11. Wanderer
Riley drew the covers closer around herself. Siberian's warmth lingered, and she dreaded the moment where they would grow cold again.
At some point, she would have to open her eyes, face Manton's corpse, and extract its blood. For now, though, she could be warm for just a little bit longer, even if she felt cold inside.
It was okay to have good memories, her therapist had said. As long as they remained in the past.
The warmth itched, and part of her wanted to throw the covers away, but she kept them there, allowing herself to feel the itch.
It was okay to feel the way she felt, she reminded herself. There was no wrong way to feel.
She could hear sobbing, and worried for a second that the sounds had somehow escaped her.
She opened her eyes and wiped the moisture until her vision cleared.
The sobs were coming from Benny.
What right did he have to cry? Did he not realize what she had done?
Her hands ran through her hair to tie it back, and her fingers caught on the bow Siberian had placed there.
Jaw clenched, she removed it.
She could be Riley now.
She'd thought she would feel free once there was no more audience to perform for, but hollowness lingered where relief should have spread by now. She was careful not to examine it too closely.
She wiped her eyes again, wondering whether she should turn off her tear ducts.
No. It was okay to feel the way she felt. Even if she didn't want to feel it.
"Oh god…"
Benny was hyperventilating now, she noted with annoyance.
"P-please, please, d-don't kill me…"
"You need to be careful how you phrase these things, you know," she snapped at him. "Some people might take you at your words."
He declined to take her advice, instead doubling down on the begging.
She sighed, guilt prickling at her.
"Sorry. I'm not going to hurt you," she said, her voice low. "I don't do that anymore."
His eyes went to the body, quite eloquently for someone who was too scared for words.
"He doesn't count," she answered too fast. "He was…" No, he wasn't. Calling him Siberian felt wrong. "Siberian was his power."
Benny nodded, the kind of nod people did when they wanted to placate you no matter what they actually thought. She'd seen too many of those.
"He was getting suspicious," she told him. "He wanted me to be Bonesaw, and that's not who I am anymore."
"Oh…"
"You can call me Riley."
"O-okay…"
"Now if you'll excuse me, I've got work to do."
She didn't wait for an answer – not that Benny was proving to be quite the conversationalist so far – and exited the truck.
The bathtub lay on its side, carved feet grazing her as she passed.
She climbed in the truck's bed next to Hatchet Face, who had flexible tubing going in and out of his body. The contraption was simple enough for her to use without her power. Needles, some tubes, and a pump, designed to keep fluid circulating through his veins so everything would stay in working order. She removed it meticulously.
As she jumped back down with the life-support apparatus, she saw that the passenger door was open, Benny's restraints undone. He was hopping away from the truck.
Sighing, she shoved the tubing in her seat and snapped her fingers. The spider box sprung from beneath the back seat, and she removed an old fast-food wrapper that was stuck to it before sending it after Benny.
"I'm not going to hurt you, Benny," she shouted at him while her surgery assistant tackled him to the ground.
He would call for help if he got away, and she couldn't afford to have the authorities coming after her while she was at her most vulnerable.
He peed himself a second time while the spider dragged him back to the truck.
"I won't hurt you," Riley repeated as she gathered the restraints. "Pinky promise!" She held out her hand to him, pinky extended. He stared at it like it was a ticking bomb, refusing the offering of a sacred bond. Riley sighed and tossed her severed hand on the back seat, then tied him back to the passenger seat with better knots.
Climbing in, she started to work on Manton.
Handling a dead body was familiar. That Manton wasn't Siberian made it easier. Siberian had left no trace behind.
How different would her decision have been if Manton wasn't a factor?
Invincibility not withstanding, she couldn't imagine ever killing Siberian.
When she'd suggested that they make their own way as a family, it was Siberian that she pictured by her side, not Manton.
Siberian had been the best part of her former life, and she missed the good memories. She missed the time where Siberian's love was unconditional. She missed the time where Siberian was just Siberian.
That the two came as a package deal was still a bitter pill to swallow. It was easy to resent Manton for pretending. He made an easy scapegoat for what her therapist had termed her unresolved feelings about family.
He'd been too smart for any pretense to be sustainable and too unpredictable for the truth.
More than that, her progress had felt too fragile with the siren song of Siberian's affection threatening to lull her down a slippery slope.
She didn't let her feelings impact the way she handled his body. She was gentle with her touches, careful inserting the needles, and activated the pump with appropriate gravitas.
Benny was looking a bit green around the gills, and she wordlessly held out a greasy paper bag for him to vomit in while the pump drained the body's blood into the reservoir.
"First time, huh?"
She'd had more than one fainter in her lab, when technicians or analysts came to observe her findings.
"P-please, I…"
"It's okay. You'll get used to it."
His eyes widened, and it occurred to her that her statement, quite universal for those who handled dead bodies, might be misinterpreted in this context.
"Not that you'll need to!"
He whimpered. Damn it, she was bad at this. She sighed.
Once it was finished, she unbuckled Manton's seat belt and dragged the body to sit in the back seat, propping it up against the door. Then, she closed his eyes. It felt appropriate even if she didn't understand why.
Now, they just needed to find a safe place to wait until her power came back.
"You know the region well, don't you, Benny?"
"Y-yes?"
"Any place where we could lay low for a few days?"
"I… There's… there's a bunch of hunting cabins a bit North," he answered, and she almost wanted to congratulate him for saying a full sentence.
An out of season hunting cabin was a good idea. She nodded.
"Can you get me there?"
"I… my ankle… I think it's b-broken…" Pulverized would have been a better choice of word, but she didn't mention it.
"Hm." She turned to Murder Rat. "Murder Rat, take the wheel."
Benny's eyes widened.
"T-that thing can drive?"
