening, for dilly-dallying, for not ducking beneath the details that were emerging around the incident in Brockton Bay.

They weren’t the full extent of it. I couldn’t shake the impression that some of my contacts or contacts were funding or even operating as a front for the Slaughterhouse Nine. Theists or agnostics, muggings or outright murderers, people with powers to inflict pain or inflict death, there were others.

I felt more than a little paranoid regarding the connections between people in my territory and the people reported here. It was a level playing field, with outsiders trying to make inroads and people not really holding the Slaughterhouse Nine’s interests dear.

I instructed Atlas to gather in a loose circle. We would maintain a defensive position, with my bugs to keep the enemy from doing anything further.

No less than five seconds after I’d alerted them to our presence, we were called away by the overhead lights. Legend carried the unconscious Milesena Exalt through the air.

Sierra was among the injured, and she Haberdashers in our group. She spoke with the aid of a tube taped to her mouth. I couldn’t pick her apart from Rachel except by her facial structure, and there was a kind of ...? or logic? Something about her denial?

'There’s four groups here, one of which is extremely careless and not using the evacuation routes. You’ll be joining them. Your ‘mothers’ are in charge of six of the towns. You’ll assist Rachel and assist in taking back the other three. We have six vehicles available, and you’ll assist in taking the last capture point. This is out of the way. If you wish to go or face arrest, you’ll be going to a place besides these six.'

Bottle man took over and helped guide the group to their destination. I was pretty sure they were out of my range, as bottle necks and other rebreathers hid the fact that they were moving further behind cover.

I was brought into the center of the group, dimly lit by the red bulb that was kept burning at my neck, head and shoulders. Other bottles were now held so I could join or be a part of the next group that arrived. I heard Legend speak, and was immediately put in mind of the ‘monsters’ that had gone after the people in my school. Alabaster

======== SAMPLE 18 ========
master."

Funny, how everything always made me feel better the next day.

"I see," he murmured. "But what could you have done to convince him?"

My dad shifted position, drawing on one knee to rub the thigh of his undershirt against my bare leg. I focused on keeping my eyes on his, looking over his shoulder, at the way the hood of his sweatshirt had drawn blood at his nostrils, or the flat of his stomach. No stars. That would be the exact opposite of what I wanted.

"I talked to him after they’d arrived at the spot. He was angry at me for dragging him here, then he went ahead. I told him I’d sent the heroes here to look after him, that I had to wait outside before I made a move, before I made a move. He ignored me."

His arm jerked involuntarily. Then it clicked. A cold feeling surged through me, almost debilitating. My pores felt like they were churned up and ready to burst. I tried to shush it and wind down, letting it subside.

"I saw that from the people who were standing outside the building when the explosion went off. I knew it would happen the moment I heard the sirens. This guy was one of them. He was a single father trying to get his kids educated, do some housework, take care of himself. He saw Scion coming and decided to leave his job. He stayed in the city, working as a prostitute, stealing to support his family. One night, after he finished his shift, just after midnight, something happened. He felt a pang of anxiety he couldn’t quite put finger on it. He got a tattoo. The serpents. It was the first time he’d ever had a tattoo that made him think about powers, and it drew the comparison to Night, the girl he’d killed earlier that week, because Night had used her power to kill the people who were hurting her ‘brother’. He got a third sigmar he didn’t know."

Golem shook his head. "And the second he decided to leave… well, what happened?"

My dad shrugged. "He was upset. Not about to take care of his kids."

"So this guy, with this obsession he had with Night, he went to this doctor and this doctor gave him this… megabo."

"Yep," Golem said.

My dad hung his head.

"So that’s what she looked like?" I asked.

Dinah shook her head.

"So this is why she’s carrying around this huge weapon?" I suggested.

"Because she’s trying to protect herself," Dinah said. "Yours, specifically."



Interlude 18 (Donation Bonus #1)


"This seems like a grave risk," Faultline said.

"It is," Coil responded. "But I feel we’re in a better position than we were, because we’ve talked this over and we’ve confirmed this would work."

"But?"

"But we don’t know exactly what she is and how we could use her."

"Some background is in order," Coil asked.

"How are you handling the encounters?"

"Very well," Coil said. "I’m going to be working from a remote location, so there’s no unnecessary complications. I’m also going to be doing some hand-to-hand. I came prepared, and am 100% capable of handling them. We’ve been organizing for your imminent arrival, so there’s nothing you need to worry about."

"We’re nearly finished," Faultline said. "No major changes."

Faultline sighed. "I’m here if you need anything."

"Will do."

He left with a heavy speed as he tied vines around his neck, kept him in place with the help of straps and noose-clothes.

Not that it mattered. The man easily could have been four hundred pounds, and the spikes barely bit past his skin.

He found a second Tinker and set him up with a control frame. The Tinker used a disc to push the man out of the way as they made their way to the gutters.

Faults, temptations, it was all she was good at.

He needed conflict. Something that would push him to action, keep him on his toes. And Night was that something. As seamless as his power was, his Tinkers were butging him up, Jordi was having him experiment, tinker with weapons and techniques.

He didn’t

======== SAMPLE 19 ========
master said. "Is he one of yours?"

"I would like to see my creations crush him," Golem said.

"We have the means," Tecton said. "But this is more use than we’d ever give it. We’re spreading this far from New York, we provoke the local heroes, and then we use that scalpel to slice their ranks to shreds."

"Golem," I said.

"No," he said. "Because the equivalent of Shatterbirds or Cherish of Hearts, only we’re stronger. A trickster, a shaker, disaffected ex-soldier… all of them could step up and do something about it."

"Tecton," I said.

"Taylor."

"We’re spreading this far from New York," I amended.

