Confrontation II: The Reckoning Pt 6 (Patreon)

Part Six: At Long Last

[A/N: this chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Boardwalk

“Well, that was fun,” declared Aisha as we exited the movie theatre. “When are we doing it again?”

I hesitated and shared a glance with Sophia. “Uh, when we can get the time, I guess,” I hedged. Deputy Director Renick had given us permission to go to the movies on this particular occasion, and we’d all had a good time—despite the fact that Aisha plus a bucket of popcorn was a disaster in the making—but there was no guarantee that he’d be equally accommodating in future.

“No, not the movie,” Aisha corrected impudently. “Beating up muggers. That was hella fun.”

Brian facepalmed with the realisation of what she was talking about. “Aisha, you didn’t beat up any of the muggers. You ran away, like we told you to.”

“Yeah, but that was because I knew you needed the practice,” she said with a cheeky grin. “I didn’t want to scare ‘em away before you had the chance to get at them.”

I was left blinking and shaking my head at the sheer effrontery of the girl. “That’s just … I honestly don’t know what to say to that.”

“That’s ‘cause I’m just too damn awesome for words,” Aisha boasted.

“You’re too something for words,” muttered Brian, fumbling with his shirt collar. “I swear, I’ve still got popcorn down my neck.”

“Wow, that was careless of you, big bro.” Aisha turned guileless eyes toward us. “Aren’t you supposed to eat popcorn, not shove it down your collar? I think Brian’s been doing it wrong all this time.”

I started to chuckle helplessly. Sophia grabbed Aisha around the neck—gently—and applied her knuckles to the top of the younger girl’s head in a noogie. As Aisha shrieked and giggled and flailed, I met Brian’s eyes. My grin was mirrored on his face. I got the impression that he was having as much fun as I was, and that he had as much trouble achieving this state as I did.

Sophia was an entirely unexpected ally in this, but definitely not unwelcome. The personality clash between her and Aisha could’ve been serious, but she’d chosen to forego her usual hard-charging attitude and it had paid off in spades. It was nice hanging around Brian, and Aisha made sure life was never boring. The friendship I was rebuilding with Sophia in consequence was different to what we’d had before, but still rewarding.

And of course there was the budding romance between Brian and Sophia. Part of me wanted to be jealous, but Brian only had eyes for Sophia, so I didn’t really have a chance. He was friendly enough to me, but more in a big-brother way rather than a potential-boyfriend way. As serious as he was, I was pretty sure he didn’t have a wandering eye.

In a very real way, I was actually pleased about this. Brian was a good guy. He cared about Aisha; the quality of his clothing indicated a well-paying job; he was well-educated, good-looking and (ahem) very athletic. In short, he was a keeper. Sophia hadn’t had many chances for happiness in her life, and I didn’t want her to lose out on this one.

Aisha eventually escaped from the noogie, eyes bright through the curtain of disarranged hair hanging over her face. Her tactic of tickling Sophia, who was nearly prostrate with laughter herself, may have had something to do with her success in wriggling out of the headlock. “Free!” Aisha proclaimed dramatically, then stuck out her tongue at Sophia. “No walls can hold me in! Iron bars are merely an amusing suggestion!”

“You’re an amusing suggestion,” I retorted. “Seriously, I swear you threw more popcorn than you ate.”

“So what if I did?” she asked cheekily as Sophia put her arm through Brian’s. He’d gotten his phone out and was in the process of turning it on, which reminded me to do the same. It was doubtful in the extreme that a citywide emergency had arisen in the time that we’d been in the movie, but there was no sense in taking chances.

“So it’s rude and a waste of popcorn,” I said as both Sophia and I followed Brian’s example. She took longer than me, mainly because she didn’t want to let go Brian’s arm. I noted that she was turning on her personal phone rather than the PRT one I knew she also carried. That wasn’t a problem; if I did get an alert, I’d just let her know that we had to go. I didn’t have a private cell-phone as yet, but my PRT one looked normal enough.

Nothing urgent popped up, though I did get a couple of low-level messages about trivial matters. Nobody had pinged us regarding the alley mugging, which had been my major concern. I stuck the phone back in my pocket and ran my hands through my hair, incidentally dislodging a couple of pieces of random popcorn. Aisha had gotten indiscriminate there, toward the end of the movie. “So who wants to do some more rollerblading?” I asked.

