A/N: Welcome to your latest Tuesday post. I'm hopeful some parts of the country open up soon. I need a haircut like no one's business. As for this chapter-Scylla was originally conceived as a crises during Taylor's incarceration. However, it was such a dark and crushing scene that it derailed the redemption arc I was going for. So instead I used it as a means of showing just how good JORD was. I hope it works for you.
Chapter Forty-Four: Monsters and Lullabies
The National Guard loaned them a Chinook helicopter. As the loud vehicle lifted into the air, rattling them as they went, Taylor reaffirmed her decision to start work on her own VTOL craft. She had designs in her head for a shuttle that could have transported the team from Seattle to Chicago in 20 minutes and hover silently as long as they needed.
Still, the twin-rotor craft was more than large enough to fit the entire team of sixteen, one of whom was eight feet tall. They all had their helmets on so they could go over the plans using the helmet's HUD features. All save Campanile, who held a computer tablet in his hands.
"The only reason Alexandria didn't go in herself is because we think Hecate is trying to hide," Insight was saying over their quantum-locked coms. "Nilbog did the same thing, using a fake body to lure the attacking capes and PRT agents into a trap that ended up getting almost a thousand people killed. Quintessence, you're telepathy is our best chance at identifying the threat."
"Understood," Taylor said.
"Campanile, I called the Oracle and got a 89% on whether your skin can withstand a bite from one of those things in your breaker state. With your new expandable armorweave, that goes up to mid-90s. There's a risk, but I think you'd best serve the team as our distraction."
"Gotchya," the man said calmly. He rarely let his excitement or nervousness show. "Stay big and squash as many of the things as I can. Should I lead them anywhere?"
"Fermilab is in the north, Chicago is to the east, and there are suburbs and shopping centers all around us," Insight said. "The best bet is just keep them in the area. Alexandria and the other brutes will do the same."
"We're going to stay together," Scapetti said. "Standard box formation. This mission is dependent on Quintessence finding the target. Our job will be keeping the monsters off her back until she does. Mujaji is our tank. Flechette is a point kill and Triumph our floor sweeper. The rest of you-if things go south we'll find ourselves in a target rich environment. Quintessence's new blasters have been authorized for deployment. They have a hundred rounds per cannister. Save rounds as much as you can, we have no idea for sure how many we'll have."
"We are over target area," one of the two pilots announced.
The ramp at the back of the massive two-rotor helicopter opened up. Campanile stood, but had to lean over to be able to walk. He looked out the ramp. "What's the word?" he called back on coms over the numbing noise of the rotors.
Horizon looked to Taylor, who closed her eyes and reached out into the Force. She gasped at the rage she felt burning all around her. But the main concentration of it didn't come from below.
"She's not there!" Taylor called. "I can feel her, but it's distant. Pilot, turn to 11 o'clock and go slow."
The pilot, who was also on their com system, turned the helicopter. Taylor moved toward the back ramp, kneeling down beside Campanile. "What are you feeling?" he asked.
"Rage. Pain. Sadness. I can feel it from every one of the monsters. She's in every one, just like Insight said." She closed her eyes and reached out, following the feelings. "There. What is that place?"
She pointed to a massive, sprawling structure. "Looks like a mall," Campanile said. "I can see the Dillard Clothing Store sign."
Taylor stood and tapped her arm vambrace to chance her channel. "This is Quintessence to all Protectorate. I am sensing the subject in a mall two miles northwest of the youth center. JORD will deploy there."
Horizon, her face hidden behind her helmet, chimed in. "This is Horizon, confirming. Map says it's the Warrenville North Mall."
"JORD, this is Legend. Acknowledged, subject is at Warrenville North Mall. Good luck!"
"Campanile, get to stomping!" Horizon called.
He grinned, and then jumped out of the Chinook. He wore neither a parachute nor a jump jet. Taylor watched him free fall for almost twenty seconds. By the time he slammed into the parking lot, he was thirty feet tall and nearly impervious. They watched as what had previously been an empty parking lot suddenly began swarming with the little round monsters.
Thousands of them.
"Shit, those fuckers move fast," Callister said. The red-head sound shaken.
"Then we'd better find the target quick," Scappeti noted.
The helicopter continued until they were directly over the mall. "Here," Taylor said.
