Chapter 34
I was forced to take time off, doctor's orders. No patrolling, no console, no paperwork, no training, no class. I even allowed myself to sleep in before heading out to the infirmary for my daily checkups.
The wound was healing nicely, without complications so far, and I did my exercises religiously while getting used to life with one hand.
At Weld and Renick's insistence, I spent the rest of my mornings with a PRT-mandated therapist. I didn't particularly like it, but I appreciated the fact that he didn't force me to relive the ordeal in its every details. He focused mostly on my current thoughts, feelings and worries, asking open-ended questions and respecting my limits when I didn't want to elaborate on a specific topic.
One thing I was careful to keep to myself was my worry over the Undersiders' fate. The screams of the man Bonesaw had tortured in front of me still kept me up at night, and I couldn't help but imagine my former friends in his place. I had no way to contact them, to check that they were okay, and the only thing I could do about it was try to bury the thought to keep it from growing out of control.
I also hadn't told my dad what happened. I just didn't have the emotional bandwidth for that conversation, and pretended to be busy whenever he called.
After therapy, I would grab lunch with the other Wards, minus whoever was on patrol or console at the time. Things were better between us since the party, and though that new normal was still surreal, I did my best to rein in my worst instincts and the survival strategies school had taught me.
After lunch, I would take care of my bees and the inhabitants of my workshop. Every day, at my insistence, Lanaro drove me to some of the hives around town to check on them, though I stayed in the car rather than go out in costume, and let her refill their feeders with sugar syrup.
When I wasn't out, I kept myself busy by taking copious notes about the horseshoe crabs for Arthur Platt from the Maritime Aquarium, while the black widows worked on three new suits, for Weld, Flechette and Glory Girl.
Despite the fact that the Slaughterhouse Nine were seemingly gone, the patrolling schedule remained the same as a precaution, with only the Protectorate patrolling after curfew. As a result, the other Wards remained at the base in the evening, and I joined them as a spectator during training. After that, we usually gathered in the break room to chat or watch a movie before retiring to bed or to do paperwork.
After a week or so, I was finally cleared to progressively start working again, and I was eager for the distraction.
On my first day back to work, my only task was to read the records and get myself up to date with what had happened in the outside world since I'd been put on pause. I was interrupted by a text message from Maureen asking me to come see her.
"Apiary," she greeted me when I arrived at her office. "Come and see the suits!"
I followed her to the craft room adjacent to her office, where the four spidersilk bodysuits I'd entrusted into her care had been dyed and fitted with a zip at the back. Aside from the black one for me, the smallest one was green, for Vista, the medium one, red, for Kid Win, and the tallest, white, for Clockblocker. I wasn't sure how she'd managed to dye the fabric from a dirty yellow-grey to pristine white, but I didn't question it.
"That's great," I told her. "The colors came out great."
She beamed with pride.
"They did, didn't they? Now we just need us a couple of models to try them on."
"Vista and Clockblocker are on patrol right now, and Kid Win is manning the console," I informed her.
"Later, then. But that's not all I wanted to talk to you about. Remember those Darwin's bark spider specimens we promised you?"
I nodded.
"They'll be here at one this afternoon, along with an entomologist who would love to visit your workshop and have a chat with you. Think you can handle it?"
"Sure."
"I'd like to document that meeting for your social media, too."
I'd expected something like that. I nodded, and she sent me on my way.
As I entered the Wards headquarters and made my way to my room, I overheard Victoria arguing on the phone in hers.
"I'm not. You don't know what she did. She… she changed me. I don't care where she is, and I'm not going back home as long as you'll keep searching for her!" She paused, then continued, nearly yelling. "Well then, maybe you should listen to mom too!"
I sat down at my desk to continue reading the records.
Then, through the bugs I had planted on her, I felt Victoria exit her room and hover in front of my door.
I opened it, looked at her red-rimmed eyes, and asked: "What's going on?"
She swallowed before answering.
"Do you want to grab lunch with me? We could eat in the break room."
"Sure," I said.
Since the party, I was forcing myself to give the other Wards the same trust and openness they gave me, and that included Victoria, no matter how terrifying she could be. She looked like she really needed someone to talk to anyways.
We walked to the elevator in silence, then to the cafeteria, where we each grabbed a sandwich, a drink and a dessert. We then retreated down to the Wards headquarters' break room.
I ate my chicken sandwich in silence, waiting for her to talk first. She didn't. Not until she unwrapped her piece of carrot cake and viciously stabbed it with a plastic fork.
"Amy's in love with me," she declared. "That's what Tattletale was threatening to say, at the bank."
"Oh." I didn't know what else to say.
"She did something to me, when she healed me after the fight with the Travelers. She changed the way I think, the way I feel. She made me reciprocate her feelings."
I had no idea how to react to any of that.
"Lily might be in a better position to help you there," I said tentatively.
She frowned, her eyes narrowing.
"Lily is being all cute with Parian, and I'm not about to weight her down with this shit. You were complicit to Tattletale fucking with my sister's head, so you have at least a share of responsibility in what happened, and you're already involved. You are going to help me to make up for that."
