One Bad Day Pt 8 (Patreon)

Part Eight: Taking Out the Trash

[A/N: This chapter commissioned by @GW_Yoda and beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]

Taylor

“And … done.” Amy put the staghorn beetle down on the bench.

I exerted my power on it as it sat there, delving into its inner secrets. There was a certain amount of what I was learning to recognise as explosive within it, but it was shaped weirdly. “Okay, what’s this one supposed to do? Take off for the moon?”

Amy looked at me oddly. “No. Why would you think that?” Her eyes went distant for a moment. “Though a rocket booster and some reinforcement could turn a bug into an instant bullet … huh.” She picked up a notepad and scribbled in it. “Something for later. This here is what I call a lock-buster, for if Vicky’s occupied elsewhere.”

Both of us glanced over our shoulders at where Vicky floated gently in the middle of the room, humming to herself. She saw us looking at her and smiled, then went back to humming.

I turned back to the bug. “Lock-buster?” I asked, as much to draw Amy’s attention away from her sister as to find out what that meant.

“Oh, uh, it’s got a shaped charge in its thorax. Make it crawl over a lock, then set it off. Given the performance of the previous tests, and the stuff I’ve been able to look up in the encyclopedias, it should blast a quarter-inch hole clear through any normal lock, and maybe even a hardened steel one.”

I didn’t want to ask the next question, but I knew I had to. “And if I set it off while it was sitting on a person?”

She gave me a well, duh look. “A jet of molten metal will punch a quarter-inch hole into their soft, squishy flesh, spreading out as it goes, with a jet of live steam blowing back out the hole,” she informed me blandly. “Followed shortly thereafter by death. Or screaming, bleeding and then death, depending on where exactly the bug was sitting. Molten metal rarely does the human body any favours, and high-velocity molten metal is downright malevolent. The steam generated by the body fluids boiling would be equally unpleasant to biological systems.”

I shuddered. “You have a way with words. Also, never tell Aisha that one. You know she’ll beg for us to demonstrate it on someone.”

“Wasn’t planning on it,” she agreed. “Lisa’s going to figure it out immediately, of course.”

There wasn’t much Lisa wasn’t going to figure out more or less immediately, so I let that one pass. Besides, something she’d said puzzled me. “Molten metal?”

“I introduced some copper into the bug as a liner to the shaped charge.” She tapped the encyclopedia. “This says that sort of thing increases the effectiveness immensely.”

“Oh. Right.” That gave me an idea, and I held up a finger to pause the conversation while I went halfway up the stairs. “Dad, could you come down here a moment?”

“Coming!” He appeared at the top of the steps and descended into the basement to join me and Amy. “What mad science are you two cooking up now, and how can I help?”

“You know a lot more about material sciences than I do.” I brought a housefly to land on my fingertip. “What would happen if Amy built a shaped charge into this guy’s butt so when he crawled down a gunbarrel, he could put his butt up against the bullet and I could set it off?”

Dad’s eyes opened wide. “Shaped charges in bugs?”

Amy nodded, indicating the staghorn beetle. “That’s what this guy’s got in his thorax. Enough to blow out a door lock, if I’ve got my calculations right.”

“Son of a … uh, gun.” Dad shook his head. “Okay, if you wanted to mess up a gun … well, you’d probably need something larger than an ordinary fly. But once you’ve got that, you set off the charge, which spears right through the slug in the chamber, spreading it out to seal the barrel off, then the round itself tries to go off in the breech. The barrel’s sealed, so the breech blows out backward.” He raised an eyebrow. “Depending on the make of the weapon, someone loses an eye or maybe a thumb. At the very least, that weapon is not in any kind of condition to be used again without being totally stripped down and remachined.”

“I like it.” Amy nodded to me. “I’ll make some of those, too. And I’ll look into the idea of bullet bugs as well.”

“Bullet bugs?” Dad looked at her queryingly. “And those are …?”

“An idea Taylor gave me to fit bugs with a high-burst single-use rocket engine. Basically, turn them into unguided kinetic missiles.” Amy shrugged. “Bullet bugs.”

