Taylor was sitting on Apex’s neck, and Apex was sitting upright on the station’s landing pad. The two of them had just seen off New Wave and Lisa, saying their goodbyes and good lucks.

  They had two last-minute additions to their part of the task force: Rachel and Vanessa. Transporting Rachel would have been easy, but her plus three dogs were more difficult. After a brief discussion, Rachel had boosted up her hounds and dashed off to traverse the city. It was going to take her longer to get there, but their group had to make a stop at PHQ and pick up Vista and equipment for their battle.

  Apex was about as expressive as a lump of stone when she was doing her statue thing, and save for the end of her tail sliding back and forth with the quiet rasp of her slick skin, she was motionless. Taylor had gotten better at reading her when she was in her true form, but it was always a challenge, just because how dramatic of a difference between the two there was. Morgan was very expressive and animated, and she didn’t shy away from wearing her emotions on her sleeve. Apex was a faceless monolith; the only remotely human thing about her was her lower arms and clawed hands. She got a lot of mileage out of those hands and was very physical with touching and embracing as Apex.

  Taylor had to assume it was because it was the only option she had, other than being sarcastic and cracking jokes. She got the impression that Apex was currently sort of… pensive. She was staring at New Wave as they left, or at least, had her head pointed at them. Taylor knew she had an extremely panoramic vision and would often be looking at many things at once.

  They were waiting for the others to finish packing and strapping in the station, so it was just the two of them for the time being. Taylor leaned forward until her head was right up against Morgan’s hair.

  She asked Apex softly, “Are you okay?”

  Apex’s voice was quiet when she spoke, which was odd, given the way it rumbled and resonated. Taylor could feel it under her as much as she heard it. “Can’t help but worry about Amy. She just got kidnapped, nearly died, and she’s heading back out. It wasn’t that long ago she was scared out of her mind to be anywhere near a fight.”

  Taylor hadn’t known the freckled girl all that long; their first encounter was some truly unfortunate circumstances, relative to how you’d normally want to meet new friends.

  Hey, love the hair, mine’s curly too, see? So, you rob this bank often?

  Amy had seemed maybe a little antsy during that encounter, but she’d also been quite aggressive, too. Hacking her insects’ senses and making feedback loops, and then smashing her in the head with a fire extinguisher. That didn’t scream terrified of conflicts, but as Morgan liked to point out, desperate people did tend to spring for bad ideas.

  “I think the suit helps,” Taylor said. “There’s a protective layer between her and the dangers she might face, but also, she’s this faceless bio-robot. It’s not like Panacea, where everyone knows who she is; she can sort of channel herself into a persona. Make others think she’s bigger, scarier than she is, and maybe even believe it herself in the process.”

  Apex bobbed her head. Taylor felt the door to the helipads open, and Eclipse, Flechette, and Menja walked out to join them. Apex dropped from her seated position down to lying flat, and she helped them up and strapped everyone in place.

  “Everyone good to go? No bathroom breaks on the flight!” Apex jokingly asked.

  Everyone gave the green light, and Apex stood up, unfolded her wings, and launched them into the sky. Taylor closed her eyes inside the helmet and relaxed her upper body. Taylor loved flying. It sucked the stress straight out of her like nothing else could. The way Apex was flying, she was breaking the wind for Taylor fairly effectively, which was good, as Taylor didn’t want to lose any of the swarm she was carrying on her shoulders, helmet, and back. The new suit that Morgan had made for her didn’t have all the nooks and crannies that her old suit had. The bugs had plenty of things to grab and hold on to, the flexible spines and strands that were shaped like her hair on her helmet, and the ones on her shoulders and upper back were perfect for it.

  Plus, they gave her a downright intimidating silhouette and presence. Old Skitter was spooky, creepy, even. The new Skitter could turn that up to terrifying, if she desired. Taylor loved her new suit. Amy had to adjust the lenses for her after fixing her eyes, but other than that, it was a humongous improvement over her old suit. Kid Win had helped incorporate some storage into the design that looked seamless, where she could store her old essentials, along with some of her new toys, as an official Ward.

  The ice between her and Chris had broken significantly following his visit to the station. She’d had a chance to sit and talk with him, not as Skitter and Kid Win, but as Taylor and Chris. He was a bit jittery and fidgety, a touch awkward, but then again, so was she. They sat and chatted about what tinkering was like, and he’d gotten pretty invested in her explanation of how she made her suit. Sure enough, when she’d show it to him, he’d gushed nearly as much as Morgan had over it. He kept talking about dynamic load balancing and the material properties of the dragline silk she used. She couldn’t help but feel a bit bashful at the excitement.

  She wasn’t a tinker. She didn’t have mentors, teachers, resources, manuals, or anything like that. She was just a girl who had painstakingly sat in the basement with a sketchbook, a bunch of highly venomous spiders, and a whole lot of trial and error. At some points, she’d wished that she had Tinker powers. Tinkertech was amazing.

  And yet here was one of the best Tinkers in Brockton Bay, maybe the second best, and he was fawning over her work? It was baffling, and she’d wanted to fall back on old habits. But Morgan had been constantly harassing her, all but cuffing her upside the head about her self-doubts, and being critical of her self-image.

  It had been nearly a week since Taylor had gotten her biology tweaked. It had taken a couple of days to fully take effect, but she could feel it now, all the time. Her eyes had shifted color from brown to a darker hazel. She was really happy with the effect, because she still had the brown of her Mom’s eyes, but now she had the green of her Dad’s eyes, too. Not needing glasses anymore was kind of crazy. She kept trying to adjust them on her face, expecting to feel the weight on her nose.

  But there was more to it than just that. Way more. She’d been adding on pounds to her workouts and breaking new personal records virtually every day she had time to hit the gym. Her reflexes were sharper, she didn’t feel like she was clumsy anymore, and she was hardly getting winded at all, even with fairly hard jogging. She was nearly positive that she was smarter, too. She’d always prided herself on having a sharp mind, but she was better at drawing connections, abstracting things, and she’d found that when she was reading things, they just stuck in her brain, like she was slapping up stickynotes she could refer back to anytime she wanted.

  A small part of her was protesting, was scared, saying it was too much, too fast. That she didn’t deserve to be happy, or enjoy the way she looked, or that she had honest to god friends now. But a much bigger part of Taylor argued that these were things she’d fought for, worked for, and earned. Amy from a few months ago would have called the cops on her instantly. Now they were close friends. Not through chance or circumstance, but because both of them had fought to overcome their social anxieties, only to realize they had much in common. Getting to know Morgan hadn’t been easier. Taylor had been convinced she was spying on her, then they’d attacked her, and she’d nearly killed her by accident. It had been dogged persistence, poking, prodding, and a whole lot of making Taylor feel deeply uncomfortable.

  Taylor had formed a bond with Morgan in more ways than one. They’d started Brockton Strong together when Morgan had taken her in with zero expectations that she’d stay or do anything. Chance and circumstance had made the dominoes line up for Brockton Strong to be successful, and she felt like the organization had a bright future ahead of it. Then there was the uncomfortable truth, the one that Amy had been poking earlier, and had made her recognize. She was attracted to Morgan, both emotionally and physically. She’d never exposed herself to anyone the way she’d exposed herself to the girl who wasn’t a girl. Emma was a close second, but her and Emma had been close friends, and they hadn’t had that intimacy that Taylor had experienced with Morgan.

  Taylor leaned forward, laying her front against the back of Apex’s neck, and hugged her. It wouldn’t look like a PDA, just like Taylor was holding on to the slippery blue beast as they flew through the skies over the city, the night sky darkening overhead as the final rays of sunlight headed off for greener pastures on the west coast. The tentacles wrapped around Taylor’s legs squeezed back, but not uniformly; they were contracting in waves, massaging her calves and thighs. Taylor ran the claws of her gloves over the hills and valleys of Apex’s muscular neck as she thought about the fight ahead.

  They had a game plan, and they had firepower; it was going to be a matter of application, and not falling prey to the remaining members of the Nine, who Taylor expected weren’t going to be holding back at all.

  Apex banked and dove for the only lit tower in downtown, and they landed a moment later. Vista was waiting for them on the rooftop, along with a handful of additional supplies. Earbuds for all of them, already connected to the network they were using for this operation. Taylor had to take her helmet off to put hers in her ear, but the rest were doing the same. Apex, for her part, just grabbed one in a tentacle and coiled it back up into the mass growing from the back of her head.

