Chapter 16

"You know," Assault said as we walked side by side toward an alley, "in the olden times of yesteryear, we actually had to fight the mooks before arresting them. Sometimes they even managed to run away, and we had to give chase, get some exercise in. Now, it's almost boring."

"I… apologize for that?" I wasn't sure how else to answer.

"No, it's fine," he said with an exaggerated sigh. "I guess I'll have to start hitting the gym instead of hitting bad guys to stay fit, if this is what patrolling with you is like. Don't tell Battery that I complained, though, or she'll get started again on the importance of minimizing violence."

We arrived into the alley where four men covered in bees wiggled on the ground, hands and feet bound by spidersilk cords.

The girl they had been on the verge of assaulting was also on the ground, arms around her knees, her back to the wall. She was staring at the men, shaking and crying.

"Do you need medical assistance, ma'am?" Asked Assault.

She startled as he addressed her.

"T-they didn't… T-they were going to… I don't know what happened… All of a sudden there were bees everywhere…"

"It's okay. The bees are the work of our newest Ward, Apiary," he said, clapping a hand on my shoulder. "The police will arrive in a few minutes to pick them up, and we'll stay with you until then. They'll want your testimony too, if you can give it to them."

I was more than happy to let him do the talking as he coaxed the victim into confiding the details of what had happened. That was the part I wasn't so comfortable with. The contact with the public, establishing a connection and reassuring people. Luckily, Assault didn't push me, letting me fall into more of a sidekick role.

As they talked, I felt out through the bugs in my range, searching for any sign of trouble.

Once the police arrived to take over, we returned to Assault's motorcycle.

"Anything else you can feel?" He asked.

I shook my head, and we climbed on.

This was the third incident I'd spotted in less than an hour. The first one had been a mugging, and the second, a group of looters trying to break into houses. Both times, my bees had dealt with the culprits by the time we arrived on site.

A lot of people were desperate. We were just a few days after the disaster, and over half of the city was without power, with even more people without running water. Many had lost their homes, and shelters were full. People were hungry, despite the trucks full of resources that arrived daily, since they were also a prime target for gangs and that supply distribution was still a work in progress.

While I'd been in my own bubble for the past few days, rushing through the motions of being a new Ward and getting things set up, the Protectorate and the other Wards' patrolling schedule had quadrupled in answer to the rampant crime, and now that I had my Image-sanctioned bees, I could finally join them.

Part of me had hoped that patrolling would bring me within range of Coil's base, allowing me to do some discreet recon, but we didn't go anywhere near it. Like Assault had told me a few days ago in the cafeteria, we were following the baby routes, near the Towers, in the nicer part of town that hadn't been touched by Leviathan's destruction. Despite that, the consequences of the disaster had spilled over, making the streets less safe than they used to be.

We continued our patrol as my bugs searched for people out on the street. There was a curfew in place during the state of emergency, which made it easier to spot troublemakers, but there were also many homeless people who hadn't found a place in one of the shelters set up all around town. They hid wherever they could find shreds of safety to pass the night.

I'd asked Assault what we could do for them, and he'd produced a pile of paper from one of the compartments of his bike, maps of the city that marked the locations of the shelters.

"Aren't they full already?" I'd asked him.

"There are buses full of evacuees that leave town several times a day, which frees some places," he'd answered. "And more shelters are being arranged as supplies come in, to try and respond to the demand. We're in touch with one of the coordinators, so we can try to find out where the nearest shelter with vacancies is and direct them there."

That's what we did, whenever I found someone hiding in a park, on a balcony, on a rooftop or behind a dumpster. Again, I let Assault do the talking, while taking notes for the inevitable moment where I would have to step forward and do the same.

Some of the people were hostile when we disrupted them, and some were armed. Some unloaded their stress by telling us all about their troubles. Many were bitter after being turned away from full shelters and hesitant to go to the ones we directed them to. Several were on the streets because they had pets with them that they didn't want to part from, and didn't want to temporarily entrust them to an animal shelter.

There was no easy answer for those.

That was a part of the job that I hadn't anticipated. Criminals, I could deal with, but each person we had to helplessly walk away from felt like a weight on my shoulders, a mental load I couldn't shake off.

It didn't help that the dogs reminded me of Bitch, which brought a different kind of guilt and helplessness.

Tattletale had mentioned that she had lost some of her dogs to Leviathan, and I couldn't imagine what that must be like for her. They were like her family, her closest connections. Not to mention that she had only just started to open up to me in her own way when I quit the team. She probably hated me now, and I regretted not being able to explain my choice to her. She was the only one I knew for sure wasn't involved in the Shadow Stalker leak, since she hadn't been present when I confided to the Undersiders about my trigger event, and I knew she wouldn't care for Coil's games. I hoped that the others were there to support her, but knowing her, she probably lashed out until they left her alone. That didn't make me feel any better.