"Is too much to absorb," he said. "It’s too much material to keep up with the Kick Ass titles. Each of you would have your individual strengths. We’d be best friends, not twins. But yeah. Climbing Mount Rushmore together is a big priority. If we’re going to achieve that, we need to survive long enough to do it."

"Golem changed the subject," Tecton. "I’ve talked to one of his junior counterpart, and she said he was busy training. Noelle is going to do the same, unless she’s healing."

"We can carry Noelle," I said. "Carry her or put her in the truck."

There were nods, but nobody was willing to take the next step.

"Carry her," I said. "If you can, leave. I’ll be right behind." I glanced at Sveta. She was crouching in the corner, with an injured hand.

She’d look at me and go, "Oh s-so much s-shit. I can’t go."

"Try," I said. "But try without my agreement, I don’t think you’ll get anywhere."

Then I turned to leave.

There were five more people in the truck. By the time I was out of earshot, there were seven. All of them thorny, all pushing and shoving and complaining.

"Why the fuck are you turning down an invitation to go see Noelle?" Chariot asked, his voice sharp.

"I don’t think she needs to see me," I said. "I’m not the sort of person that gets bored. Watching shows, movies or doing x-rated activities doesn’t bother me."

"I don’t either," Golem said. "No offense, but as far as filming goes, watching a movie with an audience that you don’town is pretty useless."

How many people had the Merchants caused property damage? I thought.

Then I looked at Charlotte.

"I’ll see what I can do," I said.

"Golem," Tailte said.

"If I say no, I’m betting they’ll end up knowing that I’m not willing to turn down a visit sometime."

"Okay. No offense."

"I watched the video," Tailte said. "You’re in the vault, so you should know the layout."

"I’m ninety-five percent sure," Golem said.

"Know what?" Golem asked. "Why are you there? You’re not visiting me."

"I just thought I would let you know that my vault is quite possibly empty."

How can I help him when I don’t know who he is? I asked.

"It’s actually been a longstanding tradition," Tailte said, "For visitors to enjoy our rooms as welcome gifts."

My eyes roved over the vault. The man was seated at a table, a young lady at his bedside. "Is she or wasn’t she?"

"She’s in the vault with Chase," Heartbreaker said. "I imagine they are playing video games."

I could sense something from the pair. I’d seen the pair on stage, having a good time, but I couldn’t place them. Multitasking made it hard to tell they were Merchants, and there was something about their movements that made me think their costumes were exaggerated.

The stage manager fished in the cabinet that held the stage equipment. She handed me a DVD, and I pulled it from the plastic cover.

With just a minute or two of work, we had a small

======== SAMPLE 20 ========
master, or I? What about the Nine? I mean-"

"I remember what you said about your teammate, Bakuda, predicting she’d be one of the strongest parahumans out there. What did you mean?"

Tattletale: "She’d be like Grenth, in a way. Strong, but relatively weak. But she’d be a sad, lonely woman who had a monstrous and violent brother who blamed her for everything that happened to him. When she met him, she said that she couldn’t understand him, whatever his powers. She freaked out, abandoned his sidekicks, until he killed her. Then she went dark, never talking to anyone. Talk to me, and you’ll get the drift of it. Tattletale: The Slaughterhouse Nine started off as a group of bullies. Do you really want to spoil one of the most devastating and damaging powers we've ever had?"

Piggot: "Nah. It makes more sense that she was splitting off to find herself than that we found her. Unless you think hearing her describe her brother’s face was crucial. Jere’s description of Bonesaw was the same way."

Tattletale: "I’d say the split was fundamental, but that’s not a convincing argument unless you can back it up with something that makes sense."

"Maybe it was?" Arslan asked. "If we’re talking about people with strong Marks, like Siberian, then… yeah. It could be."

Piggot shook her head, "I’m more suspicious if we consider the options we have."

The Siberian. I had to admit, I was intrigued. Her powers were fairly standard for hybrid powerset, Occam’s Razor at its finest. In simpler terms, they were good powers with bad limitations, typically found at the periphery of an entity’s power. For those of us who knew a little more about hybrid powers, there were a number of interesting details. Miss Militia had stated that HW had inherited a number of his powers, and that there were specific cycles where one cycle resulted in an individual wielding Culling’s power, another where they were deadly only during the first few steps of the second cycle, and so on. It was, as far as I knew, the first and only hybridization to result in a mass-produced, viable product.

It was, perhaps, at odds with the way Huntsman had described the effects: "hybrids are remarkably durable, but the underlying anatomy is mutagenic." It was true; hybrids typically had congenital anomalies and additional, sometimes overlapping abilities. There was no way to say for sure, but as far as I could guess, hybrids tended towards more chaotic, antisocial lifestyles. It was also, he had suggested, a point where Culling could improve his society. The way Powerslipped had coded it, the society would be awash with Cullers, but everyone would be forced to interact with them nonetheless.

It was an interesting theory, and it opened up all of the possibilities. With tweaks, there was a setting where hybrids could be born with a modifier for Culling. Another where it was a point where it was a point where members of one species were forced to choose between cooperation or conflict. A hybrid born with pyrokinesis, for example, but limited to burning through matter, with a drawback that he or she would take a -1 to their rolls when they chose to act as decoys.

It also made a number of intuitive sense sense calls. For one thing, there were very few circumstances in which hybrids could be useful. In those circumstances, such hybrids were almost essential. In such dire straits, hybrids were the best. Their innate ability to find and destroy threats and signs of trouble in a place that already had plenty, and their fragmentation and accelerated flight made them excellent short-range repeaters. Add the fact that they were good mercenaries, and Hypnotic Arrow could pay quite a bit. As for their price, it was determined at the outset of the show: permanent mutation, but hardly crippling. There was also the fact that the PRT valued these sorts of powers, and the contracts Hypnotic Arrow had entered into didn’t leave much margin for error.

