Agitation 3.5 Last Chapter Next Chapter

"A favor," he answered me, as if he needed to say it out loud to himself to believe it. The tone gave me pause. Had I misread him, that first night, when I gave him credit for Lung and assumed he was grateful?

"Yeah," I tried to sound confident, "But I should explain things first. First off, the Undersiders offered me a spot on their team. I took it."

His reaction was subtle. His chin rose a fraction, he shifted his weight fractionally, and the grip of his armored gauntlets tightened enough on his Halberd to make a faint metal-on-metal screech.

"I think you'd better start making sense, fast," he spoke in a calm voice, even as his body language was making me want to back away.

I took a deep breath, trying to calm my nerves, "I've been thinking a fair bit about the conversation we had last Sunday. It seemed odd how you accepted I was a good guy as fast as you did. Would I be right in guessing you either have a lie detector built into your helmet or some power that works more or less the same way?"

He didn't hurry to give me a reply, taking a few moments before telling me, "Lie detectors can be fooled, even mine."

"Well, tell me if anything sets an alarm ringing, or if your instincts tell you I'm lying. I was a good guy then, I'm a good guy now. I joined the Undersiders because you said you were having trouble getting info on the guys. Now I know their faces, I know the names they're using, I have a pretty good idea about what their powers do, and I know where they're living."

His posture relaxed. He slapped the pole of his Halberd against his back and it snapped into place. "If that's the case, then you've done us a great service. Would you be willing to come to the Protectorate Headquarters and present that information to the team?"

My heart leapt. Meeting the local Protectorate, with Miss Militia, Triumph, Velocity, Dauntless, Battery and Assault? I could imagine seeing their reactions to everything I'd found, telling them about my fight with Bitch, maybe about my part in the fight with Lung, if Armsmaster was cool with that. Hearing their stories in turn.

"I can't."

"Why not?" his response was so quick it was very nearly an interruption. His tone and posture were both hostile again in a flash. I was glad he wasn't still holding his Halberd, because I think he might have pointed it at me.

"There's one more thing I need to find out for you," I said, raising my hands in a sort of surrender. I needed to find out who their boss was. I couldn't tell him that, though. The less

he knew, the less likely Tattletale would know I told him anything. At least, I was hoping that was the case.

"So tell me what you know and then go find that last detail."

"I can't," I answered for the second time in ten seconds, hating myself for doing it.

"You'd better have a good reason, or I'm dragging you to the PHQ and we'll see how well you tease when you're in front of the entire team."

Which would be a disaster. I swallowed hard, "What if I told you there was a spy in the PHQ?"

"You'd be setting off the lie detector. Try again."

I bit my lip. I'd been hoping that phrasing it as a question would throw it off.

"There's something at play that's for all intents and purposes, a spy in your ranks."

"Mostly true. What is it?"

"I can't be any clearer without them figuring out I told. Just my being here is really risky." If word got out as to how Lisa's power worked, I was almost positive she'd know how.

He stared at me for several long moments, "The Tattletale girl."

Armsmaster had come to the conclusion more or less on his own. I hoped that was enough to keep Tattletale from drawing a connection to me. Still… fuck.

He stared off towards the PHQ for a few long moments. Without looking at me, he asked, "So you're not willing to provide any concrete information. Why did you call me?"

"They're planning something. They want me to help them. I do this, maybe one or two other jobs, I'm sure I can get that last essential detail, and you'll have what you need to capture these guys."

He didn't reply.

So I asked my favor, "I need to know that if things go sour or if I need to sabotage their plan, I'll have you to pull my ass out of the fire and keep me out of jail."

"What are they planning?"

"I can't say," I admitted. If I told him, Lisa might know I'd ratted the team out from any changes in the response time, extra guards or whatever else. However justified my silence was, I could see Armsmaster getting increasingly irritated.

"Is it murder? Is someone going to get hurt?"

"No," I said, "I'm pretty sure no civilians are going to get hurt, unless things go really wrong, which is something I'm hoping to prevent."