I set the thought aside as I felt something out of the ordinary at the edge of my range. Two gatherings of people in an alley, on either sides of a street. One of the people appeared to be covered whirling blades of metal, and my bugs could feel a disruption in the air around another. A third held a spear and a shield.

"Is there a supply convoy supposed to pass by Carter street soon?" I asked Assault.

"Yes? Battery and Triumph are doing the ride-along."

"Some of the remaining Empire capes appear to be planning an ambush there, near Lorimer Drive."

"I'll tell them to change course," he said, raising a hand to his earpiece. "Good job."

Once he had relayed the message, I asked: "Can't Déjà Vu see ahead to avoid trouble?"

"She usually does, though sometimes confrontation is unavoidable, but she already exhausted her power earlier today in a scrimmage with Purity's group and the Merchants."

I nodded.

We continued our patrol, distributing tracts to the homeless and intervening to deescalate a confrontation between an armed homeowner and someone squatting in his shed. Then, as we finished giving the man direction to a shelter downtown with a few beds still available, we received a message from the PRT officer on duty through our earpieces.

"We've received reports of Über and Leet causing a disruption at the Battista elementary school shelter, near Mill Point and Belle Vue," he said.

"Assault and Apiary heading there," Assault replied.

"Acknowledged. Sending a squad as backup."

Battista was a private, Christian elementary school, in the same vein as the nearby Immaculata High. It was located South-West of the Towers, not far from our patrol route.

Once we got within a few blocks of the action, I tagged everyone I could find with small, unnoticeable bugs, and they painted a mental picture of the scene for me. The school hastily converted into a shelter had been evacuated because of stink bombs, from what my bugs could perceive. Hundreds of people spilled in the school yard while the shelter's crew did their best to clean and air out the place.

Über, wearing body armor, a trench coat and a helmet that covered his face, was firing rubber bullets at the crowd as people ran for cover, while a similarly dressed Leet hung back in a neighboring street. I relayed the information to Assault.

"Watch out for Leet while I get Über," he told me before parking the bike in front of the school yard.

Today's theme appeared to be Fallout. Über wore a helmet with a modified gas mask and red lenses.

I buried the snitch with bees, depriving Über and Leet of their recording of the fight. It was despicable of them to attack a shelter, and I didn't want them to profit from it. The flying camera went spastic, trying to shake them off, but the bees clung to each other and held on.

Assault jumped the fence and ran toward Über, who fired a flurry of rubber bullets at him, but Assault redirected their kinetic energy to himself and zoomed past Über, bowling him over in a cartoonish way. He bounced off the school's wall and ran back to Über, knocking him down as he was trying to get back up.

Since Assault seemed to have things under control, I focused my attention on Leet. A swarm of bees descended upon him, and through them, I could perceive the vibrations of his scream as he tried to run, only to trip when they tied his legs together with silk. He face-planted, and I cleared the bees in front of him to keep them from getting crushed. Then, they bound his hands together.

I walked over to the neighboring street to find him, but a blinding light flashed as I reached it. It felt like I had crashed against concrete at full speed. I fell backwards, and the connection to my bugs was severed.

No. That wasn't right. There were still bugs around, but they weren't the same. No bees. Only bugs that were naturally present in the urban environment.

Then, I realized that I'd fallen on grass, while the street had been paved.

I blinked a few times to clear the afterimage of the flash from my vision, then looked at my surroundings. I was on a strip of lawn between the side of a building and a fence higher than me.

I'd been teleported.

That wasn't even the most worrying part.

Every half-second, every bug in my range received a singular, crude set of commands ordering them to act normally, to follow their instincts. The signal was stronger the closer they were to me, so the origin of it must be near.

I tried calling them to me, but the order was drowned out, immediately canceled by the competing commands.

"Console?" I said, pressing my earpiece.

No one answered.

I got back to my feet and tried my phone, but it wouldn't open. Whatever Leet had hit me with, it appeared to have fried my electronics in addition to teleporting me.

Movement at the corner of my eye drew my attention, and I squinted at the fence at the end of the pathway, trying to discern what I had seen.

I ducked as soon as I realized what it was, and an arrow flew where my head had been half a second ago.

Shadow Stalker went solid long enough to recharge her crossbow, and I ran to the side as she fired. She recharged, and I turned the corner of the building, heading to the doors.

Locked.

The signal was the strongest just behind the doors.

