5. Defector
Siberian ran with purpose, pulverizing anything in her way. It was early enough in the spring that the trees and bushes were still bare, and only the remnants of last year's undergrowth covered the ground. Riley reflexively squeezed her eyes shut at each burst of splinters from a stray branch or a small tree, fingers tightly knotted through Siberian's hair for balance.
She so wasn't used to this anymore.
Murder Rat was squeezed under Siberian's arm, bobbing with every stride in a way that could not be good for the stapled tissue. A few spider boxes had gathered on top of her, others clinging to Siberian however they could.
In a matter of seconds, they'd covered enough distance that Riley couldn't hear the fight anymore, and she allowed herself to glance behind. They'd traveled down a slope, and only the orange glow of the fire was visible above it.
No one in sight. No one coming after them.
Now, she just had to provide a credible explanation for what happened. Maintaining some level of pretense would be necessary to keep Siberian on her side, but more than anything, Riley needed to shake her loyalties to the rest of the Nine.
"It's not just Cherie. Jack knows. He used to be curious about you, but now he's more interested to see if he can take you out. He was planning something," she told Siberian. "I didn't want to risk losing you."
Steady heartbeats punctuated her lies, eased by the tension that trickled away from her to the rhythm of Siberian's steps.
"He has a power that lets him manipulate parahumans. That's how he keeps the group together. That's how he always wins. We can't fight him. Too risky. We just need to get away, as far as we can."
There were holes in her story, but attempting to fill them after the fact would draw more attention than letting them be. She glanced down to gauge her audience, but couldn't see Siberian's expression from her angle.
"We don't need the Nine," Riley added carefully. "We can be our own family."
Siberian gently squeezed her leg in response, and Riley tried to focus on the relief of securing an ally rather than the image of the mangled police officers that flashed in her mind's eye with the contact.
Maybe she could pretend that she wanted to try something different after leaving the Nine, and convince Siberian to try too.
Convince Manton, she amended. Even after taking multiple clones apart and studying the mechanics of the power, she still couldn't help but see Siberian as her own person.
Siberian came to an abrupt stop, head snapping in the direction they'd come from. Riley hadn't heard what caught her attention, but her heart rose into her throat as she held her breath to listen.
At first, she could barely hear anything, but the sounds were growing louder with startling speed. Repeated impacts, similar to Siberian bulldozing her way through the forest, but heralding a much larger shape.
Crawler.
"Keep going," she urged Siberian, the image of Jack riding on Crawler's back still fresh in her memory. "Could be a trap or a distraction."
Siberian nodded, then leaped down an entire slope and shifted course to the right.
Attempts against Jack were usually met with swift retaliation, and she couldn't afford to underestimate him. He was definitely intrigued enough to be a little reckless, and it was his turn to make a move. He couldn't fight Siberian, but his most devastating attacks were always aimed with words rather than knives.
With his power at play, there were no safe assumptions.
Jack wasn't the only possibility. In the past fifteen minutes or so, Cherish had proven both her special talent for ill-advised plans and her willingness to backstab potential allies. She might still be looking to get her hands on Manton, now that subtlety had been thrown out of the window. It was possible that she'd pushed Crawler their way to buy herself some time to go after him.
If Crawler was alone, then only his tracking ability posed any real danger, as long as Riley remained under Siberian's protection. They couldn't risk leading him to Manton, but she had to assume that Siberian's change in direction came from the same reasoning.
The position made it arduous to find the right chemicals in the pouches strapped to her thighs, but she managed it after some wiggling and a few questioning looks from Siberian. She eyeballed the ratios based on what she remembered of Crawler's senses, but with no hard data to rely on, there was no way to know whether it would work.
Blue smoke erupted as she combined the two test tubes, washing over them and hopefully masking their scent.
Siberian took another turn.
Riley was aware of the relative position of her spider boxes, and could give them orders with little more than a thought, but receiving feedback was trickier. It didn't help that she hadn't used them in years and was still a bit fuzzy on the controls.