He frowned, then stopped gazing out the window to look straight at me. "I'm not giving you any protection."

I clenched my fists at my sides, "This is the only thing I need, and you've got them!"

"You're a stupid girl," Armsmaster said. He gave me a moment to let the words sink in.

"I-"

He didn't give me a chance to speak. He bowled over me, his voice rising as he spoke, "You're asking for my permission to carry out a major crime. At least, I assume it's a major crime, because you wouldn't be asking otherwise! You want me to stand by so you can play your little spy game with a team that has two murderers on it!"

Two? I could believe that Rachel had maybe killed someone at some point, manslaughter if nothing else, but who else would? Eyes wide, I asked him, "Who-"

I didn't get to finish my question. Armsmaster talked over me until I shut my mouth and listened. "Do you think you're clever? In the real world, undercover cops have handlers. They have someone to report to, someone that can call in backup at any time. You? You're a middle schooler with delusions of grandeur."

"I'm not in middle school."

"Oh, well," he crossed his arms, "I stand corrected on all counts." The sarcasm in his voice was palpable.

I protested, "And if I did have back-up or a handler or anything like that, they'd know. The way I'm doing this is the only way this could work. Use your lie detector, you'll know I'm telling the truth about this."

"I know you believe you're right. That doesn't make it god's honest truth."

There was something about hearing all this from Armsmaster that made it twice as hard to take. I opened my mouth, but my brain just couldn't piece together a coherent response. I shut my mouth again.

"Abandon this charade, little bug girl, before you bite off more than you can chew. Tell me what you know, right now, then go home. I don't care if you put your costume away for good or if you sign up for the Wards, but don't go on with the solo act. That's my recommendation."

That stung. I tried again, "I gave you Lung, full credit. You can't give me the benefit of a doubt?"

"You gave me a dying man!" Armsmaster bellowed, startling me, "That was on my shoulders! I had to put up with two days of losing command of my team, two days where they confiscated my Halberd and power armor! I was interrogated, all my equipment taken apart and checked! All because you couldn't resist using your bugs to give that man a fucking near-lethal dose of poisons!"

His attitude from the beginning of this meeting had been hostile. Now I understood why. I held my ground.

"That's not my fault," I told Armsmaster, my voice strained with anger. I gave voice to a suspicion that had been nagging at the edge of my consciousness since I'd heard about Lung being hospitalized, "I didn't dose him with enough venom to kill him. What I think is that the tranquilizers that you pumped into his system knocked out his ability to heal, which is what let the poisons do as much damage as they did."

We glared at each other, as much as people can exchange glares when they can't see one another's eyes. Still, it wasn't hard to imagine the expression on his face.

"If you contact me again, you'd better be prepared to answer every question I have. Beyond that, I'm not condoning anything about what you're trying to pull. You're on your own."

I would have been happy to storm off, or offer my own angry parting words. Except there was something else I needed from him. On the assumption that he'd take me up on my offer, I thought I'd ask as a last, minor favor. Now I was put in a situation where I might have to beg a man I really wanted to punch in the face.

"I-" I paused, trying to find the words, "I'm asking you to please not tell anyone we met tonight. No records, on paper or computer. Don't do anything different because of what you learned tonight. I know I can't make you. I don't have anything to offer you, besides the information I'm going to get. But if these guys get wind that I met you, it's going to go really badly for me."

"You made your bed. You have to lie in it."

"No," I shook my head, furious he was being so mule headed. My fists clenched, "Don't toy with me here. Maybe you don't agree with what I'm doing, but I started this because I wanted to do you a favor. The least you could do is not screw with me on this, and get me hurt or killed because your fucking rep got a smudge on it."

I regretted my words as soon as they left my mouth, but I could hardly take them back.

"Fine," he decided, then dismissed me, "You can go, now."

It was a dick move, that last bit, because I was following his order if I listened and it made me look bad if I didn't. Still, if there was any upside to the bullying I'd endured out of costume, it was that I could handle the little maneuvers of bullies and assholes when I was in costume, too. I left and didn't think twice about it.