I was only expecting to get a positive response from one person—Sophia was holding on to Brian’s arm like a lifeline—and I wasn’t disappointed. “Woo, yeah!” whooped Aisha. “Let’s go show these slowpokes how it’s done!”

As she took Sophia’s backpack to retrieve the rollerblades, I looked at Brian. “Maybe you two could get skates of your own sometime and we could make a day of it down here,” I suggested slyly. Getting Sophia on to rollerblades would be much easier, I suspected, if Brian was already on them.

Sophia shot me a dirty look, but Brian nodded his head. “Actually, that sounds like a fun idea,” he said. “Aisha’s definitely having a ball, and I want to encourage the attitude that I’m not here to spoil all her fun.”

“Only most of it,” Aisha retorted, seated on the curb as she pulled the skates on. “Let’s face it, big bro. You’re a wet blanket and a killjoy.”

Brian was about to answer that when his phone rang. He grimaced as he looked at it. “Crap,” he muttered. For a moment, it seemed as though he was going to decline the call, then his expression tightened and he answered it. “Hey, Lisa,” he said resignedly.

My attention sharpened at that. Was Lisa an ex? Sophia seemed to think that as well; an expression came across her face that I hadn’t seen in some time. If this Lisa thought she could come between Sophia and Brian, I pitied her.

“No, I’m busy. I’m out with friends. Yes, friends. People I don’t work with.” His tone was one of strained patience, then his grimace deepened. “The boss wants us to come in now? Tell him I can’t make it. I—” He paused, listening. “How much overtime?”

Well, it seemed that Lisa was a work colleague rather than a rival to Sophia for Brian’s attentions. Which was lucky for Lisa, to be honest. However, it also seemed that Brian was losing the argument, which was unlucky for Sophia.

He let out an aggravated sigh then said, “Fine. Give me half an hour.” With an expression of pain on his face he turned to Sophia. “Look, I’m really sorry, but work’s a bitch at times.”

“So’s this Lisa, by the sound of it,” snarked Sophia. In a demonstration of self-control that impressed me, she took a deep breath and patted Brian on the arm. “Go. We’ll make another date. I had fun.”

“Aww, man,” complained Aisha. “I just got the fuckin’ rollerblades on and all!” She gave Brian a hopeful look. “Can I go skating with them?”

He turned to Sophia. “Would you mind? I mean, you don’t have to feel like you’re obliged to. I can just take her home if you’ve got other things to do.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Sophia told him with a rare smile; not so rare, when he was around. “We’ve got no problem with hanging out with Aisha. Right, Taylor?”

“Definitely,” I agreed. Sophia and I had the evening shift with the Wards, but that was a couple of hours away. There were worse ways to pass the time than messing around on the Boardwalk, and Aisha was always fun to be around. “We’ll get her on the bus when we have to take off.”

“Whoo!” The grin on Aisha’s face was somewhat infectious. “See you at home, Bri!” Jumping to her feet, she started skating in circles, trying some footwork that I probably would’ve twisted my ankle to attempt.

Brian nodded to her, then gave us both a smile. “Thanks. I really appreciate this. Aisha doesn’t get to go out much, and I know I can trust you two to keep her in line. I owe you both for this.”

“I know.” Sophia flowed into his personal space, then hooked her finger into his collar to bring his face down to her level. For a moment I thought she was going to kiss him again, and prepared to look away to give them privacy. But instead she spoke softly into his ear. “Which means you’d better be prepared to show me one hell of a date next time to make up for ditching us this time.”

He blushed about three shades darker, which I found pretty impressive for someone with his skin tone. “I’ll do my best,” he promised. I noted that he didn’t attempt to excuse his departure by protesting that it wasn’t his idea.

“You do that.” Sophia gave him a brilliant smile, then let him go. “Now get going. Don’t want you to be late for work or something.”

“Yeah.” He sighed, obviously reluctant to go. “It’s a pain, being on call.”

“Sounds like it,” I said, trying to sound sympathetic. It was, after all, the situation Sophia and I were in with the Wards, but he certainly didn’t need to know that particular aspect.