  “Radio check,” Vista said into her earpiece, still not having joined the group on top of Apex.

  “Skitter here, I hear you just fine.”

  “Flechette here, reading loud and clear.”

  “Menja. Radio works.”

  “Eclipse, checking comms.”

  “Apex copies, Bitch isn’t on the network, Dragon, are you with us?”

  “Yes, hello everyone. I’m stationkeeping just over the horizon, out of visual and auditory range. Just a reminder, both earbuds need to be firmly seated in the ear canal. It is normal to feel some pressure on your ear. The active hearing protection will not work if they are not fully seated, and you are going to want it for when I arrive.”

  “Got that, everyone? No wimping out, unless you want your eardrums blown out!” Apex said.

  Vista handed off a box of throwing knives to Flechette, who pulled them out several at a time and stuffed them into the many straps of her costume. Eclipse was given a handgun and magazines, which she stuck into a holster and pouches on her utility belt after checking that it was cocked and loaded. Taylor was surprised by Eclipse. She was Morgan’s twin, and they looked alike, and had many things in common, but where Apex tended to be almost excessively forgiving, Eclipse didn’t fuck around. She seemed to be getting a lot of training from Miss Miltia, and Taylor didn’t know if it was Miss Miltia’s influence rubbing off or if she was just like that normally. The two hadn’t gotten a ton of time to socialize, between being on different teams, and then Eclipse often being on opposing schedules to her and Apex. Eclipse and Lily seemed tight, though.

  Vista walked over to Taylor and handed up a small black box, a bit larger than a USB battery bank. It was covered in mechanical switch dials and had several rubber-covered sealed pressure switches. A stubby cylindrical tube extended out one end, with multiple lenses behind a protective rim. The bottom of the box had numerous laser warning labels on it. It was part of her mission to use this, and she’d been given a crash course on how to operate it, although it was mostly point and shoot. The course had been more about how to avoid blinding yourself or others by accident, and how to locate good cover.

  Goodies all handed out, Vista surveyed the back of Apex. Taylor was on her neck, Menja was behind her, but back a ways, below Apex’s four shoulders, Eclipse was in the middle of Apex’s abdomen, and Flechette was pressed up against her back, sitting on Morgan’s hips.

  “I can slot you in on the top of my tail, Vee, or you can fit in front of Taylor. Your call,” Apex told her, her voice warm. Morgan’s affection for Missy was unmistakable and blatant; she treated her like a younger sister, and Missy seemed quite happy with that arrangement. Missy hadn’t been what Taylor expected. She was the youngest Ward, and one of the youngest ever, as far as she knew, but she seemed like she was several years older than she actually was, and it was only her form that really gave her away.

  “You know what? I’ll take the tail,” Vista said, walking over and climbing up with Apex’s assistance.

  “Okay, let’s revisit the plan briefly while we’re in transit,” Apex said, tightening her hold on all of them as she leapt off the roof of PHQ.

  Taylor’s stomach did the lurch thing where it felt like it was in her throat, then right back down. She loved it, and the many other sensations Apex had shown her when cutting up in the sky over the city one day.

  Apex talked while the group climbed high into the sky. “We fly over to the university, and I glide in most of the distance so we don’t tip them off early. We meet with Rachel, give her earbuds. From there, we split up. Taylor deploys her swarm, but dispersed and sneaky, to locate and identify our targets. We are keeping radio chatter low once we begin, so Taylor can provide us all the data to work with.”

  Taylor was the eyes and ears of the operation. Apex, Dragon, Bitch, and Menja, their heavy hitters. Eclipse, Vista, and Flechette their wildcards and battlefield control.

  “We’re hanging back and keeping low until Taylor locates our two primary targets. As soon as we have them, we’re moving,” Apex continued. “Bitch and her dogs, Menja and I, are going to assault their location and force them to react. Our goal is to draw them out until we have all four spotted. Once all four are on the battlefield, we engage fully. Vista, Eclipse, and Flechette move in stick tight as a group.”

  Dragon came through the radio next. “When Taylor has located Primary and Secondary targets, she will move into position to provide targeting data. She’s going to avoid detection if possible. I will call out my ETA updates. Remember, Taylor, you need to keep that laser on the target so it can maintain lock, but you need to be no closer than thirty meters, and behind the kinds of cover we talked about.”

  “Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten, and I don’t feel like getting blown up tonight. I had had enough of that with Bakuda,” Taylor said.

  “Once the Secondary target is terminated, we are focusing all attention on the Primary target.” Apex’s rumbling voice came through clearly on the connection. “Remember: this entire mission fails if we fail to take down the Primary. He can not be allowed to escape or survive. No matter what, Jack Slash dies tonight. We have a small PRT SpecOps team that is going to assist us tonight, but they can’t deploy until we’ve successfully handled the other threats.”

  “If we had more time, I could have gotten some stealthy transports here for them to use, but we don’t have anything available currently,” Dragon said. “In any case, is everyone clear? Everyone but Eclipse’s group is going to have to be mindful of their cover and position, or you’re going to risk getting hit by shrapnel or debris.”

  “We got it, building between us and Taylor’s target, make sure it is sturdy, drop to the ground if there are no other alternatives,” Menja repeated from their briefing earlier. “If I’m using my ability, I’m not concerned about the shrapnel, and I doubt Apex is, either.”

  “Okay, here we go, I’m gliding us in. I see Bitch and her dogs; they’re maybe about six blocks out, so timing is looking good. Let’s cut the chatter from here out. Good luck, everyone.”

  “Good luck, team. I’ll be watching from afar,” Dragon said.

  Apex stiffened her wings, and they pitched down, gliding through the air nearly silently. They steadily picked up speed until the wind was buffeting Apex. Taylor saw the rest of the team behind her pressed flat against Apex’s spinal plates, and she’d formed a little windbreak shield for Vista in the back. The creaking and rustling of Apex’s wings was the only other sound besides the whistling of the air they were displacing.

  “Landing in… fifteen seconds,” Apex said.

  Taylor could feel her blood pumping, her adrenaline had her feeling the rush, and the excited energy overrode her creeping fear of facing the worst of the Nine.

  The group pitched up, and Apex was flapping her wings slowly and deliberately to brake as silently as possible. Taylor braced, and there was a sudden bone-rattling jolt as Apex transitioned from a glide into a gallop. They were down, and she slowed the group down, bringing them to a halt under a huge gas station awning.

  “We’re down, Dragon, and in position. Waiting for Rachel,” Taylor said.

  “Copy that. I’m standing by.”

  They were one street over from the campus, a spot they’d carefully picked, given the need to glide in stealthily. They were staying on Apex for transport over to the university, and they would disembark there and move in.

  They’d been there maybe about thirty seconds when Apex started cocking her head into different orientations. Her tentacle hair was rustling around like waves on the ocean.

  “Does anyone hear that?” She asked quietly.

  Everyone stilled and listened.

  Taylor thought she heard a distant whistling sound; her ears were twitching in her helmet. “Yes, I hear something now, too,” she hissed.

  A moment later, all the tentacles holding them clamped down on their legs and waists hard, and Apex lurched to the side and leapt backwards. While this was going on, the distant whistle became much less distant and far louder. Not even a second later, some kind of big pole or spear punched a hole into the metal roofing over the pumps and lodged into the pavement where they’d just been standing.

  It was ten or twelve feet long, the diameter of Taylor’s thigh, and had a big cone made from sheet metal–now torn and ragged–extending from the lower third, or not far below where the tip of the spear would be. Sand was pouring out of the remains of the cone.

  “Fuck, Shatterbird! She knows we’re here, somehow!” Apex growled.

  Another whistle, and another leap, and a second spear buried itself into the asphalt right where they’d been.

  “She’s on to us, tracking us somehow! Dragon, ideas?” Vista asked.

  “You’re likely within the vicinity of her silicakinesis; she might be able to sense the electronics on your person, since they’re probably the only silicas moving around.”

  “Well, that’s just fucking great,” Menja said. “Let me down, I’ll pop up, and they won’t be a threat to me.”

  Apex jumped again, and as soon as she landed, unstrapped Menja while a new spear crashed down from the sky. Menja immediately started running, growing up to three or four stories tall and spacing herself out from the rest of the group.

  “I have an idea, give me your earbuds, but one at a time!” Taylor said while launching all her bugs contained in and on her armor. They scattered into the air with a sudden buzz and were gone. “I’ll make my swarm clones and give them each a pair of earbuds. We can give them bad intel on our locations and tactics! I’ll keep mine, so I can radio Dragon!”