She retrieved her phone and punched numbers in, only for a "Password incorrect" message to pop on the lock screen. Her second attempt gave the same result.
Riley bit down a string of words that would undoubtedly have broken character. Precious seconds were wasted hacking the phone into submission.
A map appeared on the screen, with cartoon spiders shamelessly stolen from Love Bug representing each spider box. Thirteen were left of the twenty she'd brought from the hideout. Six with them, and seven that had successfully evaded the glass and fires by themselves. Most used biological components for sensory input, but a minority were equipped with cameras. There were two in the group they'd left behind.
Riley turned on the video feeds.
The first spider box had taken refuge under a piece of machinery between the building and the forest, and saw no sign of activity other than the fires as it peered between the wheels. She sent it to look around as the second one struggled to free itself from a pile of materials.
Jack was gone, of course.
Everyone was gone.
Mannequin's absence was perhaps the most surprising, given the position he'd been in when they left. Then again, it wasn't impossible that Shatterbird had used her power to move him while he was encased in glass.
Not a concern for now.
At Jack's last known location, the spider found blood. He'd been injured in Shatterbird's attack, but not enough to be life-threatening – not with her safeguards.
No hint of how he'd avoided the prions, but his footsteps led into the forest.
The urge to run away grew tenfold.
The other spider boxes emerged from hiding to follow the trail. They moved as fast as they could, spreading out so the whole group couldn't be taken out at once, and were autonomous enough that she didn't have to micromanage them.
She looked over her shoulder, and while the view was cut short by the slopes all around, she could still hear Crawler knocking down trees with reckless abandon. Her attempt at confusing his senses hadn't made much of a difference, although she suspected that their short head start was more to blame.
Now that he was closer, the noise made it obvious that he was alone. He would have been much more careful with passengers, as they usually preferred to remain alive and relatively intact.
The second camera showed that Cherish's car had left behind most of its windows and mirrors, as well as hurried tracks in the mud. There were three sets of footsteps leading to it, one of which was still smoking.
It was predictable, in retrospect.
"Cherie took the main road. I think she went north," Riley told Siberian. "Is your other self that way?"
Siberian shook her head.
It didn't mean much, when Riley had no idea where Manton actually was or how the roads connected, but he could make the judgment call and move out of the way if necessary.
Still, it was always better to tackle the problem at the source. What Cherish might have taken for an advantage also provided Riley with leverage.
If you go after him, I'll turn the protections back on and you'll lose control over Shatterbird and Burnscar. Do you really want to deal with a pissed off Shatterbird who's immune to your power?
She reactivated the smokescreen over her own emotions, just in case. Going through with the threat would only solve one problem by creating two more, but she was pretty sure that Cherish had enough self-preservation to scram for now.
A problem for later, maybe. When Jack wasn't a consideration anymore.
Would he ever not be?
There was still no hint of his whereabouts, but she couldn't shake off the visceral need to get away from him.
She needed to know where he was, but it was quickly becoming obvious that Crawler would catch up with them before she had an answer.
Years ago, he'd caught on to the fact that the best way to provoke Siberian was to attack Bonesaw, which had led to an interesting couple of days. She couldn't remember how Jack had shut it down, only that he really didn't want them to fight.
Could Siberian actually kill Crawler?
The answer, to the best of her knowledge and experimentation, was a definite 'maybe'. It was the sort of thing you couldn't know for sure without testing it empirically, and doing that kind of defeated the whole point.
Her educated guess was that it depended on Siberian's speed and starting point. If she found his core and destroyed the whole thing faster than Crawler could regenerate, he would die. If she didn't… It was hard to predict how his power would react.
Well, the empirical testing was going to happen whether they wanted it or not.
With a thundering crash, Crawler landed behind Siberian, looking ready to pounce and barely holding himself back as she turned to face him.
"You're leaving," he growled, his tone accusatory.
Riley considered their current position, and found very little plausible deniability there.
"What about it?" she challenged.