“I … see.” Dad began to theatrically edge toward the stairs. “I think I’ll … go upstairs now. Where sanity still prevails.”

Aisha’s raucous cackling echoed down into the basement. I raised my eyebrows and smirked at him.

“Well, mostly still prevails,” he allowed, and made his escape.

<><>

Coil
Two Days Later
Saturday, Christmas Day, 2010

Thomas Calvert was both intrigued and frustrated.

Intrigued because there appeared to be yet another new cape wandering around his city, just waiting for him to snap them up and explain why working for him was the deal of a lifetime. Though given that this cape seemed to specialise in explosives and (if the PRT files were accurate) training animals to carry them, the softly-softly approach had a great deal going for it. Threatening his Tattletale merely led to ever-increasing levels of snark, but antagonising someone whose retaliation could involve the phrase ‘blast radius’ didn’t strike him as a smart way to play his cards.

He was also frustrated because Tattletale had yet to resurface, with or without the bug controlling Aisha Laborn and the mysterious Brute and Master in tow. He’d had all his feelers out for days now, and there were no reports of anomalous bug swarms, snarky teenage blonde girls, or anyone being made to do things or being punched through walls. The only strange events were the explosions at the Trainyards, performed by the aforementioned bomb Tinker. Who had also managed to drop out of sight.

Maybe they left town. It was a possibility, especially given that the PRT had been investigating bus schedules a day or two previously, but he didn’t have the manpower to send people to other cities to look around for his missing Thinker. If she’d left town, he reluctantly had to accept, she was out of his reach.

But if she hadn’t, sooner or later she’d pop up again. And this time, she’d never get the chance to leave. With the right drugs to inflict a serious dependence in her, she would beg to be allowed to use her power for him, just so she could get her regular fix.

He leaned back in his chair, pondering. Just as threats would be entirely the wrong tack for the bomb Tinker, so would drugs. If he had someone building bombs for him, he would vastly prefer that they keep their head clear at all times. It was years since he’d been in the military, but the horror stories of people playing with explosives while drunk, high or both tended to stick in the memory.

If you see a bomb tech running, don’t ask questions. Just try to keep up.

But that was all right; the money he’d spend on the bomb Tinker could be taken from what he’d save on Tattletale’s share. And of course the bomb Tinker would need a dedicated bodyguard …

… one who could be depended on to put a bullet in their head the moment Calvert decided they were surplus to requirements. Because the very last thing he wanted was a dangerous cape like that getting an attack of scruples and deciding he was the enemy.

Thomas Calvert was a man who believed very firmly in pre-emptive retaliation.

He sat forward again and began to go over the latest reports from his various contacts, looking for the slightest trace of his Tattletale. He knew her personality type well; she would eventually convince herself that she could come out into public safely, because she knew beyond a doubt that she was the smartest person in the room.

Well, you’re not. I am. And you will learn that eventually. It’s just that you’ll be too drug-addled to truly appreciate the fact. He was looking forward to the dawning realisation in her eyes when it hit her just how badly she’d been outmanoeuvred. Maybe he’d even pull her dosage down once a month or so, just far enough that she had the ability to recognise once more how screwed she was before he submerged her in chemical bliss once more.

Thomas Calvert firmly believed that he was not a vindictive man. He merely had a strong appreciation for schadenfreude, in all its many forms.

And then an image popped up in his inbox. A fuzzy picture, but not quite fuzzy enough. Taken from a security camera in the bus depot, it showed a teenage girl in profile. She was wearing a baseball cap and an old army surplus jacket and had her head ducked down, but a single lock of blonde hair was hanging down behind her ear. It looked shorter than normal and a little ragged, as though she’d cut it off herself. The face was unmistakeable. Tattletale.

“Gotcha,” he breathed. Then he snatched up his phone. Sending a mass text to all his team leaders, as he wasn’t quite sure where they were in the city at that second, seemed to be the best idea.

