Another Way
Part Sixteen: Following Up
[A/N: This chapter commissioned by GW_Yoda and beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]
Claire
"Um … miss? Are you a superhero?"
Claire turned to look at the hostages sitting on the floor, all staring at her in the dimness with varying levels of trepidation. Before, they hadn't gone anywhere because of the threat of the Marquis clone, but that didn't seem to be what they were worried about right now.
Oh. Right.
One by one, she began undoing the changes she'd made in herself for the battle. Dead black skin faded back to pink, high-agility joints reshaped themselves almost to normal, her gecko-grip right hand altered shape to become recognisably human, and her muscles regained a more natural blend of fast-twitch and slow-twitch fibres. As soon as she was sure she wouldn't freak the hostages out, she gave them a smile.
"Not exactly," she said dryly. "As you just heard, my name is Marchioness. I'm here to help. Is anyone hurt?"
"Only the security guard," said a middle-aged woman. "I think everyone else is okay. Are you really Marquis' daughter? Isn't that Marquis just over there?"
Claire sighed. If people would just pay attention once in a while, their lives—and everyone else's—would be so much easier. "No, it's not. That's a clone. My father's just outside." Belatedly, she added, "Where's the security guard?"
"Here." The painful wheeze was masculine in timbre. "You sayin' it wasn't Marquis who put me down?" Oddly enough, he sounded almost disappointed.
"That is indeed the case!"
Claire didn't have to look around to know who it was that had spoken, his dramatic tones ringing through the darkened space. In the next moment, light flooded across the interior of the bank, causing her to cast a shadow across the hostages. I love you dearly, Dad, but do you really have to ham it up like this? She didn't even need to voice the question out loud. The answer, as long as she'd known him, was 'yes'.
With the extra light, she was easily able to pick out the wounded guard. He looked like he'd been nailed in the right shoulder and left leg by the clone. Makeshift bandages had been wrapped around his wounds, but they were soaked through with blood.
She was close enough now that she was able to single him out with her power, and she set it to work repairing his wounds. Glancing around, she confirmed her guess that her father was striding forward like a conquering hero, with Kayden hovering behind him. The effect was … pretty impressive, actually. The hostages, already getting to their feet, were shading their eyes and watching him with a certain amount of awe.
"All is well here, Marchioness?" he asked as he reached her, placing his hand on her shoulder. Claire could see at least one cell-phone in the crowd, and she figured she knew what the front page picture on tomorrow's edition of the Brockton Bay Bulletin was going to be. "Did you have any difficulty with the clone?"
"It's all good. Once I figured out how to put him down, it wasn't hard." She deliberately spoke in obscure terms, to make sure nobody in the crowd figured out how she'd done it. As Marchioness, she was known as a healer, not as a biokinetic and definitely not a Changer. While some of the hostages would've seen a little of what she'd done to take down the last minion and the clone, the darkness would've obscured a lot of the useful detail. She hoped, anyway.
"I had every faith in you, my dear." Even ignoring the overacting, she knew he was serious. It had to have been a wrench for him to let her go in solo, but she'd won. "And the other item?"
"Got it right here." She held up her right hand, opening it just far enough for him to see the vial peeking through. "You want to deal with it?"
"I would like nothing better." She felt him pluck the vial from her fingers. Seconds later, he had encased it in a smooth shiny capsule of bone, the better to ensure that it wouldn't break if dropped.
With that off her mind, and out of her hands, she turned her attention back to the security guard. He was sitting up now, with his wounds almost completely healed. The rest of the people who'd been in the bank—specifically, the customers. The staff had obviously retreated to the rear of the building—were keeping back, probably out of a combination of fear and respect.
"Hey," said the guard. "You're villains, right?"
He sounded more puzzled than accusatory, but Claire felt it was necessary to correct his misapprehension. "My father's a villain," she said. "I'm not. I'm not a villain, a hero, a rogue, or any of that. I'm me."
"Yeah, that's what I'm wondering about," the guard replied. "If you don't mind me asking … why did you stop the bank robbery? I mean … that's what heroes do. Not villains and … well, whatever you are."
