I don't think I blacked out.
Not that I can be totally sure, since I was pretty out of it at the time, but it felt less like unconsciousness and more like... drifting. Sort of like floating on my back in the ocean, somewhere where the waves are small and gentle. I could still see Sentry as he grappled with another Oni Lee, but it all felt very distant, and I couldn't bring myself to care.
I could see a tall, angular shape kneeling down next to me, and for a moment I was confused. All I could make out under the mask was the faint outline of a narrow nose and wide mouth, set in a worried frown. It looked like a caricature to me, as if it was somehow blown way out of proportion, like those soap operas where characters flip out over nothing. Although, I supposed getting stabbed was a decent reason for one of those looks.
The face looked familiar, but my mind was so fuzzy. "Dad?" I asked, because who else would look so worried about me?
"No, honey," the face said, the frown deepening into a grimace. "Stay with me, okay?"
"Not goin' anywhere," I slurred. "Got stabbed."
"You're going into shock," he insisted. "You have to focus." There was a faint twinge of dread, something important I couldn't remember, so I decided to focus on that. Something to do with the face, of it being wrong. It wasn't dad, but it had already told me that. It was Harrison, I realized, not some stranger and not my father. I hated Harrison.
Another clone appeared behind him, and I tried to slur out a warning. He turned, and took the knife on his armored forearm. Wresting it from Lee's grasp, he drove it into the clone's chest. He and the knife both burst into ash, and I noticed some of it flutter down onto my visor.
Harrison shook my shoulder, hard. I knew it would've hurt, but I'd disabled pain for the fight. Probably not a good idea, in the future. It would help me snap out of this... daze, or whatever it was. Or knock me out faster, but I could think about that later. Grimacing, I reached out to the metal parts of my body while keeping my real limbs as still as I could. Harrison tried to push me back down, but I managed to shove an arm beneath me to grab at the wound. With him fighting off the clones, it was up to me to stop the bleeding.
Yet another copy appeared, but before it could move to attack us it was ambushed by a strangely bulky figure that I didn't recognize. The creature began luring Lee further away from us, running full-out at a much faster pace than I would have expected from its stubby legs. I watched dazedly as the odd-looking cape barreled into a broken down warehouse, with Oni Lee following on its heels.
"Damn it," Harrison muttered, and hoisted me up into a fireman's carry. "Lung's getting too close," he said, half to himself. I could see out of the corner of my eye that the sporadic plumes of flame marking the main battle were indeed only a few blocks away. Which, as I'd learned the hard way, wasn't far enough.
Even when I couldn't really feel it, being carried still made me wince at how badly I must be stretching the wound. I could see the asphalt receding behind us as I hung toward the ground, yellow dotted lines flowing past like water.
So, I could see the massive dog that skidded around the corner about six blocks down, with Regent and Tattletale clinging to its back. I tapped Harrison on the shoulder, and he shot a glance behind him. He muttered something that might have been a curse, but sprinted diagonally across the street to where they were.
"Where the hell is Othala?!" he demanded, as soon as the two were close enough to hear him.
"That way," Tattletale panted, jerking a thumb over her shoulder. I could feel Harrison slowing down, but before he got the chance to turn around, a thunderous roar split the air.
"Past Lung," she added, wincing apologetically.
"'ILL 'OO!" shouted the ten-foot-tall flaming metal dragon.
"Fuck," Harrison muttered, pouring on the speed.
"Split up, he might chase us!" Tattletale yelled, and the mutant dog turned another corner, easily outpacing us.
"Cobalt?" Harrison asked, shifting me slightly on his shoulder, "Do you think you can run?"
"Yeah," I managed, and with that I was hitting the ground, wincing at the jarring landing. He tugged me along behind him for a few steps, before I managed to get my feet under me and follow him.
A burst of fire bloomed over my shoulder, and I tucked and rolled to the side to avoid the searing heat. I could feel how soaked my costume was, and it probably wasn't a good sign that there was a loud ringing in my ears. Lung roared, and I swayed from side to side, barely managing to grab hold of the side of a building. Apparently he'd decided to kill the slower prey first.