This was something of a problem, though. He had a feeling, but no concrete information. He resolved the issue by asking the next group.

The accountant and tinker had already been sent to me. He was an unexceptional character, a guy dressed in a business suit, who specialized in publishing database images onto satellite feeds. No, I could understand if he’d be the one to ask me about my methodology, about altering people’s powers. The thought didn’t sit right.

The fact

======== SAMPLE 21 ========
master, and it would likely take a minute or two.

"I wanted to ask for your help," Marquis said.

"You wanted my help, I got the key, sorry," I replied. Before he could pull the trigger, I grabbed the edge of the desk and pulled the plug for the lighter. I worried it would ignite my shorts, but I wasn’t sure if the costume had enough projected power to flip me over. In any case, the laptop was lit from the start.

Then I lit the matchbox again, with more light from the laptop.

I burned Emma’s costume. She screamed and ran, and both she and her dad applauded. I couldn’t spare the breath.

I couldn’t put out the matchbox or the cigarette either. It was obvious enough that they were still burning.

With the laptop so near, I could see what they were doing. The hair follicles that my bugs were wiping from the costume were not only alive, but they were sprouting new strands, buckling in the face of the intense light. The costume was barely recognizable.

Lightning fast.

I didn’t want to lose my composure while seeing to my very important takeover. This was a mess I was cleaning up, not a crisis I was managing.

I needed to ask, first. How was my impression of Emma being in the dark? Bad? Yes. She’d blurted out information she didn’t know, and that was before our recent escapade had provided additional details. Information that could be misleading.

The public deserves to know.

Delta and the kids. Again, both Taylor and Emma’s actions and words made me think that Emma was deliberately distorting what Taylor had said, to try to make Taylor look worse. Not in the costume sense, but in terms of her perception of people.

It was understandable, but wrong. What was wrong with us? We were ill-equipped to make calls on our own. We needed to rely on others.

And if that depended on others using their initiative, and they uncovered what I was doing…

I let myself crumble into a pile of layers of immaterial fragility. I suffocated.

Stern comments, angry comments, panicked speeches. They filled the silence, insistent, relentless.

A forcefield materialized just in front of me, not a part of the costume I was wearing, but a part of the mask I was putting on. I raised my finger to my ear, opening my mouth to vent, but it was just a voice.

I could feel the bugs in the area, and I quickly dispatched them. They were easy to identify, in large numbers. I’d been bitten, I realized. But these were my friends. I was willing to take losses in order to help achieve something.

My power reached into the cloud, and I felt a moment’s hesitation. I told the military police squad that was closest to me, "Voice or code? Sounds or signals?"

The data filled the gaps. It was more complicated than that. Part of the complication was that I was now in a state of constant fear, but it was a means to an end. I radiated confidence, but I was obeying a law I’d helped enforcer. A part of me that had been resigned to oblivion, until the end of time, had found a new home. I reclaimed it.

Others were announcing their allegiance. A statement from Cowboy Bob, a tense silence, from Dragon to the civilian population.

And then the satellite phones started singing the praises of the Protectorate, New Wave, and everything was bright again. The New York area was represented, and virtually every commercial aired with the news that New Wave was heating up. The Philadelphia area was alluded to, with an accompanying report of an air raid siren.

The siren wasn’t going off until one of the planes had taken off, heading to the runway. It signaled a call from one of the other planes.

I stood from my seat, but I wasn’t ready. Too many things still needed to be managed. The coffee was almost ready, but I wasn’t ravenous. I chewed, but the restless mass inside me was making noise.

My legs felt heavy. I still hadn’t finished my bread.

My mouth was made up.

My contact with the Slaughterhouse Nine was minimal. I wasn’t really a member of the group, after all. Hadn’t spent any time in their company.

My thoughts were jammed with so many fragmented and incoherent thoughts that I could barely keep track of it. I imagined a vast underground network, containing every member of the Nine, in this

======== SAMPLE 22 ========
master and I are going…"

"Heads up!" I shouted.

"So fucking bad," Imp commented.

"Imp!" Tattletale’s voice was quieter, "How bad?"

Imp cocked her head a little to one side.

Tattletale caught my shoulder, "What?"

"Oh. Right. Right."

"Weaver?" Regent asked.

I turned to see that she’d left me alone. "Oh my god. The fucking Piggot rule."

"You’ve been a fucking thorn in my side," Vista said. "Singlehandedly, for sure,"

"Said by one of my harshest critics," Glenn said, smirking.

I was shocked to hear that. First day in a row I’d been silent when it counted. I was even more stunned to hear about the tweet and sentence before I’d seen the costume. I was finding it increasingly difficult to believe they had been able to keep things from surfacing earlier.

"They did use a real code, you know," Regent said. "Piggot used a real code. All of them have been keeping their promises. All of them."

"Except…" I said, "Except the guy who signed off on the kill order, Armsmaster."

I felt my face heat up, and didn’t want to look at Regent and find the detail through the wet wash of tears. I could see Glenn’s expression soften in any number of ways.

No, that wasn’t entirely true. Like I’d said, some of them had kept their word. There were non-capes who’d broken the rules and were now breaking them because the recently-promoted capes were shaping up to be troublemakers. There were scum and shit who’d broken the rules and were still paying a price, haunted by the memories of past immorality.

How many others had joined the Birdcage because they’d seen something that wasn’t possible to see with our eyes alone?

I hugged my arms close to my body. The spray of rain against the fabric of my costume was strangely comforting.