Maybe a little lighter on the endorphins next time, Claire decided. This guy was posing questions that he probably wouldn't ordinarily have asked in a hundred years. It was almost certainly the fault of the hormones she had running through his system so he didn't panic over what was going on.
Still, he'd been polite about asking. "This wasn't a bank robbery," she explained. "It was made to look like one, but the whole idea was to send the Marquis clone into a murderous rage so he killed you all, then use the security footage to frame my father for mass murder. I happen to like my father without a kill order on his head, thank you very much."
Carefully, the guard climbed to his feet. "So wait, if they hadn't been planning to kill us all, you wouldn't have intervened?" He sounded almost offended.
"My only concern was that they were using my name in vain, " Earl put in from behind Claire. "Saving your lives was merely a collateral effect. Bank robbery is a time-honoured activity of imagination-challenged criminals; far be it from me to nip such a venerable practice in the bud." He nodded toward where his clone and the last Blasto minion were resting peacefully. "If you're finished tending to the unwashed masses, my dear, I believe it may be time to leave. With, of course, those persons of interest to us."
"Wait, you're just taking them and going?" Now the guard looked confused. "Aren't you going to wait for the cops or anything?"
Earl stepped up alongside Claire and gave the man a full-on are you kidding? look. "In case you'd forgotten, the appellation 'villain' literally does mean I'm not obliged to cooperate with the forces of law and order." He raised his hand slightly; the guard flinched. "Of course, if you're unconvinced, I can always bind you before we leave."
Both of the guard's hands were raised in surrender. "No, no, I'm good. Take 'em and go. And … well, thanks."
"Whatever for?" Earl turned away, obviously putting the man from his mind as irrelevant. Claire gave the guard a nod of acknowledgement before following her father.
"I'm not entirely certain as to why I was the obvious choice for carrying this miscreant." Despite his words, Earl's voice was bemused rather than annoyed as he carried the teenaged thug from the bank. "Surely your internal modifications make you capable for the purpose."
"Yeah, well, I coulda carried him," Claire confirmed. She hadn't quite given herself the same level of modifications Jonas was currently enjoying, but what she did have would've been well within the requirement to support the boy. "But it raises fewer questions if you do it." She had considered getting the clone—now shuffling along behind her—to do the heavy work, but she hadn't wanted to get into fiddly commands while people were watching, even with Kayden there to dazzle them. Both literally and figuratively.
"I see," he replied, in the tone of voice he used when he was admitting she was right without actually saying so. "Do not imagine for a moment that this will be a regular state of affairs."
"Well, duh." She grinned at him as the car pulled up in front of the bank. "That's what Jonas is for."
"What'm I for again, Miss Marchioness, ma'am?" asked Jonas as he opened the door and got out.
Claire smirked. She should've known Jonas would hear that comment, given the improved sensorium she was testing out on him. "Heavy lifting and punching people really hard," she replied cheekily. "Got another clone to deal with. And a prisoner for interrogation."
"Well, I can't argue with that job description." Jonas opened the back door to allow Earl to dump his burden inside on the floor. With a touch of pheromone and a spoken order, Claire had the clone climb in as well, then she put him to sleep. That left just Kayden and Claire to get in.
As they did so, Earl eyed the three mooks lying peacefully on the steps of the bank. "Do we really need these as well? Or is one enough?"
"One's plenty," Claire said as she got comfortable, using the recumbent clone as a foot-rest. "We can leave the others for the cops. They'll wake up in about half an hour. Sooner, if someone jostles them around."
"Very well." Earl turned to look at the white bone dome covering what had been the burning getaway car. He gestured idly in its direction, then climbed into the front seat of the limo. Behind him, the dome began to disintegrate, the hard shell flaking off and wafting away in the breeze. "When I see Blasto," he muttered, "I will be sure to thank him for making my life that little bit harder."
"I think we've all got a bone to pick with him, Dad," offered Claire from the back seat, then she grinned at the round of groans. "Oh, come on. That was a good one."
Earl looked up at the rear-vision mirror. "On that, my dear, we have a difference of opinion. And we still have to speak about how you didn't take out the clone first."