Target T sighted bus depot. Attend immediately. Covert action. Nil public attention. Report soonest. He finished by sending along the image he’d been sent.

By the time he got the message out, three more pictures had dropped into his inbox. One had the telltale lock tucked away, while in the next two she’d put on sunglasses and raised her collar. It made her look a little suspicious, but it also anonymised her look to a point that he wouldn’t have known it was her.

Carefully, he scrutinised the pictures for any sign of the Laborn girl, or anyone else who appeared to be sitting near or talking to Tattletale. No one person, let alone three, stayed consistent for all three images, and there were no black people near her at all that she could see.

He did have a second instance sitting at home, who did nothing at all, just in case this was some kind of elaborate trap or sting. After all, he didn’t think she’d go to the cops and set up a bust, but teenagers were universally known to do remarkably stupid things to get what they thought they wanted. In that situation, it would be easiest to hold the men back and let the police take her into custody when the expected bust failed to eventuate. Lifting her out of her cell later on would be the easiest thing in the world, for someone with his resources.

A short while later, he got a single message. On site. T located. Moving in.

Now it was up to the fickle gods of chance that oversaw such operations. He knew, intimately, how badly such things could go, from the most trivial of overlooked details all the way to the most horrific of previously-unsuspected data. It was only by the sheerest of flukes, and the fact that he was able to fire his pistol accurately while on a swaying ladder, that he’d survived Nilbog and Ellisburg at all.

Regaining his Tattletale threatened nowhere near that level of insane clusterfuck, for which he was pleased. Either he’d get her back or he wouldn’t. Not getting her back would be annoying, but ultimately he could deal with her absence. Just so long as nobody else was able to use her against him. They’d had their difficulties, but she had to know he would react harshly to such a show of disloyalty. Just as she had to have known that running off like she did, after killing Hardcase, would also result in inevitable punishment. He couldn’t trust her out in the world anymore. She’d brought the drugs on herself.

He visualised the way the operation would go down. His men would be dressed as US Marshals. They would walk straight in, some fanning out to cover the exits, three closing in on the Wilborn girl. Anyone who tried to question their presence would be shown a very realistic-looking badge. The three men would surround her and give her no chance to escape. She would be cuffed and marched out of the bus depot and loaded into one of the vans, which had had the appropriate insignia applied ahead of time.

To forestall the inevitable attempt to claim that they weren’t real US Marshals, one of the men would ‘frisk’ her and produce a small pistol that she had been ‘carrying’, if she wasn’t already holding one. He estimated the chances of this at seventy-five to eighty percent. Add to that a planted drug stash, and she’d get no sympathy from the crowd. And even if some of them had second thoughts after the fact, once she was in the van she would be in his reach and out of theirs. They’d never see her again. Nobody but he and his men would ever see her again.

There were contingencies to the plan, of course. If she saw them coming and started shooting, one of the men was armed with a shotgun loaded with beanbag rounds. Technically non-lethal, likely to cause broken bones and internal injuries, but survivable. Mr Pitter would be able to nurse her through whatever was done to her. All he really needed was her alive and able to talk, after all.

His musings were broken by a ping from his phone. Target T in custody. No casualties. En route back.

His mouth broadened into a smile under his mask. So far, so good. Now to see if this is a police sting or not. If it was, he would track her to wherever she was going, and pluck her from whatever place she thought was safest. If not, she was already in his grasp.

From here on in, it was just a waiting game.

Twenty-two minutes later, the fake US Marshals van pulled into the undercover carpark. The insignia, applied magnetically, peeled off just as easily. He watched on the security cameras as a Tinker-enhanced security wand was run over every part of her body. They would’ve done this as well at the outset, but it never hurt to make sure.

The wand never so much as crackled, even on a second pass. One of the men, now divested of his US Marshals jacket, gave the camera a thumb’s up. He moved his mouse and clicked the button to open the hidden door. It slid aside, and the men hustled her into the corridor thus revealed. The door slid shut again. He checked all external cameras for police presence. There was nothing.