Once I was steady on my feet again, I found myself staring directly down Lung's red-hot throat. Four jaws opened like petals on a flower, and a long serpentine tongue flicked between them as he readied himself to pounce.
"Shit," I murmured, and jerked to my feet. Adrenaline really is a wonderful thing. Still, even with what felt like fire running through me, I took barely a step backwards before my back hit a wall.
With Lung's face so close and his alien jaws opened wide, I went the only way left to me. Jumping up as high as I could, I grabbed one of the spiny ridges above his forehead and rolled over his head, tumbling down his back and onto the ground. My feet were screaming in protest, having taken the tail end of another blast of fire. He whirled around, hand already in flames, but then Harrison had reached me and was dragging me out of the way.
The dragon hissed, staring at us with molten eyes. Without warning, he lunged, pouncing at Harrison and unleashing a massive gout of fire. Again, Harrison tugged my uncooperative body behind him, supporting me whenever I stumbled and propelling me down the street.
"We need to get around him," Harrison told me, ducking into an alleyway and pulling me after him. "The rest of the villains were engaging him before, but I'm guessing he got ahead of them while he was chasing the Undersiders. They should be around—"
Another deafening roar cut him off as Lung sent a jet of fire toward us, filling the alley with blue and yellow flames. We barely made it around the corner in time, and yet again Harrison had to tug me out of the way. I gritted my teeth, wishing I could run on my own. We could split up, and maybe I could slip away, if...
No. There wasn't any time for this, I knew where that train of thought led already. I had to focus—Lung was hot on our heels, jumping and clawing his way down from the rooftops. He was too big now to fit down the narrow alley, so he'd opted to go up and over.
"Over here!" Harrison shouted, and as I turned to where he was looking I saw a group of villains, most of them Empire, racing towards us.
Glancing back over my shoulder, I took in the set of Lung's mangled jaw and the way he stood tall and straight, his tail lashing against the apartment building behind him. He wasn't afraid—everything about his posture seemed to radiate confidence. Even if he couldn't really speak anymore, the message was clear. "You want to fight? Come at me."
And the next instant, we were behind the front lines, limping along as villains passed us left and right. "Need a healer," Harrison gasped, as we ducked behind the ankles of one of the giantess twins. The front line soon passed us, as we kept sprinting down the road. A group this large would slow Lung down, and I didn't think he'd recognized me, but there was a limit to how much anyonecould do to stop him once he was big enough.
"This way," someone shouted, and I found myself being ushered along by an unfamiliar cape. I was almost certain he was one of Faultline's crew, since he had bright blue hair and orange skin that matched a description I'd read online. He led us into another alleyway off the main street, to where Othala was kneeling beside another of the valkyrie twins. There were burns running up and down her arms and face, and what looked like a claw mark across her stomach, but even as I watched they were fading away into nothing. She must've been hurt badly, if Othala was still healing her.
As soon as the woman was fully healed, her eyes fluttered open and she straightened up, already growing in size. She nodded to her teammate, and without a backward glance, strode in the direction of the ongoing battle.
"Othala," Harrison began, guiding me over to her.
"What happened," the villain asked, standing up.
"She's been stabbed," he snapped, the armor on his fists clacking together as he clenched them.
"I'll help, alright? I just need to know what we're dealing with here." Her voice was surprisingly warm, though I still winced as she moved her hands towards my face.
"For fuck's sake," she muttered. "I need skin contact."
Nodding my understanding, I lifted up my mask slightly and allowed her to lay a few fingers on my neck. I thought I could see her eyes tracking to the exposed skin, and gritted my teeth.
Then I felt a tide of warmth rush through me, and there was a fierce itching feeling radiating from my lower back. The itch spread all through my tired limbs, and within moments I was wiggling my toes in wonder. I hadn't felt this good in a long time, I realized, snapping back to alertness. Othala's healing must have given me an energy boost as well, since I felt like I'd just taken an eight hour nap.