We waved goodbye as he got into the cab, then set about enjoying ourselves on the Boardwalk. Aisha needed no encouragement; soon, she was zipping up and down in a way that made Sophia covertly grin and shake her head. I alternated between trying to catch her (not always successfully) and meandering alongside Sophia as she strolled down the Boardwalk. Aisha didn’t even try to ditch us, though she had no way of knowing her clothes were tagged with several bugs. It was pretty obvious that she was on what passed for her best behaviour, so that she’d get to come out and do this again.

I had to wonder what her home life was like. Brian had dropped a few comments about their father being ex-military and extremely strict (which both Sophia and I had both mentally compared with Aisha's attitudes and come up with a mutual nope). Their mother, as hard as it might be to comprehend, had a home life that was even worse for her. Brian’s account had been sparing with the details, but their mother apparently had a drug problem and a boyfriend with wandering hands. Aisha had called Brian for help one night and after beating the living snot out of the boyfriend, he’d taken her to live with their father.

This, among other things, was why Sophia and I had so much time for Aisha, and why Sophia was willing to be so forgiving when Brian was called away. While our association had done a lot to wean her of the toxic strong-vs-weak ideology—not to mention, I called her on it every time I caught her backsliding—we both firmly admired someone who would step up and protect family like that.

After an hour, during which time Aisha put more wear and tear on the rollerblades than Sophia had in the entire time she’d been using them, Sophia caught my eye. It was time to get to the PRT building and begin our shift. We’d both been having almost as much fun as Aisha (though not as much as Sophia would’ve had with Brian still there) so it was with some regret that I signalled to Aisha to come back to us.

“Yeah, what’s up?” she asked briskly as she came up to us. “Not getting tired already, are you?”

I sighed and nodded. “Sorry. We’ve got to get going. Dad’s expecting me.”

“And I’ve got a project to finish off,” Sophia chimed in, using another of our practised excuses. Not that we really needed them, but every little bit helped.

Aisha wrinkled her nose. “Yeah, shit happens,” she said, her voice unhappy but resigned. “Thanks for staying back. I haven’t had so much fun in fuckin’ forever.”

“Hey, we’ll come out again,” I said as I sat down and began to take off my rollerblades, then indicated Sophia with a tilt of my head and a sly grin. “Unless she’s already tired of Brian, that is.”

“Bite your tongue,” muttered Sophia, eliciting a snort of amusement from Aisha.

A few minutes later, we put Aisha on the bus, extracting a promise that she’d go straight home and stay there. Checking the schedule, I figured out that we’d be waiting more than half an hour for our own bus, so I called the PRT building and arranged a covert van to pick us up for our shift. Then it was just a matter of waiting until it turned up.

Or rather, it would have been, if the cape fight hadn’t gotten there first.

<><>

Apparently, it was all my fault. For a given definition of ‘fault’, of course.

I learned, much later, that the simmering tensions brought about by the capture of Lung and Oni Lee and the disappearance of Bakuda (all of which I’d been involved in) had been building over the last week or so. While the Empire felt that their status as the largest gang in the city gave them the natural right to the now-vacant ABB turf, others were not in agreement with them. Nor was this opposition posed only by the criminal capes of the city, who naturally wanted the area divided up semi-fairly between them. Simply put, the Asian population of Brockton Bay had tended to gravitate into ABB-run territory, and not a few of them were involved indirectly in the gang’s activities while not actually being part of the ABB proper. As such, they had a vested interest in keeping the Empire from taking over their under-the-table profits.

The upshot of all this was that shortly after our movie let out, the gangs of the city were holding a meeting in a seedy run-down bar that enjoyed the unlikely name of Somers Rock. The meeting had been called to ease tensions and to extract a promise from Kaiser that he wouldn’t unilaterally claim all the territory without giving anyone else a chance to carve off their share.

Kaiser had laughed in their faces.

The Empire Eighty-Eight, he’d reminded them, held twice as many capes as any other gang in the city. With the continued incarceration of the rage dragon and the serial suicide bomber (and the absence of the bomb Tinker from the field of play) it also held the undisputed title of most powerful gang. He would allow the other criminal types to keep their own territory, but (with Hookwolf to his left hand and Krieg to his right) they simply didn’t have the wherewithal to prevent him from taking up the suddenly-vacated turf. Any who thought otherwise, he suggested, was welcome to try their luck once the meeting was over.