Siberian couldn't cross her arms while holding Murder Rat, but the gesture was very strongly implied as she shifted her weight from one leg to the other.
"Fight me."
At least he still had his priorities in order, even after their blatant betrayal of the Nine.
"Everyone else was fighting," he insisted.
Siberian twisted her head to look up at Riley, eyebrows raised to concede the point.
Riley exhaled through her mouth, louder than she'd meant to. There was nothing she could do if either of them decided to just go at it, but until the spider boxes found something, Crawler was her best source of information.
"Where's Jack? Can you smell him?"
He raised his head to inhale deeply, then motioned to his right.
"How close?" she asked pointedly.
He huffed, repeating the gesture twice with increasingly annoyed emphasis.
Riley swallowed a few character-breaking words and took a calming breath.
"What about the others? Mannequin?"
Crawler's tentacles twitched at the mention and he looked almost embarrassed, opening his mouth to speak, then closing it after a few seconds of silence.
"I… may have run him over a bit," he admitted, then misunderstood Riley's expression and promptly added, "He's sturdy. He'll be fine."
He certainly was, if the glass had been cracked enough for him to move away before the spider boxes started investigating.
Another unknown variable.
"I've been waiting for years," Crawler complained, drawing out the word.
Riley stiffened as the connection to one spider box snapped. The phone beeped a second later. She mentally checked the location in relation to herself, swallowing to soothe the dryness in her throat.
"Fine," she relented. "Whatever. Just make it quick."
Crawler threw his head back, baring several rows of mismatched fangs for a cry of victory that shook the ground and splattered it with venom. He moved slowly at first, almost savouring the anticipation, then rushed forward when he couldn't stand to wait anymore.
Siberian adjusted her grip on Murder Rat and leaped to meet Crawler's gleeful approach.
Riley tucked her head between her shoulders, eyes squeezed shut and breath firmly held, keeping her focus on the remaining spider boxes as Siberian tore into Crawler. She'd instructed them to stay out of sight and keep tabs on Jack from a distance, and their movement made it obvious that he wasn't coming after her.
He was running away.
It felt painfully obvious in retrospect, but the fear that had gripped her by the throat when he effortlessly thwarted her attack had led her to expect nothing but immediate retaliation. Seeing that he'd gone into the forest had only reinforced the idea. Now, with a fuller picture, she suspected that he'd only wanted to get away from Cherish as she retrieved her car.
Something wet slapped the top of Riley's head, followed by an engulfing pressure. A heavy rumble dug into her skin from all sides, reverberating through every structure beneath.
Siberian twisted around, swinging Murder Rat, and the rumbling stopped. With two strides, they emerged. Once the fluids had slid off, Riley raised her head to see Crawler's mangled body.
It wasn't regenerating.
Huh. That was a pretty definitive answer to that question. At least he died fulfilling one of his dreams. She hoped he had the time to enjoy it.
Siberian turned to run.
"Wait."
She stopped, and Riley gripped her phone to review the footage from the destroyed spider box. Jack was only visible in the last second of the video, his silhouette wreathed in plumes of white smoke.
Her white smoke.
A custom biocide, which she usually kept around in case one of her creations got out of hand. A perfect counter to all things biological.
She could even guess where it came from.
The months before Murder Rat's creation had been a long string of unsuccessful recruitments and short-lived members who barely lasted weeks.
Gordius had been one of those. A spiritual successor to Breed, in a way. His bodily fluids carried microscopic eggs that would quickly grow into worms of ridiculous lengths inside a host, allowing him to puppeteer their body. His claim to fame was a brief stint at a restaurant, followed by a swift arrest when he attempted to contaminate an entire town's water supply.
When the Nine broke him out of containment, she provided tubes her teammates could clip to belts or wear on a chain and twist open to release the smoke when needed. Within hours of the jailbreak, she'd inoculated everyone, and the tubes became irrelevant.
It never crossed her mind that he could have kept one.
At what point had he retrieved it? When they were getting ready to search for Cherish? While she was getting dressed?