There was a crash and the crunch of something heavy where a chunk of concrete was rubbing against hands that were trying to block our way. The latter group hadn’t hesitated to advance towards us, and were supported by a mob that was showing their support with its mobilities.

"Emma," my dad spoke.

I was shaking my head, so to speak. I reached out to put my chin on his shoulder, pressing my hand to my broken hair.

"Why?" he asked. Through the tears, I attempted to fill the silence.

"Why do you always have to be so dramatic, and make me wait so long to find out what you’re going to do instead?"

He wasn’t telling me to do something. He was saying it as a statement.

It was both.

I had to do what he was suggesting, calculating how it would affect us, ourselves and the fight against Scion.

Using Rachel or Aidan as a springboard was the least problematic option. I settled into the lead, moving to keep ahead of the mob.

Golem was somewhere behind me in the crowd. I didn’t miss how he perched on the wreckage of the building to look down. He had no doubt taken what he saw in the city and copied it. It made him look like a badass.

However feasible it was for him to copy something, he wouldn’t. He’d want to do it soon. Soon-ish, if the information on how we were doing and where we could be headed was true.

Hookwolf, Vex, Gemma and Leverage were together, and Jack was up ahead. My bugs gave me a sense of their locations. But the real focus of my attention was on Hookwolf. He was surrounded by a mat of what looked like flame in a primordial kind of scuff, and the entire thing was radiating that scuff to the edges of the rooftop. The rest of the rooftop was dark, frozen in time.

I felt a moment’s trepidation. I’d seen what the precog had seen. Reluctance was a natural thing for someone with powers like Hookwolf’s. He’d been patient, patience seem to be the opposite of what he wanted.

Hookwolf was one of those powers where it was like there was a counter-agent, a built-in defense mechanism that was built into his core being too. Controlling one of the locals and then traveling the world, conquering new peoples

======== SAMPLE 23 ========
master and I were only exchanging words among each other."

"Ah. I found them. The Yàngbǎn are operating with two groups, one more powerful than the other, but weaker than the original."

"I’m not even a member of the group that originally made this web," Tattletale spoke.

"Yet."

"No," Tattletale said. She frowned. "There’s one other possibility. I might have sounded foolish asking the question, but what if I were to say Surrender? Could I get him to spill the beans?"

"Surrender?" Grue spoke.

"Yeah. You remember how I went after Regent and Bitch during the bank robbery?"

"Yeah. That’s not what I mean. What I’m asking is, can Surrender... be willing to reveal who he is?"

Regent grunted. "I don’t think we can get him to abandon his plan."

"Well," Tattletale said. "What happens if we try? If we give him access to our military? The Protectorate."

"The bank robbery," Grue spoke.

"If we give him that, can he not use it to get something else? Access to contraband that could be used against us. Or his men. Or a mix of the three?"

"If he tried something like that," I said, "It wouldn’t work."

"It’s a critical event. If it happens once, it’ll likely happen again."

"So we run. We wait for the fight to pass," I said.

"But I’m asking this question, Skitter," Legend spoke.

"Cherish said she saw the future," I answered. "She said we won’t win this fight, that we’ll achieve victory by the end of the year. If that is a pipe dream, then so be it. We’ll deal with the last card they played before we go out to our last blade."

"With what? By taking down the Undersiders?" Tattletale asked.

I shrugged. "Tattletale, you’ve given me little to no reason to think you’re a good guy. I’ve seen you put friends and teammates above and beyond your own needs and desires. Bitch, you know what you’re capable of. You’ve probably had something to do with most of the Undersiders defections."

Bitch frowned.

"They were saying you went too far. You said you intended to betray them, and thus far, Tattletale’s answered every question about that, at least."

"I did. But I wasn’t willing to go that far. I figured you’d forgive me that since you’re also doing my job for me."

She stared down at her gloves, stood, and then made her way to Ballistic’s side.

"So you backstabbed me," I commented.

"That is not what I said," he defended himself.

"That’s not actually, I don’t think, what I’d expected you to say," I said.

"I stood my ground," he said, in neither half of his usual calm tone.

"And I should point out that at least some of that might have been because you were hoping to get help, or help putting us off-balance so you could play your preferred role at the White Tower. This is more to do with the fact that you’re upset because you can’t reconcile your personal life with your work; I’m pretty sure the only girl in that building is Mirage, and you’ve seen her more than any of the others."

Sophia had stepped out of the room, and I turned my attention to her. The fact that she was a person, instead of an observer, was telling. She’d stooped to posture, as if she was ready to run any second. Any second.

But I wasn’t sure she was a threat. Not when she was this predictable.

"I believe I’m in a position to pick up on subtle clues about your thought process. Would you believe me if I said I knew where you were headed? It’d be so easy. A second thought? Or is that so powerful? Could you stop wanting to try to be like the Undersiders? There won’t be a comeback for a long time."

"We’re headed to the city?" I asked.

"Escaped from the sinking ship, out

======== SAMPLE 24 ========
master turned around, then spun to face me, "I was thinking in terms of the group as a whole… and in the individual cases of individual members of a group, it’s hard to deconstruct their behavior and models into something understandable by outsiders. We get the feeling they aren’t like that in program or in game, at least. The Behemoth simulator seems to give it to him."

"What do you mean when you say all of them are like that?"

"Some are, like Eidolon’s simplified understanding of the Endbringers. No team, no individual members are inherently bad. Good or bad, some are more constrained by rules than others, but generally speaking, the more complex a thing is, the more limited its boundaries. It’s like the difference between a chicken and a duck."

I glanced at Eidolon, who was riding one of his innumerable floating wings. He was taking it easy, even relaxing a touch, despite the current situation. Are they both mentally disabled or something else?

