Chapter 31

"The rules are simple," Jack spoke as I faced the crowd. "I'm sure you recognize the people on the left. People you hate, people who have wronged you one way or another. This is your chance to take revenge. You can do anything you want to them. Hurt them, maim them, terrify them, as long as you keep us entertained, we won't hurt the civilians on the right. As a bonus, for every person you kill on the left, we'll free two on the right. The game ends when we get bored, and then we'll kill anyone who remains."

Most people were openly crying by now. Part of me was surprised that I wasn't, but the rest of me just felt cold.

I'd fantasized about taking revenge on the bullies, maybe even on the school staff. Going full Carrie, setting my bugs on them in answer to their latest taunt, letting them realize just who they'd been messing with. Turning the tide. Or maybe going after them later, getting some vigilante justice since regular justice seemed out of reach.

I'd never meant any of it.

"First, let's remove your mask, to make sure they understand why they're here," Jack continued.

I hesitated, too long for Jack's taste, and he unsheathed a small knife from his belt and swiped it, slashing the cheek of one of the civilians on the right. They cried out in surprise.

The message was clear.

I removed my mask and clipped it to my belt.

In the months following my trigger event, I'd given an inordinate amount of thoughts to how the bullies would react to learning that I had powers.

Emma would come back, begging me to be friends again, and I would reject her.

Sophia, the coward who only picked on those she considered beneath her, would be intimidated and back off.

Madison would freak out and try to pretend that she did it all because of Emma and Sophia pressuring her.

The other girls would also blame the trio for their bad influence.

Principal Blackwell and my teachers would be forced to reexamine their biases against me.

Since learning who Shadow Stalker was, and that Emma most likely knew about me, I'd also given thought to the question, in a different way.

What did Emma think? What would happen if I ever saw her again? I'd pushed the thoughts away, not wanting her to taint the use of my power.

Upon seeing me unmasked, the only ones from the left group who didn't react were Emma and Sophia. Madison's eyes widened, and she let out a muffled squeak. A girl on the second row whispered something I couldn't hear. A few mouths fell open. Principal Blackwell's eyes widened.

"You," said Alan Barnes.

"Taylor?" Asked Mr Quinlan.

"You can start now," Jack stated, and I hesitated.

What could I do? I couldn't set my bugs on the Nine, with the white smoke killing them on contact. Even if I could, it was unlikely to achieve much before Bonesaw reacted by throwing one of her creations at me.

Stall, I reminded myself. Buy time for the others to go after Shatterbird.

Which meant I had to play.

"If I were you, I wouldn't take too much time to make up my mind," Jack said. "Little Bonesaw here gets bored pretty easily. You wouldn't want the game to end before it even began, especially after we went through all the trouble of finding you all these people."

I glanced at Cherish. Surely she could tell what I was thinking, about the others attacking Shatterbird. She might have even been able to tell when I talked to them, as we left the PRT HQ.

She winked at me.

What did it mean? Was she in favor of that plan? Did she have a personal grudge against Shatterbird? Or were the others walking into a trap? Shatterbird wasn't here, but neither were Crawler, Mannequin, Burnscar or Hatchet Face. Which meant they were busy elsewhere. Doing what? Which other people had Panacea named as targets?

I had a sinking feeling, thinking about Tattletale.

"Tic, toc," Jack reminded me. "This is getting pretty boring."

Stall.

Emma shrieked as a centipede crawled on her cheek.

I glanced at Jack, who looked unimpressed, his arms folded with a cleaver in one hand and a small knife in the other.

Then, the centipede crawled into her nose, and her screams became frantic as she shook her head to dislodge it.

I couldn't put in words how it felt, attacking Emma. It didn't feel like revenge. I didn't want to attack her, or any of the others. I was being forced. At the same time, it felt wrong, being put in a position where I almost wanted to protect them. But they didn't deserve this, to become the Nine's playthings in a game designed to force me to cross a line. This wasn't justice.

Emma's dad was talking, pleading. I ignored him as the centipede came out of Emma's other nostril and into her mouth. She began retching.

One of the hostages on the right, the old lady, screamed as a cut appeared on her forehead.

I looked at Jack. His arms were still folded, and he'd barely even moved the knife.

What else could I do?

A cockroach flew to Sophia's face.

"A cockroach, really?" She said, glowering at me, as if she didn't realize the kind of situation we were in. While her mouth was open, the cockroach crawled in, and she bit down on it hard, then spat it out.

What did she have to prove, here and now? Couldn't she see that I was trying to placate the Nine so they wouldn't kill everyone, her included? Maybe she was on edge, pride hurt by her capture, but she was still being an idiot.

Jack was looking at me, to gauge my reaction. I needed to answer, or else he would slash again at the hostages.