I was pissed, and it was a lot easier to be pissed at Armsmaster than it was to be angry with myself. This hadn't gone the way I'd planned. I didn't even know if that 'fine' of his was an agreement to do as I'd asked, or if I was royally screwed the next time I went to meet with the Undersiders. There were two ways I could respond to this. I could either drop the plan and put away my costume like Armsmaster wanted, or I could pull off the undercover gig and prove him wrong.

Fuck it. I was going to rob the hell out of that bank. I'd win the trust of the Undersiders, I was going to figure out who was running the show, and then I was going to hand over all of the info.

To Miss Militia, I was thinking. Not Armsmaster.

Agitation 3.6 Last Chapter Next Chapter

"Think of it as a game," Lisa said, "A high stakes variant of cops and robbers."

A steady downpour of rain thrummed against the outside of the van Lisa was driving. The rain drowned out all other noise of the traffic around us and muted our view of the surroundings, making the interior of the car an island in the midst of downtown. Traffic was at a deadlock, so bad that Lisa had put the van into park and turned off the engine. To break the silence, I had asked Lisa why some villains didn't get their secret identities revealed when they got caught, and I'd apparently stumbled into one of her favorite topics. I supposed it was good that she was in a mood to talk, because I wasn't.

"I think," I ventured, "That it's a little closer to real cops and robbers than the schoolyard game."

"No, no. Hear me out. Grown adults running around in costume? Making up code names for themselves? It's ridiculous, and we know it's ridiculous, even if we don't admit it out loud. So there's capes like you and me, where we go out in costume and it's fun. Maybe we have some agenda or goals, but at the end of the day, we're getting our thrills, blowing off steam and living a second life. Then there's the crazies. The people who are fucked up in the head, maybe dangerous if there's not something or someone to help keep them in line. The people who take it all too seriously, or those guys you wouldn't want to get on the wrong side of, even if they didn't have powers. Lung, Oni Lee, Heartbreaker," she paused. "Bitch."

I nodded.

"And there's the monsters. The really dangerous motherfuckers, who are barely human any more, if at all. The Slaughterhouse Nine, Nilbog-"

"The Endbringers," I interjected.

Lisa paused, "Right. But you have to understand, ninety percent of what goes on when you're in costume? It's the first group. Adults in costumes playing full contact cops and

robbers with fun-as-fuck superpowers and toys. This mindset applies to the people without powers too. Way I see it, having a local team of superheroes is like having a sports team. Everyone's rooting for them, they make for great media that isn't about wars or the water crisis or whatever, there's merchandising and tourists… all good shit that the local government loves. But what good is having a team if there's no competition?"

"Which is where we come in," I figured out where she was going.

"Exactly. At the end of the day? We're not doing much harm. Property damage, theft. A few civilians get hurt if they don't move out of the way fast enough. But insurance payouts cover that stuff, and people aren't that much worse off. The property damage is covered and the injured bystander has a great story to tell at the water cooler. The city gets revenue in an indirect way, from merchandise, tourism and the rising property that come with being an exciting city.

"Compared to the psychos and the monsters out there, it's almost in the city's interests to keep us in circulation. Far as I see it, we're not that much better or worse than the so called good guys. We face more risk at the end of the day, with the possibility of jail time and physical danger, but we get a better payoff. We just took the path that was higher risk, higher reward."

"I'm not sure," I said, carefully, "That I buy all that."

"No? Then why don't they send people like Über straight to the Birdcage after his trial, like they are with Lung? The amusing but relatively harmless villains get a regular jail cell, they inevitably break out before the trial concludes, and the cat and mouse game starts again. Sure, there's the three strike rule, and he'll get sent to the Birdcage eventually, but the people in charge have to maintain some plausible deniability."

I didn't think there was a way I could argue against Lisa's theory without giving too much of my own perspective away. I just kept my mouth shut and turned my new knife over in my hands. Direct from our anonymous 'boss', it sported a blade a little over six inches long and a textured handle with three symmetrical indents on each side, for grip. According to Lisa, it was strong enough to use as a miniature crowbar, if I had a mind to. My extendable combat baton was tucked away in the panel of my armor where I kept my pepper spray.