  “Do it,” Apex said while Taylor condensed a swarm of nearby insects into the shadowy figure of a human. Eclipse fished her earbuds out from under her helmet and gave them to Taylor, who tossed the pair to the swarm clone. It seemed to catch them out of the air and enveloped them, then took off ‘running,’ the outline moving just like a person going from building to building.

  Taylor repeated this with Apex, Vista, and Flechette, while Apex kept them from getting impaled by the steady rain of projectiles. “I’m keeping them moving, directing them into different positions around the campus in a half-circle. And I’m keeping them away from other people, so they shouldn’t get found out too easily.”

  “Fuck, we can’t wait for Rachel; she’ll have to figure things out and head in on her own. The rest of us are sticking to the plan,” Apex called out to them as she started moving them in. “Let’s hope she remembers the briefing!”

  The spears dropping out of the sky stopped. Shatterbird must have been targeting other headsets. A thought popped into Taylor’s head as they were heading in. “What about the laser? If she can see the earbuds, can she see that too?”

  “It’s a possibility, Skitter,” Dragon said.

  Taylor relayed the message to the group.

  Apex responded first. “Okay, so, we’re just going to have to keep her really occupied, then. Everyone else ready to engage?”

  Agreement all around, Eclipse pulled out her grappling gun, and Flechette rotated the big crossbow off her back and around to her front on its sling.

  “Ask Dragon if they’re in the same building,” Apex called back to Taylor.

  “She says yes, there’s been some foot traffic, but they’re still returning to that location!” Taylor relayed back.

  Apex was tearing through the campus, with them getting beaten and lightly thrashed as she sent clumps of grass flying while weaving between buildings, and leaping up and over smaller structures in their way. The BBU campus was on the southwestern side of the city, south of Captain’s Hill, and was more elevated and sheltered from any of the water damage impacting the rest of the city. This entire section of town was one that Taylor preferred to avoid. All the big houses with fancy driveways and expensive cars, ringed with fences that weren’t entirely decorative.

  Taylor tuned out the outside world, paying attention to her swarm and the three-dimensional map she had in her head composed of the countless insects on the campus and in the buildings. The modified horseflies that Amy had made for her were insanely fast, and she had them spread out around her in a rough octagon, outside the range of her power, but keeping a fair overlap. She’d left standing orders with the repeater bugs to return to her if they fell out of contact, in the hopes that she wouldn’t wind up accidentally losing any of them.

  With her bugs out, she had a wide view of most of the campus. She had to orient herself with recognizable buildings to figure out the proper rotation for the map of the campus from their briefing.

  There!

  The university’s medical school building was their destination, and they were getting close. Taylor was using gnats, fruit flies, and other tiny, mostly unnoticeable insects to scout and tag their targets. They weren’t very good insects for much else, and the only really valuable information they could relay was things like fabric textures and some scents.

  Shirt, pants, belt. Perfume of some kind, metal… That’s Jack Slash.

  Shatterbird is on the roof, easy to tell it’s her, she’s covered in slick glass.

  Stiff canvas and a lot of blood. That’s going to be Bonesaw.

  Denim, boots, leather belt… Lots of hair?

  Layers of different kinds of cloth, some cotton, satin, and lace.

  One where they’re slippery and the bugs die whenever they move. That’s Siberian.

  Bodies everywhere downstairs. Mangled and mutilated, metal and bone. Another display?

  “Apex, we have a problem!” Taylor said.

  Apex skidded to a stop behind a building. On the other side was the side of the medical school. A concrete parking deck stood a few hundred feet away. There was an expansive front lawn with garden plots, fountains, and statues in front of the building. Some cover from hedges and statues, but otherwise pretty wide open.

  Apex started hastily unloading the group. “What is it?” she asked.

  “There are more people than we expected. Maybe other recruits, or nominees?” Taylor said, sliding off Apex’s neck and shoulders.

  “How many, and can you ID any of them?”

  “Six total. Four we wanted, plus two, no idea who they are. Wait, I just caught a metal mask on one. I’m pretty sure that's Hookwolf. No clue on the other. There’s also a lot of corpses in the lower levels of the building.”

  “Okay, and locations?” Apex asked as she stood back up and rustled her wings.

  “Bonesaw and the bodies are in the basement, or subfloors. Shatterbird on the roof with more of those spears. Siberian, Jack, and the other two are on the second floor; there’s a big atrium in the entrance, they’re just above and to the sides.”

  “And what about our Secondary target?” Dragon asked in her earpiece.

  “I’ve got them. Third–no, fourth floor of the parking deck. But Dragon, there’s no way I can get you the targeting lock without being too close to the target area. The buildings here aren’t tall enough, except the medical school itself, and Shatterbird is on the roof.”

  “Any other people in the parking deck that you can identify?” Dragon asked.

  Taylor started sweeping the building. There were a lot of cars, but the windows being blown out were a huge help in cutting down the time it would take to comb through them.

  “Eclipse, red flare, please. They know we’re here, might as well signal to Bitch where we are,” Apex said.

  Eclipse pulled out a signal flare pistol from her belt and loaded a cartridge into it before firing it into the air. The red glow cast the gardens and nearby buildings in an ominous glow.

  “They’re moving now, heading to the entrance, Apex,” Taylor relayed.

  “Building’s clear, Dragon. I don’t see anyone there, at least, nobody alive outside the target.”

  “Copy that, I’m coming in now. Stay in cover. ETA 40 seconds.”

  “We need to get around the corner of the building, right now! She’s going to bomb in just over thirty seconds!” Taylor hissed, darting along the wall and around the corner a good dozen feet, then dropping to the ground and covering her head, as they’d been instructed to do. Vista, Flechette, and Menja all piled in close on the ground next to her, and Eclipse hopped on top of Menja’s back. Menja grunted when the other woman basically dropped herself on top without forewarning.

  Eclipse’s hand slapped onto her arm, and then absolutely everything blinked out of existence. She could move, but there was nothing else present. No sound, no light, nothing at all.

  Taylor could only hear her heart racing in her chest, the steady thump-thump almost calming, in a way. They waited. It felt like an eternity had passed while they were in there. Taylor tried to count the seconds, but it was hard with how fast her brain was racing.

  She was struck by something, a sudden realization. The calmness, the peacefulness, the quiet inside of Melody’s Shaker field.

  My swarm, all my insects, the millions of tiny dots I can perceive in my head, the ones who’ve been with me every waking moment since January. They’re all gone. I can’t sense them at all, not even a single one!

  Just as the anxiety of being cut off from her swarm started to rise in her chest, everything came back all at once. A bright red glow overhead, millions of her bugs snapped back into her focus instantly, but with a big hole punched in her swarm. Burning chunks of debris and bits of stone were raining down all around them; they were thankfully in the shadow of the building and not being pelted.

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  There was a deafening roar and a jet of fire blazing off into the sky, then Taylor couldn’t see it any longer as it became obstructed by a nearby building.

  “Go, go! Move!” Menja shouted. “Apex has already moved out!”

  That got everyone scrambling up. As soon as they’d gotten up, Vista, Flechette, and Eclipse piled into a close formation and moved off as a trio. Taylor debated what she wanted to try and use. She had her baton, her combat knife, and the pistol with a few magazines. She pulled her knife for now. Menja was using her ability while pulling her bladed spear and shield out, surging up to four or five times Taylor’s size in the course of several seconds.

  Taylor couldn’t help but notice that Menja didn’t sink into the grass or crack the pavement the way Apex did. It was strange; she didn’t seem to weigh much more than she did when she was of normal size, instead leaving giant bootprints of flattened grass as she moved out.

  My original role in the team has been filled. After using the laser, I was just supposed to engage with my swarm to obstruct and keep the Nine off-balance.

  “Everyone intact?” Dragon asked on her earpiece.

  “Yes, we dogpiled, and Eclipse shielded us behind cover. Nobody injured, as far as I know.”

  “Good. Confirming that Siberian is down. I saw her blink out immediately upon destruction of the Secondary target.”

  Taylor reached out to determine what the best course of action would be. She could hear sounds of battle picking up on the other side of the building from her. Shatterbird was getting back to her feet on the rooftop of the building. Taylor attempted to attack her with her more offensively oriented biting and stinging insects, but she’d no more than started swooping down with them when something started chewing up the swarm in a rough sphere around Shatterbird. So she pulled them back before taking too many losses.