Claire huffed in irritation. "He looked like you, okay? I had a hard enough time attacking him in the first place. Besides, I wanted to make sure the murder-pheromone wasn't at risk."
"Hmm," he said. "I'll let it go … this time."
She poked her tongue out at him, then turned to Kayden. "Comfortable?"
"Sure," the older woman replied with an eye-rolling grin, as she stretched her legs out and rested them on the Marquis clone as well. "Couldn't be better."
"You two are using my clone as a foot-rest, aren't you?" Earl asked suspiciously.
Claire and Kayden immediately moved their feet from the clone on to the mook. "No," they chorused. Exchanging mischievous smirks, they settled back to enjoy the ride.
"All right then."
The basement was cool and quiet. Claire stood, eyeing their prisoners. The clones stared blankly back, while the three mooks watched her with varying degrees of terror. She'd removed their various compulsions, leaving just five behind.
First: don't move without permission.
Second: don't speak without permission.
Third: do what I tell you to do.
Fourth: don't try to give orders to the clones at all.
Fifth: give the absolute and total truth when asked a question or told to speak.
One of the things she'd given back was the ability to care about what was going to happen to them. She wanted them to care. She wanted them terrified. Pure, gut-wrenching fear was a better loosener of tongues than any number of mental compulsions.
She wasn't alone in the cellar, of course. Earl and Kayden were standing back a few steps, while Jonas loomed in the background. The belated light lunch sat on a tray nearby. Claire took a slice of apple and chewed on it while she considered the questions she was going to ask.
"I'm going to ask questions. If you know the answer to any of the questions, put your hand up. Once the question has been answered, put your hand down. Do not lie by keeping your hand down if you know the answer. Is that perfectly clear?" All three mooks put their hands up. Claire looked at the first one. "What is the answer?"
"Yes, it is clear." The mook put his hand down. So did the other two. This puzzled Claire until she realised she hadn't specified that they had to answer the question before they put their hand down, just that the question had to be answered.
She repeated the question with the other two mooks, getting the same answer each time. Okay, so that works. Taking a sheet of paper from her purse, she unfolded it to reveal the list of questions that she and the others had brainstormed over for the last fifteen minutes.
"Question number one: how many people does Blasto have working for him?"
All three hands shot into the air.
Blasto
Rey Andino had a bad feeling about the way the day was going. Not only had the massacre at Brockton Bay Central Bank not made the news yet, but his Lung-clone wasn't back from the PRT building. In fact, both clones and their attendant minions may as well have fallen into a hole, as far as their existence was concerned.
The PRT HQ had been attacked, he knew that much. But far from trumpeting the move by Lung to the skies and swearing to bring him in and avenge his victims, the PRT was saying … very little indeed. What news footage there was showed a barricade set up around the entrance of the PRT building, with both fire trucks and police cars nearby. A statement had been given by a tight-lipped PRT public-relations guy, which boiled down to "something happened, but we're not going to talk about it".
What the hell's going on here?
When he first came up with his master plan, the idea had been to sit back and watch the chaos unfold all around him. As each gang was weakened in turn, he would slowly but surely expand his territory in that direction, until the true ruler of Brockton Bay's underworld ended up as none other than he himself. And all without using self-reproducing creatures; he had no desire for that pre-signed kill order to come into effect. The PRT may have hobbled him but they'd left loopholes, which he fully intended to exploit. And if a few civilians died in the process, who cared? It wasn't like he'd get blamed for the deaths.
But still, something was going on. His latest masterpiece was still maturing, so he left it to continue growing and absorbing nutrient matter at a steady rate. It wouldn't need his attention for another ten minutes or more. In the meantime, he had something he needed to do.
He had to admit, however grudgingly, that the ex-ABB youths had held up their end of the deal. As he ducked past the curtain into the kitchen area of his lair, he saw one mopping the floor and another stirring something that smelled delicious on the stove. The place had never looked cleaner; all the surfaces sparkled, dishes were washed and put away, and they'd even managed to get rid of whatever had been growing in the fridge.
"You two," he said. He'd never bothered learning their names; why should he? People were far less interesting than his beautiful monsters, after all. "Have you been watching the news?"
