Occupy 3.2
I thought of Bitch, of how she interpreted commands and status. I decided not to immediately take Prominence up on his invitation, to maybe show I wasn't shy, just busy.
I'll get my spiders settled, I typed. See you shortly.
I heard him typing through the bugs I had downstairs.
Right-ho. Hope you aren't squeamish.
Did he think I could be, with my powers? I assumed he meant some of the people on my team were like Gully or Newter, but that wouldn't bother me. No Case 53 I'd met had come close to being as repulsive or monstrous as Bonesaw or Coil or, well, Alexandria.
More typing.
And call yourself Skitter. Nobody else has their real name.
That was exactly the kind of information I'd hoped to gain from reading the files, and I was a little irritated he wasn't giving me time to find things out on my own. I was always apprehensive about social situations anyway, and my reputation hadn't followed me when I'd left Bet. Lung wasn't around, so I couldn't make the same first impression on this group as I had on the Undersiders. I would be on my own.
Never mind. I'd been thrown into worse situations with less preparation.
After a moment's consideration, I put my arm into one of the terrariums I'd just filled and directed a few of its inhabitants to crawl onto me. I directed the remainder to start drawing out lines of silk, just in case. If I needed to deal with one of them the way I'd had to deal with Bitch, I'd have bugs and silk on hand.
Then I walked downstairs.
"There you are," Prominence said. "This is Skitter."
A man about my father's age rose. He had a massive beard streaked with gray and a faint red mist emanated from his skin. "I'm Wrath," he said.
"Teratoma," said the woman on the other couch, waving. Like Weld, she'd completely changed—she still looked human, but her skin had been entirely replaced by a glossy black material. She jerked a thumb at the blonde, freckled girl sitting next to her, who was about my age and who hadn't suffered any obvious change. "This is Mercurial."
Did Mercurial not talk?
"Which bedroom did they put you in?" Teratoma asked.
Prominence had made the connection between the terrariums and my power, and he'd obviously told the others I was here. So why ask the question? I directed a few spiders to crawl down the back of my legs to the floor. "The one on the third floor," I said.
The man with the red mist surrounding him spoke. "What qualifies you to head this team?" he asked.
I looked at him, trying to figure out how to handle the challenge. The third floor was a status symbol, here, an indicator I was the leader. I thought of Rachel again—no, I thought of Brian. Wrath reminded me of the man who had criticized me despite the fact I was helping him feed his family and had removed rats from his house. Brian would have known how to handle him, maybe even without hurting his pride. I wouldn't be so lucky.
I'd have to settle for effective.
"I know why Teratoma asked the question she did," I said. "Do you?"
"What do you mean?" he asked.
"She knew I'm on the third floor. All of you do," I said. "But she wanted me to say so. Was it to undermine me by making me explain myself, or irritate you by reminding you that you're not in charge?"
Teratoma's smile widened to the same degree Wrath's face clouded. The cloud was literal as well; the red mist around him thickened from whisps into foggy tendrils, nearly obscuring his face from my view. "I don't think you need much undermining, child," he said.
"I can see why you'd think that," I said. "Bug control? Not very interesting, on the surface. Especially not if you're thinking one moth or one spider. Tiny, easily overlooked, crushable. Easy to underestimate if you don't think very much."
He stepped forward, or tried to. I'd used spiders to tie his ankles together. His feet caught on the webbing and he fell.
"I hate being underestimated," I went on. "I know you don't know me, and I'd sound like I was delusional or exaggerating if I tried to tell you what I've done. So I'll give you a pass here. Wait until we've had a few assignments, do what I say for the time being, and let me prove myself. If you aren't satisfied with my competence after a real battle, I'll fight you one on one for leadership."
"You'd fight me?" he asked, struggling to untangle himself. I didn't help. "Do you have the first idea of my power is?"
"No," I said. "I don't think it matters. You can't be scarier than the Slaughterhouse Nine or an Endbringer." I looked at the others. "Do you guys follow news on Earth Bet? Enough to know what the Endbringers are?"
Nods and murmurs of assent.
"Prominence always makes us watch Bet news when it's his turn with the remote," Teratoma said. She elbowed her companion in the side. "So does she."
Mercurial spoke for the first time. "You've seen an Endbringer?"
"Leviathan attacked my city," I said. "I followed him with my bugs and shoved a tinkertech halberd up his asshole. Er, where his asshole would have been, if he had one."
"A halberd?" She leaned forward. "Like the one Armsmaster has?"
"It was Armsmaster's," I said, and her eyes went wide. A cape groupie? "He was injured and I came across him, borrowed his weapon." I left out the part where I'd stopped him from bleeding to death; I wasn't sure if she'd believe me, and I wasn't sure I wanted to see her enthusiasm if she did.
"What's he like?" she asked.
"He's . . . not what you'd think he is. More arrogant, stubborn. Competent, driven, but not what you'd call heroic."
"He stepped down after the last Endbringer attack," she said. "They said he was injured."
"That was the one. He was healed, by the way, stepped down for other reasons. He's calling himself Defiant now, works with Dragon."
A door opening—a portal, not the front door—interrupted the conversation. A blond man in his early twenties stepped through, and he was carrying a couple of bags. Electric blue cracks split his face, and the cracks continued down his neck and disappeared under his shirt. He had similar cracks on his hand, and they ran up his arm, again disappearing under his shirt.
He looked around. "Where are the twins?" he asked.
"We thought they were with you," Teratoma said.
He shook his head. "Are they in their rooms?"
"Nobody's upstairs," I said.
He put his bags on the floor and sped out of the room, inhumanly fast. A mover. He was in front of us one instant and upstairs searching each of the rooms the next. Each time he stopped speeding, he radiated a wave of cold that was harsh enough to kill the bugs within five feet of him.
"Unless they have a breaker or stranger power that would make them undetectable to my bugs' senses?" I asked the room as a whole.
"They're thinkers," Prominence said. "We think they're eleven or so, new enough we haven't named them yet. The boy is good at setting traps and the girl is good with her fists. Blitzeis has taken them under his wing."
"He's done such a good job that he's lost them five times," Teratoma said. "And they only showed up last Tuesday."
I was beginning to dislike her. Setting me and Wrath up to fight in our first conversation, now mocking the mover for losing track of the kids . . . a bully? They'd put me on a team with a bully, an Armsmaster fan, and someone who was grossed out by bugs?
Fuck me, nothing was ever easy.
"Where do they usually go when they disappear?" I asked, directing the question to Prominence and Wrath. I'd need a better grasp of the team's dynamics and her powers before I confronted her.
"Out," Blitzeis said, emerging from the stairs, which he'd walked down at a more normal speed. "They just wandered off the first couple of days. We stopped them and now they sneak off. They were here when I left, which was nearly three hours ago."
"I was asleep," Teratoma said innocently, which made me assume she was guilty of something.
"They don't have access to the portals, so at least we're limited to where they can walk," Prominence said. "But his power makes them very good at hiding."
I'd been slowly moving the bugs in my range to the building I was standing in. I canceled the order and started searching.
It didn't take me long to notice two people, both short enough to be children, running through the valley at the edge of my range. One of them was running less fluidly, more slowly than the other. The one in front stopped and returned to tug the other along.
"I take it we're the only humans on this planet?" I asked.
"We are," Wrath said. He'd gotten himself mostly untangled by this point.
"Then I found them," I said. "They're over that way, a little over half a mile, on their way back here."
Then the things they were running from came into range.
"And it looks like they need our help."