Nobody was quite stupid enough to take up the challenge, though Skidmark apparently muttered dire and profane threats under his breath. But once Kaiser and his retinue left, the rest of the capes remained. Rag-tag second and third raters though they were (and, in the case of Über and Leet, somewhere south of that), they nonetheless decided that if Kaiser wanted a fight, he was going to get a fight. Under the chairmanship of a cadaverous man called Coil who went with a snake motif, they agreed to a non-aggression policy between themselves, and to cooperate with each other until the Empire was brought to heel. Well, almost everyone agreed to fight. Faultline, the leader of the eponymous Crew, opted to remain neutral as she possessed no territorial ambitions.

Shortly after that, the meeting broke up. Everything stayed quiet and under the PRT’s radar until the first fighting broke out, practically on top of us.

<><>

Boardwalk

One Minute Prior to Shit Encountering Fan

“It was a good movie, wasn't it?” I commented idly, fishing out my phone to check the time. Sophia and I weren't alone at the bus stop, so we couldn't talk shop freely. However, there was plenty of other stuff we could chat about. And while we weren't quite as comfortable with each other as we had been before the catastrophic unmasking, we were definitely getting better at communicating.

“Yeah,” said Sophia vaguely. “I liked it when that thing happened.”

I stared at her. Sophia had her faults, but waffling like that was totally unlike her. Normally, she was very precise in her speech, or at least extremely blunt. But the moment I got a good look at her face, all became clear. The dreamy expression she wore was as uncharacteristic as the words she'd uttered.

“Yeah, it was pretty cool when that flying castle exploded, wasn't it?” I asked mischievously. There hadn't been any castles in the movie, exploding or flying, which was why I had to hide a grin as I awaited her response.

“Yeah, it—wait, what?” Jolted back to the here and now, Sophia gave me an irritated glare. “What goddamn castle? When did that happen?”

I smirked at her. “Well, if you'd been paying as much attention to watching the movie as you were to sitting in Brian's lap, you'd know." In all fairness, she hadn’t actually been sitting in Brian’s lap, but on the other hand she hadn’t noticed when Aisha leaned forward and tipped the remains of a bucket of popcorn over her head.

“He’s different,okay?” Her expression dared me to say otherwise. “I mean, you can see it, right? He’s not like other guys, all wishy-washy. He’s the kind of guy I can respect. Anyone can respect. The kind of guy who’s willing to go the distance. He doesn’t ask permission before he gets shit done. And he can definitely handle himself.” Which was basically her way of saying he was ‘strong’, but in a way I wouldn’t object to.

“Hey, I’m not saying he’s not any of that,” I pointed out. “I just think it’s funny. If any of the guys could see this, they’d be going full-on Mike Sierra on your ass.” I didn’t actually think anyone would think it necessary to call for Master/Stranger procedures after seeing Sophia cuddling up to Brian like that, but Dennis might do it anyway for shits and giggles (well, he would’ve, before he ended up as team leader. These days he was more responsible). Chris, on the other hand, might need therapy.

“I’d like to see ‘em try,” she grumbled. “They gave us enough weird looks when you and me got to be friends. What’s wrong with me having a normal relationship, anyway?”

“Maybe because you kept pushing people away?” I suggested as diplomatically as I could. “I mean, you can be kind of prickly at times. And you’ve got a bit of a temper.”

She gave me a dirty look, but didn’t dispute having a temper. Which was kind of a good thing because teasing her about Brian was fun, but I didn’t want to be mean about it. It was just a way to pass the time while we waited for our ride.

“Yeah, well, I—” she began, but I held up a hand to hush her. Something weird was happening just down the street and around the corner. I didn’t have a huge swarm up, but the bugs in that vicinity were experiencing weird conditions. “What?” she said, obviously picking something up from my expression.

“Something,” I said. “Not sure what.” I got up from the bus stop seat and slung my backpack over my shoulder, then started along the pavement in the direction of the disturbance. Sophia followed me, eyes intent. I began to pull in all the bugs I could muster, converging in smaller swarms here and there.

“Cape something?” she murmured, once we were away from the people at the bus stop. “Got your baton?”