Instantly the entire team was on their feet. Mujaji took the rear, with Triumph and Flechette in the middle with Oversight and Taylor at the lead, with Scapetti's PRT agents forming walls on either side. The Chinook was large enough to let them all jump out in that exact formation.
They only fell free for a few seconds before their repulsor coils slowed their descent. They hung on to each other, with three separate hands clasped onto Taylor's jump jet. The whole team fired their jets just for a split second, following Quintessence's lead, until they landed gently on the roof on one side of the mall.
"HQ, this is Horizon. We've landed. Going internal coms only. Out."
"Acknowledged. God speed, JORD."
Taylor knelt down and placed her hand on the ceiling. "She doesn't know we're here yet," Taylor said. She stood and walked toward the outer wall of the structure with the team right behind her until she reached a spot furthest from any of the little balls of hatred.
"Here's the cleanest spot I can find," Taylor said.
"Roger. Make a hole."
Taylor's lightsaber snapped to life. She stabbed the blade down all the way to the hilt. After she made her first cut, Scappette shot a silenced grappled hook into the gravel and asphalt roof surface. He braced his feet as Tso and Hollis grabbed him for more support. When Taylor finished cutting, the section of the roof dropped suddenly, making all three men grunt at the effort of keeping it from hitting the floor below.
With her saber stored, Taylor levitated the cut section up and out, relieving them of the weight. Mujaji came forward, lifted effortlessly off her feet, and sank down into the hole just like in their drills.
"Clear!"
The rest of the team followed, using their repulsor coils to turn a fifteen-foot drop into a simple step. All around them they saw mannequins wearing the latest fashions at only 20% off heavily inflated prices if they bought before January 31!
They quickly reformed in the middle of an aisle. On her helmet HUD, a map of the mall suddenly appeared via the quantum link all their helmets shared. They were silent with HQ, but not Insight. "A local tinker specializing in surveillance gear gave a thermal scanner to Dragon. From what we can tell, there's a massive concentration of the creatures in the sublevel of the mall directly under the Cole's. Patching through the feed now."
"Acknowledged," Horizon said.
Thermal spots popped up on the map. They could see themselves with startling, impossible clarity. They also saw monsters spread throughout the mall, just standing around.
"Quintessence, can you do a box cloak?"
Taylor nodded. "Bring it in close."
Fifteen people clumped together as they tightly could, moving Taylor back until she was squeezed in the middle. She sank herself into the Force and then pushed the suggestion of their insignificance out around them. "Okay, we're good. Let's go."
The encountered the first monster at the base of the deactivated escalator. It stood in the middle of a pool of still fresh blood. Despite the risk, Taylor led them on the other escalator, still clumped as tightly as they could, and walked right by the monster.
They saw dozens more, all of which stood in or near bloody pools that marked the death of a person and the birth of a monster.
They had to slow when they reached the main atrium of the mall. The monsters were everywhere, spread in a strangely even formation across every surface. The floors glistened with blood and gibbets of discarded flesh so thickly that it was impossible not to walk on it.
Horizon took the lead, clutching her blaster carbine with Scapetti and Davis on either side. They moved at an agonizingly slow rate as they twisted their way through the maze of monsters. According to the map, the Coles was clear on the other side of the mall. As much as Taylor wanted to just kick on her jumpjet and get their quickly, she couldn't extend her obfuscation in the Force over that many people spread that far out.
So, as her headache began to mount, they moved slowly over the treacherous, blood-slicked floor of the mall.
"This is Campanile," the giant changer's voice came on an open channel. "Request emergency evac. I'm hitting my limit and I've got about thousand of these things trying to give me a colonoscopy."
"Campanile, Alexandria is en route. Hold up your hands and clench your cheeks."
The channel went silent again. None of the sound escaped the insulated helmets of Taylor's design. They continued on, reaching a giant T-intersection. Down one side was the Abella's Camping and Outdoor store, dominating two floors of one end, and Coles dominating two floors of the other. And between them?
The mass of monsters was so dense Taylor could neither count nor even sense their number. Thousands were pressed together forming a barricade across the front of the ground floor, with even more on the second.
"Mujaji, can you bring the thunder and open a hole?" Horizon asked softly.