The fence's gate faced the building's entrance, and was chained closed, tightly enough that I couldn't squeeze through the opening. The fence was high enough that I'd have time to get shot in the back if I tried to climb it.

I ran in uneven zigzag, hoping to avoid any arrows sent my way, and ducked whenever I heard her fire.

Until I arrived at a dead end on the other side of the building.

I turned around, facing Shadow Stalker.

She wasn't running. Instead, she advanced like an implacable predator cornering a prey. She wasn't wearing her mask, just a dark cloak with a hood that fell over her eyes, and from here, I could see a smug smile touch her lips.

"I told you, Hebert," she said as she reloaded the crossbow. "I. Win." She took aim.

Stall, I thought.

"Why does it bother you so much that I have powers?" I asked.

"Why? It's a fucking joke!" She said, gesturing wildly with her other hand for emphasis. "If people like you get to have powers, then having powers means nothing. It's embarrassing. You're nothing. Nobody likes you, you've got no friends, and you're not good at anything. You're a fucking coward too, crying to the big guys because you can't take a joke. You don't deserve powers, even lame, disgusting powers like that."

All the while, she remained solid. She has to stay solid to talk, I realized. It made sense. I could use that.

Stall, I repeated to myself.

"Then you only have yourself to blame," I said.

She frowned, and I continued.

"Haven't you heard? I got my powers because of the locker, back in January. It's all your fault."

Her expression hardened, and threw her crossbow to the side before rushing forward and pushing me against the fence, a gleaming arrow raised against my unprotected neck.

I kicked at her, only for her to become intangible.

It was the opening I needed. I lunged for her discarded crossbow, then she became solid again, crashing against my back, her weight pinning me to the ground.

I blinked back tears as she stabbed the razor-sharp arrow next to my shoulder and dragged it across the top of my back, above the armor around my torso. Pain seared as I struggled to get free.

"I'm gonna take my time with you," she said as she drew criss-crossing lines of pain between my shoulders with the arrow. "Gonna stretch it out as much as I can. Then, once you beg me to finish, I'll know you finally understand your place."

She stabbed the tip of the arrow just below the armor on my arm, and dragged it down to my elbow, ripping the skin as I struggled to remove the arrow that was loaded in her crossbow. I managed to get it free, and swung it behind my head, where hers should have been, but she turned into her shadow state and let it traverse her. I tried to get to my feet, only to receive a kick to the back that set my wounds aflame.

"You really know how to piss me off, don't you?" She said with another kick before sitting on my back and pushing my face against the gravel. "I. Win. Get it through that thick skull of yours. It's… what's the word…"

"Then why did you need my power to be disabled?" I asked, face pressed against the foam inside my mask. "Were you afraid you couldn't beat me otherwise?"

I couldn't see her expression as she huffed, but I could imagine it.

"That's what I thought," I continued. "Big bad Shadow Stalker is afraid of a few bugs."

"It wasn't my idea," she defended herself. "Big guy had it as a condition to set this up."

It had to be Coil, if Über and Leet were involved, and he apparently thought I might win if I had access to my power. I could use that.

"Because he doesn't believe you can beat me in a fair fight," I told her.

"There's no such thing as a fair fight," she spoke in a hard voice.

"He knows you're so weak, you'd loose to a bunch of bugs."

"I. Win," she repeated, stabbing the arrow in my upper back with each word for emphasis. I bit the inside of my cheeks to keep from making a sound, and took a deep breathe to steady myself before speaking, trying to keep my voice even and aiming for a mocking tone.

"Sure, for a coward."

She screamed incoherently, both from the accusation and from the arrow I'd just stabbed in her leg while her guard was down. As soon as she turned to shadow, I scrambled to my feet, crossbow in one hand, and ran to the fence to climb it as fast as I could before she recovered.

It wasn't fast enough.

An arrow materialized in the back of my leg, just above my boot, before being twisted and wrenched out. I continued climbing despite the pain, hurrying to get myself out of her reach, but she was already waiting for me on the other side of the fence.

Holding the fence with my good arm, I lowered myself while kicking and swinging the crossbow at her to force her to go intangible, then jumped to the ground. I ran as fast as I could with my injured leg, carried by the adrenalin rush.

"You want to run?" She yelled after me. "I don't mind a bit of a chase."

I didn't look back. I ran one, two, three blocks in a straight line, before my leg gave out, Sophia on my heels as I collapsed.

"There. Cornered like a fucking rat," she said in a triumphant voice.

I turned around, facing her. She had an arrow in each hand.

"Wrong kind of vermin," I told her.

"Does it matter?" She sounded annoyed. "You're dead, Hebert. Any last words?"