  Some kind of barricade, maybe? Or a shield of sand or glass, moving quickly enough to kill the insects?

  Taylor ran around the side of the building to get a direct look at things.

  The parking garage had collapsed and kicked up a bunch of concrete dust into the air that was acting a bit like a fog slowly rolling in. The structure was mostly obscured by the dust, but there were numerous wrecks that had burst into flame in the process of the deck coming down, and they were lighting the dust cloud from within. All that remained of the deck was a massive pile of broken concrete and steel pillars and beams, and cracked slabs making an angular, craggy landscape two or so stories tall. More than a dozen fires were raging within the ruins of the structure, burning hot, but they seemed to be contained within the footprint of the building currently.

  Apex and Hookwolf, in his four-legged metal wolf form, were brawling, using campus buildings like film props to smash one another into. Menja was facing off against what appeared to be an equally large, bloated zombie. Taylor couldn’t make it out well in the dust and chaos, but her insects were telling her it was made up of seemingly human body parts, covered in skin. The giveaway that it was a zombie of some kind was the fact that it reeked of decay, something her bugs were strongly tuned to seek out.

  Menja was blocking blows from the zombie creature with her shield, and they were powerful enough to send her skidding backwards. She’d come back in with furious, rapid-fire thrusts with her guard up. She stabbed the zombie repeatedly in vital locations: chest, joints, and even the head. It didn’t seem to react or mind in the slightest, which was throwing off Menja’s fighting strategies. Several fierce slashes with the blade of her spear across the zombie left gaping wounds.

  Taylor sent her bugs to attack the innards, in the vain hope that stinging and venom would have some effect on it. Only to discover it was… hollow!?

  What the hell? How does that work? I thought this was a Bonesaw creation, but this isn’t like the stuff she makes at all.

  Taylor could sense ribbons and cords of organic material moving around inside the zombie-like snakes, and they stitched the holes and gashes that Menja was making in the zombie, faster than she could stack up damage against it. Like Menja, the giant zombie seemed to weigh less than it should, but was massive when it came to dealing and taking blows.

  Some kind of aerokinesis, maybe? That might explain why it has a skin, so it has something tangible to attack with?

  She relayed the information to Dragon.

  From within the medical school, Taylor sensed motion. She’d been trying to get bugs into Bonesaw’s area, but Bonesaw seemed to have figured out that Skitter was present and had done something to kill off all the bugs around her. Maybe some kind of aerosol or gas? Whatever it was, whenever she sent bugs within twenty or thirty feet around Bonesaw, they died nearly instantly, and the bugs themselves couldn’t taste or smell anything in the air.

  But there was motion leaving Bonesaw’s lair—a lot of motion. A dozen people, two dozen, more and more pouring out, and coming up staircases. They had metal contraptions on them. Taylor could tell they had metal, wires, and other electronics. She sent some cockroaches and beetles to attack the wires heading into the skulls of the people. They were fairly small wires, but there were a lot of them, and a lot of people.

  The number kept rising.

  Cupping her hands around the fabric over her mouth, Taylor shouted: “Apex! Eclipse, Vista! We have incoming from the school! A lot of incoming!”

  Apex roared back. “Busy! Vista, Flechette, Eclipse! Try to see if you can deal with them!”

  Flechette seemed to have been taking potshots at Jack and Shatterbird whenever they were visible, but Shatterbird was often using the face of the building as cover and used her glass and sand to deflect the projectiles. Jack was darting in and out of the garden areas, popping up here and there to flick one of his blades outwards to attack the heroes. Menja had several minor slashes on her exposed skin on her thighs and arms, and Flechette had been using the stock of her crossbow to block slashes from sweeping over the group she was in with Eclipse.

  Eclipse was using her power sparingly, flicking it on and off to block glass swarms and projectiles from Shatterbird and attacks from Jack. Vista was doing what she could to assist her team, but between having the low ground and Eclipse’s power causing her spatial warping to dissipate each time she blinked her power, she wasn’t having a huge impact.

  That was okay. She was here for specific purposes, and that was making it all but impossible for the Nine to escape and to enable Eclipse to traverse the battlefield more effectively to deploy her power.

  Sending some of her swarm to attack Jack, she found the same obstacle with him that she found with Bonesaw. Whenever her bugs got too close, they died. Taylor flexed her jaw, anger flaring. She was feeling frustrated with her inability to have much of an impact in this fight so far.

  She sprinted toward the trio, not trying to get inside Eclipse’s radius, as she had her hands full keeping her power from affecting the other two. She was going to try and deal with some of the people storming up and out of the building. She was already attacking them with her bugs, but they weren’t having much of an effect, for some reason.

  Very familiar, distorted howls and baying greeted Taylor’s ears. Bitch had arrived on the scene. She set one of her dogs to attack Jack, and the other two to assist Menja on the mega-zombie. She rode on the back of one heading toward the shambling hulk, issuing orders with pointing fingers, shouting commands, and whistles.

  The mass of people started pouring out of the large, broken window frames of the medical school’s front atrium. Taylor wanted to gag upon seeing them. They were a mix of flayed people and what appeared to be corpses, all wearing those same metal frames with wires sticking into them all over their bodies, similar to the description of the mutants and spliced-together heroes from Apex’s report on Winslow.

  They weren’t the slow, shuffling arms-forward, moaning zombies of old movies, though. They moved like people–feral people–running and crawling on all fours. She was in front of the Eclipse group, between them and the growing swarm of zombies. Stuffing her knife into her belt, she drew her pistol, racked the slide, and started shooting at the mass of reanimated corpses. Chest and organ shots weren’t having much of an effect.

  Shunting some of the anger and fear she was feeling off into her swarm, Taylor’s voice was level and steady as she spoke. “Dragon, we’re going to need you here on the ground, if you can land. All of us are pretty tangled up with the Nine, and there’s now a zombie horde coming out of the building. It seems like sort of a dead heat at the moment.”

  The original plan was that Dragon would stick to the air and give fire support, and be ready to intercept any of the Nine attempting to flee in vehicles. That didn’t seem to be happening; instead, they were prepared and were hitting back pretty hard.

  “Copy that, Skitter. I’ll try to disable Shatterbird on approach; otherwise, she could destroy all the electronics in my suit.”

  “Okay!” Taylor shouted, steadying herself against the tall stone base of a statue.

  She steadied her breathing, taking more careful aim, and started shooting for the head. Her aim was pretty good, maybe even really good for someone who had as little practice as she did with using guns, but accuracy wasn’t too vital, since there were a lot of targets all in the same general height range. So if she missed one, she’d wind up hitting one of the others. Taylor emptied the entire magazine into the rushing crowd, dropped the mag, and got another one in and a round chambered before she was forced to stuff it back into her holster and draw her knife and baton.

  There were just too many of them, and she didn’t have any training trying to use a pistol while on the move, much less in close quarters. Baton and knife it was. Flechette had dashed up alongside her, flinging throwing knives underhand and overhand the entire way. Her aim was precise, and with her power, the knives flew clean through the skull of the first corpse, and would go on to penetrate another one or two, cutting narrow swathes through the crowd. There had to be over a hundred, even with the casualties they’d inflicted.

  Flechette drew her machete and looked over at Taylor.

  They shared a nod, then met the mass head-on. They were using the hedges and statues to funnel the group so they wouldn’t be totally surrounded.

  Taylor lost track of things, having to devote every ounce of attention she had to smashing skulls and stabbing through jaws, temples, and eye sockets. She was holding her own, but mostly she was helping corral and control. Lily was mulching through two to three zombies at a time; her blade must have been energized with her ability, because it was cutting through metal frames, wiring harnesses, and body parts as if they weren’t even there.

  Both Taylor and Lily were slowly retreating as they went, and the bodies they were leaving were helping to off-balance and further limit the number they were facing at a single time. Both were putting their all into it, fighting with desperation and a bit of recklessness. Both were drenched with sprays and spatters of congealed blood, and the stench was awful and cloying. They couldn’t escape it; it clung to them as they moved. She was reminded of the smell coming from Armsmaster; this was nearly as bad, but more putrid, and far, far more dense in quantity.

  “Flechette! Look out! Left side!”

  The other woman spun, bringing her machete up from low to high as she lashed out, sending the head of the body that had been climbing over the top of the hedge flying. She followed through, coming right back to facing the direction she originally was in one smooth motion, as if she were dancing, rather than fighting a horde of tinker-reanimated corpses.