There was a slim, outside chance that she may have contacted the PRT or even the Protectorate for assistance. An Armsmaster-designed tracker had the chance of getting past his security checks, or a high-flying hero could have been keeping a visual check on the van. He didn’t drop the other timeline just yet. But this didn’t mean he couldn’t go and greet his new pet.

He clicked the button that would send an alert to his phone if police band activity began ramping up near the base, then stood up from his desk. Strapping on his pistol, he exited his office and strode along the walkway toward the entrance where they would be bringing her in. On the other timeline, he sat at home and idly browsed the net, looking at pictures of cats in Santa hats. They would go well as wallpapers until he tired of them.

The door ahead slid open and there she was. They’d divested her of the jacket, the cap and the sunglasses, and added a heavy bag over the head to her ensemble. This had been specifically so that she couldn’t talk to them on the way back. The chances of her actually convincing them to let her go were slim at best, but Calvert was a man who didn’t believe in taking a chance he didn’t have to.

“Uncover her mouth,” he ordered. There was the faintest of chances they’d snagged another teenage girl with the same build and similar features, and now was as good a time as any.

Obediently, the man holding her right arm folded the bag upward to just under her nose. She coughed and spat out a stray bit of lint. “Hey, boss,” she rasped. “Think you could get these assholes to wash this bag once in awhile? I’m pretty sure I’ve inhaled dandruff in here from the nineties, and let me tell you, it hasn’t aged well.”

That was a point in her favour, but he needed to be sure. “How many fingers am I holding up?” A fly buzzed around his head, making him wonder if she didn’t have a point about the bag.

She coughed again and cleared her throat. “Three on your right hand,” she said in a sing-song Are we really doing this? tone. “And two on your left hand, behind your back.”

He brought his hand out from behind his back. That was definitely Tattletale, all right. Only a Thinker could have pulled that last bit of information out of thin air. And the chances against having two blonde Thinkers of identical looks in the same city were nigh-infinite.

Even if it’s not Tattletale, I still have a Thinker in my hands.

Leaning forward, he pulled the bag all the way off her head, leaving her hair to dangle down over her face. She shook it back out of the way, showing that she really had used scissors or some other sharp implement to roughly trim it, probably so it would fit under the baseball cap. “Hi,” she snarked. “Miss me?”

“Not this time, we didn’t,” he replied, amused at the death-glare he got in return from those bottle-green eyes. “Come along, pet. We have some talking to do.”

“Oh, god,” she groaned, rolling her eyes theatrically. “Just shoot me now and get it over with.”

“As tempting as that might normally be,” he said, “I have other plans for you.” Turning on his heel, he strode away. “Bring her.”

<><>

Elsewhere

The rat, festooned with black and red beetles, scurried along an air shaft. Behind it, more rats followed, each one with either a bird or more bugs clinging to its back. Behind them was a screen designed to keep creatures like that out. It wasn’t going to work so well with a large hole melted in the centre of it.

The leading rat came to a second screen. It stopped, and a third of the bugs decamped from its back. They lined up, aiming their abdomens at the screen. At an unheard signal, they all let loose at once, spraying an acrid-smelling liquid over the thin metal. White smoke began to coil up from the mesh, then was drawn away down the shaft in the ongoing air current. Silently, a hole opened up in the mesh, the edges sizzling away.

The bugs climbed back on to the rat and it nimbly jumped through the hole, to be faced with a large spinning blade. To a human, this would’ve been a problematic obstacle. Rats, on the other hand, had thousands of years of avoiding angry humans to draw on, and millions beyond that of keeping out of the way of hungry predators. Choosing its moment carefully, it leaped across the gap.

One by one, the creatures following along also passed through the spinning fan-blade. Now they were in the ventilation piping that drew air from all over the base. Beetles climbed off the first rat, spreading out to attach themselves to others, until each had one. Then the rats split up, scuttling throughout the base.

Awaiting the signal.