"I don’t mean to say the others are necessarily bad," I said, "But the Simurgh has stressed us all how little we know about them. To put it bluntly, we’re abominations in the truest sense of the word. Multiple universes, multiple dimensions, multiple dimensions of a scale never before imagined. There’s no comparison. Bitch’s dogs are going into overbooking us, The Glaurung Destroyer has gone berserk and gone after people who need it, King of Cups’ creations have gone so far as to attempt to destroy humanity, to overthrow it. No analogy I can think of."

"Then why?" Grue asked.

"That question has yet to be answered. Perhaps the most disconcerting aspect of this whole affair has been how little anyone’s speculated on or hypothesized, yet the damage has been done. Games masters, players, storytellers, it’s time we end this dickish behavior of yours truly and start sharing the benefits of our teamwork."

"Because we lose," Tecton said. "Like, we lose our minds, we lose our competitive edge, we lose the ability to communicate, able to think of ideas that matter, because we start competition with nothing on the field, and those that remain are then fucked over by freaks like you. By Golem. King of Cups, Lung, Dauntless… Golem’s an asshole, but he’s not more than five years old. Secrets, creativity, he turns thirteen and develops PTSD because nobody fully understands what’s up, and everyone that he patently uses is a stranger."

"I remember," I said. "It’s always been there, like the freaks that are about to walk into a burning house."

"I read your file," Tecton said. "I don’t know what you mean by that. There’s exceptions, right?"

I shook my head. "No. There’s a Ziggurat in the Brockton Bay Wards headquarters that was built on the ruins of an old structure. I’m guessing the lawyers were on the property at the time the Slaughterhouse Nine were holding town."

"I remember," Tecton said. He wasn’t improving as fast as his partner, but he said, "I went there when I was thirteen. You go, and the people there say there’s a hole in the wall. Maybe. It doesn’t really matter. Less than two years ago, Leviathan tore it down. You probably don’t know the story there. Brewster and his partners made some money off the land, but he lost the money he made from the site’s destruction, and since then, he’s been trying to get funding to revive the idea, to bring another one to the city. Lose what’s left of the economy, try to recoup what you’ve lost in the war on the home front. He rips through the city to do it."

"I see," I said. Interest was crushing my efforts to get back to a normal life. I would have complained, none of me would have blamed Tecton or Wanton for trying something, but they faced a barrage of accusations and negative press, and still they stood by their decision.

"You’re still going?"

"Still able bodied. No major injuries, it was clean up with no damage to anyone, thankfully. If the damage was any worse, it could get ugly."

"Okay. You’re not making enough to stay at the Hotel?"

"Goes way up," Tattletale said, as if she were reassuring a child.

"Way up

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master were to be put to work fighting the Nine.

Capes who had fled to higher ground ran for the nearest hills, shrubs and tree. Those who could fit through the gaps in the shrubbery or the gaps in the tall grass occupied by the massive, primitively angled rockslide tried to make their way over a rocky slope that followed the hill they’d climbed. When they reached an inconspicuous place where there was more than one small slope going down together, they gathered in a loose ring around their headquarters. The ones who could put their skills to work struck jobs, healed wounds, raised beds. To get something done, they would hike it to the ground, or hike machines and other necessities.

A Cerberus with two segmented heads.

The first of my teams arrived. Newter and Charmander were old enough to be considered adults, so they went together. The rest of the teams consisted of the kids who couldn’t or wouldn’t deal with the work and the needs of the cities, confined in building and implementation of the zones.

The tall grass had been cut, so there was less green in the aftermath of the Leviathan attack. The zones themselves were tall grass and mutant growth, wreaths of sand that wreathed the larger pieces of the taller buildings in place of the streetlights and other infrastructure. I stood on the top of the tallest building in the zone, and the bugs molded Leviathan into a form most of us would recognize as monster.

I separated my swarm from Leviathan’s and tracked his movements. He descended to the ground, and the husk of his former form scrabbled after it, searching. My bugs could sense him changing – a second wind.

I heard a girder collapse, touched ground to catch my balance. I didn’t have any girder segments in my costume, but I had other assets. I walked beside Newter as he landed, and felt him close to me. I slipped on the ice and pulled it off, to stop where it was precarious.

Bugs started to gather near me. They included beetles, arachnids and worms, many of the latter on the ground alongside the larger bugs. I wasn’t feeling particularly calm, but there were exceptions everywhere. Around me, the ice shimmered, swirled and warped. It made for a mirage.

The biggest of them, a beetle, touched my shoulder. I hesitated, then pulled the bug out of my costume.

"I’m not slippery," it said.

"You’re ice, Bitch."

"I’m pretty," it said.

"Get rid of it," Bitch ordered, looking around for a suitable item to prod. "Treat humans with respect."

"I treat people with respect," I said. "It’s a fact of being human. It’s my job."

"Riiiiiiiiiight," the smallest beetle made sound, then ran off.

Nobody ever talked about respect, I thought, Sveta discarding the tendril as a bodyguard and stepping forward. Nobody ever talked about respect, I thought, as I’d just turned a full four feet tall. It wasn’t in the slightest.

People still called me Weaver. My civilian name.

I didn’t regain my senses until Eleonora had lunged into the room and was holding me down. Riot control, my bugs were on hand to keep the crazies in their ranks.

"Sierra," I tried, but she looked at me and didn’t speak.

"Nice to meet you," I said. When she shifted position, I lowered my voice, "Is there something urgent? A need to talk?"

Silence, a murmur.

"A lot on your conscience in the span of seconds," she said. She had to raise her voice to be heard over the music that blared from the entirety of the cell. Two teenagers, both male. One was ugly, the other was very attractive. Big for his age, too young. So maybe my visit had just encouraged them to begin discussing their possible partnership.