  Taylor’s assault on the masses was interrupted by an ear-piercing whistling shriek. She looked up at the building in front of her, seeing a red streak in the sky. Shatterbird seemed to notice it as well and started to fly upwards from the rooftop. She was maybe about ten feet off the surface when the shrieking object–a missile–impacted the roof below her and detonated. Rather than a big, fiery explosion, there was a strange-sounding, echoing concussive clap. Whatever it was, Shatterbird went stiff for a split second, then dropped to the roof and out of sight.

  An approaching roar signalled Dragon’s arrival.

  “Duck!” Lily shouted from her left, and Taylor dropped into a squat. Flechette held her machete vertically in front of her, and the blade clanged as something bounced off it. She started side-stepping away from the zombies, and Taylor followed along, staying below the level of the hedge. She used her baton to smash the knees of zombies, sending them sprawling and trying to give Lily a bit of breathing room.

  As Lily maneuvered her machete to block another attack or shot, she let out a scream as a gash opened up along her ribs, her side having been exposed with the way she’d extended her arm. She pulled and threw a throwing knife with her opposite hand in one motion, and Taylor heard a man mirror Flechette’s scream.

  Lily was staggering and trying to keep her balance with the long cut in her side. It wrapped from just above where her right elbow would rest at her side, across the front of her chest to her sternum, and it was deep enough to expose the bone. It was bleeding profusely, fresh blood pouring out and over the synthetic, waterproof material of her skin-tight suit. She was wheezing as she took a step or two back.

  “Taylor, take–take my machete, it’ll be charged for a little while after I let go, I’m–ah–retreating to Eclipse to stop this bleeding,” Lily rasped out. Very carefully, she handed the machete over, and Taylor could feel her hand and lower arm tingling as she held it.

  “Go,” Taylor urged her. “I’ll keep them busy, go!” Sticking her knife in her belt, she picked up her baton and stepped forward to continue the onslaught.

  In her peripheral vision, she saw the head and upper body of Dragon’s suit pop up over the roof of the medical school. A turret on one shoulder popped up, snapped into a position off to Taylor’s left, and sprayed containment foam at someone. The turret on the right shoulder did similarly, spraying an arc of containment foam in several short bursts over and just off to Taylor’s right. A green flare was shot from somewhere on her back into the sky.

  The signal to the SpecOps team. Shatterbird’s contained, or dead.

  Taylor was blown away by how effective the machete that Lily had given her was. It didn’t even register an impact when hitting or slicing through things; it simply parted them like they’d never been in one piece to begin with. A manic rush filled Taylor’s veins, her adrenaline surging as she worked the blade in figure eight motions, taking off grasping limbs and gnawing heads effortlessly.

  No wonder the PRT told her she wasn’t allowed to use swords anymore. This is ludicrous!

  “Taylor, take cover and shield your eyes!” Dragon called over the radio.

  Dragon’s head rotated towards Taylor, and her mouth opened, a brilliant purple glow lighting the fang-laden maw from within. Taylor jumped back, turning and running so she was facing away from it. A loud buzzing or tearing sound filled the air, like huge sheets of heavy paper being torn directly behind her. The faces of all the buildings surrounding Taylor lit up with the purple light, and it was interrupted by rapid, random pulses of intensely bright white light. The entire thing lasted for maybe three seconds, although it felt far longer than that.

  The tingling in her arm had ended, and she saw Eclipse dash across the garden in front of her, Vista right behind her. Taylor felt a little dazed. She turned around to look behind her to see Dragon crawling over the edge of the building and hopping to the ground with her clawed feet clattering on the pavement and paving stones.

  The mass of zombies she’d been fighting lay in steaming piles of remains, metal frames glowing cherry red and sparking wires, the flesh seared across every cut that Dragon had made. Several hedges had also been cut, their branches flickering with flames, leaves standing with precision lines and curves drawn over their new edges. Taylor didn’t know how many of the group were still alive, or maybe better to say, animated when Dragon had intervened, but she’d probably taken down forty or fifty in those few seconds.

  Taylor looked at the winged, mechanical menace as it prowled forward on all fours to sit opposite the central fountains and statues of the gardens, opposite where Taylor was standing. She assumed that was where Jack was.

  She looked around. Menja was shrinking down; the giant zombie she’d been fighting had disappeared from view. There was someone glued upright in containment foam not far away from where Menja had been. Bitch had grouped her dogs and was trotting over.

  Flechette had bandages on her side and was sitting on the sidewalk, her back propped up against a building. She heard voices–Apex, clearly. Holding on to Lily’s machete, she collapsed her baton and jogged over towards where Apex was.

  It seemed the fight was over. Had they won?

  A helicopter was landing in a field that featured a pond nearby. People in all-black tactical gear were hopping out of it; she paid them no mind.

  Apex wasn’t too far from Dragon, maybe thirty feet away, alongside a partially destroyed building. She was sitting and talking to someone, her lower hands animated and gesturing around. Taylor couldn’t hear her well over the chopper in the background, but she continued to approach.

  Jack was leaning against another large monument with a statue on top, some medical figure or another cast in bronze, along with a cabinet or something next to him. Jack’s feet and one of his legs were covered in containment foam, and he’d lost his balance and partially tipped over, but was trying to make it look like he was just casually resting against the monument.

  He flashed Taylor a winning smile as he saw her looking at him. Vista and Eclipse seemed to have disarmed him of his toolbelt stuffed full of blades and had stepped back to let Dragon keep watch over him.

  Taylor turned her attention back to Apex. She was out of breath, sweating like crazy, and tired after what was a far more strenuous fight than she had expected. Apex looked like shit, but that was sort of normal for the bigger fights she’d seen her in. Her wings were in tatters, two were broken and dangling by connective tissue, she was covered in what looked like black potholes, nearly from head to toe, and several seriously deep gashes. Her wounds were seeping and oozing, but not too badly. Taylor saw several of the spears Shatterbird had been shooting like artillery sticking out of Morgan’s back and side, and two were lodged in so deeply they were sticking out the other side.

  It never ceases to amaze me how she’s sitting there, looking like she was used as target practice for a firing squad of cannons, like it’s no big deal. Doesn’t that hurt? Is she putting on an act, or does she just not feel pain the same way?

  Apex saw Taylor approaching and held one of her lower hands out, palm outwards.

  “Not too close, Skitter. We’re having a bit of a negotiation here,” Apex rumbled.

  Taylor moved so that she could see around the corner, and Bonesaw was standing not too far away. She had one of her mechanical spiders, one of the bigger ones, nearly the same size as she was, and she had some kind of tinkertech apparatus on top of it, mounted on a turret that was tracking Apex. It, like a lot of tinkertech weapons, looked like it was cobbled together with a random assortment of parts: electronics, pipes and tubes, wires, recognizable bits of technology from everyday appliances. There was a thick bundle of cables running from the spider-bot to a backpack that Bonesaw was wearing, which looked quite securely attached. Antennas stuck up over Bonesaw’s shoulders, and Taylor saw blinking status lights when she got glimpses of the pack itself.

  “Back! Around the corner! I want to see Uncle Jack!” Bonesaw demanded. She had tears running down her face, streaking through the makeup she was wearing to make her appear more doll-like.

  Apex motioned Taylor over to join the others, and she got up slowly and backed up, keeping her hands visible and non-threatening toward Bonesaw.

  Bonesaw directed them, pointing and shouting orders for people to move. Eclipse and Vista looked at Apex for guidance.

  “Go ahead and move over. Dragon can keep an eye on Jack on her own,” Apex told the group. Taylor walked over to join Eclipse and Vista at Bonesaw’s insistence.

  The chopper had since shut off its turbines, and the level of background noise was at a more manageable level. The ghost team was walking down the street toward them, coming from the opposite direction of where Bonesaw and Apex were. The group of commandos was circled loosely around Director Piggot, whom Taylor was shocked to see out here.

  Apex told Bonesaw that the rest of their group was approaching. Rachel was keeping her distance; she and her dogs both moved closer to Lily, on the other side of the garden.

  “What the hell is going on right now?” Eclipse whisper-hissed at Taylor.

  “It looks like Bonesaw is holding Apex hostage with some kind of tinker blaster attached to one of her robots,” Taylor whispered back.

  “So why aren’t we just shooting her? She’s a member of the Nine with a Kill Order on her head,” Eclipse shot back.

