Chapter 1

"…stable. The rest will…"

"Please. We need… lucid and mobile…"

It was hard to focus on the words. Too many competing sounds filled the air, blurring into indistinct loudness. I'd heard those voices before, but the few words I could grasp weren't enough to place them.

I opened my eyes, and immediately squeezed them shut to escape the blinding lights above. The afterimage burned under my closed eyelids, and I had the instinct to turn away from the ceiling to avoid it, but a crushing pressure kept my neck from moving even the slightest bit. It was strange. I wasn't suffocating, and I didn't feel any pain. Was that some kind of neck brace?

I was alive, at least

I reached for my last memories. Leviathan had breached the flooded shelter under the library, and I used Armsmaster's halberd to attack him. I remembered making swarm decoys while I ran for my life. There was a swipe of his claw and a crash of solid water, then nothing. I must have been knocked out cold.

"…can stop… pressure…"

The weight on my throat lifted. My left arm was folded over my midsection, and refused to move as I attempted to inspect my neck. My other arm hung above my head, and my wrist jerked to a stop when I moved it.

Any residual haziness from waking up abruptly vanished with the sound of chains.

Something in my mouth prevented me from speaking. Fingers were pressed on my forehead, just below my hairline, and I belatedly realized that they shouldn't be touching my bare skin.

My blood ran cold. They couldn't do that.

I yanked my arm as hard as I could. It didn't accomplish anything.

"…itter?"

I tried twisting around, but my body wasn't cooperating, as if I'd lost any and all upper body strength. I couldn't move my legs either. My right arm was the only thing working properly.

"…do something?"

"Not if you want her lucid."

My vision was too blurry to make out my surroundings.

There were some bugs in the building, but nothing useful. I drew them anyway. The ones outside were better, but would take longer to arrive.

"Skitter."

I grabbed the chain and pulled repeatedly. A hand seized my arm, and it didn't budge as I struggled to wrench myself out of its grasp.

"Stop. You'll only injure yourself."

This voice, I recognized right away.

If the realization that I was handcuffed and unmasked had me on the verge of panic, Armsmaster's voice right next to me made me go very, very still.

"To be fair, that was kind of predictable." A boy, maybe my age or so. How many people were here?

"Skitter, this isn't-" Another man I couldn't identify.

The first bugs were almost there. I directed them to–

Pain slammed into me. The contrast with the cool numbness from before made it a hundred times worse. Fire spread from my midsection with the smallest movement. I'd been aware of something wrong with my left arm, but the pulsating pain made it clear it was broken.

I tried to breathe, and every part of it felt wrong.

"No. Nuh-huh. I can tell that you're using your power." I belatedly recognized Panacea's voice. "If I see a single bug, I'm leaving you like this, and you can spend the rest of your life in a wheelchair."

Wheelchair? I guess that answered the question of why my legs weren't working. There was no pain below my waist. There were no sensations at all.

I tried to keep myself as still as possible, but something in my left arm twitched involuntarily and tears welled up in the corners of my eyes. My second attempt at breathing only produced a wet choking noise and a burning pain in my chest, so I defaulted to holding my breath as long as I could.

"Panacea. Please," said the same man as earlier.

She huffed, but her fingers found my forehead again, rougher than before, and I relaxed as the pain vanished with her touch. Hopefully, having an audience would dissuade her from going through with the threats she made at the bank.

I blinked a few times to clear the moisture from my eyes.

"Skitter," the man said, "You are not under arrest. Those are cautionary restraints to keep people from wandering about. You arrived here drowning, and your costume was partially removed by medical personnel in order to save you."

I tentatively identified him as Legend from the colors of his costume alone, as I couldn't make out much more details. My eyes were getting used to the lights, but I didn't have my glasses on.

"We are here because an incident occurred while you were unconscious. Another cape saw you unmasked and attacked you. We saw you unmasked while intervening. We can discuss it in private once you are healed."

An attack?

Was someone from the Empire looking to make a statement after being outed? They did blame us, and with Kaiser's death, some of them might be eager to make a move for leadership.

Assuming they weren't thrown in the Birdcage first for breaking the truce.

I turned my neck a fraction to look at my surroundings. The rigid feeling in my throat made it harder than it should be.

Curtains were stretched around my bed, forming an enclosure that felt too small for the number of people in it. Panacea was on my left, the upper half of her face covered by something black. A blindfold. Legend stood by her side. At the foot of the bed, Miss Militia was quietly talking to a nurse. She was holding something, but I couldn't make out what it was. Clockblocker was next to her, adjusting his posture every few seconds. He stopped once he caught me looking.

It struck me that he was almost dead last time I'd seen him. Even without my glasses, I could make out a dark smudge on the white pane of his helmet where it was cracked.

Slowly enough to avoid offending Panacea, I twisted my head to the right to look at the last person in the enclosure.

Armsmaster stood next to my pillow, beside the heart monitor. I squinted at him for a moment before my brain registered that the arm Leviathan had ripped off was still missing. His remaining hand was stained red.

Sensations gradually returned to my legs in the form of painful jolts tracing every nerve. I ignored them as best as I could.

Four heroes had seen me unmasked. That worried me more than being attacked by a villain while I was vulnerable.

How hard would it be for them to put a name to my face? I had no passport, driving license, or criminal record, so my picture shouldn't be in any database that law enforcement used. It shouldn't be online either. With the bullying, I'd avoided social media and didn't really maintain an online presence. There had been a few humiliating accounts pretending to be me, but the ones I had found were shut down after I reported them, and the bullies had grown bored with that strategy after a while.