"But the real evidence to my 'cops and robbers' theory," Lisa continued, "Is the reaction you see when someone crosses the line. You've heard about it happening. Someone finds out another cape's secret identity, goes after the cape's family. Or a cape wins a fight and decides his downed opponent isn't in a state to say no if he's feeling lusty? Word gets around, and the cape community goes after the fucker. Protecting the status quo, keeping the game afloat. Bitter enemies call a truce, everyone bands together, favors get called in and everyone does their damndest to put the asshole down."

"Like we do with the Endbringers," I said. I sheathed my knife.

"Holy fuck," Lisa said, slapping the sides of the steering wheel with her hands. I think if the van had been moving, she would have hit the brakes for emphasis. Traffic was starting to

move, though, so she started up the car and put it into gear, "Twice, you bring up the Endbringers in as many minutes. You're being morbid. What's going on?"

I stared out the window at downtown Brockton Bay, hundreds of people with umbrellas and raincoats, a few intrepid individuals bolting down the street with a briefcase or newspaper over their head, to ward off the downpour as they made their way to or from their work on their lunch hours.

It was hard to talk to Lisa, as much as I liked her as a person. I felt like I was walking on eggshells. If I said something, would that give her the puzzle piece she needed to figure me out? I had been lucky so far, but relying on luck sucked. I was counting on this ruse continuing, whether it was because I enjoyed the temporary companionship of Brian, Lisa and Alec, or because I wanted to get Grue, Tattletale, Regent and Bitch carted off to jail and prove Armsmaster wrong. I was aware how paradoxical those two interests were.

But right now, maybe for the first time since Bitch had set her dogs on me, I felt painfully out of place in the group dynamic. We were robbing a bank, and I was the only one who was guilty about it, apparently the only one who was worried about the safety of the bystanders and hostages.

Then there was the fact that Armsmaster had said that two members of the Undersiders were murderers, and doubt was tainting every interaction I had with these guys. When I was smiling about a joke Alec made, was I enjoying the joke of a killer? I liked Brian, but now I was looking back on how he had pointed out how to brutally disable someone in a fight, and I was wondering if he'd ever gone that one step further and snapped someone's neck. It wasn't a hundred percent impossible to imagine that one of the secrets Lisa was so fond of keeping included murder, either. I felt like every interaction with these guys was spoiled, now, and there was nobody I could ask to clarify the lingering questions.

Still, staying quiet now would only make her more suspicious, and if she turned the full extent of her power on me, I doubted my undercover ruse would withstand her attention. I confessed with a half truth, "I got in an argument with someone last night. I think it was mutual disappointment, got pretty heated, hurtful. I guess I'm a bit angry, and my confidence is a little shaken."

"Well, fuck them," Lisa stated. I raised an eyebrow in response.

She went on, "See, I know you. Believe it or not, I like you. Did from the time I saw you on that roof, opposite Lung. You know how we fear the unknown? Well, I know stuff, that's my whole thing, and that motherfucker is one of the very few people who can spook me. You, Taylor, stood up to him."

In a manner of speaking, anyways. The way I remembered it, I'd been curled up in a fetal position when the Undersiders came to my rescue. I didn't correct her.

"So this guy or this girl that's got you down in the dumps? I say fuck them. They don't know you. They don't know what you're capable of."

I would have stopped myself if I could have, but the irony of her statement was too rich. I grinned, looking out the window to hide the expression from Lisa.

"I saw that. Don't think I didn't. So I've shaken the doldrums from you. Good. Now look to our left."

"Who uses words like doldrums, anymore?" I voiced my thoughts as I obeyed her instruction. She only chuckled in response.

As I realized what I was looking at, through the rain and the past the traffic, I swallowed hard. It was a stone fixture six stories tall, with crenelations on the roof and balconies, stone gargoyles at the corners and iron grilles on the windows. The entryway had wide stone stairs like a courthouse, with statues of rearing horses with wild manes on either side. The name of the institution was etched into the stone above the doors. The Brockton Bay Central Bank. A virtual castle.