"I can. If you want me to keep the hole open I'm going to have to stay out here."
"Can you do it?"
"Watch me, boss."
"Okay. Team, behind pillar three. Mujaji, stay with us until my mark."
Taylor was gritting her teeth with concentration and couldn't afford to talk, but it was a good plan. As their resident Alexandria package, Mujaji was in the least amount of danger. As long as the monsters were not able to get to her face, they couldn't hurt her at all. The team made their way to the pillar in question, only for Stanitz to see the sheered off, upper torso of a little boy who couldn't have been more than six. Her boot came down with a squelch on the little boy's torn intestine, making her lose her feet.
"Mujaji, go! The rest stay in formation!"
As the monsters began to stir, alerted by the squelching sound, the young heroine lifted out of their unit, flew into the air, and called the thunder.
The ceiling overhead shattered as two thick, blinding streaks of lightning slammed down into the most dense parts of the monsters. The accompanying thunder strike shattered glass walls and windows throughout that wing of the mall.
The mall shook with the accompanying roar as thousands upon thousands of monsters spilled out of every store front around, jumping with terrifying speed into the air as they launched themselves at Mujaji.
She grabbed one by the legs and used it to bat others away, laughing at being completely free to fight as she needed. She quickly flew back away from the Coles, firing another of her massive, almost uncontrolled lightning and thunder blasts against another carpet before turning a corner out of sight. The remaining team watched in numbed awe as the monsters continued to pour out of the store in unbelievable numbers. Finally, the flow trickled away to nothing.
Horizon motioned them to go, and they started forward toward the entrance.
With Insight guiding them from afar, Horizon was able to get the team through the front portion of the Coles until they reached a utility hall just past Boy's clothing.
"Wait," Taylor hissed. "The hall is full. Three dozen, at least."
"Shit," Insight said. "That's the only direct access."
Taylor was about to say something else when a straight though wondered into her mind. A line from a song, sung in Spanish. Duérmete mi niño
"She's directly under us," Taylor said as her stomach dipped. "I think...twelve feet down. It's an open space."
"Loading dock," Insight affirmed. "What are you thinking?"
"I'm thinking Thermal Detonators and weapons hot," Taylor said.
Taylor couldn't see Horizon's face, but she could feel the older woman's fear. But also her determination. "Scapetti?"
"We're good to go weapons hot."
Horizon nodded. "Schertz, Tso and Callister, set your thermal detonators for 60 seconds. Drop them where we stand, then we retreat. You give the mark."
The three men quietly pulled their tinker-style grenades, set the variable timers, and then dropped them all at once. "Mark!"
Still under Taylor's straining field, the team moved quickly away from the three highly explosive devices. One minute later, all three went off.
Thermal detonators were not grenades. They were essentially a fuel air bomb inside a fully contained magnetic shield that expanded to a set perimeter. These were set at ten meters each. They expanded into a white hall of phosphorescent plasma that instant consumed everything within its affected radius of ten meters. The combined effect expanded that almost to forty.
Abruptly the exotic explosion ended, resulting in a massive hole in the floor, a missing stair well and ceiling, and a cacophony roaring monsters.
"Weapons hot and go!"
The whole team jumped through right into the center of a mass of gooey and partially vaporized monsters. The PRT agents formed up fire walls on either side of the capes, their blasters firing in rapid bursts of energy. Each bolt of red hyper-accelerated participles punched through the body of a monster in a shower of bloody gore. When the bodies piled too high, Triumph stepped forward, opened the adjustable mandible of his helmet, and shouted.
His sonic shout pulped the bodies and sent showers of goo flying back among the still on-coming monsters. Random explosions shot up from the floor of the loading dock where Horizon applied her own striker power. Flechette wasn't bothering with her own striker power, instead employing another blaster carbine. They moved in a single unit toward where Taylor sensed the strongest concentration of hate, pain and anguish.
Duérmete mi niño.
She saw nothing but monsters. Through her helmet, she saw nothing but a sea of thermal mass. But in her mind, the lullaby rang out loudly.
Where was she?
This was why Alexandria didn't just come in and begin killing monsters. This was why Nilbog still lived despite capes that could vaporize mountains. The truly dangerous capes were the ones with cunning and brutal ruthlessness. Scylla, as they named her, was hiding behind her monsters somehow.
