12:29 pm

"Coming up here. Here! Stop!"

I had to shout to my motorcycle's driver to be heard over the din. Downtown was filled with the roar of car engines and honking horns, the yells of evacuating families trying to stay together in the crush of the crowds, the cries of the people who were dying in the rubble of collapsed buildings, the louder cries of the grieving survivors.

And underneath it all was the Simurgh's scream in the back of my head, an endless cacophany of warbling shrieks. The Simurgh had taken the Protectorate's bait, flown out into the bay to tear apart their floating base, but her song was still twice as loud here as it had been in the motel.

I would have to be conservative with my time. Twenty minutes to get in, get Dinah, and get out. Any longer than that, and...and I didn't want to think about the consequences.

I jumped off the backseat of the motorcycle before it came to a full stop and ran without looking back. I shouted my thanks to the driver as I ran. He had been a godsend. Cars were useless, gridlocked by the sheer density of evacuees and car crashes, but with his motorcycle he had managed to navigate the streets. I left the man my duffel bag of cash. A quarter of a million dollars. An exorbitant price at any other time for less than five minutes of work.

I already knew where I was going. I had been using my power to gather insects ahead of me, selecting the best species for scouting and search and rescue. Houseflies, dragonflies, mosquitoes, beetles in the air. Cockroaches, millipedes, and legions upon legions of ants underground.

The damage to Coil's base made it easier for me to search. The impacts from missiles and collapsing buildings had shaken bugs loose from their underground burrows and opened cracks in the walls, giving them countless entrances to infiltrate the base's otherwise sterile corridors. I could sense the entirety of the base, every nook and cranny.

What I found was a disaster area. The surface was a wreck, the construction site pocked with craters and wrecked fragments of skyscrapers. The underground was even worse. The surface impacts alone weren't nearly enough to explain the maze of twisting passages and buried crevices Coil's base had become. The Simurgh must have been using her telekinesis on the base directly, to rip apart the foundations and collapse ceilings.

The base was filled with people trapped inside. At least thirty people alive and active, and twice as many bodies that lay still and unmoving. I sent my insects to each one, trying to determine their identities, to gauge my allies and opposition. Who were the survivors? Were the Undersiders there? The Travellers?

Most of all, where was Dinah?

While my underground insects searched for survivors, my surface insects searched for an entrance. I could sense nine separate underground exits, many of them apparently designed as boltholes for emergencies, but every single one of them had been sealed off by collapses and rubble. The Simurgh's handiwork?

The only way in was through a missile impact crater on the far side of the construction site. The crater had opened a large hole into an underground room. The room was filled with debris, but the way it had fallen created a long, twisting passage that led to the intact parts of the facility where the survivors were clustered. What was strange was that the survivors weren't using the passage to evacuate. There were fourteen corpses lying on the floor, but not a single living person trying to traverse it.

I had an inkling of the reason. There was a dead zone in the entrance room, roughly twenty feet in diameter, where my bugs were unable to reach. Any bugs I sent into the zone were sucked into a soft, sticky substance and the disappeared from my senses. And the walls and debris that touched the dead zone were being periodically pushed, hammered with heavy impacts. A parahuman? Some kind of Tinker device the survivors were using to tunnel out?

My bugs told me where to go for answers. I climbed over a collapsed fence into the construction site and jogged over to the small crowd standing clustered around the entrance crater.

The Travellers. Trickster, immediately identifiable in his red mask and top hat. Sundancer and Ballistic, their heavy hitters. With them was a strikingly handsome man wearing civilian clothes - one of Genesis' forms?

Trickster was crouching at the lip of the crater, smoking a cigarette and raising his voice to talk to someone inside. The parahuman making the dead zone?

"I get it, Noelle, I get it one hundred percent, but fighting isn't an option." said Trickster. "If we do that, everyone loses and the Simurgh wins. We'd be playing right into her hands."

A deep, echoing voice replied. "...fake angel is following us, won't let me rest...hate her so much! I'll kill her this time!"

A massive impact shook the base. The rubble in the entrance room shifted but stayed in place.

"I wish we could, Noelle, but it won't work. The best capes in this world have tried for a decade and haven't come close. It sucks, I hate it as much as you do, but we need to run. I'll get us out of here, we'll grab Coil and his precog for protection from her plans-"

"Don't you see, Krouse? There's no way out. We keep to ourselves, she wins. We get protection, she flies in and kills them! She won't let us rest until she's dead or we are!"

The handsome man spoke up. "Don't give up, Noelle. Please. We're a team, we'll make it as long as we stick together. Remember our promise."

An ugly sound, somewhere between a laugh and a sob. "Our promise isn't worth a thing if we're dead! She took Chris, she took Cody, now she took Jess...so tired of living like this...I want to end it, Krouse, here and now, one way or the other."

Another massive impact in the base.

