6. Hunter
The effect wasn't instantaneous.
Any ordinary parasite would have been promptly squashed by a dozen layers of defenses, but no one would ever accuse Bonesaw's designs of being ordinary. The risk of accidental contamination was low enough that she hadn't bothered immunizing herself against it either.
The parasite would reach her stomach in a matter of seconds, then burrow in the submucosa to release metabolites into her bloodstream. There would be a delay of about two minutes before the connection to her passenger was shut down, because she'd paid special attention to Jack's lessons while preparing Cherish's test. It was important to build anticipation.
Riley discarded the empty vial.
Two minutes.
How to make them count?
Any action she took, any decision she made while Jack's power could still affect her was liable to shoot her in the foot. On the other hand, doing nothing at all might give him the head start he needed to slip away.
Better to keep her options open than to make any solid plan.
She snapped her fingers, and the spider boxes stood to attention around her. They varied in shapes and sizes, built and rebuilt from whatever scraps were available at the time, and the largest ones came up to her hips. She handed them two of the vials cherry-picked from Bonesaw's experimental samples, and hesitated on the third. Maybe she should keep it to herself, just in case. At the same time, the spiders were expendable, and their programming would allow them to make good use of it, better than she could once deprived of her tinkering ability. They could attack together and maximize the chances that something would work while she remained a safe distance away.
It felt suspiciously like a good idea, which was enough for her to slip the vial in her own pocket instead. Too dangerous to put all her eggs in the same basket.
"Go join the others," she ordered her minions. "Hurry up!"
They scurried off, disappearing at the turn of a small hill. Even if they didn't reach Jack before her time was up, they'd be in a good position to make a move once she was ready. On the other side of the forest, the second group of spider boxes was still following her instruction to keep tabs on him as he tried to escape.
Micromanaging them would only increase the chances of Jack smoking them out, so Riley put the phone away.
Her hands lingered over the pouches of chemicals at her thighs, itching to go to work on a flurry of ideas. It pained her to hold back, but it was too risky.
The slightest miscalculation on her part could quite literally blow up in her face, and she'd be especially prone to errors against this specific opponent. Better to stick with what she already had.
Flexing each finger, Riley took inventory of the weapons hidden beneath her skin, then worked her way up the arm as she ran behind the spiders.
Hatchet Face's presence in the Nine had made for the occasional bout of friendly fire, in addition to the many instances of unfriendly fire. Bonesaw had been able to fly blind for the most part, relying on muscle memory to use her tech when her power was out, but Riley was too far removed from it to do the same.
The automatic stuff would be fine, but consciously operating any complex internal mechanism would be a gamble without her power, so she focused her attention on the simplest ones. Movements and mental pathways were repeated over and over, like mantras, in the hopes of committing them to memory well enough to bypass the effect of the parasite.
Through her connection with the spider boxes, she could sense that Jack was moving slower than anticipated. Was he wary of traps? He's already caught one spider, and likely knew others were trailing him.
She checked the video feed, dissecting it for information.
Jack's footprints showed an uneven gait, confirming that he'd been hurt during Shatterbird's attack. He'd suffered muscle damage to the right thigh, judging by the patterns and nuances of the blood trail. The injury had been worsened by his initial sprint.
She had to put away the phone to climb a steep hill, both hands grasping at trees and branches to help herself up.
It should be a good thing that he was injured, but she'd seen him win fights in worse conditions, and claiming the slightest advantage felt overconfident. He'd avoided her first attack almost effortlessly. How many more tricks did he have up his sleeve?
Maybe her decision had been too hasty. She'd acted on impulse, going against instincts she believed weren't hers, but there was still a possibility that she was playing right into his hand.
For every scenario that crossed her mind, she could imagine a hundred different ways it would go horribly wrong. Safer, cleaner, more elegant solutions nagged her from the other side of her time limit, just out of her reach. With just a few more minutes, she could whip out a counter to the biocide, then leverage the trace amounts of sweat he'd left on her hand as a base for a targeted bioweapon. It would be safer – safest – to finish him off from a distance.
The idea sprouted relief as it took root.
Her mind and hands leaped into action, reaching for ways to delay the onset of the parasite, to buy herself more time to prepare. Ways the other group of spiders could run interference to keep Jack from escaping in the meantime.