"In twenty minutes or so, we're going to be leaving there, tens of thousands of dollars richer, the adrenaline rush of victory pumping through our veins," Lisa's voice was barely above a whisper, "Now tell me. Can you visualize that?"

Not really.

"Yes," I tried.

"Liar," she said. Then she winked at me, "It's okay. An hour from now, you'll be rolling in money and laughing about how pessimistic you were. Promise."

Lisa pulled the van around to circle the block, then pulled into an employee parking lot behind a restaurant. As she pulled into the parking lot, bringing us right to the back corner of the bank, I pulled on my mask. Lisa did the same, then took a few seconds to smear her eyelids with black facepaint so they blended in with her mask. I wasn't so lucky as to have any final touches to apply, so I watched the rearview mirror nervously. It felt like an eternity, but was probably closer to a minute, before Brian pulled a second van into the alley that led into the lot. He parked his van halfway down the alley, blocking anyone else from coming through.

As I opened the car door and hopped out into the pouring rain, I managed to say the words without choking on them, "Let's go rob a bank."

Lisa grinned.

Agitation 3.7 Last Chapter Next Chapter

Grue was already out of his vehicle and halfway to us by the time Tattletale and I had shut the doors of the van. He was using his power at a low degree over the entirety of his body. The darkness soaked into and through the porous leather of his costume, making him look like a living shadow. Brian had showed me how the visor had vents at the edges, to direct

the effect of his power around the sides and top of his head, so it wouldn't obscure the face. It wasn't that he couldn't see through the effects of his own power – he could. He'd explained that the vents were there to create an effect where you could see glimpses of a black-painted skull floating in the vaguely human shaped form of even darker black. When he had the money to spend, he had told me, he was going to get a more complete costume custom made for him in the same way, to expand on the effect.

"Let's move fast." His voice echoed, reverberated, with a hollowness to the sound, like something alien and far away. He was using his power to play with the sound, "Tattletale, see to the door. Bug, with me."

Together with Grue, I returned to the van Lisa had been driving. Grue grabbed the handle of the sliding door and hauled it open, then scrambled out of the way as the contents came pouring out.

I chuckled at the image of this spooky supervillain being caught off guard. I'd packed the entirety of the van, minus the driver and passenger seats, with bugs. As the door opened, they spilled out to pool on the wet pavement beneath the door.

"Got enough?" his voice echoed. I thought maybe I caught a touch of humor in his tone, behind the influence of his power.

I smiled behind my mask, "Let's hope."

A drive earlier in the morning had given me the opportunity to gather this swarm. It was surprising how many bugs there were in the city, hidden from sight. At any given point in the city, I could generally draw out tens of thousands of bugs from inside walls, sewers, attics, lawns, trees and even places you would think were too clean or occupied to have any creepy crawlies lurking about, and I could do it over a matter of minutes.

These weren't just the bugs I could draw in at a moment's notice, though. Traveling the city had given me the chance to be picky. These were the good ones, each of them fast enough to keep up with me, or capable of being carried by those that were. More than that, though, the majority of them were either durable sorts like the larger centipedes, cockroaches and beetles, or capable of stinging and biting, with bees, wasps, ants and blackflies making up their bulk. To round out their number, I'd gathered moths, houseflies, and mosquitoes, who weren't the best attack bugs out there, but were easy enough to get, and served to distract the enemy or bulk out the swarm.

There were three hundred and fifty cubic feet inside the rear of the van. Tattletale had told me that. When they were packed in just tight enough that they wouldn't damage each other or spill past the barrier and into the front seats, it added up to a pretty amazing amount of insects. I called them out of the van and watched as their mass seemed to expand as they spread out.