  “She’s wired up to the bot, some kind of backpack, maybe a bomb? Probably has a dead hand switch, or something,” Taylor murmured back.

  “That little bitch has another thing coming if she thinks my sister is going to let her barter her way out of here,” Eclipse said.

  “Quiet! I hear you whispering!” Bonesaw turned and glared at them.

  She was being very careful about her positioning, with Apex, her bot, Dragon, and the rest of them. She was also regularly glancing over where Lily was. Taylor wasn’t sure if she was conscious or not, but it sort of didn’t matter in this situation.

  “Apex, status report!” Piggot’s voice barked over the sounds of chunks of building still clattering and settling, and the fires burning.

  “Siberian terminated, Slash partially secured in containment foam,” she pointed at Jack’s grinning mug.

  “Shatterbird incapacitated, sedated, muzzled, and foamed, Director. Parian is secured in containment foam.”

  “And Hookwolf?” Piggot asked.

  “Deserted the Nine. They were using threats of violence against his friends to forcibly recruit him. Once he realized that the Nine weren’t going to be making it out of here, and therefore had no leverage, he took off.” Apex said. “I’m currently being held hostage by Bonesaw, as you can see, and she has some failsafes on hand.”

  “And you let him leave?” The Director asked, keeping one eye on Jack.

  “He’s able to recover from damage more readily than I am. I didn’t want to leave the team to pursue, when he wasn’t a priority target, ma’am,” Apex replied.

  Piggot nodded. “Good.”

  “Stop ignoring me!” Bonesaw screamed, stomping her feet.

  Director Piggot slowly brought her eyes over to look at Bonesaw. Taylor glanced back and forth between them.

  Director Piggot doesn’t look like she cares one bit about Bonesaw.

  “Well, what is it that you want us to pay attention to?” She asked Bonesaw.

  Bonesaw sniffled and coughed. “You killed my big sis! You ruined everything! Your big, stupid pet is my hostage, now!” She pointed between her spider and Apex.

  “You let my Uncle Jack and me go, or I'll kill her! And the hostages!” Bonesaw’s hands were trembling, and she kept her finger pointed at Apex.

  Hostages? What hostages?

  Taylor fanned her bugs out, sweeping the nearby buildings. She’d only found corpses and bodies, which then had become the army of zombies. She’d double-check, anyways.

  Were the zombies… not corpses? I’m nearly certain they were, at least, the ones I saw. They all smelled rotten.

  “What hostages would those be?” Director Piggot asked.

  “The sewing girl! And all the people with control harnesses on!”

  “Those people are dead, Bonesaw. And I’m jamming wireless signals across the spectrum,” Dragon said loudly, clearly, and calmly.

  The little girl in her bloodstained dress and stockings, her apron carefully arranged over top and packed with surgical tools, stomped her foot once again. “Then I’ll just kill your top hero if you don’t give me what I want.”

  “You’d better do as she says, Director. She’s extremely good at what she does,” Jack crooned from where he was stuck in place. “My sweet niece, Bonesaw. I love her as if she were my own daughter.”

  Bonesaw sniffled again.

  Piggot looked between Jack, Bonesaw, and then Apex. After a long moment, she addressed Apex, saying, “You seem as if you have this matter under control, Apex.”

  Apex bobbed her massive head. “Yes, Director.” She shuffled and rotated so she was directly facing Bonesaw. She was sitting upright and angled her head down toward Bonesaw.

  “Bonesaw. Siberian was not your older sister. And that man is not your uncle. He’s an unhinged serial killer, and he’s been lying to you for years,” Apex told Bonesaw calmly.

  “Don’t listen to her, Bonesaw!” Jack called out. They were able to see one another, but just barely. “They’re trying to trick you, get in your head!”

  Piggot pointed at Jack. “You will be silent, or you will be silenced!” Her voice brooked no arguments.

  Jack just held his hands up, eyes sparking in the dim light and teeth gleaming.

  “Let him go, let both of us go! You’ve done enough!” Bonesaw demanded of Apex.

  Yeah. I don’t see any hostages at all. A lot of bodies and body parts.

  Taylor ordered her valuable bugs to return to roost on her armor; she doubted she’d need them for anything else.

  Apex lowered herself to her elbows as Taylor watched, putting herself at more of an eye level with Bonesaw. She also dropped her voice. “Riley, listen to me. I know these people have been like a family to you for years now, but Jack murdered your family and kidnapped you. I don’t know if you remember or not, but that’s the truth. You can ask anyone else here who has read your files and looked at the evidence that was collected from the scene.”

  Riley clutched at her hair on the sides of her head and pulled it downwards, the bright blonde curls stretching as she whimpered.

  “Is she really trying to talk down Bonesaw?” Eclipse whispered under her breath. Taylor gave the slightest nod of her head to Eclipse, not wanting to disrupt the proceedings.

  “You’re young. You’re talented. You’ve been misled, lies upon lies, like you’ve been in a cult. The people here don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to hurt you. But that man, who’s pretended to be your Uncle? He’s killed hundreds, maybe thousands of people. We cannot let him go. The best fate he has left in life is maybe being sent to the Birdcage. But that doesn’t have to be you, Riley. I don’t want that for you.” Apex was letting her emotions bleed through, trying to get through to the distraught and emotional tinker.

  Tears were streaming down Riley’s face, and her chest was heaving. She was still clutching at her head and slowly twisting back and forth, moaning.

  “What about Shatterbird?” Riley asked.

  “She surrendered, and we have her sedated. She took a fall, but she’s otherwise fine,” Dragon said.

  “Bullshit she did,” Jack said, sneering at Dragon.

  Dragon didn’t seem ruffled by the display in the slightest. “She actually values her life, Jacob. She knew that she had the option to surrender or to be executed. She made the smart and obvious decision to remain alive.”

  “Tch. Typical,” Jack spat, then flicked a droplet of saliva off his lower lip.

  Riley’s eyes never left Jack’s face as he cursed Shatterbird.

  “Please surrender, Riley. Disarm your trap. Let us finish our business here, and I promise you we’ll do everything we can to help you,” Apex softly urged the girl.

  “You disarm your deadman switch, Bonesaw, and they can kill you whenever they like,” Jack said, his grin back once again.

  “I want to see Shatterbird!” Riley called out.

  Dragon looked at the Director, and she waved a hand. Dragon padded off, leapt on top of the building surprisingly gracefully, shocking Taylor.

  I just want all of this to be over. I want to find out if the other team accomplished their goals, and hopefully, we didn’t lose anyone taking down Coil.

  God, I hope Dinah is okay. That she never has to live another day in that nightmare hell, trapped underground and kept dosed up on drugs all day and night.

  Dragon returned with an unconscious Shatterbird in her paws. She was still dripping globs of melting containment foam, but she was very securely bound by high-tech hand and ankle cuffs. There was a blinking metallic collar around her neck, and Taylor could see several vials slotted into it. She, as Dragon had said, also had a gag strapped on her face.

  “She’s just unconscious, but she’s alive, mostly unharmed, as we said,” Apex told Riley.

  Riley let out a wail, slapping herself in the head on one side.

  When she stopped, she sucked in a breath and wiped the tears from her face, coughing and sniffling.

  She looked at Apex when she was done. “You have to let my– Jack go. You let him go, and I’ll surrender.”

  Jack clasped his hands over his heart. “She loves me so dearly, what a sweet child.”

  “Silence!” Piggot growled.

  We aren’t going to let him go, right? What about the prophecy?

  Apex sighed. “I’m sorry, Riley. But I can’t let Jack go. He has to pay for the horrific crimes he’s committed.”

  “Then you will die!” Riley’s voice rose to a screech. “So let him go!”

  Apex shook her head. “I can’t. I’m sorry.”

  Apex looked over to Piggot. “Director?” She asked in her low rumble.

  Piggot looked back at Apex. “Yes, Apex?”

  Apex paused, holding eye contact with Piggot. “Please proceed.”

  “Rifle!” Piggot barked, holding her hand out. One of the troopers behind her handed her a slick black rifle with plenty of doodads on it. Taylor didn’t have the faintest idea what most of that stuff did, but she recognized the laser pointer that she’d been given sitting on the barrel.

  Piggot held the gun in one hand by the grip. She looked back at Apex.

  Apex nodded to her.