The plan came together with the familiar rush of satisfaction that bloomed whenever she found just the right angle to look at a problem, and the conscious realization of what she was doing stopped her dead on her tracks.
The clock ticking down was her salvation, not an obstacle to overcome.
She lowered the two test tubes she'd been about to combine, mourning the illusion of safety as she dumped their content to the ground to avoid any further temptation.
In frustration, Riley kicked one of the empty tubes against a tree, where it shattered with a satisfying crunch. Hadn't it been two minutes already? She should have checked the time after ingesting the parasite.
Had something gone wrong?
It wasn't impossible. She'd assumed it would work on the basis that she wasn't immune to the parasite itself, but there were many other possible points of failure. Her modified digestive system might not be a suitable environment for the parasite to complete its cycle. Her blood-brain barrier might not let the metabolites through. The experimentation she'd done on the connection to her passenger might have altered the requirements to shut it down.
If it didn't work, she'd have to let him go and play the long game. Anything else would be suicide.
She squeezed her eyes shut and breathed in. It was hard to center herself, to think past the flurry of doubts and intrusive thoughts nagging her.
It was too early to tell whether she had failed, and useless to worry about it until then. For now, she had much more important things to focus on.
After careful consideration, she decided that the explosive snot rockets would be better left untouched.
The spider boxes were making steady headway through the forest, fast enough to intercept Jack in a matter of minutes. He was–
The sharp tingling of her funny bone brought the world back in focus. Cradling her elbow, Riley tried to steady herself on the fallen log she had slumped over. Her glove snagged against the rough bark, and–
No, that wasn't right.
Her bare hand came away with splinters, and Riley squinted at it for a long moment before piecing together that the additional layer that felt like a glove was under the skin, not over it. The thumb and index had a slightly warmer coloring than the rest of her hand, and the graft scars were still pink. The fingers flexed with ease, but there were three extras that she couldn't see even as she bid them to move and felt them respond.
Wiping her hand on her coat, Riley stepped over the log, then stumbled when her foot hit the ground much faster than anticipated.
A careful, measured step confirmed her suspicions.
These legs were just a few inches shorter than the ones she was used to, but it was enough to throw her off. The limbs were also heavier, crammed with tech that Amy had removed on Gold Morning. She'd been aware of the differences in her body since she woke up, but her power had made it easy to process the dissonance between memory and proprioception and to adjust her movements to compensate. It had been barely more than background noise after the first few moments.
Now, every little thing she'd been able to shove to the back of her mind with the help of her power stood at the forefront of her awareness.
Her insides felt too big for her skin. Extra limbs were folding inward like fractals, moving in ways she couldn't comprehend anymore. Breathing was a whole different process, but she couldn't pinpoint exactly how. Her skin itched with everything under it, but it wasn't the kind of itch one could solve by scratching at it.
She still scratched, and the scratching made it worse.
At least she was safe from Jack's power now.
Wasn't she?
There was no vanishing fear to confirm she'd been right. No renewed courage to carry her through the upcoming fight. No tangible difference.
It was a bit of a disappointment, but not something she could afford to dwell on for too long.
Putting one foot in front of the other, Riley resumed a tentative walk, trying to find the right rhythm for her treacherous limbs to cooperate.
She couldn't try to assassinate Jack while stumbling around like a newborn foal. He'd keep her alive just so she could never live it down. She briefly wondered if he could choke himself to death while laughing, but decided that since the safeguards she'd armored him with had protected him from both strangulation and Burnscar's cooking, this kind of blind luck was highly unlikely.
The fastest spider boxes had already reached their destination, hiding at a safe distance and awaiting her orders. As Riley weighted the costs and benefits of waiting for the stragglers, the spiders nearest to Jack heard something.
Sound wasn't enabled on her end, and she couldn't risk fumbling with the connection to turn it on, but she already knew what it was.
She hated that her first reflex was to hold her breath and listen, as if straining her ear would allow her to decipher his words through the distance. As if listening to him would ever be a good idea.
Something nagged her about his position.
It had been hard to consciously keep track of it while her own movements demanded so much focus, but the map on her phone allowed her to catch up on what she'd missed.
The first group of spider boxes had stopped moving.
Jack had stopped moving.
Riley's breath fogged in the cold air as she exhaled, the full breadth of her attention on the phone.
