Turn 6.4

Everything went according to plan for the first second or so.

I'd reasoned that Teratoma, Wrath, and Blitzeis all relied on proximity in a fight, and if I could keep them away, I could stay safe. I opened my assault by popping her tumors with some of the giant wasps I'd taken from the girl on Bet, and her paralysis-inducing fluid splashed all over Wrath and Reset.

But not Blitzeis. He reacted much faster than I thought he would even though I'd seen him in action. The instant he realized I was going on the offensive, he moved, blew through the lines of silk I'd started to set up, and was on me before the first drops of Teratoma's goop could hit the others. The cold that came with him killed the bugs surrounding me as he landed a blow on my stomach.

I had no armor and so it hurt far more than I subconsciously anticipated, but the pain was nothing compared to the aftereffect of his power that spread from where his fist had struck.

Cold. Cold that I felt to my core despite the sweltering heat. Cold so severe it burned.

Then he was behind me, dealing a double blow to my kidneys before I could get oriented, before I'd even had a chance to inhale.

I'd mentally compared Blitzeis to Velocity, and that had led to me underestimating him. My run-in with the hero at the fundraiser had certainly been obnoxious at first, but his blows had left me stuck in place rather than damaged. This wasn't like being hit by Velocity at all. Enough of this would kill me.

Distance was key, and I'd already blown it.

Maybe I'd blown it before I'd even set foot inside the PRT headquarters to surrender, when I'd given up on my team. My real team, the one that I'd chosen and the one that I'd earned and the one that I'd trusted. Not the one that had been foisted on me by a bunch of inscrutable assholes, not the one made up of people who resented my very name.

Velocity had been easy for me to dispose of because of the Undersiders. Brian had lowered the effectiveness of Velocity's power for long enough I'd been able to slow him down appreciably with bugs and put him out of commission. Alec—Alec, who was dead now, probably because I hadn't been there to save him—had taken care of Miss Militia, and Rachel and Lisa had held Armsmaster at bay until I could take care of him. Here, I had nobody to help me. I was alone.

Blitzeis struck my kidneys again, then my jaw. I went down.

I thought about my first aid classes, trying to remember if there had been anything on cold weather injuries. Hypothermia? Yes, but it wasn't a threat to me at the moment in this weather, so long as I didn't let him drag this out. Frostbite was a much bigger concern, and I couldn't do anything about that until I took him out.

I missed my armor, I missed the Undersiders, and I missed Atlas.

He kicked me and I kicked back, but he was already gone. The speed of his perceptions was so ramped up that he could see me making a move long before I could connect. I thought about drawing my gun, but I didn't need a precog to see that it wouldn't work. He'd knock it out of my hands—if I even got that far—and possibly even turn it against me.

How could I get him off my back for long enough to get away? And once I was away, how could I stay away? I curled into a ball in order to present a smaller target. If I could start rolling down the rocky hill, however painful that might be, I might be able to reacquire distance.

If he took that as a sign of defeat and let me get away.

Which would send the wrong message.

No...I'd already lost the opportunity to make this a distance-based fight. Trying to recover that wouldn't work. Short of tricking myself into second triggering with the ability to fly, I had to figure out how to deal with this now, on terms they had forced on me, or be defeated completely.

I didn't have protective gear, backup, or transportation. What did I have?

Experience. I suspected I had the ability to cope in a way they didn't. I'd been in worse positions—Bonesaw's table, Coil's kill house, the cafeteria in Arcadia High. I wasn't down yet and I could adapt tactics I'd used against Sere and Mannequin to win here, provided I could work fast enough to keep him from beating me half to death. Or all the way to death.

Our surroundings. Everywhere I went, I would have an army at my call. Every second that passed, I would get stronger as I amassed more bugs. I was already calling every spider in the area to create enough silk to trap him in, but they would need time. I would need more time.

Two things that were useful but weren't useful right now were effectively useless.

I wheezed as Blitzeis drove his shoe into my ribs. Fuck, but he wasn't holding back.

What else was there?

My teammates. Not that they were on my side, but I shouldn't discount them as a resource I could turn to my advantage. I began to go through them and the possibilities they presented.

Involving any of the people out of my range would be a net negative. I'd deliberately sent the twins off because I thought bringing them in wouldn't help me and might hurt them, and my assessment of their vulnerability hadn't changed just because I was having trouble. Forcing Prominence into this wouldn't help me, either tactically to win the fight or strategically to win the argument.

Mercurial and Reset were neutral, non-factors. There was some potential to turn Wrath against Blitzeis, but I didn't think I'd manage that in the next fifteen seconds or so. And I'd need something that soon.

A physical attack wouldn't work but perhaps a psychological one would.

I took a deep breath and rolled towards Teratoma.