Grinning, I got to my feet and straightened my mask. "Thank you," I said, surprised to find that I really did mean it. She nodded, then ran off toward the fight.
"Come on," Harrison said, tugging on my elbow. Behind his visor, I thought I could see a slight smile pulling at the corners of his mouth. A part of me was still pissed that he'd carried me, but with all that was going on, I decided to let it pass.
Together we sprinted down the street, dodging bits of rubble and patches of melted concrete as we approached the battle. Lung was on fire, and with all the scorch marks on the buildings around him I guessed that he'd been so for a while.
He stood taller than ever, over ten feet as far as I could guess. There was something about his stance, his posture, that seemed like the very embodiment of pure animal rage, his raw anger bleeding out of him in flame and glinting silver scales. I remembered hearing him roar, when I first fought him, and being surprised by how human he'd sounded. Now, he was so amped up I doubted there was anything left of his former body.
Facing the flaming metal dragon, the rest of the villain population of Brockton Bay stood in a rough approximation of unity. Fenja and Menja were shoulder to shoulder, blocking the street and lowering their weapons. That was all the front line we needed, and from behind them came one of the most impressive displays of parahuman firepower I'd seen so far. One cape in red and black was launching anything he could get his hands on at Lung, and at speeds that made him more artillery than telekinetic. Kaiser stood with his feet planted, one hand thrown up in a suitably dramatic pose as spines of metal ripped down the street and grew into gleaming fractal spines all over the street. Standing right beside him was Gregor the Snail, doing his best to hamper the ABB leader despite the fire and rubble everywhere.
Lung just bellowed in fury, shrugging off the blows with little difficulty and slamming into Fenja's shield. His claws scrabbled against the hard surface, before she dug one foot into the ground andshoved. Even as big as he was already, Lung was still dwarfed by the thirty-foot giant, and was toppled over backwards. He twisted in midair in a vain attempt to regain his balance before crashing into the ground floor of a ratty office building. It crumbled inwards, tons of brick and wood and plaster collapsing onto his prone form.
For just a heartbeat, I almost believed we'd won. The dust began to settle atop the remains of the apartment building, and the heat of the fight was starting to dissipate, creating a temporary illusion of silence.
Still, no matter how much I might have let myself hope, I wasn't all that surprised at the deafening roar that split the air, accompanied by a fresh burst of flame that shot out of the rubble. Lung could barely even be called a dragon anymore. He was a force of nature, fury personified into flesh and gore and shining metal scales, and the instant he screamed his challenge to us it seemed ridiculousthat I'd ever thought we might've won. Trapped as he was, he wasn't going to stay that way very long.
Biting at my lower lip, I shifted into a more ready stance, with my hands held out in front of me. Even as I made my best attempt at resistance, I was made very aware of just how useless I was in this fight, with no powers to speak of that could possibly threaten Lung. My body was almost absurdly fragile. Aches and pains I'd picked up since being healed were already making themselves known by way of slight tingling along my arms, and I resigned myself to a long night in my room. If I survived, anyway.
Before the roar had finished dying away, it was almost drowned out by a deep grinding noise coming from the middle of the rubble imprisoning Lung. The rest of the capes seemed to snap back into action, with Menja leading the charge with her spear lowered like a jousting lance.
I moved forward to join them, but before I could take half a step Tattletale was shouting, "White hats!"
Most of the assembled villains ignored her, choosing to keep on blasting the pile of rubble. Harrison on the other hand grabbed my shoulder. "We're beyond useless at this point," he told me, and began striding down the street. I knew, intellectually at least, that he was right. Even when I'd first engaged Lung that night I met the Undersiders, when he was barely seven feet tall and just starting up, I hadn't been able to do much more than play cat and mouse, hoping he'd waste enough time that he wouldn't be able to finish carrying out his plan. Now he was a virtually unstoppable killing machine, and I doubted I could so much as inconvenience him in my current gear.