“Probably, and yes. I can mask us up whenever you’re ready. Just say the word.” I could usually get away without using a mask in an emergency situation, just by standing off and pretending I had no idea why all the bugs were flying around like that. But I had another trick I’d worked up with Sophia. We’d practised it a few times and while she always complained, we both knew it could be useful in a pinch.

“Ew. Yeah, okay.” Each of us carried a collapsible baton wherever we went. This was Brockton Bay, after all. Wards or no, we were still teenage girls, and there were more dangers out there than just capes. Supervillains, after all, wore costumes to show who they were. More subtle human predators did no such thing.

In the next moment, one of the giant bone-encrusted Undersider dogs came hurtling around the corner sideways, trailing a streamer of darkness. A car appeared next, flying backward through the air. It was followed by a second one, this time with a robed figure standing on top of it. Rune.

It looked to me as though the Empire cape had used the first car to smack the dog that Grue was riding, which explained their abrupt entrance. Because it was definitely Grue; nobody else could pull off a skull helmet and black biker leathers like he could. He was also athletic as hell, bailing off the dog just before it would’ve rolled over the top of him, and getting out of the way.

Everyone else was staring at the ongoing fight, which allowed me to bring the swarm in. All the nearby security cameras also got a blanket of insects just before I covered us both in them. Sophia got all dark-coloured insects, as small as I could find. Whenever she went to shadow, her power brought along anything that was closely connected to her, which meant smaller bugs had a better chance of staying on her than bigger ones. She claimed to be creeped out by having that many bugs crawling on her, but I noticed she never refused the offer. In truth, I suspected she knew how badass she looked and secretly enjoyed the effect. Almost as much as she enjoyed bitching about basically anything.

I got the more colourful bugs, arranged in a symmetrical fashion on me so as to break up my features and prevent incidental footage from capturing my face. Not that I’d be dashing into combat, but nobody and nothing was going to prevent me from backing up Sophia to the best of my ability. We were partners, damn it.

Dropping my backpack, I reached into my pocket and pulled out my baton, then flicked it out in a practised move. Beside me, I heard Sophia’s own baton make its click-click-click noise. More and more bugs were arriving every second, and I started forming ghosts of us in the swirl of bugs, nothing corporeal but definitely a suggestion that someone was there. I felt Sophia’s cheeks clench in a grin under the feet of my bugs.

“You take Rune, I’ll take Grue,” I said firmly, making sure my bugs transmitted my voice to her ears. I knew just how much she disliked the leader of the Undersiders, and I didn’t want this to go sideways because she wanted to indulge her mad-on.

Her head flicked around toward me and she opened her mouth as if to protest, then she paused. “Don’t let him get away,” she snapped, then headed across the street toward the ongoing fight.

While we’d been preparing, the villains had not been standing around idle. The monster lizard-dog-thing had rolled to its feet, and Grue had regained his seat astride it. Rune sent the unoccupied car swooping at him again, but the dog obviously didn’t want to get caught like that again. Whether it was due to a command from Grue or on its own initiative, it leaped up and started climbing the building beside it. Darkness billowed out from Grue, cloaking him but not totally covering his location. The evasive manoeuvre was what saved them; despite a course correction by Rune, the car missed them by scant inches and ploughed into the building frontage. Glass smashed, metal crunched against concrete and one of the tyres was torn from the car and bounced down the street, but Grue and the dog were unscathed.

I followed after Sophia, generating more swarm ghosts as I went. These moved in various directions, but most were on a beeline toward either Grue or Rune. For her part, Rune was launching chunks of concrete toward Grue and the dog. Already, they were at a height where a fall could kill, so I decided to intervene directly.

“Bugpocalypse,” I had my insects buzz in Sophia’s ears, then a chunk of the swarm converged around Rune. She wore robes, which had the benefit of being loose-fitting and easy to move in. The fact that bugs could easily find their way past to the person underneath was less of a benefit to her, though probably not something she’d considered when designing her costume.

Even if I hadn’t been aware of it through my connection to the bugs, I would’ve known almost to the second when the bites and stings—though going easy on the venom, as I didn’t want to risk her going into anaphylactic shock—began to register on her. Both cars began to wobble back and forth, losing altitude all the time. I moved up alongside Sophia and bent down slightly, lacing my fingers together and cupping my hands.