"No," said the girl who was stirring the pot. "What's happened? Where are the others?"
"They aren't back yet. And neither are my clones." His tone made it clear which was more important to him. "You've heard nothing from any of them?"
"No, sir," said the kid with the mop. "Not even from Sugito."
Rey looked at him. "Sugito," he repeated, gesturing for the street rat to make some kind of sense.
"He went out with the Lung clone," the girl clarified. "He should've been back hours ago. Or called. Or something."
"Would he have gone to the authorities? Or back to the ABB?" He was beginning to regret taking the kids in altogether. People were just so unreliable.
The girl snorted. "Fuck, no. Lung—the real one—woulda killed him. And Sugito wouldn't have gone to the cops. That's just not him. We're his people. He wouldn't flip on us."
Her words rang with sincerity, which paradoxically made him more uneasy, not less. There was a potential problem here, much worse than simple betrayal. "Get your weapons," he said. "You're off cooking and cleaning duty and on guard duty. Something's wrong."
"What? What's wrong?" asked the girl, but she was already turning the stove off and putting a lid on the pot.
"If I knew what it was, I could do something about it." Having exhausted his store of patience for human interaction for the day, Rey turned and hustled back toward his lab.
If his creations had been captured, their ingrained instincts were to fight their way free. Separated from their human sheepdogs, they would return home. They hadn't come back, with or without the teenagers he'd sent out to accompany them. Which meant that someone had captured or killed his creations without it making the news …
Right on cue, the TV he had fixed to the wall played an alert tone.
"We interrupt with a breaking news bulletin. The Brockton Bay Central Bank was the scene of a bizarre villain attack earlier today, where someone initially appearing to be Marquis entered the bank and took hostages. Shortly thereafter, the new cape known as Marchioness engaged both the false Marquis and his teenage accomplice and disabled them, claiming that this was merely a clone of the infamous villain. Marchioness has claimed to be the daughter of the real Marquis, and this was borne out when he entered the bank as well. They took the clone and the accomplice with them, after Marchioness healed the hostages of their injuries. Witnesses at the scene report that—"
That couldn't be right. Rey wasn't exactly an avid follower of current events, but even he'd heard of the healer called Marchioness. She'd made waves by establishing herself at the Brockton Bay General Hospital on a semi-regular basis and curing all comers of their ailments. He hadn't heard that Marquis was her father, though. But that begged the question of how a healer took out the clone and its minders.
I bet she went in to try to defuse the situation, then her father took out the clone and the idiot minions. He'd probably handed her the credit just to confuse matters. Who'd take her on, after all, if they thought she was some kind of badass? It wasn't like healing was a particularly scary power.
But in any case, he'd heard enough. Moving to where a chain hung from the ceiling, he yanked on it. Immediately, a pre-mixed pheromone jetted from the re-purposed fire sprinkler system, spreading in clouds through the air. When his guard-beasts inhaled it, they got up from where they were resting and moved toward the exterior wall of the building, peering out through peepholes. Growls rumbled in their chests. Others scaled ladders to higher vantage points on the upper walkway.
That was the main reason he preferred working with his own creations. Given the right stimulus, his creatures would instantly go on to high alert without him having to talk to them.
He turned his attention to his latest project. Almost fully grown, it would be ready for decanting in just a few minutes. He didn't know that the base would be coming under attack, but it was the safest assumption to make. If anyone did attack, he intended to make them severely regret it, then use their genetic material to build the next generation of his creatures.
Unless it was Marquis, of course. He already had Marquis' genetic material, so he'd just kill the man and dispose of the corpse, unwritten rules be damned. The daughter—Marchioness, wasn't it?—might yield some interesting insights, so he'd probably keep her alive long enough to see what she could do before he got a sample and disposed of the rest of her.
He was fully aware that normally he was a lot more cautious than this, but dammit, he'd been keeping his head down for far too long! The gold ring was within sight, and he was damned if he was going to turn back now! By the time he was finished, Brockton Bay would understand that Blasto was a force to be reckoned with—
Someone knocked on the door.