All the same, I wanted to stay. I wanted to see the fight to its conclusion, not walk away when the city might still get burned to the ground. More than that, I still held on to some lingering hope that maybe one of the heroes would look at me and just... know that I needed help. Tattletale could, and even if that was a bit unfair—pulling facts out of her ass seemed to be her power in a nutshell—I couldn't help but imagine Armsmaster making the connection between Cobalt and the nameless tinker he'd met before.
Still, Harrison sure as hell wasn't going to accept either of those reasons if it meant he was more likely to be found out by the heroes, or more immediately, pulverized by the next best thing to a dragon. He took hold of my armored shoulder and tugged, sending us both bolting down the street. Throwing a look over my shoulder, I caught a fleeting glimpse of a glowing figure that I thought might be Battery. For a moment, I considered making a break for it. It wouldn't even be that difficult, I'd have surprise on my side and would only have to outrun Harrison for a few blocks. The heroes were out in force, they could protect me from Coil if I asked them.
Biting my lip, I turned and faced straight ahead. I'd thought along those lines hundreds of times, and the fact remained that I wasn't willing to risk my dad getting hurt. Rehashing the same thing half a hundred times only made me more frustrated, and brought up the unanswerable question of what else I could do, besides play along. And I was never going to play along.
As I shook my head clear of uneasy thoughts, I found myself surprised by how drastically the temperature decreased as we sprinted further from the fight. It was like walking in fast forward from summer to winter, and I turned my sweat-soaked face toward the sky, hoping to let some small breeze in under my visor. Damn pyrokinetics, I thought, wishing I could wipe my forehead. The night air was as much of a relief now as it was when I'd first left Coil's base, and I noticed that I was walking slower and slower, as if I could somehow delay the inevitable. Harrison was having none of it, and tugged me along by the wrist whenever I fell too far behind.
After a few blocks of this, Harrison turned us down a small side street flanked by two empty-looking warehouses with boarded up windows. Changing out of our costumes was simultaneously easier and more difficult than I suspected it was for most capes. On the upside, we didn't need to find some small corner to hide in while we stripped down, since the armor was uncomfortable to wear without some kind of clothing under it.
Then, there was the downside. I'd stretched my tech as far as it would go towards something like power armor, because I'd wanted to be able to undo whatever I did. But at its core, everything I built was meant to interface directly with my brain. This all meant that I needed to plug it in, for lack of a better phrase. The control unit perched at the base of my skull had three main contact points, each of which had to be driven into the back of my neck, where it would stop just short of my spine. From there, it could send and receive electrical signals from my nervous system to my skeleton.
Now, I had to rip it out. No damage would be done, since it didn't penetrate deep enough to sever any nerves, but the pain inhibitor was in the armor and it hurt like hell. If I weren't so squeamish about the slicing and dicing aspect of my power, I could've just kept it in indefinitely, but I hadn't come up with a viable way of hiding something like that from my dad. Regardless, as long as I was still working for Coil I didn't have many options as far as tech went, so I was stuck with it for the time being.
At the sound of a low hiss from behind me, I glanced at my partner in crime. I was suddenly reminded of that saying about taking negatives and turning them into positives. Maybe it wasn't the kind of healthy optimistic idea the phrase intended, but watching Harrison screw up his face and squirm while he took out his control unit made my own pain completelyworth it.
After we'd changed and stuffed the exoskeletons into a pair of large duffel bags, we headed a few blocks west to where a windowless black van was waiting for us. I had to resist the urge to laugh, since of course Coil had a windowless black van. Harrison gave me an odd look, and I realized I was smirking slightly to myself. Biting my lip, I schooled my features back into a more neutral expression.
The trip back to Coil's lair wasn't a long one, and I soon found myself being propelled along a metal catwalk towards my room. I stopped for a moment, reluctant to reenter the same dull, windowless cell. Harrison placed a hand on the small of my back and gave me a gentle shove. I elbowed his arm away, and sped up to keep a few feet of distance between us.