Abruptly a sharp stab of pain shot through her mind, accompanied by a gurgling scream through their quantum-locked cams.
"Martin's down!" Scapetti said. He didn't shout, but she could sense tension and loss in his voice. "Someone grab his fucking ammo before he turns!"
"On it," Horizon said. "Who's lowest?"
"I'm down two," Callister said.
"Make 'em count. Quintessence, where are we?"
"Close! I can sense her, she's in the room somewhere."
"Hold." Behind Taylor, she could sense Horizon kneeling down on the ground. The team leader of the JORD had three separate perception-based Thinker powers. She could zoom her vision out to process multiple scenes at the same time; she could focus on an individual organism mass to see the internal workings in detail; or she could see through inorganic material.
"Quintessence, your ten o'clock, fifty feet under the surface."
Taylor narrowed her senses to that section of the dimly lit garage.
...Que tengo que hacer
"On me!" Taylor said. She slapped her blaster to her holster, held out both hands, and pushed with the Force as strongly as she could. Those monsters charging the sudden gap in the fire pulped, those behind them blasted backward. Triumph jumped to her side and shouted, clearing an even broader path.
The whole team moved as one with a coordination made possibly only by her subconscious battle meditation. Taylor felt another of their PRT members die screaming and tried not to think on it. Fifty feet behind them, another hole suddenly blasted open in the ceiling, revealing first a pillar of light, and then an explosion of lightning that made their face shields darken briefly, and a numbing crack of thunder.
Mujaji brought the thunder, blasting the creatures left and right. Even so, the density of the monsters seemed to increase even as Taylor and Triumph continually blasted a clear path. Abruptly the floor ended in cracked pavement. Rough earth replaced it. Triumph screamed again, clearing one more path, and in that moment Taylor's eyes locked onto the source of the monsters.
Dark eyes stared at Taylor. They had turned yellow, almost like the Sith of old in Taylor's mind. She could feel in the Force how the girl's power stripped away Taylor's armor and mask. She couldn't even see it, only the flesh of Taylor's body.
She sat in the dirt with her legs spread. Blood covered the lower part of her body. She held a writhing abomination in her arms and rocked it gently, as if it were a baby.
It was. For a moment, Taylor almost threw up. It took all her will and the Force not too, because in that one moment Taylor knew Araceli. She felt buffeted by a constant litany of pain, anguish and hatred. The girl's entire life was a nightmare easily a thousand times worse than what Yuki went through. She dealt with it by becoming one of the monsters herself. She attacked and hurt all she could. When she shot the old man who tried to keep her and her crew from stealing his car, she felt nothing but satisfaction. The old fuck deserved to die. He had everything; she had nothing. He deserved to die for having what she wanted.
Underneath it all, though, Taylor sensed a small, crushed memory that informed the core of the cape now known as Scylla. Little Araceli, holding her baby brother in her arms and singing Duermete, mi nino just like her mama sang to her before her Dad beat mama to death.
Araceli always wanted a baby. More than anything else, she wanted to recapture that one, tiny moment of peace, when she held pure innocence in her arms. Instead, the world gave her a monster, a tiny body riddled with rotting sores from the methamphetamines that rifled through her own body. A deformed, monstrous thing that bit and transformed everyone around her into more monsters. And more. They were all her children now. She was the mother of the world.
Looking into the dark eyes of this grinning child the world had destroyed, Taylor knew for a fact that Araceli Santiago would never be contained. She would gladly watch the world burn.
Taylor took a step closer. "Duérmete mi niño, que tengo que hacer," she sang, her lips moving in perfect time with Aracelis.
The monsters around them stopped attacking, shuffling as Taylor's telepathy smothered Araceli's.
The twisted eyes latched onto Taylor's as the newly-made monster continued the song. "Lavar los pañales, y hacer de comer."
Taylor felt her own eyes burning. "I'm sorry, Araceli. Lo lamento."
Aracelli screamed and thrust out both her blood-caked hands. Every monster in the mall roar and charged all at once.
The charge stopped before they could breach the JORD field of fire. They stopped when Taylor reached out her hand, focused with the Force, and snapped the fourteen-year-old girl's neck. Araceli's body went instantly slack as she first slumped over onto her bed, and then tumbled off into the muck on the floor.