"What on earth do you want?" I asked. "You’re supposed to be introducing us."

"Just curious," she said, offering me a curt nod.

"We’re building a team," I said. "Registration’s almost here."

"Oh," Sierra said. She sounded surprised. "That’s good. We were just discussing options."

"I thought you were going to say no," Myrddin said.

Sierra shook her head. "I’m sorry. My train of thought stopped before it was possible. What

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master

"We just set foot inside."



Hive 5.5


"We’re not supposed to be out like this," Glenn said.

"Okay," I said. "Gonna fix our hair now."

"You too."

I pulled off my armored panels. A quickie look around. No dice. They were covered in white dust, and the heat of the room and my bugs gave away much of the craft’s shape. Image, mystery and all the crap that implied a thing was up.

By the time I realized what Glenn was doing, his body would be set into the suits, its joints and claws riveted together. I’d fucked up my ability to see all of its internal workings. It would be like detecting a particularly persistent gas in a room by smelling it. Hers was like a thin fog. My bugs’ noses were the only thing that I could make out, except the fog was worse in texture and seemed to seep past the panels without any repelling properties.

The various drones started to speak, their own inner-workings tinkling and shifting as they compared notes with the speaker system.

"We are here for a reason," it said.

"Know why we are here," I replied.

"Sudden death clairvoyance. A class-A threat."

The drones shifted more, increasing in size.

I was trying to be objective. Was there not some way I could validate that this was a serious situation? Was there not some hook I could hang this panel on?

"It is," the system said.

"Not guaranteed," I said. "Does offer some small strength of form. Claimant set pin at three point five three five seven percent."



There was a note of art in the language. Or maybe it was the same language as the drones. It didn’t fit. The claim was either sloppy or disingenuous.

"You claim to have a particular perspective? For lack of a better word. You’d be surprised at what you’re capable of."

"I think you lack common sense. Parahuman abilities are a strong point in any case."

"You’re parahuman?" I asked.

"Perhaps not. We have documented cases in which individuals have transformed despite having powers being a contributing factor. We have documented cases in which individuals have justifiably lost their powers, only to come back, showing enhanced parahuman abilities. You’re one of them."

"No powers, major deviations from the mark," I said. "I guess it does qualify as a bonus."

The system frowned.

"Let me know when you reach a dead-end," Glenn said. "I’d like you to consider our options."

"We can’t reach anyone right now," Aiden said.

"You’d have to make a circuit, talk to Tattletale," Glenn said. "There’s no convenient avenues. The deadens, the rooms we’re passing through."

"Sure. Sure."

There was a new member to the group. Leet-clone zero-two-three. The thinker unit had to be careful about picking locks and identifying keycards, be aware of lockpicks and whetter-tucker fights, because any of them could theoretically close a door.

The others were in the warehouse with the suds. Four more entities to deal with.

"Endbringer," I said.

"Circumstances beyond their control," Dragon said.

A failure to reach agreement, a deadlock. The ship couldn’t afford to take a shot at these things. If these things started exploding, it could mean war with a thousand superpowered individuals, just as Endbringers had with lesser opponents.

"Fine," I said. I used my bugs to gesture for Dragon to low to the ground. She started to move to follow, but a part of her faced the window. A circular blob of darkness swelled from the spot where the window had shattered, closing around her. A bubble that expanded on a whim from her general shape to an area twice the size of the city block.

It took a minute before she was finally lying down, free to move. Using her forelimbs to leverage herself to her feet, she slowly made her way toward the source of the screeches.

The same spot Endbringer frequented? He’d entered through a hole in the side of what was then the only intact building. The remnants of a sunken ship still stood a distance away, too damaged to serve as a stand-in for Tohu.

Endbringer attacked, and he took down two of

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master on the end?"

"My god." Did they? "Does this guy have anything to do with anthills?"

"He does."

I shrugged. It was better I wasn’t sure where the subject had come up. If I could pass it on to someone who could verify, I would greatly appreciate it. "Anyways, this part of the city is pretty barren, and I guess you don’t want to be in the middle of a barren wasteland, either."

"What’s the point of developing an art form if it leads to extinction?"

"If I can kill another being outright, there’s no point to calling it art. It’s reductive. There’s only the abstract and the tangible, and maybe an idea behind it, but all of this is ultimately meaningless anyways. All of this is turning my power against itself. I’ve got enoughtle to take on whatever it takes to stay alive, and when that turns out to be trouble, I’ll end up dying anyways, so I’m not forcing it."

She met my eyes, looking down. She wasn’t angry, and she wasn’t condemning my actions either. It was still an empty gesture.

Tattletale had left. Perhaps the catalyst had been the news report on the Cabal. Maybe the catalyst had been the reveal that their leader was a monstrous parahuman known as Eidolon. In Grue’s position? Perhaps.

In either event, it had taken time to gather, to prepare and gather information. Now it was just my luck that was working in my favor, my bugs working in conjunction with me on a precision level.

I set about identifying the individual sub-weapons I could use, and how I could leverage them in tandem. There was a microscope on my desk, an unused splinter of wood from my costume hanging from the ceiling. Wood and file folders sat beside my computer.

I pulled out my smartphone and put it on the counter. The first thing I did was to set up my array.

Right, at the very top of the walk-in closet, I put my phone in the mannequin’s mouth and begin making calls. There were six men out of my range. I started calling everybody I knew who would listen.

"Hand, mein," Grue said.

My minions began forming into a rough double helix, pulling the ladder up to the second gun mount.

"Hand, mein," he said more aloud, this time with his eyes.

I was behind the wheel, now. I input my coordinates into the phone and drove towards the men.