"I'll be back in a half-hour or so," he told me, as I entered the room and he shut the door behind me.
I bit my lip again, worrying it between my teeth as I looked dejectedly at the empty corner that had been home to heaps of electronics when I'd left. Coil probably didn't want skeletons for his troops now, since it'd be a dead giveaway that Harrison and I were working for him. Would he even let me build anything? The lack of materials wasn't a good sign, but they'd been moved in and out before.
Since there was nothing else to do, I looked around the room for the hundredth time. My gaze settled on the wall above my desk, and I found myself impressed by how very blank it was. Not even a spidery crack to stare at. I sighed, and plopped down heavily on my cot. While I was glad that none of Coil's grunts would be going out with my tech, hurting or maybe outright killing people, I was painfully aware of how dull things would be if I couldn't spend time working.
Harrison had said he'd be back in thirty minutes, but the time seemed to stretch on forever. There wasn't any clock in the room, but it felt more like hours before I finally heard footsteps heading my way. Then, I realized with a start that they didn't match Harrison's heavy booted tread.
I stood up abruptly, putting a hand on the wall to steady myself when I overbalanced slightly. Coil hadn't bothered to show up in my room in days, but it was easy to recognize the musical clanging of his soft-soled feet on the walkway that led to my room. Glancing down, I realized I'd been fiddling with the hem of my shirt, and forced myself to relax. He might be creepy as hell, but Coil had never so much as raised his voice.
Still, I jumped a little when the door swung open, admitting the skeletal figure of Coil. He turned his head towards me, and fixed me with an eerie stare through his eyeless mask. Even though I couldn't see his face, I was certain that I blinked first.
"Sweet," he greeted me casually, stepping into the room and cocking his head slightly to the side. The snake on his costume contrasted against the shadows, and I found myself torn between staring at it, and at where his face ought to be. Unable to think of a biting comment in time, I said nothing.
"Harrison tells me you had an exciting day," he continued, and something in his tone made me wince. Nervously, I shifted nervously from foot to foot, wishing he'd just get to the point already. Then, he took a step forward, so that his shadowy silhouette loomed above me. "It would seem you met some interesting people," he said, his tone perfectly even. I clenched my jaw, and glanced at my cot, unable to look at his smooth, black head, to stare into the blank nothingness that bordered the vague suggestion of a nose.
"People like Tattletale?" he prodded, and my head whipped around.
"What?" I blurted out, but even as I feigned ignorance I knew it was pointless. He knew, and there wasn't anything I could say to change that. I stood stock still, staring at my feet and wishing I could be anywhere else. I'd take Lung any day, at least he would rage and scream, not just stand there, and I felt myself starting to hyperventilate.
"Calm down," Coil said, still in that dangerously quiet tone. "I am... disappointed." There was an air of condescension in his voice now, as if he were scolding me for forgetting to wash the dishes. I gritted my teeth, and welcomed the surge of indignation and anger that washed over me, letting it steady me where I stood.
"What did you expect?" I couldn't help but mumble a bit as I said it, but I put as much defiance into it as I could. He only stepped closer to me, and I found myself forced to look up at him.
"I think," he said coldly, "that I should limit your activities this next week." Without another word, he turned and headed for the door.
"The fuck is that supposed to mean?!" I shouted at his back, before the door shut with a stern click. With a frustrated yell, I grabbed the pillow from my cot and launched it at the door. If Coil had heard me, he didn't deign to respond.
I lay on my stomach on the bed, and soon found myself relaxing almost involuntarily. Soon I found myself drifting peacefully, enjoying the quiet of the room.
A harsh buzz jerked me awake, and I groaned and groped for the pillow to press it over my ears. Glaring at the offending object where it lay halfway across the room, I settled into a sitting position, cross-legged on the cot. It was going to be a long day.