Blitzeis followed me as I moved and he was so focused on beating the hell out of me that he didn't notice where I was taking us. By the time he realized what I'd planned, it was too late for him. I threw myself into my bugs and deliberately burst every single of her remaining tumors at once. Even with his accelerated reaction time, he couldn't escape every single droplet.

Unlike me, he didn't have a way to ground himself around her when her power was in effect. And unlike mine, his power wouldn't work if he couldn't physically move. He'd either have to leave me be or succumb.

He made the smart choice and ran to a safer distance, about twenty feet away. He hauled his polo off and started rubbing at the growing stains on his arm, trying to get the little blobs of fluid off before they could set.

Meanwhile, black syrup slapped against every exposed inch of my skin and stuck. Where the bugs on my body and in my hair were touched, they struggled briefly and went still as they drowned. The sensation repulsed me, but I told myself it didn't have to be any more disgusting than having my hair full of beetles. This was how I was going to win.

Then it began to dig into my skin. I'd anticipated this and had gone in with a coping mechanism, but even so I was almost overwhelmed.

My first thought was that it was like being back in Echidna, but that wasn't quite right. Echidna had bathed me in nightmares of how I'd felt in the buildup to my trigger. This reminded me more of Labyrinth's power, placing less emphasis on my psychological state and more emphasis on shaping my perceptions of my surroundings.

The only source of light was a deep red sun that took up a quarter of the sky. I found myself in an empty city dominated by black blocky buildings. Everything was off, somehow. The steps leading up to the doors were slightly too steep. The doors didn't have handles. A curtain moved slightly as though stirred by a breeze, but it was on the other side of sealed glass. When I looked away from a house and back, I got the sense that things weren't exactly where they'd been before.

Then it hit my emotions. The sense that something was off crystallized into the conviction that something was wrong and it was going to get far worse. I wasn't alone. I was being hunted. I had to move, and move now, I had to, but I couldn't—

I actually couldn't move, or nearly couldn't move. I knew from the files that less than a minute of exposure to her power would totally immobilize me, and that the areas of my skin it affected would swell into seeping, gangrenous appendages that would in turn produce tumors of their own.

I closed my eyes. I could still "see" the hallucinations—in fact, I could only detect the real world through my bugs—but it was a little gesture to ground myself. I shoved the dread onto my bugs and started to deal with my team.

The first thing I did was use what little time I had left before I completely lost control of my body to interlock my fingers behind my head and casually throw one leg over the other, lounging like I'd planned on being stuck on a brambly patch of dirt this entire time and found it relaxing.

Then I snagged Reset. His power required line of sight, so I found the flag I'd intended to use for our game and dragged it over his face. Then I used silk to reshape it into a hood that blindfolded him. He could have been useful for them, but he hadn't thought quickly enough.

"I can't get her, Terra," Blitzeis called. "But you can."

One problem solved and replaced by another. The prospect of being beat up while lying helplessly on the ground could have been daunting, but, fucked up as it was, I was glad when Teratoma stood up and started to advance on me.

Finally, I thought. Some actual fucking teamwork.

"You're communicating," I said through my bugs. "Good. Keep that up."

She drew her foot back to kick me, but I threw up a living wall of ironclad beetles in between us. It wasn't exactly armor, but it was as close as I could manage with what I had on hand.

"It's not working," Teratoma said, when the force of her blow dissipated amongst the bugs. "She's still using her power."

"I could gag you," I continued. "Shut you down. I'll let you get away with talking this time, but remember that you'll face enemies who can cut off verbal communication."

Teratoma snarled. "I'm going to knock your teeth out and make you pick them back off the ground and swallow them, you condescending bitch."

"You'll have to catch me first," I said. Then I directed my bugs to laugh. At least, I hoped that they sounded like they were laughing. The last time they'd "laughed" was when they'd picked up on my subconscious reaction to Legend asking me if I considered myself to be a hero or a villain, and the sound had been inhuman and bizarre. I couldn't hear what my bugs were doing now—what I heard was a scuttling that came from behind no matter which way I turned my head in the eerie city—and I could only hope that they were conveying my intent. "It should be easy, shouldn't it?" I hummed. "I'm five feet away from you and I can't move."

Teratoma threw herself against my bugs again and failed again.

Finally understanding that she was having no effect on me, she smoothed down her skin, stopped producing boils that I could burst and use as a weapon against everyone else. I used my bugs to rip out the dollops of sap that had implanted in my skin, and the hallucinations began to decrease in intensity.

"Wrath," she said.

He rose to his feet, and his recovery surprised me a little. Then again, I had noticed some synergy between his power and hers during our raid. I should have asked him about that before I'd started this. Then he advanced on me, but he didn't try to go up against the wall of bugs I had protecting me. Instead, his mist seeped through gaps between them, consolidated into several tendrils around my throat, and started to throttle me.