The Travellers finally noticed me as I approached the lip of the crater.

"Skitter." said Ballistic. "Didn't expect to see you here."

"I came to help. Are the Undersiders down there? Coil?"

Ballistic nodded. "They're all down there. I can't say they're alive."

"How about-" I hesitated. They had been talking about grabbing Dinah, treating her like a prize to be won. I couldn't let them know I was here to set her free, but if I made it sound like I was in the same boat... "How about his precog? I'm kind of counting on her for something personal."

"I assume she's down there too. If you want to help, wait here with us. Our teammate Noelle is digging them out."

Noelle? They had another member? "There's a zone down there where my bugs get killed. That's her?"

"Got it. She's big and super strong but she got stuck, impaled on a few I-beams. Doesn't matter how strong you are if you don't have leverage. Might take her a few minutes to get through."

This Noelle had a serious Brute rating, if being impaled by I-beams was a minor inconvenience. In other circumstances I would dig for information about the new cape, but...

"No time to spare. I'm going in now." I said. I started climbing down the crater, but Trickster ran forward to stop me with a hand on my shoulder.

"Whoa, whoa. It's dangerous. Wait for Noelle to finish."

"I'll be fine. There's an open passage curved around her." I gestured, indicating the path. "Maybe too narrow for you, but I can squeeze by."

Trickster shook his head, gripped my shoulder tighter. "You don't get it. Noelle's power is extremely dangerous, touch activated. Your bugs die when they touch her, right? Your bugs tell you about the bodies on the floor down there? You'd better wait."

"Shit." But her power didn't 'kill' the rubble around her, so... "Touch activated. Does it need skin contact? My costume covers everything."

"Your hair's not covered."

"Her power activates on hair contact?"

"Don't know. We never tested it because we like this little thing called being alive."

"I...you know what, fine. I'll cut off my hair. Problem solved." I shook off his arm, reached into the holster in my belt and pulled out my combat knife. My insects found a scrap of cloth on the other side of the site that I could fashion into a covering for the back of my head. I commanded them to bring it to me.

Trickster pursed his lips behind the mouth-hole of his mask. "Look, Skitter. You're not getting it. Noelle's power is bad news. Going down there now is most likely going to get you killed, or else get one of us killed. Best not to risk it."

His attitude was pissing me off. "Stop fucking with me, Trickster! You're not getting it. Who the hell are you to tell me to give up on my friends?" He didn't reply, and I turned back to the crater. "There's no time. I'm going in."

Trickster flipped his cigarette to the ground. "I'm not sure we can let you do that."

I tensed for a fight. I didn't like my chances. I couldn't beat the Travellers alone, I would have to make a run for it. But if Trickster had a free line of sight he could keep me away from the crater indefinitely. His power let him swap the locations of any two objects he could see that had similar size and mass. I reached out to my insects and found that I had already unconsciously drawn them into position to counter his power. One squad gathered on the ground behind him, ready to jump him as a distraction, another group inside the base near the crater, ready to fly up to form a wall and screen off his vision-

A deep voice came from inside the crater. "Skitter, is it? The girl with the bugs?"

"Yes." I said, not taking my eyes off Trickster. "Nice to meet you, Noelle. Think you can let me through?"

"...you smell strong. Strongest one I know...Come down. I'll make sure my power doesn't hurt you."

Smelling me? I didn't know what she was talking about but I wasn't about to question my good fortune.

"Thanks Noelle. Coming down now." I looked for footholds on the lip of the crater, then carefully lowered myself down and into the rubble-filled passage below.

The Travellers watched me go as if I was a condemned man walking to the gallows. Not reassuring.

Trickster called out behind me. "I know what you're thinking, Noelle, but you don't want to do this. She's only got bugs, she can't hurt the Simurgh."

"You did this to me, Krouse! You owe me this. Or else the Simurgh did this to me, and we'll kill her. We can't let her push us around forever!"

I started down the passage. The only light was a dim trickle of sunlight from the crater opening I had come through. My bugs helped me navigate the irregular floor of the passage, covered with rubble and dead bodies. My insects informed me that most of the bodies were stark naked and grotesquely mangled. An effect of Noelle's power? I set my jaw and tried not to think about it.

After ten paces I came face to face with Noelle. In a manner of speaking. As my eyes adapted to the dim light I saw that the 'dead zone', the right side of the passage, was a massive wall of living flesh, covered in bestial paws, mouths, and eyeballs of all sizes. The eyeballs turned to watch me as I passed, and one of the mouths licked its lips.

"Um. Hi, Noelle." I said.

"Hi. Watch out." she said, speaking with three mouths at once. Her paws tensed, and then she jolted in place, shaking the room and sending loose debris raining down on me. I stifled a scream and shielded my head with my arms until the debris settled.

"Noelle, can you, um, wait to let me through? I'll only be a minute."