<><>

Brooks

The teenage girl sat in the chair opposite the crime lord. She was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt featuring Mouse Protector. Even her sneakers had been removed. A single set of handcuffs anchored her to the chair arm. Her hair was messy, as though she’d used her free hand to rake the blonde locks out of the way, which was exactly what she’d done. She’d requested a brush to tidy her hair. The request had been declined.

Brooks, the guard who stood just inside the door, was uneasy, but he couldn’t put his finger on why. They’d tracked Tattletale down using a security camera image pinged by one of their guys whose job was to do precisely that. She hadn’t tried to run, but that was probably because her Thinker power had advised her that running was pointless. Every step of the way, any potential escape plan had been thought of ahead of time and blocked. Coil was very good at that. So now she sat in the bare room, with just a table between her and the man who paid Brooks his salary.

Again, Brooks tried to analyse why he wasn’t totally at ease with the situation. He’d put the cuff on the girl himself. She’d been wanded over several times, and frisked twice. There were no metal items on her, save for the button and zipper on the jeans; the security wand had been calibrated to take that into account. He’d seen people commit mayhem before with ceramic blades and the like, so he’d been sure to check for that too. She had nothing on her that he could find without actually performing a physical strip-search, but unless she’d swallowed something or inserted it into a body cavity (and the wand would detect metal there too) she was all out of options.

So why wasn’t she more worried?

He’d seen bravado many times. People went to their deaths without cracking, without showing an ounce of fear. This was not an uncommon thing, in his line of work. But to do that, people had to act differently. Either they shut themselves off from all emotion, or they overlaid the fear with anger or humour. Tattletale was a Thinker. She had to know she wasn’t getting out of this of her own accord. The boss was pissed with her and when Coil got pissed with people, nobody mistook it for anything else. But there she was, sitting in that chair, looking around with interest. The very faintest hint of a grin, lurking at the corner of her mouth.

Almost as though she knew something that nobody else knew.

Well, of course she knew things nobody else knew. It was literally her power. But she also had to know what was actually there. What everyone else knew. Her eventual fate. Coil hadn’t made much of a secret of it. If it was Brooks being faced with something like that, he would’ve run. Tried to escape. Maybe even put that little dinky pistol she’d been carrying in his mouth. Because there was no way in hell he’d want to live through something like that.

She wasn’t worried. Why wasn’t she worried?

<><>

Coil

“Pet.” Calvert spoke for the first time since he’d sat down.

“Woof,” Tattletale replied impudently.

That caught him by surprise, and he took a moment to get his equilibrium back. “Excuse me? You’re not Bitch.”

“You called me ‘pet’. Pets don’t speak.” The girl snickered. “Unless you want me to be a cat. Meow.”

She’s trying to get under my skin. Calvert felt his hands curling into fists, and knew she was succeeding. Taking a deep breath to relax his muscles, he spread his hands flat on the table. He suspected he knew her strategy now; she couldn’t escape, so she intended to force him to murder her so she wouldn’t have to live through whatever he had planned for her.

Well, it’s not going to work.

“Tattletale,” he ground out. She didn’t respond to that, except for a slow blink. “You have disappointed me greatly.”

“If I was that much of a disappointment, you’d cut your losses and walk away,” she pointed out helpfully. “I would’ve thought you’d be too smart to fall for the sunk cost fallacy.”

“But it’s not a sunk cost if I have you in my possession,” he reminded her. “You will do what I want. There will be no choice in the matter.”

“Really.” She gave him a look of scepticism. “And what if I decide I have a choice after all?”

Was she really this dense, or was she still trying to make him angry? The latter, he decided. “Every account you own, I own. Your ex-teammates are working for me, under Circus. You’re out of options.”

She went blank for a moment and he thought he’d broken through her reserve. But then she snorted. “Poor Circus. Hope you’re paying extra.”

This was wasting time. He cut to the chase. “But I’m willing to extend an olive branch, if you do something for me.”

She shifted her weight, pulling one leg up to put the foot on the chair, and wrapped her free arm around it. The arm with the cuff dangled over the side of the chair, out of sight. This was new behaviour for her, and inwardly he smiled. She was becoming rattled, even if she didn’t show it overtly. “I’m listening.”