"Look out," I said.

"I'm not dumb. There's nothing behind—"

A mass of bugs fell on her from behind. I'd been calling them while running, more and more responding as I distanced myself from the source of the fake commands, until I reached the end of the effect, where I'd told them to gather.

She screamed in surprise, and as soon as she opened her mouth, bugs forced their way in, much like they had with Clockblocker at the bank. I didn't hold them back from stinging and biting, nor did I tell them to avoid injecting venom. They were more reactive than usual, responding noticeably faster.

Sophia turned to her shadow state, and the bugs that had been on her passed through, but she seemed to have trouble moving with all of them sharing the same space as her. My bugs could feel a faint resistance where she was, so she wasn't completely intangible either. She couldn't turn solid as long as they intersected with her, and was trying to push them out, so I told them to push back.

I climbed to my feet and limped forward as fast as I could, bringing her crossbow with me. I kept going until the bugs stalling Sophia fell out of my range, which was larger than usual.

As I went, I checked my phone again. Still offline and refusing to open.

I had no idea where I was.

Through the bugs present in the urban environment, I felt out for houses that appeared to have power, and found a residential area a bit South.

I made my way there, maybe slower than I could have, but the run had worsened the pain from my wounds, especially my leg, and every movement set them ablaze.

The first house in the neighborhood had its lights off, but through the second house's bay window, I could see silhouettes around a table.

I hid the crossbow behind the garbage cans in the driveway, to look non-threatening, then knocked on the door.

A man answered, rifle in hand.

"Sorry to bother you sir. I'm a Ward, and my phone is dead and I need to get in touch with HQ. May I use your phone, please?"

"I ain't ever seen you before," he grumbled before slamming the door in my face.

Lovely.

I retrieved the crossbow and skipped a few houses before trying again. This time, the elderly couple who answered accepted to let me use their phone. I wasn't sure whether they believed me about being a Ward or if they figured it was better to let the person in costume do whatever they wanted as long as it wasn't violent, but I was grateful.

I didn't know the PRT's number by heart, so I called 9-1-1 and asked to be redirected. When I finally got hold of the PRT officer on duty, I explained the situation, from the fight with Über and Leet to the showdown with Shadow Stalker and my escape. He said that he would send a nearby patrol to pick me up.

The elderly couple hovered, offering me to stay in their house until the patrol arrived, but I insisted that I would be fine outside.

As I waited in front of their house, sitting on the edge of the sidewalk with the crossbow, I noticed that I was shaking, and feeling lightheaded.

How had I ended up in that situation? I knew Coil was involved, for sure. It made too much sense. Was it as revenge for sharing his plan with the authorities? Because Dinah's numbers were better for him with me dead? Both? He must have recruited Shadow Stalker for her grudge against me, and used Über and Leet as bait, knowing when I'd be on patrol nearby. Then Leet fried my electronics and teleported me to Shadow Stalker's carefully chosen, fenced location where my power was canceled, so she could finish me off without me running away or fighting back.

As I waited for the patrol to pick me up, questions kept bouncing in my mind.

Were the Undersiders aware of this plan? Did they condone it? Did they protest? If they didn't know, then I suspected Tattletale would find out eventually, at the very least. Would she care? Would she tell the others? Would they take action against Coil or let him get away with it?

And, especially, why did I care so much, when we were on opposite sides?

About ten minutes after I'd made the call, I heard a motorcycle incoming. To my dismay, it was Armsmaster.

He parked his bike beside the sidewalk and came closer.

"Apiary. Are you alright?" He asked.

I shrugged reflexively, and a fresh wave of burning pain washed over me. I was grateful for my mask, that hid the tears that had escaped me despite myself.

"I'll live," I said through clenched teeth.

He frowned, holding out his hand to pull me to my feet, and I stumbled a bit when I tried putting weight on my injured leg. The adrenalin rush had passed, and the pain was harder to ignore.

"Panacea is currently at HQ for Assault," he told me. "I'll ask her to stay until we arrive."

He muttered a few words, presumably to console or Panacea herself.

"Assault? What happened?" I asked after he finished.

"The squad that arrived after you found him unconscious, most likely from some kind of gas. We suspect the goal was to put him out of commission while you were transported elsewhere, so he couldn't call it in."

"Is he okay?"

"He is now. The PRT officer on duty mentioned that your power wasn't working right?"

"Something else was giving commands and overriding mine," I told him. "A bit like the machine you made to cancel my power on the office floors, but broadcasting all over my range. I guess Coil must have had Leet make it."

Armsmaster remained silent a long moment, expression unreadable, before saying: "Let's bring you back to base."