When she woke up?
He'd known something was off from the start, and he'd been prepared.
Her biggest mistake, she realized, was to assume that there was safety in distance. The passengers didn't need proximity of the hosts to communicate.
No amount of distance would ever keep her safe from him.
Jack thrived most when presented with a challenge, and she had no doubt that he would come after her. This was too new, too unexpected, too interesting for him to resist. He'd find new allies and rebuild the Nine with a goal in mind, then keep himself out of reach until he was ready to make his move.
There would be a matter of pride, too.
People didn't leave the Nine. They were killed, either by an enemy or a teammate, and then they were replaced.
Harbinger was the only person who'd successfully retired, but that was before Jack took over, and Jack saw him as a friend and an equal. She'd asked him about it while she was in Cauldron's custody after her surrender, but he was… evasive, and derailed the conversation with his opinions about the "inaccuracies" of her clones. He had no appreciation or respect for how hard it was to reverse-engineer an entire person from scratch, especially when all she had to go by were public records and bedtime stories.
The clones had been her idea, but she had no doubt that Jack would come up with something of equal measure. He'd spend weeks, months, years preparing their big showdown and meticulously crafting those elaborate lose-lose scenarios he was so fond of.
He might even find out about the end of the world along the way.
He'd given Theo Anders two years to hunt him down and kill him. How long would he give her?
How long would she give him?
Every instinct was screaming at her to run and keep running, but they weren't instincts she could trust.
This was the most vulnerable he would ever be. If she couldn't beat him now, when he was the closest thing to unprepared and alone, then she couldn't beat him once he had every advantage in the book. Running away would only work in his favour.
Everything she did would work in his favour, as long as her passenger was communicating with his.
Her hand went to her pocket, retrieving the handful of test tubes she'd taken with her. Bonesaw's most recent projects.
If Cherish was still in the middle of her tests…
She found the vial. Found three more she could reasonably use against him.
Siberian was cranking her neck to look up at her, still waiting to understand what was going on. Riley reached for her free arm, and Siberian helped her to the ground. The spider boxes jumped off as she tentatively put down Murder Rat without breaking contact with Riley.
"Do you trust me?" Riley asked in a small voice.
Siberian nodded, a concerned look on her face.
"I know how to beat Jack, but it only works if there are no other parahumans around. I need to go alone."
Concern turned into a frown.
"Can't take the risk, with his power. We don't have much time, and we won't get a better chance than this."
There was so much she couldn't say.
"Please. He's running right now, but he'll come after us. We'll never be safe if he gets away."
Siberian's hand tightened around her shoulder, her power flickering for emphasis.
"No, he'll find a way around it. He always does."
The argument was too weak to budge the iron grip on her shoulder. Riley swallowed, buying herself a second to find a better one.
"You know the kind of games he likes. He could convince you to hurt me. He could force you to kill me to save your other self. You know he would."
Siberian hesitated.
"I have a plan, don't worry."
She did not, but with Jack's power, maybe it was better that way for now.
Siberian let go, and Riley felt no relief, only cold.
"I need your help too! Mannequin's missing. I need you to find him, make sure he's out of the way."
I need you out of the way.
"Bring Murder Rat. If I–" Riley caught herself. "I'll use her to contact you when it's over."
A rough plan etched on the ground by a spider box indicated which section of the forest to avoid.
Siberian lifted Murder Rat over her shoulder, but didn't step away.
"I'll be fine," Riley assured her, double-checking to make sure the system that would release a bundle of plagues in the event of her death was turned off.
Siberian did not look convinced.
Riley smiled, and found that Bonesaw's smile was much easier to perform when Jack was not in the audience. Siberian hesitated, then stepped closer and stroked Riley's hair, managing a small smile of her own. She nodded, and they went their separate ways without a word, the spider boxes flanking Riley.
Saying goodbye felt too final.
She uncorked the vial and swallowed the content before she could second-guess herself.
Communication was a two-way street. If she couldn't affect Jack's end, she could always shut down her own.