Up above, Grue wasn’t escaping my attention. I had the swarm cover him as well, clustering around the dog’s eyes and ears, and coating the helmet faceplate so that neither could see. I couldn’t mess with his hearing, but now he couldn’t give the dog any verbal commands. Neither was I going to interfere with his ability to hang on, and I was ensuring that Rune could launch no more of the deadly missiles in his direction. Our job here was to keep casualties to a minimum, and bring the fight to an end as soon as possible.

Sophia divined my intention at once, and put her foot into my cupped hands. Regular exercise alongside Sophia hadn’t brought me up to her level of fitness, nor would it do that any time soon. But I was stronger than I had been before all this happened, able to give her a boost upward as she kicked off. The instant her foot left my hand, she went to shadow along with her cloaking bugs. I lost contact with them, except for a vague sense that they were there somewhere. As had happened before, I knew they’d be carrying out my last command to them, which was to stick close to her and not impede her mouth or eyes.

Her shadow form shot upward, almost divorced from gravity. A mass of my bugs flew upward with her in the real world, each of their tiny bodies lending her a little forward momentum so that she went farther and faster than the jump normally would’ve taken her. As they guided her toward Rune, I ran toward where Grue’s dog was cautiously negotiating the downward climb, unable to hear or see anything. A growing cloud of blackness accompanied it, blotting out all sight for yards around. I didn’t slow down at all as I entered the cloud, despite the fact that I couldn’t see a damn thing … at least with my eyes. With the swarm acting as effective sonar, I was aware of every object more than an inch across within the cloud of blackness.

The two cars were about four yards off the pavement when Sophia landed on the one holding Rune. Between the swarm buzzing in her face and the stings happening all over her body, the villain was entirely unaware of her new passenger until Sophia hauled her around and punched her out. It seemed Rune hadn’t been getting any tutoring on taking a hit from her ex-cage fighting cape comrades. Or, if she had, the lessons hadn’t stuck. Her knees went out from under her and she collapsed on top of the car. A second later, both vehicles struck the ground with a tremendous crash that bespoke a wrecker’s yard in their near future.

The monster dog Grue was riding reached the ground, still moving cautiously. It kept shaking its head in an attempt to dislodge its unwelcome passengers, to no avail. Now that he was on ground level, Grue swiped his hand across his faceplate to clear his vision. The bugs came back, but he’d gotten a snapshot of what was going on, and I figured he didn’t like it in the least. Kicking the dog in the ribs, he started it moving away from me, but more slowly than he probably wanted it to go.

Definitely slower than me; as I reached the dog, I mapped its side with the bugs. It was big, but the bony plates and spikes gave me an abundance of handholds to grab. Sticking my baton between my teeth and trying not to grimace from the taste of oil, I leaped up and clambered on to the back of the beast. Grue must have heard or felt something, because he began to turn, just as I snatched the baton from my mouth and swung it hard at his helmet. I felt safe in doing that, because helmets were designed to weather hits, but with any luck I might disorient him enough to land a proper body blow.

The weighted tip of the baton struck the faceplate. A small chunk broke away, leaving the majority intact but badly cracked. His head flew back from the impact, and he half-fell, half-slid off of the dog. This was probably the smartest move he could’ve made, given that if he’d stayed on the dog, I had free rein to attack him from behind.

However, while he was almost certainly used to hiding in the darkness and taking out his foes from concealment, that tactic was wasted on me. I couldn’t see a thing, but my bugs told me where they were. And when they were on him, they showed me where he was. Also, with access to his bare skin at last—motorcycle leathers were a pain, like that—I started pouring bugs in through the hole in the faceplate. I didn’t have them sting or bite him immediately, but they stared clustering around his eyes again, rendering him as blind as any normal person would be in the choking black fog.

Leaping off the dog, I grunted heavily as I landed and rolled. I wasn’t as graceful at regaining my feet as either Grue or Sophia would be, but they couldn’t command ten million bugs as easily as they opened and closed their hands, so I refused to feel inadequate. In any case, I was still fast enough to catch up to Grue and tackle him from behind. “Surrender!” I yelled at him, buzzing the word at the same time with my bugs. He stumbled, then went down heavily, but rolled over and threw me off almost immediately.