His internal monologue came to a screeching halt and he looked around, not at all sure what was going on. If someone was going to attack, they normally didn't knock first. He checked on the project; less than a minute to go. Picking up one of several spray-bottles he had sitting around, he liberally doused himself with a specific pheromone; not unlike the one he'd given his minions, it made all his creations see him as someone to be respected and obeyed. To them, he was basically God, which wasn't all that far from reality if he stopped and thought about it.
The knock came again.
Selecting the nearest guard-creature, he pointed at the door. "See who it is!" As the guard hulked its way toward the entry, Rey pulled open a drawer and took out the pistol it contained. He didn't like using firearms—as far as he was concerned, they were far less reliable and versatile than his creations—but they were an effective force multiplier in tight situations. He hurried after the guard, positioning himself by the door so that when it opened he'd be able to hear the conversation.
The guard clumsily manipulated the locking mechanism, then pulled the door open. There was a short pause. "Who you?" it grunted.
"Hi," a voice answered. Rey wasn't the best person for determining age or even gender by voice alone, but if pressed he would've pegged this as a young woman or a teenage girl. One who sounded quite pleased with herself. Annoyingly so, even. "The name's Marchioness. I'm here to give your boss one chance to surrender before Marquis brings this place down around your ears and Palatina makes a crater out of it."
The guard-creature obviously tried to absorb all this, but eventually it shook its head in confusion. "Uh?"
"Oh, you poor thing." Marchioness' voice was immediately full of compassion. "Did he do the same thing with you as the other clones?"
This had gone on long enough. Rey pulled the door open a little farther and pointed the pistol at … huh. It was a teenage girl, after all. Wearing an evening dress and heels, with a little wrist purse even. She was done up to the nines, looking for all the world like she was going out to a high-society function with her parents, not standing on a supervillain's front doorstep. "All right," he snapped. "Who are you really, and what do you want?" The name 'Marchioness' did seem to be familiar from the news just before, but he'd learned not to believe everything he saw on TV.
"Oh, good." She smiled at him. He'd seen smiles like that before, on creations he'd made that owed a lot to shark DNA. "I was worried that I'd have to come find you. So, the offer to accept your surrender expires in one minute. My father and Palatina have this place surrounded. Dad is all kinds of pissed that you tried to drag his name in the mud, and Palatina isn't thrilled with you either."
So many things about this weren't adding up; he grasped at the first straw that came to hand. "Palatina? Who's he?" It wasn't a cape name he recognised, and it didn't exactly make it obvious what the cape's powers were. If it even was a cape. For all he knew, it was someone's surname.
She gave him a pitying little smile, as if he'd missed something very important. "Palatina's a she, not a he. She's very nice, unless you upset her. Then she blows things up a lot. She's the newest member of our team, and she's currently waiting to see if I ring her and say you've surrendered."
Palatina was a name Rey hadn't heard before. It was another point in favour of the theory that Marchioness hadn't been the one to take down the crew in the bank; if Marquis had had another cape on hand to deal with them, there was no way he'd be sending the healer in to do the job. Which meant the media had gotten things wrong yet again. In any case, even if her healing was scarier than it sounded, he had a gun and his guard-beast was sufficiently big and scary to make the average linebacker wet himself in terror.
"Grab her," he said to the guard-beast, gesturing with the gun. As the creature complied, he gave Marchioness a nasty little smile of his own. "Once they see you with a gun at your head, they'll be the ones surrendering, not me."
He was mildly surprised when she didn't try to avoid the guard-beast's grasp, but figured that she hadn't expected him to try this ploy. Not that it would've helped her; with these beasts, he'd coded high-speed reflexes and brute strength into one remarkably effective package. She didn't struggle to get free, probably because she recognised the uselessness of pitting her muscles against the highly tuned physique of the creature holding her.
He'd been kind of expecting her to scream as the guard-beast dragged her across the threshold and he slammed the door behind her, but she remained eerily silent. And unless a faintly worrying smile was her version of a rictus of terror, it wasn't fear that was keeping her quiet.
I've got the upper hand here, he reminded himself firmly. I've got my gun, I've got my guards, and I've got my masterpiece. If she thinks she can overcome that, she's delusional.