Did the PRT have access to school databases? Could they just contact every high school in the city with my description until someone gave them a name?

Would they?

"Done," Panacea announced.

She removed her hand, and I barely felt any pain when her power stopped affecting me. Even the aches and pains I'd accumulated this past month were gone.

I wanted to thank her, but couldn't speak with the tube in my mouth.

Legend put one hand on her shoulder to lead her out, and Miss Militia opened the curtain at the foot of the bed. Panacea left without a word, and I took that as my cue to start using my power again.

The bugs resumed their course toward me. I filtered out the smaller, less noticeable ones to tag everyone and everything in my immediate vicinity, and relaxed a fraction once my power gave me a better sense of my surroundings than my blurry vision had. The more useful bugs discreetly hid under the bed and in the folds of the curtains, and the others dispersed to survey the rest of the building. More were on their way.

Clockblocker said something to Miss Militia, too low to be heard over the ambient noise.

"No one leaves until this is resolved," she answered.

The nurse shooed Armsmaster away from my bedside and took his place, looking remarkably unfazed by the capes surrounding her. She reached for my arm, and I felt her strip away bands of adhesive before taking out the IV drip and taping a bandage where it had been.

The process of removing the breathing tube in my mouth was quick but undignified, as I was painfully aware of my audience.

A traitorous part of my brain chose this moment to provide a vivid memory of Brian talking about the importance of image.

The nurse diligently wiped the secretions I had coughed up before they could dribble from my chin, then removed the much less invasive cannula in my nose. Every surface inside my throat felt raw and irritated as I heaved to breathe on my own.

She produced a wet cloth and started to scrub my neck and the underside of my jawline, as well as a portion of my face.

The covers on the bed were hiked up to my shoulders, which made me wonder just how much of my costume had been removed. I could tell by rubbing my newly repaired legs together that the bottom half was still on, and the top was off. I'd worn a tank top and a bra under my costume. Had my injuries made it necessary to remove those too?

It felt silly to be modest now, when being unmasked in present company was significantly worse than any amount of nudity, but my cheeks and ears still burned at the possibility.

Satisfied with her work, the nurse disposed of the red-stained cloth in a plastic bag. She had me lift my head to remove the sling around my left arm, then took off the electrode glued to my collarbone and the clip on my finger. The heart monitor stopped beeping, but its silence was barely noticeable through the cacophony outside the curtains.

As soon as she left, Legend started unlocking the handcuffs to set me free. "Free" being a relative notion here. I had no illusions about my ability to leave before they let me.

If they let me.

I inspected my neck, and only found smooth skin. Panacea's work, presumably. My hand moved to my shoulder and I was relieved to find the strap of my tank top. Safe in that knowledge, I pulled the covers off and stepped out of the bed, testing my legs.

I quickly backed myself up against the curtain, putting as much distance as possible between me and the heroes. Which really wasn't much. The nook couldn't be more than ten feet across.

My bugs found a similar enclosure behind me. Occupied. Not an avenue of retreat. There was a window and an empty cot in the enclosure on the left, but that curtain had Legend standing in front of it.

I took a moment to stretch my arms and rub some sensation back into the red marks where my wrist had hung from the handcuffs. There was a bloody hand print around my forearm, where Armsmaster had grabbed me. I wiped it on my leg, then started to pull the top of my bodysuit back on.

The disadvantage of having a costume that was essentially full-body pantyhose was that there was no elegant way to put it on. Especially when it was still a bit damp and clinging to my skin in unwanted places. Having an audience didn't help, making the awkward seconds where I struggled with my gloves and sleeves feel like hours.

Pieces of my armor were stacked at the foot of the heart monitor. I grabbed the pile and dropped it on the bed, careful to keep the bugs out of sight.

I tried not to look at the amount of blood on the sheets and pillow as I began to strap my armor in place. I wasn't usually queasy about that stuff, but the gaps in my knowledge demanded to be filled, and my imagination was eager to provide.

Running a hand through my hair made me realize how gross and tangled it was. Strands were stuck together with mud or congealed blood, with sand caught in the mess. Once I realized it was there, I couldn't not feel it. Resisting the urge to scratch everything out of my scalp, I picked up the last piece of my costume.

The outside of my mask was crusted with mud, and the inside wasn't much better. I tried scraping the dirt off the goggle lenses, and regretted not doing it with my nails before putting on the rest of my costume. The gloves didn't have enough of an edge to be effective. I gave up entirely when I felt the greasy film on the inside lenses, like they had been submerged in dirty water for too long. There was no way I could see anything without a thorough cleaning on both sides. In addition to being dirty and impossible to see through, the mud sticking to the fabric around the nose and mouth would make it hard to breathe. There was really no advantage or comfort to be gained by putting it on now.

The bugs I had crammed in my utility compartment gave me a feel of its content. Surprisingly, my glasses were intact, but I elected to leave them there. Clear vision wasn't worth the trade-off of making me easier to identify.

"We can find you a temporary mask if you need it," Armsmaster said.

From Legend or Miss Militia, I might have said yes. From Armsmaster though? It felt more like admitting a weakness than accepting an olive branch.

I clipped the mask to my belt as the bugs hidden around the enclosure converged to me, consolidating as a second skin over my face and neck. I did take a measure of satisfaction in the way Armsmaster tensed up at the sudden appearance of the swarm.

Through the bugs I had planted on him, I felt Clockblocker shudder.

I turned to Legend and nodded that I was ready to go.