We joined Tattletale at the side door of the bank. I had to admit, I admired the sheer change she was capable of pulling off when donning her costume. Rather, I should say, I admired the effort she'd gone into as Lisa, that made her so different from her Tattletale persona. Her

mask was narrow, only really surrounding her eye sockets, covering her eyebrows, some of her nose and some of her cheekbones, but it hid the freckles on the bridge of her nose and changed the apparent lines of her face. Her hair was down and loose, damp from the rain, in contrast to how it was always in a ponytail or braided when she was 'Lisa'. Her costume was skintight, beaded with droplets of water, lavender with bands of black across the chest and down the sides of her arms, legs and body. An image of a stylized eye, only visible in the right light, given it was dark gray on black, was worked into the costume's design. A compact 'utility belt' sat diagonally across her hips, sporting a variety of compact pockets and pouches.

Regent was keeping watch, a few feet away. From what I'd seen while we prepared, I now knew his costume was deceptive. He still wore the hard white mask with the silver coronet, but he had shown me how the interior of the mask had foam shaped to the contours of his face, with only his mouth left free, so he could talk without being muffled. In a similar vein, the loose white shirt he wore covered up a mesh vest that was molded to the shape of his body. He was idly twirling a scepter in his fingers. The scepter wasn't purely thematic – apparently the crowned orb that topped the scepter had two electrodes built into the tines, for the taser that was built into it. It was all about misdirection, misleading and giving the impression of vulnerability.

"The fire exit at the back is protected by a digital passkey," Tattletale explained while she crouched at the keypad, staring at it, "Every employee has the number to get in if they need to, but that rarely happens because opening the door sets off a bunch of alarms. That password is easy. The interesting thing that the employees don't even know is that the capes and SWAT teams have a special code they can put in if they need to make a quiet entrance with no alarms going off. To do that, you punch in the regular code, 3-7-1, but you hold the one down, then press the number sign and the asterisk keys down at the same time… Voila. Try it."

Grue pulled on the door. We waited in tense silence for a moment for the angry blare of the alarm, but none came. Tattletale grinned at us. "What'd I tell you?"

Grue signaled, and we were joined by Regent and Bitch with her three dogs. The animals were the size of small ponies, their flesh having swelled and expanded enough that their fur had split at the seams. Muscle and bone showed beneath, and the arrangement of said anatomy wasn't exactly typical. The change was slow enough that you couldn't see it if you were looking for it, but if you looked away and looked back a moment later, you could tell they were bigger, that bone at the shoulder was longer, the eyes were deeper set, and so on. Spikes, spurs and an exoskeleton of bone growths had appeared to fill or cover gaps and grow in at places where the bone was already close to the skin. The tail of the smallest dog – Angelica, I think Rachel called it – was twice as long as normal and prehensile, now, and the other two were well on their way. It looked like someone had torn out a pair of human spines, the meat still hanging off them, and attached them one to the other before tacking the end to the dog's hindquarters.

Bitch, for her part, was just wearing a jacket with a fur ruff collar and a cheap, hard plastic mask of a bulldog. The dogs had been given the rear of the second van, allowing Bitch to

work her power on them as Brian drove. Being able to do the change more slowly meant she wouldn't prematurely exhaust herself or the animals by rushing the job on site.

We made our way into the back hallways of the bank's ground floor, Bitch's dogs leading the way, my swarm pulling up the rear. The clock had started running down from the moment we'd parked in the alleyway; that was the point where people might have thought something was up. Now that we were inside, though, someone knew, or would know any second.

At this very moment, chances were, some guard in the room with the security cameras would be making a call to 911 and reporting a crime in progress by costumed criminals. If Tattletale was right, the Protectorate was too far away to be called in, so they would contact the Wards. We had five or ten minutes before trouble showed.

Each time we passed a room, Grue, Regent and I would double check it. The first few were empty, but as we reached one room, a dog took notice, and Grue raised a hand to plunge the room into darkness. A second later, he stepped back into the hallway, twisting the arm of a cringing thirty-something man in a gray suit behind his back. I hadn't even realized Grue had entered the room in the first place.