"So that's a 'no' on unconditional surrender, then?" The girl's smile had, if anything, become more worrying. Delusional she might be, but there was a certainty about her that would've made him reconsider his life choices if he wasn't pointing a gun at her face.
"Don't be a fool," he told her roughly. "Your father and Palatina, whoever that is, can't help you now. They aren't here. I am. And unless they do exactly what I say, things are going to go very badly for you. Call them up and tell them that."
Her smile widened slightly and she looked past him. "Oh, hi!" she called out. "How are you doing?"
Backing off slightly, in case she made a grab for the gun, he glanced in that direction, wondering who or what he had in his base that she addressed so familiarly. The two kids were standing the doorway to the kitchen area, staring at Marchioness with the level of horror that she should have really been showing toward the guard-beast.
"Shit!" yelled the boy, half a second ahead of the girl. "What's she doing here?"
Wait, they know her?
"That bitch got Dao killed!" the girl clarified. "Is Marquis here? We are so fucked."
"Wow, you're really good at picking sucky bosses, aren't you?" Marchioness sounded positively amused. A corner of her smile sharpened. "If I was you ... I'd run."
Rey turned his full attention back to her and raised his pistol slightly. "What's going on? What are they talking about?" At the back of his mind, he wondered if he shouldn't just shoot her—
Now her smile was fully predatory. "This." And then she snapped her fingers.
When the guard-beast began to growl, he didn't immediately realise what the problem was. Then he did; the thing was looking at him, thin lips peeled back to reveal razor-edged dentition. It released Marchioness' arm and took a step toward him, the thick brush of hair on its hunched shoulders starting to bristle in an unmistakable fashion. It was just seconds away from attacking and from all the indications, he was the target. Which was ludicrous. Never in his career had any of his creations defied their pheromone-induced state of servitude.
"Gotta love an easily-adjustable vomeronasal system," she observed casually, a wicked expression dancing in her eyes. A casual hand on the monster's arm stopped its forward advance.
His eyes widened as her words hit home with all the force and shock of a half-brick impacting the back of his head. "You didn't!" he protested. "You couldn't have!" But either she'd wrested control of his creation—carefully engineered to be as strong, fast, durable, vicious and implacable as he could manage—from him, or somebody else had. Somebody who was guiding it to attack him.
He'd figure out the whys and wherefores later. Aiming the pistol two-handed at Marchioness, he squeezed the trigger before he could talk himself out of it. If she was indeed calling the shots, killing her should end the problem.
The shot echoed loudly across the huge room as the weapon bucked in his hands. Burnt cellulose irritated his nose and his ears rang painfully, but Marchioness didn't even stagger. With a mildly irritated frown, she looked down at the dark hole that had appeared just above the 'V' of her evening gown. Placing her finger and thumb on either side of the bullet wound—which had yet to start bleeding—she squeezed inward. The next moment, the pistol slug popped out of the hole and she caught it, then brushed the same hand over the wound. After her hand had passed by, the skin was once more unblemished, as if he'd imagined the whole thing.
"Idiot," she said with the same level of exasperation as if he was a puppy that had just peed on the carpet. "I'm not guiding him to attack you. That's down to the pheromones you're wearing. Right now, they make him want to rip you apart. I'm the only thing holding him back. Five." Lifting the palm of her hand from the creature's arm, she left just the fingertips in contact with its skin. And then she raised her pinky, leaving four points of contact. "Four."
There had to be a way around this. "If he kills me, the rest of them will tear the two of you apart," he bluffed. Inserting a deadman switch like that had been tempting, but he didn't want them massacring their way across the city if he was injured. That sort of thing would get him Birdcaged or worse.
He didn't even consider shooting the guard-beast. The way he'd designed them, bullets would merely irritate it.
Her eyes narrowed and she shook her head. "Nice try. I know how they're programmed." Up went the next finger. "Three." The creature growled again, long and low and menacing.
Rey's nerve broke. He backed off, away from the unnerving teenager and the suborned guard-beast. Only when he was next to his workbench did he look away from the girl and the creature, and that was to locate the big red button on the side of his cloning tank. The Emergency Decant function had only been used a couple of times, but he'd really needed it. Just like he needed it now.