I set all the cockroaches I had on Sophia, instructing them to bite.

She screamed, in rage rather than pain, and her mouth filled with cockroaches as they took advantage of the opening.

Jack looked satisfied with that, and it bought me a moment to think. How far was I willing to go? I didn't want to kill anyone, which meant that the game would inevitably end with everyone's death unless the others intervened. Was it better or worse not to take action? I had no idea.

In the end, I went with my first idea. Stall, play the game on the lowest setting for as long as possible, to buy time for the others. As for how it would end, there really wasn't much I could do, with the white smoke surrounding Jack, Bonesaw and Cherish. I didn't have much hope to get away.

Jack glanced at me, waiting to see what I would do next.

Flies gathered on Madison's face, crawling around as she struggled not to scream. Then they started biting, and a shriek escaped her. They took the occasion to go in, and she sputtered and coughed, trying to dislodge them.

"This is getting repetitive," Bonesaw complained.

How could I mix things up?

This time, it was one of the hostages on the right side who began screaming and twisting around as a swarm of bugs descended upon him.

I glanced at Jack and Bonesaw.

Jack's eyebrows were raised, like he hadn't expected that. Bonesaw was clapping her hands.

"See? Thinking outside the box," she said. "I like that! You would have made a good candidate!"

Cherish rolled her eyes in annoyance, but didn't say anything.

The swarm continued to attack, biting and stinging the hostage for as long as I could milk this. I watched Jack and Bonesaw from the corner of my eyes for any change in posture or looks thrown my way, indicating that it was time to step up the game.

When it came, I extended the swarm to include another hostage, then kept adding one every time the Nine showed signs of getting bored, until all of the right side was thrashing under my swarm.

When I ran out of hostages on the right, I began including the ones on the left, the bullies and school staff, and continued by small increments until everyone in the room save for the Nine and me were thrashing around and screaming, trying in vain to stop the swarm.

"You're doing great," said Jack. "Bonesaw is right, you would have made a fine candidate."

I didn't know what to answer to that. I had to imagine it was how Panacea had felt, learning that the Nine thought she belonged with them. I didn't know what those tests they talked about consisted of, but I felt bad for her anyways.

"Now, let's take this a step further," he continued. "Kill one of them."

This was the part I'd been scared of, the line I didn't want to cross. What could I do? Refuse and let the Nine kill everyone present? Maybe I could bluff, make it seem like I was obeying, and milk it out long enough for… for what? I had no idea how much time had passed since we had left the PRT HQ, much less if the others had even managed to find Shatterbird.

I glanced at Cherish behind me. She was running her hands through her hair to comb it, experimenting with a side part. If she knew what I was thinking, she gave no indication.

Jack unfolded his arms, raising the cleaver to cut through the hostages.

At once, all the bugs converged to Sophia, a thick cloud obscuring the Nine's view of her. I set them to invade her mouth, nose and ears, to ensure that she was screaming and twisting around.

Jack folded his arms again.

I milked the scene for all it was worth, letting Sophia's screams grow frantic as she trashed around, unable to use her power without intersecting with the fairy lights wrapped around her. Would she die if that happened? I had no idea. I just hoped that she wouldn't do it.

Seconds felt like hours as I watched her struggle. Next to her, Emma was sobbing out loud, as were several of the other hostages.

A swipe of his cleaver marked the moment Jack realized this was going nowhere, and three or four hostages shrieked as blood rained down their faces.

Head wounds tended to bleed a lot, I remembered from my first aid class. It didn't mean that the injuries were deadly. Still, the sight urged me to do something, anything.

I cleared the bugs inside Sophia while maintaining the cloud around her, hoping that she would take the hint and go quiet, but it only caused her to roar in fury, her teeth clenched. Idiot.

Jack swiped his knife again. More hostages injured.

The cloud of bugs around Sophia split in two, the second half going after Emma, obscuring her from view. On her thighs, they spelled out "play dead." To her credit, she gave a good performance. The bugs didn't need to invader her orifices for her to thrash around and shriek, then make it sound like she was choking, then finally, after several long minutes, go quiet and stop moving. Her father, in contrast, grew more and more frantic.

"Let's see this," Jack said.

I cleared the bugs, revealing Emma, eyes closed and head hanging to the side.

"She's just pretending," Bonesaw protested right away.

Damn it. Did her power allow her to see that, or was it her vast experience with dead bodies?

"Hm," said Jack. "I do believe it is your turn to go, poppet."

She grinned from ear to ear, then jumped off the stage and went to the hostages on the right.

"Eeny," she said, pointing at the first hostage. "Meeny," she continued, pointing at the second one. "Miny," she said in front of the third, "moe!"

The fourth hostage sobbed helplessly before she even stopped in front of him. He was a large, burly man I thought I might have seen before, probably with the Dockworkers.