  “Jacob Black, alias Jack Slash. By the authority of the United States Government, and under Kill Order S-one-zero-nine, you are hereby sentenced to immediate execution. As you are an S-class threat, responsible for mass civilian casualties and numerous acts of terror, this order is final and without appeal.” Piggot spoke loudly, clearly, and with resolution. Her voice echoed off some of the nearby buildings.

  “Any last words?” She asked.

  He threw his head back and laughed, as if he didn’t have a single care in the world. Still grinning, he looked back down at Piggot. “It was fun while it lasted.”

  Taylor wanted to look away. She couldn’t turn her head or close her eyes. She had to see this through. They were literally saving the entire world by doing this, according to Dinah. And she trusted Dinah’s predictions.

  Piggot pulled the rifle up, checked the chamber, and proceeded to fire the gun on full automatic in two short bursts. One burst to the chest, maybe five bullets, and then another to the head. Jack’s skull ruptured, and blood and bits of brain splattered against the monument behind him. The gun was silenced, but it was still pretty loud, especially the sounds of the bullets hitting the stone. Piggot held the rifle out, and one of the troopers took it from her.

  There was a sudden buzzing zap from the left.

  Taylor jerked her head away from the mess to look over at Apex. Apex was holding Riley against her chest in a close hug. Riley’s eyes were wide open, with tears streaming down her cheeks. She was staring up at Apex’s head above her with a shocked and confused look on her face.

  “What did you do!?” Eclipse screamed, her voice raw.

  “Shh, Mel. She’s in shock. She probably just panicked because she didn’t know what else to do,” Apex said softly, petting Riley’s head and rubbing her back.

  “Dragon, disperse the foam, please. Team four, secure all the bodies of the Nine,” Piggot was saying in the background.

  Taylor speed-walked over to Apex. She seemed… fine? Bonesaw was whimpering and blubbering, increasingly agitated whines escaping her throat.

  “Riley, disarm your backpack and tell your robot to shut down, please?” Apex asked.

  Sobbing, Riley did something with the palm of one hand, and the backpack went dark and the spider flattened out on the pavement, turret listing and drooping off to one side. Apex carefully sliced the straps off the backpack, which fell to the pavement with a loud thud.

  Taylor closed the distance and rested a palm on Apex’s shoulder. A tentacle came out and pulled Taylor in for a hug, too.

  “It’s finally over. We did it, we saved the world,” Taylor said, not realizing how much tension had wound up in her chest throughout the day. She took a deep breath and dropped her helmet-clad head against Apex’s side.

  “Riley, I’m going to give you something to help calm you down and let you get a little rest, okay?” Apex asked.

  “B-b-but why?” Riley stammered, her voice wobbly, thick, and phlegmy. “Why didn’t you kill me?”

  Apex pulled Riley back from the embrace and reached out with a few tentacles to wipe her cheeks off. “Because I told you I wasn’t going to hurt you, silly. And I don’t want to hurt you,” Apex said, her voice warm and comforting.

  “E-even still?” Riley’s voice trembled.

  “Yes. Even still. Nothing’s really changed.”

  “But… Everyone says that, but they’re always lying, just trying to save themselves, or lie to you,” Riley said.

  “No, not everyone, Riley. You’ve just been around some really terrible people, and for a long time. Maybe you’ll get to meet some new people who aren’t like that, yeah? There are good people out there, I promise you. You just have to find them and work hard to be one yourself. Remember, people tend to group together in similar groups. If you want to meet good people, you can’t hang out with bad crowds. You've got to be a good person yourself.”

  Riley was coughing, sniffling, and nodding. “Okay…”

  “Little pinch, then you’ll have a nice rest. Nobody is going to hurt you. They might ask you to do hard things, talk about things that do hurt, but it’s to help, not harm.”

  Riley nodded.

  There was a soft fwip, and Apex stuck the back of one of Riley’s thin arms with a quill. She held her steady, and within a moment, her eyes closed, and she went limp. One of the SpecOps team members took her from Apex. Eclipse was fussing over her sister’s wounds.

  Taylor pulled back, seeing that Director Piggot had strolled up right behind her at some point.

  “Making an awful lot of assumptions about what we can and can’t do with that one, Apex,” the Director said sternly.

  “It’s a cult of personality, Director. And he had his claws in her for years, and from a young age. Grooming her to be like one of his other nightmares. Please… Do what you can for her? I know she’s probably destined for the Bird Cage, but maybe, given a little time and a lot of psychiatric help, she’ll turn out to be okay,” Apex said.

  Director Piggot made a noise in her throat and maybe a nod.

  She turned her head and hacked out a huge gout of stringy, black goop onto the pavement. Reaching one big arm down, she snapped off the pieces of spear sticking through her, then slid her arms forward until she was lying flat.

  “Ooh. That feels much better,” Apex sighed with relief.

  “Do we need to get transport arranged for you?” Director Piggot asked Apex. “We can radio over, Glory Girl can carry you back.”

  “Mmm, no, no need. I’m just going to rest here awhile, I think,” Apex said with a yawn.

  Melody let out a moan, low at first, and growing louder. “No, no. No, no! NO!” She screamed the last part.

  Taylor pulled back, looking around Melody. The wounds on Apex’s abdomen and side, the pot holes, as she’d thought of them earlier, had changed. The edges of the wounds weren’t clean anymore, but ragged, bits and pieces flapping outwards and falling out. They were being carried along by a steady gush of transparent goop pouring out of her sides like a cheap, damaged pool. As she watched, it looked like Apex’s midsection was deflating, and more clear goop was oozing out of her hindquarters and dribbling down her back.

  “Mel, come here,” Apex said.

  Melody was backing away, shaking her head.

  “Mel!” Apex’s voice was sharper. Melody looked over at her. “Please, Mel.”

  Melody took off her helmet and threw the side, rushing to the front of her sister, who was holding one upper arm out already.

  Melody was sobbing and babbling nonsense, and Morgan held her close to her neck.

  “Why!? You promised you wouldn’t leave me behind!” Melody was gasping and fighting to get the words out.

  “I’m not, Mel. You’re my twin. I’ll always be with you. Listen, listen. Riley’s just a scared little ten-year-old girl inside, underneath all that mess. She got scared, she got angry, and she made a mistake. She knew she did as soon as she did it,” Apex said, coughing. Chunks of her armor plating were peeling off, and it cracked and shattered when it hit the pavement. Most of her midsection had collapsed, along with her hips. Two of the spears fell over, the metal pipe clanging against the road.

  “I-I-I-” Melody was hyperventilating between sobs. “I won’t forgive her!”

  “Hey, hey. It’s not her fault, Melody. It really isn’t. I knew what was going to happen when she told me she took samples of my body from Winslow,” Apex said, squeezing and stroking her sister’s back.

  “So why didn’t you just kill her!?” Melody screamed, her voice breaking under the strain of her emotions.

  Apex gently pressed her back with a few of her tentacles so she could look at her.

  Taylor had to pull her own helmet off to keep wiping at her eyes, and her lips and jaw wouldn’t hold still, no matter how hard she tried to keep them steady. Taylor’s eyes were blurry with tears, but she could see goop dripping off Apex’s face and out of her hair at this point. Her tail and legs were almost entirely gone.

  “I can’t kill someone who’s mentally trapped as a ten-year-old in cold blood. Kill Order or not. She might not physically be a child, but it’s her mind that counts, what I care about,” Apex said.

  “Why not?” Melody asked, searching her sister’s face.

  Morgan chuckled, the sound coming out wet and bubbly.

  “Because we’re heroes, remember? We have to be better. I believe Taylor, and I believe Dinah Alcott. I had to choose between my life and potentially saving the world. I wouldn’t choose otherwise.” Morgan brought her hard face forward and pressed it against Melody’s cheek, and she made a lip-smacking sound.

  “This is why we fight, Mel. Don’t forget. I love you. Tell Mom and Dad, Amy and Vicky, I love them, and everyone else, too. You’re going to be an amazing hero, Melody. You’re already so much better than I ever was. But please go, and tell Taylor I want to see her, quickly.”

  Melody took two steps back, said, “I love you forever, Morgan,” then hurried away. Director Piggot held one arm out for Melody, and she nearly leapt to her side and pressed herself against the Director’s plush figure, sobbing loudly.

  Taylor gulped and hurried over. She wasn’t sure why Morgan couldn’t see her, but she realized why when she saw half of her eyes had gone translucent inside, and several had fallen out. She embraced the least deteriorated part of Morgan, her neck under her head, where her hair was hanging limp and slipping off in wet chunks.