“The people you were staying with before you made your run to leave town.” He leaned forward slightly. “The bug controller. The Brute. The Master. Get me in touch with them, and I might just be willing to go a little easier on you.” She’d still get the drug treatment, but he’d give her a day of lucidity every now and again. If he felt like it.

She chuckled. It was actually a little creepy, not the way she usually laughed. “You want to know where my friends are? Where they are right now?”

Well, he wasn’t playing her game. “Yes,” he said firmly. “I want to know where they are, right now.”

“Right behind you,” she said with a straight face. There was so much conviction in her voice that he almost turned around to look. A fly buzzed past his face.

“There’s nobody behind me.” He glared at her. “If you can’t be serious …”

“I’m absolutely serious.” She leaned forward and looked him in the eye; or rather, she stared at where she had to know his eyes were. “My friends are in your base. You gave me an ultimatum, now I’m giving one to you. You surrender to me right now, walk out of the base, and surrender yourself to the PRT, and I’ll let you live.” Turning her head, she addressed Brooks. “That goes for you, too. In fact, if you take him prisoner now, I’ll put in a good word for you. Just saying.” Raising her hand, she buffed her nails against her jeans leg and then inspected them.

Up until now, Calvert had been running both timelines side by side. He’d waited long enough to know for a fact that there was no police or PRT presence near his base, so he’d dropped the other timeline and let this one run. Now, in one, he pulled his pistol from its holster. In the other, he didn’t bother. Leaning forward across the table, he summoned his best command voice. “You have no friends.”

<><>

In the other timeline, he levelled his pistol at her and squeezed the trigger.

Just before it would’ve gone off, it exploded. Shards of metal blasted into his face and hand, and he fell back with a scream of pain. Brooks’ rifle, half-raised, exploded as well. The return air vent dropped to the floor and something small and furry leaped out, scuttled across the room and scrambled up his body, ending up on his head. He grabbed for it with his good hand, but as he tried to pull it free from his costume, something inside it popped, and a horrific burning deluge poured over his face and head.

There was a series of tiny cracks from the far side of the table, and Tattletale stood up, picked up the chair—it was supposed to be bolted to the floor!—and smashed Brooks in the face with it. Then she dropped the chair and pulled the door open. Calvert heard more explosions echoing through the base, just before a bird launched itself from the vent and flew up to land on the table.

The door shut behind her.

The bird exploded.

<><>

Very carefully, Calvert put the pistol down on the table. “Brooks, put your rifle down,” he ordered, enunciating his words clearly. “It’s rigged to blow.” And there are acid rats and exploding birds in my air vents. What the hell is going on here?

Tattletale raised her other foot onto the chair. Four precise cracks sounded on her side of the table, then a fifth. “Yes, it is,” she agreed, getting up from the chair. “My friends have explosives and other nasties seeded all the way through this base.” The return air vent popped open and lowered itself to the floor, thin cords stopping it from clattering on the concrete. A veritable swarm of bugs poured out, along with a couple of rats. Most of them landed on Tattletale or swirled around her. Several landed on Calvert and Brooks. Leaning across the table, she picked up the pistol. “Don’t move. I’ve got you covered.”

Moving with more exaggerated care than Calvert had, Brooks leaned the rifle against the wall. Next, he lifted his pistol from his holster and placed it on the floor. He still had his fighting knife, Calvert knew.

“Hm,” murmured Tattletale, tapping the barrel on the palm of her hand. Calvert couldn’t tell how it had been rigged, but whatever it was, she could no more use it than him. “Okay, I hadn’t intended to go this early. Brooks, you’ve got zip cuffs, yeah?”

“Yes,” agreed Brooks.

“Good. I don’t feel like trying to beat someone like you up, so Coil, go ahead and cuff him. Hands behind the back.”

“Of course.” Calvert stood up carefully and turned to Brooks. They had to kill Tattletale quickly, so that she couldn’t set off any more explosives. “Give me the cuffs, Brooks.” He held out his hand.