He started to get to his feet, a lot quicker than me (once again) … but the fight had distracted him and the cloud of darkness had drifted away. Sophia came in like an avenging thunderbolt and smashed a kick into his ribs from the side. Taken by surprise, he went down again, his helmet bouncing off the pavement with a hollow clonk. That, at least, seemed to rattle his cage.

Teeth bared with atavistic glee, Sophia straddled his back and pulled the baton across his throat from behind. He was a far better combatant than me, and probably at least Sophia’s equal, so I kept up the distraction of bugs over his face … which was when I made the unwelcome discovery.

“Shadow Stalker!” I yelled. “Stop!” He was barely resisting now anyway.

“Not damn likely,” she gritted, pulling harder.

“You’ll kill him!” I insisted, grabbing her arm.

She sent me a blazing look that reminded me far too much of the Sophia from before. “Walk away, Buzz. This is between me and him.”

“No, don’t!” I hadn’t wanted to say this before for several reasons, but there was no other way to get through to her. “It’s Brian!”

For a moment, I thought she hadn’t heard me, then her grip slackened. “ … the fuck?” she said blankly. “Brian? It can’t be.”

“My bugs don’t lie,” I said as steadily as I could. “It’s him.” I hadn’t wanted to believe it either, but I knew the shape of Brian’s face by now, and my bugs had faithfully shown me what lay beneath the faceplate.

In the moment of silence that followed, we both heard the gruff voice from beneath us. Grue’s voice normally echoed because of his helmet (and, I suspected, his darkness) but this close it was unmistakeable. “ … Taylor? Sophia?”

Sophia’s eyes met mine and widened, the bugs on her face scrambling out of the way. We both got up and backed off. Brian—because now that we knew it, there could be nobody else in those bike leathers—got to his feet, swaying slightly. He stared at us both. “You’ve got to be shitting me,” he said slowly.

Abruptly, Sophia turned and ran. I followed, pausing only to scoop up our backpacks and start the swarm dissipating. Grue would escape, but right now that didn’t bother me. What Sophia intended to do next did concern me. I had no idea how she was going to react. For that matter, I had no idea how I was going to react, once I had time to settle down and think things through.

I almost lost her three times, but my bugs picked her up again. We covered block after block, and then I detected her climbing a fire escape. Oh, shit. There were two ways this could go, both bad. She could be intending to travel farther and faster over the rooftops than I could follow, or …

I didn’t want to think about the or.

Panting heavily, I arrived at the building. She was still on top of the roof as I laboured my way up the fire escape in my turn. As I climbed on to the roof proper, I saw her sitting with her back up against the parapet. The late afternoon sun gleamed on tears running down her cheeks.

“What the fuck, Taylor?” she asked. “What the absolute fuck has my life come to that I just tried to kill the only guy I ever kissed? What the fuck sort of monster am I?”

I dropped the backpacks and walked over to her. There really was nothing I could say to that. I didn’t want to mention the fact that she’d been ready to commit murder and if it hadn’t been Brian under that helmet, I would’ve had to fight her to stop her. Slowly, carefully, I sat down beside her.

“I know,” she said, as if I’d answered her. Anguish coloured every syllable. “If you hadn’t said it … I would’ve  …  and I'd never have known … FUUUUUUUCCCCCKKKK!” Her sudden scream sent birds scattering into the early evening sky. Fists clenched, she pounded on the obdurate rooftop over and over.

I didn’t want her hurting herself, any more than I’d wanted her to hurt Brian. Reaching out, I wrapped my arms around her, trapping her arms next to her. She struggled, but not as hard as she could have. Neither did she turn to shadow to slip out of my grasp. Slowly, her head came down on to my shoulder, and I could feel her heaving with silent sobs. Moisture—her tears—wet my cheek.

“Taylor …” Her voice was soft, desolate. “I’m broken. There’s something wrong with me.”

I held her more tightly and rocked her back and forth. Tears of my own trickled down my face. For how could I face my friend’s sorrow without sharing in it?

Finally, her voice whispered two more words. Two words that the old Sophia would never have used.

“Help me.”

I buried my face in her hair. “I will,” I replied, just as softly. “I promise.”

We sat like that until the PRT driver called my cell-phone to ask me where we’d gotten to.

 Part 7