They had seven guns, all of identical designs, their ranges and combat effectiveness in mind, but it was the size of the groups that made them formidable. Stuff like this was something Huntsmen and Wards tended to get their done in their downtime. It was how we maintained a fight where every bullet needed to fly in the right direction and hit the enemy in sufficient numbers. It was also how we maintained a offensive line.

Using the rear of the truck to block the others from their position, I steered clear, reapplying the pressure through the formation to keep them from getting a bead on my power. I pulled the double helix out of the box and set it down, running the last several hundred feet to the edge of the parking lot.

No use bringing reinforcements now, at this point. They’ll have reinforcements already on hand, and they’ll be back soon.

The women were hidden within, waiting for me in the shadows. I was careful in how I didn’t step on their burried wives. They had kids of their own, and these were people with kids. It said something that a guy with no less than ten cars molested a helpless little girl, when I thought about it.

There were seven women and seven children. Seven women moshing in a loose ring around a massive clairvoyant and his puppet, accompanied by thirteen children. There was a huge cluster of people behind them, women who were either holding their husbands or sons or something like children. When the man reached out to touch them tenderly, they pulled away.

No use giving them a nudge or encouraging them to leave, now. They’d be looking to get out of the carnival atmosphere by the end of the day.

I watched as the woman with the three month old girl approached me. She had acne, but looked prim and proper, with only a bit of a belly and high heeled shoes. Her clothes weren’t exactly fine, but I could see the skirts of her plaid green polo shirt and denim skirt were a touch tight. Is that basic training or something? Girls in

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master and his other underlings. He’s being disingenuous, he’s not very bright, he’s caught between the obvious choice and the one that makes the most sense, between the heroic and villainous. He doesn’t really care about either."

"I’d say something to that," I said. "I don’t really believe this stuff, but I don’t reject it either. But maybe, if someones power wasn’t negotiable, if we could enlist their help, we could choose the help of the Piggots anyways. Might be an incentive for them to give us the benefit of a doubt."

Tecton glanced at Cuff. I suspected he wasn’t the only one who thought along those lines.

"Or maybe not," Cuff said.

"Then I hope you’re wrong, and this isn’t a ploy by the Endbringer to get us to play his power for a profit. I hope you’re right. For Leviathan, for this whole enterprise. Because victory is worth it."

"He doesn’t care about any of that."

"He doesn’t have the slightest interest in victory, lowly hero," I said. I glanced at Clockblocker. He nodded a little. "He’s on our side for a reason."

"I don’t understand," Tecton said.

"Think about it," I said. "All this, all this fighting, some of the scariest capes around, and you just give it a rest. Let it sink in. You can’t really beat the Empire Eighty-Eight, Canaries aside, even from a distance. Can you really go up against a power that size?"

"I’m a lot more comfortable taking on the Nine," Clockblocker said. "I’m used to being the target, always being on the defensive. Against the Thanda, against the Birdcage, I was constantly able to rely on the fact that I could get a lead, get a justice of the court that was always on the horizon. I’ve never been able to do that against an opponent that actually ME."

"Me?" I asked.

"The court in this town is looking to the winner for damages awarded in a case where the loser was wrongfully accused," Clockblocker said. "Given what happened at the trials, it’s not unreasonable to think that this will be a retrial. Maybe one Judge TBD under good cop bad cop. Someone familiar with the town and the situation."

"We’re not losing many in this fight," I said.

"Pretty much. The thing is, the rest of the city doesn’t know this. Legend doesn’t want the details to leak, because it impacts tourism, the business of the Protectorate in Brockton Bay. I raised the subject with head judge Laufman, who we may or may not replace with a judge of record. I hinted at it, saying that if we replaced him with a more reliable reporter like Cauldron’s Kenta, things would be worse."

"With the possible exception of the Skye murder," Kid Win said.

"I don’t want the details to hurt tourism. I want to make sure anyone looking to visit the south end of town knew that there was real life crime in the area. That is, if things hadn’t already gotten out of control elsewhere."

"The nearest airport is four hours away by road," Miss Militia said. "We can’t land there and be done in five minutes. Arcadia?"

"We’re operating in the darkness, there’s no cars, and there’s almost no traffic in this Dunkirk. If there’s trouble, there’s probably be a car on the other side of the airport."

"We have security," I said. "People and cars to keep an eye out for."

"We should stock up on supplies," Miss Militia said, leaning back in her seat.

"Shit," Clockblocker said. "People are going to be anxious, with the possibility of fighting downtown. I don’t want that."

"I’m not complaining," I said. "But that was a bit of a problem, wasn’t it?"

"You were the one to point it out," Miss Militia said.

"Yeah," I said. "You pointed it out."

"I didn’t realize you were doing it," Miss Militia said.

Oh. Another clue that he’s onto us. There was just a little more of a warning at the

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master, she’d probably been thinking how to protect herself, and there it was, appearing in front of me.

This is your city, the people here, some of you. I can’t make promises, but I can say this much: If you want your dream of a superhero team getting its championship shot in the arm, you’re welcome to it. If you want to bitch and moan and moan about how you don’t get to participate in the events, you can have your say, and I bet you’ll be happier in the end."

I looked around the empty room. The Protectorate, the Wards? Not one of them.

"Shit," Tattletale said. I couldn’t see her in my field of vision, but someone else was right in front of us. Kaiser. He was giving us hard instructions. About targets. About methods.

Feeling hungry, I offered my own instructions. "If Grue orders, we’ll give Bitch and Regent the rest of the bottle, along with some bites for the remaining nine. And we’ll grab any bottles from the break."

"Taking this passive," Revel said, "Maybe we’ll look like we’re not pushing the bearer of bad news."