In the next room, Regent grabbed another hostage. I caught a glance of the man, graying hair and thick around the middle with a pink dress shirt and no jacket, staring at us with eyes wide. He opened his mouth, I think his intent was to cry for help, but broke down into coughs and sputters instead. A second later, he keeled over and collapsed onto the floor. He tried to climb to his feet, but his elbow buckled and he hit the ground a second time. While he continued to struggle, Regent strode into the room with an almost lazy air, grabbed him by the collar and shoved him towards the hallway where we stood. Defeated, Pink-shirt didn't resist, half-walking, half-crawling forward as he joined us. He met eyes with the other employee, but didn't say anything.

We only passed a dozen offices, but it felt like three times that number. Grue was on point, glancing into each room and watching for danger from up ahead, with Regent keeping an eye on rooms to our right. That meant I was paying attention to the rooms on the left, as well as keeping an eye out by way of the swarm to our rear. Each time I looked into an office, lunchroom or conference room, I prayed it would be empty. I didn't want to be any more responsible for all this than I had to.

When I saw the last office on the left was vacant, I was relieved enough that I nearly forgot my role in the next stage of the plan.

We reached the front lobby of the bank, and Bitch's dogs charged into the room. They were nightmarish, barking, growling and shaking themselves in a spray of bits of fur and blood as they abruptly grew another foot taller at the shoulder. I had a moment's glimpse of twenty or thirty bystanders and another six or so employees of the bank before the lights went out. Grue used his power, and the room was plunged into darkness, the volume of the screams and wails dropping to utter silence in a matter of seconds. We stood in the entryway to the lobby, and there was only nothingness where the bank lobby had been.

"Your move, Bug girl," Tattletale said, reaching forward to put a hand on my shoulder.

I closed my eyes. With a mental command, my bugs flooded into the room from the hallway behind us, flying and crawling over, under and around us to spread through the room. I noted each person in the lobby as my bugs made contact with them, and left several bugs crawling on each individual. I took five seconds to double check I'd gotten everyone, and belatedly remembered the two employees we had brought forward from the back offices. A group of bugs returned from the darkness, brushing my skin on their way to make contact with the pair.

"Done," I said.

Grue swept his arms forward, and the darkness parted. We moved into the room as a group. Pink-shirt and the younger guy collapsed to the ground as we walked. I supposed it was Regent's work there. Some of Grue's darkness clung to the surfaces of the doors and the windows, but the room was otherwise clear in a matter of moments, lit only by the florescent lights. Everyone except for us was lying on the floor, crouched behind a desk, or huddled in the corners. Two of Bitch's dogs were standing in front of the main entrance, while the smallest was standing near the vault. All three of the monsters were the size of cars, now.

"Fifteen minutes," I called out to the room, my heart in my throat, "We won't be here any longer than that. Stay put, stay quiet, we'll be gone before fifteen minutes are up. You'll be free to give your statement to the police and then go about your day as usual. This isn't a TV show, this isn't a movie. If you're thinking about being a hero, don't. You'll only get yourself or someone else hurt."

I held up my hand, finger outstretched, a familiar spider perched on the tip, "If you are thinking about running, making a phone call or getting in our way, this is a good reason to reconsider. This little creature and her one hundred sisters that I just brought into this room are under my complete control." I had the spider drop from my fingertip, dangling by a thread, by way of demonstration.

"She's a black widow spider. A single bite has been known to kill a full grown human, or put them into a coma. You move, talk, try to find or kill the spiders I just put on your bodies, in your clothes, in your hair? I'll know in split second, and I'll tell them to bite you several times."

I stopped to let that sink in. I looked over the room. Forty or so people. I saw a full grown man with a tear rolling down his cheek. A teenager with freckles and brown curls was glaring at me with raw loathing in her eyes. At one of the counters, a matronly bank employee was shaking like a leaf.

My taking hostages like this? It had been my idea, so help me. As horrible as it was, it had been necessary. The worst case scenario was some regular schmuck in the bank pulling some stunt and getting themselves or others hurt or killed. I couldn't let that happen, if I was in a position to help it. If it meant keeping them quiet and out of the way, I was willing to terrorize them.

As I saw the effect I'd had on these people, that justification felt really thin.

I was going to hell for this.