I realized that he was actually trying to kill me. No cops and robbers here.

Well, turnabout was fair play. Beetles ferried spiders, millipedes, and centipedes up his nose and down into his throat. He intensified his attack, and I realized he probably thought that killing me would disable my power and he'd win. Tagg had made a similar miscalculation.

But I wanted Wrath to live, so I redirected the bugs from his throat and lungs up into his sinuses, where I had them to simply move their legs.

Unpleasant, yes, but nothing that would kill him. Nothing like I'd done to Alexandria, even if watching him splutter and claw ineffectually at his face powerfully reminded me of that day.

"If you kill me," I said, "these will stay where they are."

He backed off, and I also relented. My bugs came out his nose, and without wings to assist they simply fell to the ground. I felt his knee and foot start to move to crush them, but he didn't follow through. Instead, he sat back down on the rock that they'd started on, hands in his lap.

Much better.

I checked on the others. I permitted Teratoma and Wrath to remain free, but I secured Reset's hands so he couldn't remove the blindfold and completely wrapped Blitzeis in silk rope. I wasn't going to take any more chances with him.

Leaving Mercurial.

I found her in a puddle about twenty feet away. She'd run off when I'd first attacked, melted herself, then double-backed and was currently trying to sneak up on me. It wasn't a bad plan, but she hadn't known how extensive my range was or how easily I could pay attention to everything in it.

Whenever I thought about how I would defeat my team—and, over the past month, I'd had reason to think about it a lot—Mercurial was the one who gave me the most pause. She was immune to bites and stings, she could shrug off an attack on her eyes or airway, and she could cut or slip through webs. I could move faster than she could in her liquid state, but I couldn't hurt her, and she'd win a fight based on attrition. She presented a more complete counter to my power than either Sere or Mannequin, at least on the surface.

If I left her intact, that was.

And I had no reason to do that.

I threw every spare bug I had at her. Flying insects deposited the ones that couldn't fly on her, and they used their mandibles to wedge themselves between the minuscule cubes that made up her body. Cockroaches, beetles, and ants tore off little chunks and were in turn picked back up by the fliers.

Tens of thousands of dragonflies, wasps, moths, flying beetles, and flies scattered her across the full extent of my range. I dropped pieces of her in the river, shoved others in between crevices of rock, and left still others atop trees.

I was betting that there wasn't a limit to her ability to reconstitute, expecting that she could come out okay on the other end. Nothing in her file indicated that she did have such a limit, and she was one of the longest surviving members.

I could just imagine the tone of Alexandria's voice if I had to tell her that I killed one of them.

But it wouldn't come to that.

I hoped. I'd know in a few hours.

I rolled over and pushed myself to my feet. "I beat you using yourselves." Every single bug I had on hand echoed my words. "You picked a fight with no objective, no plan, no way to win."

I looked around and saw only anger and resentment. In a way, we were mirroring each other.

"We're all here because Cauldron took our choices away. That sucks, but there are ways of dealing with that that are smarter, more right." Again, no reaction other than sullen glares. "I know you have good reasons not to fight. And I won't tell you that you're wrong to feel that way, but I will tell you that it will happen even if you don't want it. The world is ending and nobody gets a choice there."

Silence.

"So, let's tie this all together." I paused, and what I'd said caught up to me. I hoped they wouldn't think that was a joke. "We are going to go back home and we are going to wait for Mercurial to come back and then we will all sit down and talk until you understand where we fit into the bigger picture. We will come out of today a team one way or another."

Without being asked, Wrath picked Blitzeis up and slung him over his shoulder.

I'd won.

We set off for home. Without Mercurial to help him, I took over guiding Reset so he didn't trip on the way back.

I conjured one of my humanoid figures by Prominence. It turned its head to face him. "The same goes for you, Prominence. You don't get out of any of this that easily."

"What am I not getting out of?" He tried to sound nonchalant, but I wasn't fooled. He was scared of bugs and from his body language, I could tell that seeing a human form made of them really unnerved him.

"Having an honest conversation. No lies about your past, no secrets or tricks, no getting cheatcodes from the old brainwashing-in-a-can."

He sucked in a breath, but didn't say anything. When we came into view, he lost all composure. "What in the fifth circle of hell did you do?" he shouted.

"Your fucking job," I snapped, and he had the decency to look guilty. "My way."

A concern born of years of living with them and caring for them in the very fucked up way Cauldron had given him the tools for must have kicked in, because he suddenly seemed eager to volunteer. "Are they okay? I can tell them to—"

"Fuck off," I said, and swept past him, dragging the rest of my team behind me.

I'd gone this far to show I was serious, and I was going to bring them around, and I would be damned before I'd stoop to relying on brainwashing to get what I wanted—what I needed. What the world needed.