Brooks was quick off the mark, thank goodness. He pulled one of the plasticuffs from his belt, and at the same time managed to palm the fighting knife. In a totally natural movement, he passed both over to Calvert. Tattletale was still on the far side of the table, so it couldn’t be a step-and-stab. Calvert was going to have to throw it. Fortunately, he was good at that.

Tattletale was still fiddling with the pistol, only paying half the attention she needed to. It was pointed in entirely the wrong direction. Moving as fast as he ever had, Calvert transferred the knife to a throwing grip and went to bring it up in an underhand flick—

The loud CRACK echoed through the cell. The last thing that went through Calvert’s mind was a .44 calibre Hercules beetle.

<><>

Brooks

Brooks stared as his boss went down, his masked face a red mess. The blonde girl still stood there, the pistol still aimed at nothing in particular. “What … the fuck?” he mumbled, his ears ringing. “How … how did you do that?”

“I said, I had you covered.” Now the girl looked upset. “I didn’t want to have to do that, but he forced my hand. And so did you.” The pistol turned to point at him. “Now do you believe I have you covered?”

“Jesus Christ, yes.” The only thing scarier than facing a professional with a firearm was facing an amateur with a firearm. The former could kill you any time he intended, but the latter might kill you by accident. And ‘sorry’ was never an adequate response to putting a nine-mil round through someone’s breastbone. “I give, I give.”

“Your boss pretended to surrender, too.” She gestured with the pistol. “Go out there. Tell everyone to put their weapons down in one place and step away from them. I’ll know if anyone tries to fuck me around.”

He went to the door and opened it. “Okay, you got it.” Maybe she couldn’t pull that ‘phantom gun’ shit when she wasn’t in line of sight, but he wasn’t going to risk it.

A line from The Gambler passed through his mind. “Gotta know when to fold ’em.”

Besides, the boss was dead. That paycheck was officially gone.

He just had to do whatever the scary girl said, and maybe he’d be alive to look for work tomorrow.

<><>

Director Piggot
PRT ENE

“Armsmaster here.”

Emily tapped the radio icon. “Talk to me.”

“The tip was on the level. We found sixty men, disarmed, kneeling with their hands behind their heads. We also found Coil, deceased. One bullet wound, front to back, through the head.”

“Any report of who killed him?”

“Nothing coherent. One of the men claimed it was a girl with a phantom gun. Said it was Tattletale, and that she did it with her mind.”

Her response was immediate. “Tattletale’s a Thinker, not a Blaster.”

“That’s my understanding as well, but he was adamant. He also said she had a friend who could do explosives. No other description.”

Sitting back in her chair, she ran her palms over her face. “The Tinker in the Trainyards. They’ve joined forces.”

“That’s a very strong potential aspect, yes.”

“Wasn’t Tattletale a member of the Undersiders?” She was sure she’d read something about that.

“Perhaps the gang fragmented after Grue was murdered. It wouldn’t be the first time something like that’s happened.”

Her mind filled in what he’d left out. Murdered by Shadow Stalker. Because of course things couldn’t be simple. Stalker had been murdered in turn, apparently by one Taylor Hebert, bug controller. Was there a connection? Probably only incidentally, knowing her luck.

The Hebert girl had gotten the better of three agents who had been sent to escort her father home. She’d then gone to ground after having her father beaten up by whoever she’d joined forces with; by his account, a dark-haired girl had done the deed. Two blondes, two brunettes. None of them people he’d met before. Which ruled out any of her previous acquaintances.

Just for a moment, Emily toyed with the fact that Tattletale was a blonde. Wouldn’t it be convenient if she was one of the Hebert girl’s new allies? We could fold both cases into one.

Out loud, she answered Armsmaster’s observation. “True. Well, keep looking. Once you get Coil’s body back to base, give it a thorough autopsy. I want to know everything there is to know about his death, and how a teenage girl got the drop on him.”

“Copy that.” Armsmaster cut the call, and Emily went back to her musings.