The girl lifted her hand free of the guard-beast's arm, and it roared with the excitement of the hunt. Powerful haunches launched it toward him, ropes of drool hanging from its wide-open jaws as it closed the distance shockingly fast.
He slapped the button. Several things happened at once.
Within the tank, the newest creation opened its eyes wide as the nutrient feeds dumped epinephrine into its system. Another nutrient tube gave it a dose of pure glucose, to give it a head start on the blood sugar it was going to need for energy. Tiny explosive bolts blew the casing off of the cloning tank, and his latest masterpiece surged upward, already looking for an opponent.
Rey cringed back from the oncoming guard-beast, eyes clenched shut. There was a massive meaty thud, and a howl of rage and frustration from the guard-beast. With his arm still upraised in a futile attempt at warding it off, he cracked one eyelid to see what was going on.
Barely two yards from him, his freshly-created masterpiece had intercepted the oncoming creature in the middle of a leap. He was impressed despite itself; the newly decanted creation was already eight feet tall and covered in silvery scales. As he watched, it threw the guard-beast off it then fired a burst of flaming bone spikes out of its hands. These struck the suborned creature, sinking deep and eliciting another howl of rage and pain.
He scrambled away as the clone of Marquis and Lung—with some honey badger and wolverine mixed in, because why not—enveloped itself in flame and grew another twelve inches in height. It seemed to be hefting a spear made of bone, the flame around the tip so hot it was painful to look at.
The guard-beasts watching the outside were finally coming to realise that something was wrong within the building. Several were venturing over, probably trying to figure out which of the two they should attack. It was fortunate their pack instinct was almost non-existent, or they would probably be already attacking the newest clone. As it was, they were diffident in the extreme.
It wasn't hard to figure out why. His guard-beasts were horrifically effective, but they had normal animal instincts where it came to dealing with fire. That is, they didn't do it at all well.
Backing off some more, he looked around to see where his human minions had gotten to. They were nowhere to be seen. Now that he came to think about it, he seemed to recall frightened voices saying something along the lines of "fuck this shit, I'm out" when Marchioness pulled her reveal with the guard-beast. And there was a back door out of the kitchen, to allow for the dumping of trash.
Fucking cowards. I'm better off without them.
Not that Rey was interested in taking on the rogue creature by himself. Fortunately, he had his newest clone doing all the heavy lifting on that front. As tough and strong as the guard-beast was, the Lung/Marquis clone was wiping the floor with it. Twelve feet tall, with silvery metal talons and flaming bone spikes driving deep into the guard-beast's vitals, the clone was justifying every minute of the long hours of effort he'd put into getting it just right.
The next problem of course, was that Marquis and someone called Palatina were somewhere outside his base. This was in no way an ideal situation. In fact, it was very bad indeed. However, he also had his guard-beasts (which were in turn slavishly loyal to him, so long as Marchioness didn't get to turn any more of them) and his hybrid clone, which he'd back against either Marquis or Lung in a straight fight.
Where was Marchioness, anyway? He'd gotten over the shock of shooting her to no real effect, and was wondering if multiple shots to the head would be more effective. It occurred to him that he was contemplating the murder of a teenage girl, but then he weighed this against being Brockton Bay's next pre-eminent crime-lord, and it became less of an issue. And even if his gun didn't do the trick, he'd call in the rest of the guard-beasts. Surely they'd be able to tear her apart faster than she could do whatever she did to corrupt them.
The trouble was, she was nowhere to be seen when he decided to enact his plan. Pistol up and ready, he began to stalk around the interior of the base. Each time he came close to a guard-beast, he called it to him. He didn't intend to take any chances when he finally caught up with her.
But I definitely want that genetic sample now. Whatever powers she's got, I can use.
Claire
As the fight escalated, Claire slipped out through the main doors and shut them behind her. The hyena-gorilla hybrid creatures were tough, but she had a feeling that whatever Blasto had let loose was even tougher. From her initial observations, she had an idea she knew what (or rather, who) had contributed DNA toward it. Dad needs to know about this.