Prominence jogged along beside me in flustered silence.

As we approached the house, my bugs noted that the twins were on the porch, and that there was another person with them. A woman, speaking to them in Portuguese.

We rounded the corner.

It was Contessa.

She had Tripwire's hand in hers. Neither he nor Rabbit Punch seemed to be alarmed by the fact she was digging a knife into the back of his thumb. His creased forehead and thoughtful frown seemed to indicate engagement rather than fear, and she'd turned her featureless white face to the operation with an attitude of polite attention.

Beside me, Prominence flinched. I felt him tense and start to turn, as if he was thinking of running, but then he straightened his back and planted his feet.

She didn't seem to notice, continuing to speak to Rabbit Punch even as her brother allowed Contessa to work the knife in between his joints. She was evidently showing them how to loosen the ceramic that had restricted his mobility so badly of late.

What was I supposed to do with this?

I'd planned on sitting everyone down—Prominence included—and getting us all on the same page. Her presence was a factor I hadn't anticipated and didn't know how to account for.

Focus. The whole purpose of this exercise had been to bring the team together under me, and I couldn't lose sight of that, couldn't afford to let her throw me off my game. I let go of Reset's shoulder, strode up to the porch, and climbed the stairs with calculated nonchalance, as though I was getting back from nothing more than a brief stroll.

"You know," I said casually, "most people pass the time by twiddling their own thumbs, not stabbing other people's."

She turned to look at me. I thought her eyebrows might have lifted slightly, but the sun was behind her and it cast her face in just enough shadow I couldn't be sure.

"Your boy needs maintenance," she said.

It clicked. I could use this. My teammates were pissed at me, which might make sense from their perspective even though I'd explained what I was doing. I could use Contessa's visit to redirect their anger to where it should be.

"And—what," I said, sarcastically and with just enough amplification from my bugs that I knew the others would hear me clearly, "you think telling me that will make up for what you did to him?"

She flipped the little knife around with a twirl and flourish that had to have taken her months of practice and nicked fingers to perfect and extended it, handle outwards, to Rabbit Punch. "Insira a faca até escutar ela moendo, depois empurre, usando a faca como uma alavanca," she said.

Rabbit Punch took the knife and plunged into the back of her brother's elbow, where his funny bone should have been.

The crust that had been hardening and restricting the range of motion in his arm exploded outward, showered over everything: the twins, the wooden deck we were standing on, and some of the surrounding dirt. Some shards bounced off my glasses and others clung to my t-shirt and jeans.

None, I noticed, landed on Contessa. She'd been standing on the other side of him, just so.

Interesting. Her precognition, or just regular thinking ahead? I made a note of it in case it was her power at work.

And so much for my play. She hadn't just ignored me, she'd continued a conversation in a language we couldn't understand. I couldn't think of a more complete dismissal, and I felt the loss of face. Why did she undermine me in front of my team? Why did Cauldron do nothing but criticize, sabotage, and interfere even though they'd dumped these people in my lap with the explicit expectation that I manage them?

And fuck them for putting me in this position. Did things really have to be this hard? The Number Man had hinted they were grooming me for something bigger, but that sure as shit didn't show in how they acted.

I was willing to see what they had in store for me, even if I did plan on rejecting it and going after them once we'd faced down the end of the world, but I was so damn tired of having to fight everyone every step of the way.

"Assim mesmo," Contessa said. "Posso falar com ela sozinha, por favor?"

"Obrigado," Tripwire replied, and the two went inside. I noticed Rabbit Punch had kept her knife, and I also noticed that he looked happy.

There was something wrong about that. She'd helped him, sure, but he wouldn't have needed help if not for her and her organization experimenting on him to begin with. Had she given them gifts and assistance in order to manipulate them, or because she'd given in to some impulse to show a little kindness? Which motivation was more perverse?

I watched the door close behind them, then I looked at Contessa.

Contessa was looking back. She maintained eye contact for a second or two, then let her gaze travel from me to Reset, Wrath, Teratoma, and Blitzeis. Then it fell on Prominence.

"My lord," she said. "We need to talk."

My bugs felt him flinch again. He didn't recover himself as he had before. I wondered how she did it. She was a precog, so it wasn't her power. Reputation? A memory of some conversation that they'd had earlier? Fear of Cauldron in general?

I'd already stepped forward, placing myself between her and my teammate. Even as I did it, I noted it was mostly instinctual. He wasn't a good teammate and I didn't particularly like him or want him around, but the principle applied to all of them, even the duds.

And if the others saw me standing up to Cauldron, good.

"What do you—"

I was off my game from the beating Blitzeis had given me, and I moved faster and less carefully than I should have. The tread of my shoe caught on the layer of pus-slick shards that covered the deck, and I slipped and fell backwards through a portal that opened to receive me.