  “Hey, Tee,” Morgan said, her voice growing weaker.

  “H-hey. Morgan, what am I going to do without you? I can’t run this all by myself,” Taylor said, her own voice thick.

  “You’ve got everyone you’ll ever need there to support you. And don’t forget how strong you are, too. You like to forget.”

  Taylor choked out a laugh.

  “Can you promise me a few things, please? I don’t have much longer, so we’ll have to be quick.”

  “Anything,” Taylor replied quickly.

  “First, don’t ever lose sight of our vision, okay? Take Brockton Strong, and make Brockton strong. Make someplace you’d have wanted to grow up in.”

  Taylor patted her neck, in case she couldn’t hear her.

  “Two, please do what you can for Amy. I know she’s not going to do well without me there. Try and be there for her. You two are so alike, I know you’ll be friends.”

  Oh god, Amy. She’s going to totally fall apart.

  “Last thing. Take care of yourself. Don’t let those dark thoughts dic–” Morgan’s voice burbled, and the arm she’d been holding Taylor’s back with fell with a splash. “Don’t them them control you. Go be an amazing hero, Tee. It’s who you’re supposed to be with your gifts.”

  Taylor nodded rapidly, patting and stroking Morgan’s neck as it faded and started to become soft.

  Morgan pushed Taylor back with a firm shove, and she tripped and fell backwards onto her rear and palms into the clear, odorless gunk. What was left of her head and neck collapsed forward with a splash, and Taylor felt like the life had left what remained of her best friend.

  She brought her knees up, wrapping her arms around her knees, and resting her head on top. She sat in silence with tears streaming down her face.

  She sat and watched what solid parts of Apex remained melt away. She was sitting in several inches of the liquid remains, and she didn’t feel like moving. Wisps of steam radiated up into the night’s sky as it evaporated, the pile slowly but surely shrinking.

  Taylor tuned out the crying of the others. She wanted to just… tune out everything.

  But she couldn’t.

  She was aware of Dragon approaching, both from the sounds and the vibrations, but also from what her swarm was telling her, the three-dimensional map of everything around her, as rendered by millions of motes of light that were her insects shifting.

  She saw that Menja had gathered up Flechette, whose machete she still had, and brought her over with the rest of them.

  She felt the specialist team moving about, tagging and bagging up bodies.

  She felt Dragon take a seat next to her.

  She felt Rachel leaning against the building.

  A small mechanical articulator rested on Taylor’s shoulder. She looked over, seeing that a screen with Dragon’s face on it had been extended out on a robotic arm.

  Taylor sniffed, swallowed, and cleared her throat. “Hello, Dragon. Do I have to move?”

  Dragon smiled, but it was a wan expression. “No, I just wanted to draw your attention to something, that's all.”

  Taylor nodded. The slim robotic appendage retracted from her shoulder and reoriented to point at the now-shallow pile of goo, the vast majority of it having evaporated off into nothingness. Taylor wiped her eyes and squinted.

  “What’s that?” She asked Dragon. Something was glowing in the pile with a red light that slowly pulsed in intensity.

  “That’s Morgan’s core, which appears intact and undamaged,” Dragon said.

  Taylor frowned. “Core?”

  “Mhm. Her Changer core. Most Changers have one. Endbringers, too, apparently, although our sample size is one.”

  Taylor looked back at Dragon’s face, which had a warmer smile on it.

  “I don’t understand,” Taylor said.

  The robotic limb telescoped out, further and further, the claws unfolding several times into a bigger, delicate grasper. Very slowly and carefully, Dragon closed her claw around the core and lifted it up, bringing it closer.

  The red glow of the sphere started to dim when it left the goo, and as Dragon was retracting her arm, it went dark. Taylor was able to get a look at it. It looked like a perfect sphere of quite pure quartz; it was transparent on the outer layers, but had intricate crystalline structures deeper inside that rendered it opaque. They appeared white and opalescent.

  I would say it was beautiful if it weren’t the remains of my friend. Or maybe it is beautiful, because of it.

  “It’s pretty,” Taylor said, with a quiet sigh.

  “Of course it is. She was a beautiful person, inside and out; it’s only fitting her core would be the same.”

  “What are you going to do with it? Does it… Go to her family?” Taylor asked.

  “I’ll speak with them, of course, but I have a feeling they’d probably want it to remain with me,” Dragon said.

  Taylor’s frown returned, and she looked up from the crystal to Dragon’s facial display.

  “Since her core is intact and seems unaffected by what destroyed her body, there’s a very real chance I can revive her with this. Of course, it’s going to require extensive study and testing; we’re talking about something that’s never been attempted before. But these contain the consciousness of their hosts, and you saw as well as I did that it was still active.”

  A panel on Dragon’s body parted, and a secure-looking polymer container popped out. Dragon pulled it out with another arm and opened the clasps. It was a padded container, filled with dark foam, like what you’d store a camera inside. Dragon placed the core inside, closed and latched the box, and placed it back inside the compartment, which sealed. She stood up and offered Taylor an articulated arm. Taylor took it, rising to her feet.

  “If her parents are okay with it, I’ll do everything I can to bring her back, Taylor. You have my word. I owe her several times over; it’s the least I could do to repay the debt I owe her,” Dragon said, her voice solemn.

  Taylor wiped at her face, bent over, and picked up her helmet and the machete Flechette had given her. She stood back up with a sigh and looked over at Dragon. “I’m not sure what I’m going to do without her here. I feel like so much of everything rode on her being this unshakable bedrock.”

  “You do,” Dragon said. “You know exactly what to do. What she asked you to do is going to get you the majority of the way there. But as she said, take care of yourself. Get caught up on your education when we have wireless restored. Train with the Wards, and with the Protectorate. I’d like to think I see the same things in you that she did. I think you have a bright future ahead of you if you apply yourself. I can’t promise you any kind of timeline or even estimate one, but Colin and I both will be working on this.” She tapped the panel on her side with a claw.

  Dragon continued, "She was lost and alone, too, just a few months ago. Look at what she was able to accomplish. How she went about making friends and allies, increasing her reach and impact. You have it in you to do the same. And I’ll tell you the same thing I told her. Call me for anything at all. I’ll always be there. Might not answer, but I’ll call you back.”

  PRT trucks and SUVs were pulling up into the area, lights flashing, but sirens off.

  “I’d better get going. Figure this is going to be another long night.” Taylor pulled her helmet on.

  “Mhm. I love your new suit, by the way. Who made it?”

  Taylor chuckled. “She did, actually. Made it from her own body, somehow. Don’t ask me how, but it seemed like it wasn’t easy.”

  Dragon’s eyes turned upward in a broad smile. “That’s amazing. I suppose she’ll be there, keeping you safe, whenever you wear it.”

  Taylor ran her fingers over the bracers.

  I’d never really thought about it like that before, but she’s right.

  “I suppose you’re right about that. Have a–” Taylor thought twice about her phrasing, nearly saying the wrong thing just out of habit. “Be safe, Dragon. Talk soon.”

  Taylor headed over to Piggot and Eclipse, stooping to pick up Eclipse’s helmet along the way. Piggot had been holding Eclipse against her with one arm and didn’t appear to have been saying much, just holding Melody firmly.

  She nodded to Taylor as she approached. “Hey, Melody? Walk with me? I think we’re going to be packing up and leaving.” The girl sniffled and detached herself from Piggot, turning to face Taylor. Taylor handed her her helmet, and she took it, looking at it for a moment. Then she pulled it on, and Taylor extended a clawed hand out to her. She took it, and Taylor squeezed her hand.

  Piggot dipped her head to Taylor and tapped her earpiece, muttering something. A low whine started to build across the park where the chopper had landed. She spoke up, addressing the heroes. “We’ll provide you all with a flight back to the station. Eclipse, Vista, Flechette, Skitter!” The heroes looked up and turned to the Director. “You’re all on leave. I’ll be calling in additional counselling support if you would like it. Next Monday, we’ll have a conversation about returning to duty. Until then, where would you like to be dropped?”

  The voices were unanimous for being dropped off at the fire station.

  Yes. There is going to be an epilogue, and then Book 2 will start.

  Potentially. I'm going to have to a lot of creative work for Book 2, but my goal is to hammer some of this out while dropping the epilogue, on top of what I already have. Keep an eye on my blog, for updates about that! Alternatively, you can find my socials on my Carrd, linked in my bio.

  Check out my links on my Carrd in my bio, and come chat with us on the Discord!