It should be a good thing that he'd stopped trying to get away just as she lost her power. If nothing else, it should be a confirmation that she didn't register as a threat anymore.
She hadn't realized how much she liked the idea of Jack running away from her until he wasn't. Sure, an overconfident Jack would be more prone to life-threatening mistakes, but part of her wanted him to be scared.
The sight on the video feed wasn't that different from the one in her mind's eye. Jack stood in the middle of a small clearing with a knife in each hand and all the confidence in the world, offering her a clear shot as if she was dumb enough to take the bait. He was still talking, waiting for her to make the first move, and she instructed her pawns to get closer. They crawled low on the ground, keeping cover from the rocks, vegetation and uneven terrain, but they couldn't get close enough to land a hit before he did, and he could destroy them with one good strike.
What would he expect?
He wasn't aware of his power, and as far as she could tell, the information it fed him was indistinguishable from his own instincts. Even if he tried to understand what had changed in the last few minutes, it just wasn't an intuitive leap for anyone not in the know. He wouldn't expect her to shut down her own power any more than he would expect her to cut off her own leg.
Truth be told, she had chopped off a leg once or twice to access hidden weapons, but it could hardly be counted as a common occurrence.
He knew that she knew about the biocide by now. She was a problem-solver, and he knew just how infuriating it was for him to use her own work against her. She thought back to her momentary lapse in judgement earlier. If she hadn't known about his power and they'd been in the same situation, she would have pursued that avenue of attack and created a counter to the biocide just to prove a point.
All around him, sprays and venting systems activated, flooding the clearing with various chemicals. They were almost immediately rendered harmless, but he didn't know that.
Jack bolted, knives swinging as he went. Three spider boxes perished.
He ignored the largest gap between the rapidly merging clouds of smoke, where her younger self would undoubtedly have hidden a trap, and instead made a narrow escape in the opposite direction, where the actual trap was.
As he passed a thicket of trees, two of her minions doused him with the vials she'd selected from Bonesaw's most recent experiments. He quickly dispatched them, but it was too late.
The chemicals in the air made it hard to see everything. Eyes glued to the screen, Riley ordered her spider-cam to find a better vantage point. The other spider boxes hurried to the scene while Jack frantically removed his coat, which had soaked up the brunt of the liquid.
Not that it would make any difference. A single droplet coming in contact with him would be enough.
The fastest spider box tackled him while his hands were busy with his coat. Scalpels and bone cutters dug into his legs until he managed to use them against their owner.
Then, he swung the spider's corpse, using his power on the blades and tools adorning its legs as the five remaining spider boxes were closing in on him.
Just like that, her fleet was gone. Only her camera remained, but it would be pointless to send it after him now.
Soon, his flesh would begin to melt under his skin, and he would be done for.
Any second now.
Riley's steps were steadier, almost managing a half-jog even with most of her attention on her phone.
With no more assailant in sight, Jack struggled to get back on his feet, leaning against a tree as one hand held a blade in front of himself and the other put pressure on his thigh. He took a look at his discarded coat, then inspected himself. Tremors shook his body.
This was it.
Riley hurried, itching to join him in his final moments and give him a dose of his own medicine. She knew just the right words to say. After all, she'd had more than enough time to ponder them.
How many times had she imagined this scene? It had come a long way from the violent, tinker-focussed revenge fantasies of her early days with the Wardens, refined through therapy and as her understanding of his influence shifted, but the gist of it remained the same. She wanted to break him like he had broken her.
He took so much pride in his ability to read people. What was he without his power? Nothing.
Riley checked the phone to get an idea of how long he had left, and her steps faltered.
Jack's body was shaking alright, but not from tremors.
He was laughing.
Worse, his flesh remained distinctly unmelted.
Whether it was through bad handling or simply a bad choice from the start, the vials were just as ineffective as the rest.
Had she been wrong about the way his power worked? Was she still vulnerable to it?
No, there was a much simpler explanation. Despite herself, she'd made her plan two minutes too early. She'd used her power to pick the vials, and made the decision to send the spiders after him while her power was still active. The third vial was still in her pocket, likely just as useless as the others.
She'd have to start over from scratch.
Moving forward was a risk and would mean fighting Jack one on one. Going back and abandoning the fight would only delay it and raise the stakes.
She ran.
She ran as fast as her legs could carry her without stumbling.
She ran, until an invisible blade slashed the side of her face.