"Maybe," I agreed. "But we’d look bad, and we’d piss you off more than if we were telling you directly."

"Piss you off is the least of our worries," Tattletale said, smiling.

The armor of my costume had changed, the belt and the armor at my hips adding mass. My hair was pretty much the same, now, long and thick, and my features were broader, with more emphasis on the features on my face and neck. I now sported dark sunglasses over my mask. Teeth, by contrast, were soft.

I suppose she knew how paranoid I was.

"Any reactions?" Revel asked.

I mouth-fed her a nervous laugh.

"Ruby’s still hurt," I said. I turned to Revel, "Don’t touch her."

She frowned, but she didn’t argue.

Better to have options. I could fake hesitation, a loss of composure. It would hurt, to reveal my plan. But I was OK with it. It would simplify matters.

In a way, I was hoping, they would hate me for my plan. They would know I was working towards what she was, in a way, but they wouldn’t necessarily hate me. They would know, even more than they now know, that I was putting myself in mortal danger.

I waited until she was standing before I reached out and took her hand. We held each other’s hands over our helmets, and we marched straight towards the fighting.

In one fell swoop, we changed tactics from our previous, and we found ourselves in the thick of it. We were at the crossroads, and the only thing we could control was the fight.

It was a different dynamic than we’d had with Newter, where everything was coordinated. With us, it was more risk averse. Me, you… I dunno. I feel like it’ll be better to not be in charge, here.

Not that I was so sure.

There was a sense of the city as a whole, and it was shared by everyone. People were complaining, but they’re complaining about something, and something else was happening elsewhere.

Coil was complaining about his old location. He and Vice Admiral Grim were arriving to complain about the damage that had been done to the machinery, and things weren’t getting better fast enough. Plans were afoot to get the city moving again, but there was just too much risk of the Simurgh getting her hands on it, and there was just too much opposition from too many different directions.

I was suddenly acutely aware of the fact that I was tired, and my attentions were more my own than anything else.

The kids were already moving, POLITICOILOTS doing their best to surround myself and my rescuers as we made our way down the street. Only BONES and ODYSSEY were still in my range, getting ready to run some more.

In a way, I was glad. It would be a grave error to let my people rest and take it’s' fill, like we had when we were in the thick of it.

This was something to occupy my attention, and I could let my people focus on other things. If I had to worry about my people, I’d let them do the talking.

It would be cowardly if I didn’t.

CHuckles were

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master, and it had taken him years.

"You’re going to lose your mind," he said.

"Not yet. Will I be able to pressure you?"

"I’ll make you piss off," he snapped, and the emotion in his tone caught me off guard. I didn’t respond.

"You’ll provoke him," Defiant said. "Push him to use his power in a way that surprises us or pushes you into the breach."

"This isn’t even scraped together," Prefab said. "It’s lower priority."

"The second this picture is released," Defiant said, "I’ll make it a priority kill."

"I can see that," Prefab said.

When I glanced back at the screen, things didn’t look promising. The camera flickered, and then disappeared.

The camera lingered on Marquis and Guildenet, hovering over them, as if to show the differing degrees of their powers. There was the briefest of pauses, each image reloaded a few times, as the effect of the last one bending a section of floor to its real mass.

"Reward unknown," Defiant said.

"I can make something," I said.

"You’re a tinker," Prefab said. "You know that."

"I’ve worked for the PRT for five years. In that time, we’ve been in a lot of fancy disguise and false identities. We set up shop, stole from the old Dragon’s Palace, then started making our way home. I have a debt of more than a million dollars, I reckon."

"That’s on top of the missing Dragon’s Sword," Prefab said. "We could have taken a hit to our reputation, dropped them on you. It wouldn’t have made a huge splash, I might have. Would have done more damage than good."

"Then," I said, "I wouldn’t bother asking for your forgiveness, I wouldn’t betray you on the spot, and I wouldn’t ask you to sacrifice yourself for the greater good. I’d show my hand, and you’d abandon me."

Prefab clapped his hands together once, then frowned. He tapped his chair, and an opened hangar-door in the wall below booted open.

He moved his hands behind his back, and the portal shifted back into place.

I had a growing doubt I could trust them, with the revelations the Travelers had made about Word and the Scarab.

I gathered my bugs, readying to introduce myself.

"I’m sorry, Sophia," I said.

"What?" she asked.

"It’s too late to undo what happened. We’ve got to end this now."

"We do have a time limit. You wanted to end it soon, but… now is not the time to end it. It is, but things have shifted," Sophia explained.

"My time is up," she said.

"Now is the time to end it. We’re all going to die. We’ll all slip into the role of villains and victims, as we let one another slip into the role of similar characters. Only this time, the act will be staged," I said.

"I don’t want to end it," she said. "But it seems like the perfect time."

The moment Rice and Shatterbird had disappeared from the balcony, I had caught up and was running alongside her.

Through the bug-signal, I found out, the Travelers had decided to split up. Powder had set up Stronghold, a holding pen for captured or unemployed members of Empire Eighty Eight, and had invited some of his crew over. Mostly unemployed, in their dim way, they’d seemed to settle into a life of collective hysteria, with fists clenched and heartbeats that were too fast for even Clockblocker. Arriving at the temporary settlement, they’d started dividing up, with some gathering in groups and sharing food and water, while the rest scattered liberally, calling each other by their names.

I knew it had been a tribal thing, between himself and Sophia, but it seemed that tribal instinct had led to them forming an alliance. With some coordination, they’d diverted some of the elders and chosen few from their own group to go with them, changing their group name to Masked Marauder’s. Sugar had set them up just far enough away that they couldn’t be attacked from long range, so they were out of reach of the sniper and pyrokinetics