Once she judged herself to be a safe distance away—though the fight inside the base was still audible—she pulled out her phone and dialled a number.
Her father answered immediately. "Marchioness, are you all right? I heard a shot."
"I'm fine," she replied with a roll of the eyes. Had he forgotten who'd pulled his ass out of the fire not all that long ago? "He tried to shoot me with a nine-mil Beretta. My subdermal nanotube mesh stopped it cold. He's definitely not surrendering."
"No surprise there," he agreed. "But if you're not in there, who's fighting? Because I can also hear a fight."
" … yeah, you're not gonna like this," she said. "He made another clone."
"Of me?" She heard what might have been a bitten-off swearword. "Seriously, that man is irritating. How many of me are we going to have to deal with? And who's the other me fighting, if it isn't you?"
Claire took a deep breath. "Uh … not quite of you. There's some kind of animal mixed in. Whatever it is, has anger issues. Oh, and … Lung." She braced herself for the explosion.
There was silence for several seconds. "Lung." His voice was almost serene in its lack of emotion. "Damnation. He mixed my DNA with Lung's. That man is the loosest of loose cannons, and now my powers will be associated with him? By all that's holy, I am going to kill Blasto."
"Umm … that might be difficult." She knew her warning would not be overly well-received, but she forged on anyway. "The clone is up and aware, and is already able to use its powers effectively. And then there's the rest of the guards. Individually, they're pretty wimpy compared to the hybrid clone, but en masse they could cause problems."
"Sounds like the old line about quantity having a quality of its own," her father mused. "Incidentally, while you were in there, two people ran out through a back door. Palatina intercepted them and has ascertained that they are two of the people who …"
"Who we met in the alley, yeah." Claire smirked. "I think we made an impression. Sucks to be them."
"We did more than make an impression, my dear." Her father's tone was firm. "Apparently our actions in the alley led directly to the situation we're in now. Including the fact that Blasto now has my genetic material, and Lung's, to play with. Which means even if we wanted to walk away now, we can't."
"Ah." She saw his point immediately. He wasn't chastising her directly; instead, he was ensuring she understood the consequences their actions were having. And that if they walked away at this point, Blasto's creations would be even more formidable when they finally did choose to confront him. "Yeah, I get it."
"So who is the hybrid clone fighting? Or rather, was. I believe the sounds of battle have died down now."
"Ugh, dammit. One of the things Blasto has guarding the place. I made it think Blasto was the enemy." Claire felt a pang of regret for the passing of the guard-beast. It'd never had a choice, or a chance, to be anything but a puppet to its orders. First Blasto had created it and set it going with a series of immutable commands and urges, then she'd subverted these which led to its inevitable demise. At least it went down fighting. I think that's the only time those things feel happy. "The hybrid must've killed it. That thing's pretty impressive, from what I saw. Basically, a seven foot humanoid honey badger with Lung's powers and yours overlaid on it. And it ramps up fast. Also, shoots spikes of flaming bone from its hands."
Her father paused for a long moment. "That's … impressive, yes. Which means Palatina can't just stay out of reach and blast it into submission."
"Uh, you did realise that once he ramps up far enough, he'll be able to fly anyway, right?" Claire's question was tentative. There was no way her father would've forgotten that little aspect.
"Of course." He sounded almost impatient. "The idea was for her to put him down before he got that far."
"Yeah, two problems with that." Claire grimaced. "He's kind of ramped up already, and he did it pretty quickly. I don't know how fast he could come up with wings, but I don't want to bet that she can smear him before he does."
"And of course, Blasto is aware that we're out here. So our chances of pulling off a successful surprise attack are now nil." She heard a sigh over the phone.
"So what are we going to do?"
He chuckled warmly. "You should know by now that I always have at least two backup plans, my dear Marchioness. It's the secret of my success."
"I always thought the secret of your success was being better at using your powers than the other guy."
"Well, that too." She could hear the smugness in his voice.
"So, did you have a plan for this scenario?" She knew he did; he just wanted her to ask.
"I thought you'd never ask."
End of Part Sixteen