"Hurry." she said.

I made it two steps forward before my foot slipped on the remains of a half-melted corpse. I reached for the safe side of the passage to brace myself-

The Simurgh's scream in my head intensified, reached a peak, and an earthquake hit. My bugs felt the quake ripple through the ground, moving away from the bay. The aftershock of an attack being used against the Endbringer.

I stumbled, lost my balance, and landed on Noelle's wall of flesh. Her skin was sticky to the touch, and the parts of my body that touched her sank directly into her flesh as if it was a very thick, viscous gel. I tried to move away, only to find that the back of my head was adhering to her flesh, literally stuck inside. After a few frantic seconds of struggle I managed to work myself free and threw myself to the floor of the passage.

"Sorry." said Noelle.

I gasped and pulled myself to my feet. Then flinched away from her as something long and wet snaked out of her flesh and licked the back of my head.

"Sorry." she said. "Force of habit. You taste strong."

"N-no problem." I shuddered and picked up my pace.

As I half-walked, half-crawled my way down the passage, I was working with my bugs to identify the survivors. The first thing I checked for were young girls, about twelve years old. No matches.

Damn it. Dinah wasn't here. But someone here would know. Coil, or Tattletale, or...

Coil was in what I took to be a computer room, sealed off from the other survivors by an airtight metal door, probably locked. There were tall closets in walls that were similarly sealed off, vaults that my bugs couldn't penetrate. Coil was in front of a bank of computer screens, typing madly on a keyboard and occasionally pulling servers and data drives out of a rack and stuffing them in a duffel bag. He must have a special-purpose power system to still be getting power for his computers. One of the sleeves of his costume was torn off, and the arm underneath was wet with blood.

The Undersiders were in a mostly-intact conference room down the hallway. They were joined by a group of Coil's employees, six men and three women, carrying varying degrees of military equipment and weapons. The Undersiders were in poor shape. Grue, recognizable by his leathers and motorcycle helmet, was bending over Tattletale, who was laid out on the conference table and breathing in a slow, regular rhythm. Unconscious, I hoped. Bitch was pacing back and forth in an endless cycle, occasionally directing a sharp head movement - a glare? - at whoever was nearest. I couldn't find her dogs - ah. Three dogs of hers were in an adjacent room, blocked off and hidden from her sight by a thick barrier of loose debris.

Regent was there, too. He lay on the floor of the room, not moving or breathing, his body growing cold. My breath caught in my throat. I, I...

...I shook myself and kept moving. I had seen hundreds of people dead or dying in my five minute motorcycle ride through downtown. I couldn't let one more slow me down. Besides, however much Regent had acted as if he was my friend, he had been completely fine with Coil's enslavement of Dinah.

I was shaken from my thoughts by a thick, wet sound behind me. The place it came from was hidden from my view by the curvature of the passage, but I sensed what was happening with my bugs. One of Noelle's mouths had spurted a fountain of warm, sticky liquid, from which rose a woman, tall and thin. She pulled herself to her feet and took off in a dead run to the exit. Noelle whipped out a tongue and caught the woman around the neck. She whispered something to the woman, then let her go.

As the woman neared the exit, I felt an abrupt wave of activity through my swarm as a fraction of my bugs moved in unison without my commands. Strange, many of the bugs were internal parasites that couldn't normally move on their own - ah. The bugs were being carried. All the small mammals in my range were moving as one. Mice, rats, squirrels, even a bat, all converging on the woman who was climbing out of the crater.

On the surface, Trickster turned his head toward the woman and she instantly disappeared. A second later the all of the mammals changed directions, moving to converge on a new point far outside of my range, probably more than a mile away.

What the hell? Noelle spit out a woman who attracted mammals?

"Noelle, who was that?" I said.

"Clone of you." she said. "You'll see-"

A mouth in the wall in front of me opened wide and gushed out a wave of chunky vomit and the upper half of a woman. She was naked, on her back, her head and torso in the passage while the rest was still inside the mouth. The woman groped out with her arms, found a grip on a piece of fallen debris, and began clambering out of the mouth.

I sent in my bugs in to get a sense of her shape in the dim lighting of the corridor...but the instant my bugs touched her they froze, refusing to heed my commands. I tried again, reaching out to the full extent of my swarm. Most of my bugs obediently moved toward me, but the bugs in a fifty foot zone around me had become unresponsive.

No, wait. Not a fifty foot zone around me. A zone centered on her. The woman wiped a stream of vomit out of her eyes and grinned at me with a grotesque, blister-pocked mockery of my own face.

A clone of me.

The woman, the other-me, let out a primal scream. A cry that mixed the raw emotions of relief and rage, triumph and malice.

And then my bugs turned on me. Swarming to cover my face, to get under my feet and throw off my footing, to crawl down the roots of my hair and bite at my scalp.