"Don't worry," Bonesaw told him, "I'm not going to kill you." She retrieved a scalpel from the pocket of her apron. "I've got something special planned just for you!"

What could I do?

With the white smoke all around her, my bugs couldn't attack her. Could I distract her long enough to delay the inevitable? How?

I set cockroaches on Madison, who made the mistake of screaming, allowing them to climb into her mouth. They purposely triggered her gag reflex, and she retched a few times before puking on her own thighs.

It didn't work. Bonesaw's attention didn't waiver, and the man's screams didn't stop.

The game was over, then.

I glanced at Jack, who looked back at me with a mocking frown, shaking his head.

"A shame, really, especially after we went through the trouble of tracking down all these people just for you. I guess we'll have to find other ways to entertain ourselves with them. But it's not too late. Maybe you'll change your mind after seeing what we have in store for them."

The screams of Bonesaw's victim had become a continuous, nearly inaudible wail as she continued to work while humming a song. I could feel the sounds searing themselves into my memory, the way the sight of the destroyed office building had.

What could I do? The white smoke wreathed around Bonesaw kept my bugs from getting close, but could I work from outside of it? Use lengths of spidersilk to disarm her? And then what? Even if I managed to get the scalpel away from her, she still had an apron full of tools and pockets full of vials, not to mention the mechanical creatures looming around the sides of the auditorium. Jack still held two knives, with more at his belt, and Cherish might give the others a heads up if I tried anything.

For long minutes, the man's wail and Bonesaw's song filled the silence as I desperately tried to come up with a plan that wouldn't end with me and the hostages dead or worse. My thoughts kept looping, tracing the constraints of the situation and unsuccessfully trying to find ways around them.

All of a sudden, something crashed into me from behind, pushing me to the floor.

A fraction of a second later, Bonesaw collapsed against the hostage she was torturing.

Before I could react, Jack jerked forward and fell off the stage.

I turned to push off the weight pressing against me. It was Cherish, blood spurting from the large, gaping hole in her chest. Her eyes were wide open. Dead.

I swiveled around to look at the others.

A similar hole had been blown into Jack's shoulder. He wasn't bleeding as much as I would have expected.

Bonesaw got to her feet, looking around for the shooter. She reached into her pocket, but before she could grab anything, a headshot sent her stumbling backward against the hostages.

"Ow!" She exclaimed as if she'd been stung by a wasp rather than shot with armor-piercing rounds. "That'll give me a headache!"

She got to her feet and grabbed Jack's uninjured arm, helping him stand up, then glanced back at me.

Her hand went to her pocket, and came out with a vial she uncorked with her teeth and dropped before running away with Jack between the two groups of hostages.

I reacted on instinct, ripping the vial of white smoke from Cherish's neck and throwing it at the one Bonesaw had dropped, hoping it would have the same effect on whatever this was as it had on my bugs.

Something tackled me from behind as I got to my feet. One of the spidery contraptions. I rolled on my back, trying to fight it off of me. The legs ended in various surgery tools, from hemostatic clips to scalpels and syringes.

Right before I kicked it off the stage and away from me, one of the syringes managed to prick the index finger on my left hand, through my glove.

It was painful, more than anything I'd ever felt before. I ripped the glove off, and saw that the skin around the injection site had become black and dessicated. The effect was spreading fast, burning along my finger to my palm, then outward to the other fingers and toward my wrist.

I didn't hesitate. I grabbed the cleaver Jack had dropped, then raised it above my head as I braced my wrist against the stage floor, and brought it down with all my strength.

It took three tries to cut the hand off.

I dropped the knife, shaking.

It was bleeding too much. I hadn't had the time for a tourniquet.

I removed my belt and put it around my arm, using my teeth to pull it as tight as it would go.

As I laid there, cradling my injured arm and holding the tourniquet with my teeth, my severed hand continue to wither and die.

I drew in shallow breaths, trying to focus on my breathing rather than the pain and the horror of what I'd just done, and falling short.

Outside, a squat form hovering in the air gave pursuit to Jack and Bonesaw, firing again and again. It had to be Dragon, which meant that the others had successfully taken down Shatterbird.

A figure was making its way through the remnants of the school, but I couldn't think clearly enough to recognize them. I felt light-headed and weak, too weak to care about the image I gave to the hostages as I curled up on my side, facing away from them.

My eyes were closed by the time the person made it to the auditorium, walking on the stage to stop beside me.

"Apiary."

The voice was too distant to be recognizable.

"You're going into shock," it said.

Fighting against the fatigue and dizziness, I opened my eyes, and found Armsmaster crouching by my side, adjusting the tourniquet on my arm.

My eyes closed again, and I let go.