She leaned lightly on her aura to punctuate the words, not enough to make me shake in my boots, but just enough to command attention.
I swallowed with difficulty. It was the first time she'd brought up the bank robbery since the party, and part of me had hoped that we were past that. Evidently not.
"How do you want me to help?" I asked.
"Just… shut up and listen."
I nodded, taking a bite of my brownie.
"My mom knows that she did something to me, but doesn't know what, and my dad… My dad is thankful for her finally deciding to heal him after weeks of leaving him be and saying that she couldn't heal brains when she clearly could all along."
I said nothing.
"He's been searching for her ever since the Nine left, and found a witness saying that she visited the hospital in Milford. He's planning to go after her to bring her home, and he wants me to go back home too. He doesn't understand that the two aren't compatible anymore."
I took another bite of my brownie.
"I can't stand the thought of her even being in the same city as me, much less in the same house. I can't… I was okay when I only knew that she was on the run, but knowing that she might come back to the city within a few days spooks me. Then there's my dad, who doesn't understand why I'm mad at her all of a sudden, and now my parents are fighting about her and about me, and they both want me to go home, but I can't."
She stabbed the innocent carrot cake in front of her for emphasis before aggressively shoving a bite in her mouth.
"They won't understand unless you tell them," I said tentatively despite her telling me to shut up.
"It's all so fucked up, I can't even bring myself to do it. I keep worrying that they won't believe me, or that they'll try to make excuses for her. Do you know what she told my mom? That she had healed my brain wrong and that she needed to use her power again to fix it, so now they might think that it's just an effect of that, that I'm delirious and paranoid or something."
"I'm sorry," I said. "I don't have any idea what else to tell you. But if you wait for her to come back, you're letting her have the advantage in what she tells your parents. Maybe your father would know to let you have space if he knew what happened and why you're pulling away."
She nodded, chewing on a bite of carrot cake, then took a sip of her iced tea.
"Thanks for listening. It needed to come out. You're right, I should at least try to tell them everything before dad goes looking for her."
She hurried to finish her carrot cake, then threw away the plastic wrapping and flew away with her iced tea.
I took the time to finish my brownie, then left for my workshop, to put things in order before I had visitors.
The first few black widow hatchlings were born, I noticed. I checked their terrariums, directing preys to them to fatten them up and giving them a stern warning not to eat each other. Unlike the adults, they were orange, with a white abdomen and a few black markings on the legs. In just a few days, they would begin to produce silk.
A knock on the door announced the arrival of Maureen and the entomologist. I opened the door to find an elderly Asian woman, with grey hair tied in a bun beneath a khaki fedora and an assorted raincoat.
"Dr. Andrea Anquino," she introduced herself, offering me a hand. "But please call me Andrea."
"Apiary," I answered, shaking her hand.
Her other hand held two large bags with butterflies on it.
Beside her, Maureen was snapping pictures.
"This is your workshop?" Andrea asked. "Maureen has shown me the suits you've made from black widow silk. Impressive! I'm curious to see them in action."
"Come in," I said, holding the door open.
She stepped in without hesitation, even coming closer when she saw the tens of thousands of black widows working on the three suits.
Maureen remained at the door.
"Can I take a video of this?" Andrea asked. "It is fascinating to see them working in concert."
"Sure."
She carefully deposited her bags on the floor before taking out her phone.
"How do you keep them from becoming territorial?" She asked.
"I have full control over them, and there is tinkertech beneath the workbench that keeps them following my last order while I'm out of range."
"Incredible."
She took a few more shots of the spiders working before putting away her phone and looking around to the rest of my workshop.
"Are those…" She trailed off, her eyes wide as she pointed at the aquarium.
"Horseshoe crabs, yes. It's a research project for the Maritime Aquarium in Norwalk."
"And you can control them too? Fascinating."
She then looked at the shelves of terrariums on the walls.
"Grasshoppers, fireflies, cicadas, an ant farm, Salticidae or jumping spiders, cockroaches, dragonflies… And are those young black widows?"
"Yes, they just hatched today. Most of the terrariums on this side of the wall hold incubating egg sacs. I'm looking at a over a million of hatchlings over the next week or so."
Her eyes widened at that.
Maureen snapped pictures as we continued to talk, while refusing to step foot inside of my workshop and closer to the spiders.
"I've brought you specimens of Darwin's bark spider," said Andrea after a lull in conversation. "Straight from Madagascar."
She bent down to reach inside the first bag, and I cleared the part of the workbench beside her.
Each spider was in a small plastic box with a hole in the lid and mesh glued over the hole. There were a hundred and twenty in total. They were brown and grey, with white markings on the abdomen. The females's bodies were about three quarters of an inch, with inch-long legs, and the males were a third of the size.
"About forty males and eighty females," she specified, even though I'd already understood it. "The females were easier to find."
They were hungry. I asked for Andrea's help to open the boxes while I called a swarm through the trap leading outside, directing the bugs straight to each spider.