I let out a strangled scream and flailed at the bugs that were no longer my own. As fast as I pushed the bugs off my costume, mor came to replace them. I slipped on a mass of cockroaches that crawled underfoot and landed on my back. The woman's swarm was growing impossibly fast, doubling and then doubling again.

I realized that my power was drawing bugs to me from everywhere in my range. An instinctive response to attack, but in this case it was only bringing more insects into the woman's control range. I sent out a command to override it, and-

Noelle's deep, booming voice echoed through the corridor. "Stop it! Lay a finger on her and I'll kill you!"

The bugs around me froze in place.

"Get the bugs off her."

The bugs crawled off me and my vision cleared. The woman was still inside Noelle's mouth but she was writhing in place, in obvious pain. Noelle's mouth had bitten down on her hard, trapping her upper body in the corridor and her lower body inside the wall of flesh.

The other-me hissed in pain. She glared at me and spoke to Noelle in my own voice. "You can't trust her, Mom. That girl is an abomination. Hypocritical wannabe hero. Hates Emma for betraying her, but she stays up at night planning to betray four of her friends, her only-"

Did she really just say-

"Shut up! You're the abomination." said Noelle.

The other-me cringed, "I, no, no, you can't mean that, I-" She stopped herself, swallowed. "...sorry Mom. That arrogant little shit just pisses me off."

"I made you for fighting the Simurgh. The originals are off limits. Do your job or I'll kill you."

The other-me glowered at me for a moment. Then her expression shifted into a smirk. "Okay Mom. I'll be a good girl. Scout's honor."

I stared at the clone. The other-me apparently had my shape, my memories, even my power...and she hated my guts. I wonder what that said about me. Apparently the only thing that held the other-me back from killing me was a bizarre compulsion to treat Noelle as a family member, probably an effect of Noelle's power.

God. Parahumans could be so fucked up.

Noelle released the other-me. The woman crawled out of Noelle's mouth and crouched on the ground on all fours, looking up at me with a smirk. Then the bugs in the fifty foot zone around her converged on her body. I felt them crawl up her arms and legs, and...and crawl into her skin as if it was made of putty. The bugs dissolved into her flesh and her body began to change shape...

The other-me spoke to me with a venomous relish. As if she was getting grievances off her chest that had boiled inside her for years, that she could finally speak for the first time.

"You. Taylor. You took our mother away from us. Murdered her. That eats at you, sits festering in your gut, and you'll have to live with it forever. But me? I have a new Mom now." She ran a hand across one of Noelle's gargantuan mouths. "A thousand times more virtuous and beautiful than that stuck-up English professor."

Her skin was changing color - no, was being covered with a second skin, an exoskeleton. Small patches of jet black carapace appeared around each place where a bug was dissolved into her body. In a matter of seconds, her body was, with thicker concentrations of insects turning into heavier panels of armor around her head and chest. More than armor, her arms and legs were changing shape, fingers lengthening and sharpening into claws, and legs becoming heavily muscled and taking on an odd, curved shape.

"I'll be the good daughter you never were. Defend my Mom to the death. We'll do the right thing and fight to kill an Endbringer. While you scurry away like a coward and keep up your unbroken record of failure at being a hero! Go ahead. Abandon your family and friends to save a kid you hardly know. You'll fail and get yourself killed like the loser wannabe you are!"

The other-me flexed her limbs and leaped into the air above me, kicking my head as she passed above me and knocking me off balance. She made it to the exit in three more hops, far stronger and faster than a normal human. I felt her pass through my swarm, drawing insects to her as she went and absorbing them into her flesh. With the brief moments of contact as the insects were absorbed, I got the impression that her armor was getting stronger, thicker, growing wicked spines.

I stared after the clone. So fucked up.

"Sorry. They're like that. Don't usually call me Mom." said Noelle. She didn't sound sorry. She sounded very, very tired.

"That's...that's fine. Okay." I said. It wasn't okay. It was horrible and wrong and sad.

The clone's words got to me. As if Emma had been transplanted into my body and given all of my memories as tools to bring me down. If I had been at school, and the clone-me had been an ordinary bully, I wouldn't have been able to handle it. Her abuse would have been an emotional assault that hit me in the gut.

But here and now...somehow, I could handle it. I wasn't Taylor Hebert, the bullied schoolgirl. I was Skitter, the powerful cape. I was on a mission to save Dinah Alcott, I was in the middle of a fucking Simurgh attack, and everyone's lives were on the line.

I couldn't let myself think about it any longer. I was running out of time.

I made my way down the passage, drawing bugs to me to replace the ones the other-me took away. Twenty feet and I was past Noelle, and the massive, hammering impacts of her struggles resumed. Thirty more feet, clambering over collapsed sections of infrastructure, and I found my way to the conference room.

It was time to rejoin the Undersiders.