"Don't be rude! I'll have you know that Murder Rat is twice the driver you are!"
"I-I'll do it," Benny mumbled. "I-I'll drive."
On one hand, he was clearly waiting for another opportunity to escape. On the other hand, specifically Murder Rat's, the machetes might prove problematic. On her feet too.
Riley looked at the driver's seat, eyeballing the space around the pedals, then back to Murder Rat's machete-clawed feet. Hm.
"No funny business," she warned Benny, pointing at him with her severed hand for emphasis.
He nodded hurriedly, pupils wide with fear.
Riley untied him, and he glanced at the blood-stained driver's seat, looking unsure.
"Second thoughts?"
"N-no."
"It's just blood. It won't harm you."
"S-sure."
He scooted over to the driver's seat, and Riley climbed in the place he'd just vacated, then handed him the keys.
The drive was pretty boring.
Riley dutifully drank her blood, and Benny pretended not to look, even though he had to stop twice to throw up.
"It's not that bad," she insisted. "Blood tastes a lot better when it's still warm. Less of a metallic tang."
They arrived at an old wooden cabin by the afternoon.
It was small and unassuming, but had all the qualities of a good hideout: remote, vacant, and with working plumbing.
She sabotaged the phone as soon as they got inside.
Leaving Benny in Murder Rat's care, she excused herself for a well-deserved shower. After scrubbing herself raw, she wrapped up in a fluffy towel and wiped the steam from the mirror to see her face.
The injuries dealt by Jack had closed up, but the scars were still pink and tender.
Her hair, even wet, bore the shape of Bonesaw's perfect ringlets, except they weren't so perfect anymore. Some of her hair had been cut by Jack's blind strikes, leaving them uneven and shaggy.
She almost reached for the brush, and her breath itched in her throat. She used her fingers instead.
Tomorrow, she could undo the ringlets, and regain the delightful mess of wild curls that was her natural hair. For now, she wove it into a thick braid reminiscent of Valkyrie and tied a ribbon at the end.
Yes, she quite liked that comparison to Valkyrie. Hopefully she could live up to it.
After changing into a flannel shirt and some oversized jeans she had found in one of the bedrooms, she exited the bathroom.
Benny was sitting on the couch, flanked by Murder Rat and the spider box.
"Are you hungry?" She asked him, rummaging through her bag.
He looked almost afraid to answer.
"I have some granola bars."
Relief bloomed on his face, and she threw the box at him. What did he think she was gonna feed him?
She took the half empty box of Frooty Toots to the kitchen to pour in a bowl, and added some blood instead of milk. It was still better than Burnscar's orange juice nonsense.
She went outside to eat, sitting on the porch, contemplating Manton's truck.
Manton's body was still in the backseat, and she wasn't quite sure what to do with it.
She didn't want to leave it out like Jack's for the authorities to find.
There was a shovel amongst the tools sitting next to the door, inside the shack.
She could bury him.
Was that what he would have wanted?
She was pretty sure he would have trusted her to make the decision, and it only made it worse.
She set down her bowl and went to pick up the shovel.
Walking around the cabin and the surrounding woods, she looked for the right place and found it between tall fir trees, near a boulder.
The sun had set by the time Riley finished digging the hole. Benny had offered to help, but she suspected he was mostly interested in getting an opportunity and a weapon. Besides, she wanted to do it herself. She owed Manton that much.
In lieu of a tombstone, she selected nine rocks and painted them with black and white stripes before laying them on the freshly turned ground.
Back at the cabin, Benny was pretending to sleep on the couch, waiting for an opportunity to escape while she slept. She instructed Murder Rat to keep a close eye on him, then went to sit on the porch with a mug of tea, watching the stars.
For the first time in her life, she was alone in every way that mattered. There was no pretense to keep up, whether as Bonesaw or as Upstanding Prisoner Riley. No audience to perform for. No passenger whispering in her ear.
Jack often said that the Nine showed people their truth, once everything was taken away from them.
What was her truth? What did she have left?
The thought of finding nothing was terrifying.
Jamie would have had many things to say about an Alice drinking from a vial without knowing whether it would make her bigger or smaller.
She smiled a bit at that.
What would Jamie think of her current circumstances? What about Valkyrie?
They used to talk about how they played the roles they were given so they could be part of the play, since writing their own story was no longer an option.
She quite liked that idea, of writing her own story.
There was still quite a lot to do.
Tomorrow, her power would come back.
She would release Benny, properly sedated and scrubbed of recent memories and biological evidence.
She would double-check the work the spider-box had done on her injuries after the fight with Jack.
She would neutralize all of Bonesaw's experiments that she had recovered from the previous hideout.
She would operate on Murder Rat to remove the two nervous systems and store them in the backpack Mannequin had made for her, that doubled as a life-support pod. Then, she would bury the rest of the body, along with the other organs and body parts Bonesaw had hoarded. Some day, she would find a way to bring back Mouse protector and Ravager.
The remaining members of the Nine were still at large, and she had no doubt that they would resurface sooner or later. They would want revenge, too, and she would need to prepare for it.
Even with Jack dead, the end of the world was only pushed back by a few years.
Then, there was the aftermath of Scion's death. What she'd been investigating, with the broken triggers. What Valkyrie had been afraid of, and why she spent so much time away from the City.
Would the woman in the suit come after her again?
Had she had the option two years ago, if had Jack been defeated under different circumstances, she might have taken the chance to disappear and never look back.
She'd changed, these past two years.
She'd changed, these past two days.
Plucky heroines who found themselves in absurd circumstances and slayed monsters did not turn and run and hide, Jamie would say.
Besides, she still had more monsters to slay.
She could figure out the big stuff along the way.
For now, she drank her tea, warm under a quilt someone had lovingly sown, and watched the stars for the first time in years, savouring her freedom.