"Is that how you feed the black widows?" She asked, and I nodded as she filmed the scene.
Once they were done with their meal, I flipped their biological switch to urge them to mate, but they wouldn't be ready to lay eggs right away. I then directed them to their quarters on the right wall.
"That's not all I brought," said Andrea, bending down again to search her second bag. "I figured you might be interested in a few other extraordinary specimens."
She pulled out a pile of eight boxes each containing a reddish spider with a white 'U' on its otherwise brown abdomen. They were larger than the Darwin's bark spiders, the females nearing four inches with the leg span included, the males, two-thirds smaller.
"Nephila, also known as the golden orb-weavers. Mainly the subspecies Trichonephila komaci, also from Madagascar. They are known for their golden silk. It is not quite as strong as the Darwin's bark spider's, but still quite extraordinary. There has been attempts to make garments out of their silk, so far fruitless."
I nodded. I knew about it already, from when I'd researched the properties of spidersilk.
She took out another few boxes. These ones, I recognized right away.
"Mantis religiosa, the European praying mantis. I wasn't sure whether you would have some specimens already, since they are present in North America, but I brought some anyways. They are mostly known for their sexual cannibalism behavior, but are also the only known invertebrates to see in 3D, but their depth perception only works on moving objects."
The next box contained a few dozen flat, mottled brown beetles about an inch long.
"Nosoderma diabolicum, the diabolical ironclad beetle, from California. The structure of the exoskeleton makes them one of the most durable insects in the world. They can withstand being run over by a car. We have to use a small drill to pierce a hole through the shell when mounting them in a display, rather than using stainless steel pins like with other insects. Because of their durability, they can live up to eight years."
That was interesting. I could imagine myself making armor with them, if I could breed them in sufficient numbers.
The three next boxes were much bigger. Two contained horned beetles nearly seven inches long counting the horn, and the third, a smaller beetle half the size, without a horn.
"Dynastes hercules, the Hercules beetle. The largest beetle species, and largest flying insect in the world. It can lift eight hundred and fifty times its body weight, coming in second in the strength category. Only the males have horns, as they are primarily used in combat against other males during mating season. Note that they mainly eat fruits when in captivity."
Two more large boxes, each containing a beetle over six inches long.
"Titanus giganteus, the titan beetle. A male and a female. One of the largest known beetles, from South America. Their mandibles can snap a pencil in half. They only live for a few weeks, though, as they don't consume food except water in their adult form. The larvae ingests dead wood, and the caloric intake is meant to last it a lifetime. Because of their short life span, little is known of their mating habits, and we have yet to witness their full life cycle. I was hoping that you could breed and observe them, and share your insights."
"I can do that."
She offered a bright smile.
The last two boxes were the largest of all, each holding an auburn tarantula the size of a dinner plate. Their bodies alone were at least five inches long.
"Oh god," cried Maureen somewhere behind us.
"Theraphosa blondi, the Goliath birdeater, from South America. Despite its name, it rarely preys on birds, preferring other large arthropods, worms, amphibians, and the occasional rodent. The largest spider by mass and body length, second only to the giant huntsman spider by leg span. The female can live up to twenty-five years."
She opened each box, and I directed the bugs to the terrarium on the right wall. Once I was done, Andrea spoke again.
"Now, I was hoping I could ask you a few questions about what you can perceive through arthropods."
Yeah, I'd gotten the feeling that the bugs were mostly a bribe.
"What do you want to know?" I asked.
"Everything."
By the time I made it back to the Wards headquarters, most of the others were already in bed.
As I walked down the corridor to my room, Victoria came out of hers, like she had been waiting for me to come back.
"Where were you?" She asked.
"In my workshop, with an entomologist who had a lot of questions."
She nodded, then motioned to her room. "Do you have a minute?"
"Sure."
I followed her in and closed the door behind me.
The room was nearly bare, as if she was living out of her suitcase, save for a poster of Gallant on the wall, and another with the pre-Leviathan Wards team.
"I told them," she said, wringing her hands. "My dad thought I was imagining things, and he still wants to bring her back home. My mom was furious. Then, they had a big fight, and my mom threatened to move in with my aunt Sarah if she comes back. I left while they were still screaming at each other."
"Sorry."
She shrugged.
"It went about as well as expected. At least I've said my piece."
"Still, that sucks."
She exhaled in a huff.
"Speaking of sucking, do you know an 'Emma Barnes', by any chance?"
It caught me off-guard, hearing that name in a context it didn't belong in, and it twisted something ugly in my stomach, thinking about our last meeting.
"Redheaded, pretty, kind of a cunt," she continued. "Her dad works with my mom, which I imagine is how she managed to get her grubby little hands on my phone number. She's been harassing me about you for the past few days, saying that she really needs to talk to you."
"Please don't give her my number or contact information. She's Shadow Stalker's best friend, and partially to blame for my trigger event."
She frowned.
"I'll just block her, then."
"Thanks."
She nodded, then said: "I'm going to bed, now. Good night."
"Good night," I answered, exiting the room.