Without her power, the monsters collapsed to the ground. They were not separate beings, only extensions of Aracelli's own madness.
"It's over," Taylor said. It wasn't until she spoke that she realized she was sobbing within her helmet.
~~Quintessence~~
~~Quintessence~~
Legend handed Taylor a warm glass.
The rest of the JORD team had their helmets off and were sitting around with stunned expressions. Of the ten PRT members who went into the field, only eight returned. LaMarcus Martin was only six years older than Taylor. He'd joined the PRT right out of college and was engaged to be married.
Jan Stanitz was almost thirty. Her wife had just moved to Seattle from Los Angeles when they decided JORD was going to be a long-term assignment.
Taylor sipped the tea, only to blink at the strong bite of brandy within. She looked up at the leader of the Protectorate who smiled sadly at her. "I heard a rumor you can sober yourself up," he said.
They were in a classroom in an adult education center a few miles south of the mall. PRT containment teams and National Guardsmen were already in the process of collecting the bodies of monsters-monsters who used to be human.
Just from those in the mall, Taylor realized that Araceli had killed not just hundreds or thousands, but tens of thousands. In just the few hours of her existence as a cape, she'd killed as many people as Nilbog had over the past five years.
"Insight has already shared your body cam data with Alexandria and Watchdog," Legend said. He used a gentle tone-like dad did when Taylor was little and scraped her knee. The memory startled her-she went to mother to get the scrapes treated, but for some reason it was always dad who comforted her when she was little. He'd hold her on his lap and rock her until she stopped crying.
"She triggered during a stillbirth," Taylor said. "Her power turned the stillbirth into the vector for her power."
"Martin turned in ten seconds." Horizon came and sat beside Taylor, placing a hand on her back. "I barely had time to get the ammo cannister off before he became another monster."
Legend nodded. "That's how she spread so fast."
"They were her," Taylor said. "She didn't just see through them-they contained a part of her consciousness. Her power let her control them all at the same time. There wasn't a limit, I don't think. She could have kept spreading out forever, until the whole world was converted."
"How did you locate her?"
Horizon looked as exhausted and wrecked as Taylor. "Quintessence narrowed down the area. I used my inorganic perception to locate where in the floor she'd dug her nest. It took both of us to locate her."
"At the end, the monsters didn't attack," Legend noted.
Taylor pulled off her gauntlets and rubbed tears from her cheeks. "Her power echoed through a spanish lullaby. A children's song. I hijacked it long enough to get a clear view of her."
"Then you executed the kill order."
"I snapped her neck with my telekinesis, yeah."
The older man winced. "I'm sorry. You shouldn't have been in that…"
"Yes, I should have," Taylor said sharply. "Horizon and I had the best synergy of powers to locate her, otherwise you and Alexandria could have handled it by yourselves. Yes, it sucks. I'm sixteen and I just executed a fourteen-year-old. I know why you hate it. I do too. But it had to be me. It had to be Horizon, and this team. We're the best you have, and today proved it. That's why you're going to increase our charter and double our personnel. That's why you're going to release me from the Wards and allow me to join the Protectorate as a full member despite my age."
Around the room, Taylor could feel her teammates sitting up to watch the exchange. She wasn't done, though.
"The world is dying, Legend. You know it as well as I do. What does my age matter, if it comes crashing down? We're the best you have, and we're going to continue to fight for what's left of the world as long as we can."
The head of the Protectorate looked from her to Horizon. From Mujaji to Flechette and Triumph, then to the eight determined agents that finished their team. "You're right," Legend said at last. "You are the best we have. What you did today will show the nation, and the world."
He stood and looked at them all. "You'll get your funding and personnel. We'll have to wait until you're seventeen for full Protectorate status-that's a federal law I can't change. But Alexandria, myself and Chief Director Costa-Brown don't make a distinction. You saved the nation, today. Hundreds of thousands of people are alive because of you. Thank you all."
After he walked out of the room, Scapetti slapped his hand on a desk. "I need a fucking beer and a burger."
"Me too," Taylor said.
"You're buying, right? Being so rich and all?"
Taylor's voice cracked as she laughed. "I can't buy beer yet, remember?"