Let’s see. If Tattletale was one of the blondes … New Wave says Glory Girl and Panacea haven’t surfaced yet, so what if they were the other two? One blonde, one brunette. And Tattletale’s working with the Trainyard bomber, so that’s the other brunette. By all accounts, Panacea can’t fight her way out of a paper bag, so the bomber would have to be the Brute who beat up Danny Hebert.

She snorted, discarding the whole notion. Too many things just didn’t fit together. As much as she wished it could be all one case, life just wasn’t that simple and neat.

<><>

Taylor

“Woooooo! Echo! Echo … echo … echo … echo!”

Aisha stood in the centre of the lowest section of the base and spun around on her heels, arms stretched out and yelling at the top of her lungs. Her shout, directed at the concrete ceiling two floors up from her, did echo to a certain extent.

Standing on the walkway above, I sighed and ran my hands through my hair, glad to have it back to its full length. It had been weird to be a blonde, having tips passed to me by Lisa talking to a rat from outside. But we’d pulled it off, and now we were the proud owners of a genuine Bond villain base, slightly used, one previous tenant.

“Everything alright?” asked Amy. “I’ve never done a full-body job like that before. I was terrified I’d get it wrong.” Her look went somewhat further. Why are you still trusting me? she asked silently.

“Everything’s just fine,” I assured her. “Coil never suspected a thing. And your bullet bug worked perfectly. Even though I wish I’d never had to use it.”

“He was a bad guy and he’d killed people,” Amy said firmly, as though she was trying to convince herself as much as me. “And we needed a secure place to work from to help Vicky.”

“Plus,” Lisa reminded us as she emerged from Coil’s office, “we needed the money to pay Cranial for the assistance she’s going to be giving us. Which we now have. His accounts are open to be plundered, as soon as we’re ready to commence.”

Amy hugged herself and shivered. “I really don’t know if I like this bit. I know it’s for Vicky’s own good, but …”

Dad, who’d been standing back watching us, came forward and put a hand on her shoulder. “… but you said it yourself, Amy. It’s for Vicky’s own good. Once it’s over and done, I’m sure your relatives will understand why you had to do it.”

“Understand, maybe.” Amy shook her head. “Forgive me, never. What I did to Vicky was … monstrous. And they’ll be correct. I don’t deserve to be forgiven. Not by them, and not by Vicky.”

“Hey. Hey, hey, hey.” I stepped up past Dad and put my hands on her shoulders. She looked at me, her eyes blank, and I put my arms around her. “We’re here. We accept you. We forgive you. And we’re gonna help make it better.”

Amy began to shudder, then she put her face into my shoulder and started to cry. I held her close, rubbing her back with my thumbs, as my own ghosts washed past me. Sophia’s face as I plunged the knife into her chest. Madison, screaming and suffocating in the middle of a cloud of bugs. The way Coil went down like a broken doll when the bullet bug punched into his forehead and out the back of his skull. Everyone else who had been hurt by me, or by the consequences of my actions.

Amy’s mistake had been tiny, a single fracture in the stone façade she’d built for herself around her feelings. Her power had taken her over and pushed further and harder than she ever would’ve done willingly. Afterward, she’d repented of the action over and over, but it was too late.

My own sin had been just as hard to step back from and forgive myself for. Had I wanted to defend myself? Sure. But had I intended to kill Shadow Stalker and Madison? Not in a million years. My power may have pushed a little harder than it should have when it came to killing Madison, but it wasn’t my power that had stabbed Sophia. It had been me.

Aisha’s interference complicated matters to such a degree that I couldn’t untangle my actions from hers, but the fact remained that I was at least partially responsible for the death of one human being, and wholly responsible for the deaths of two others. That was a fact I was going to have to accept for the rest of my life. I didn’t like it, but that was just too bad.

I couldn’t erase my crimes, and by the time I was ready to face up to them, there would be a good chance that Director Piggot would be ready to issue an arrest warrant for me. But there was no way I could give myself up right now. Not when Amy and Vicky still needed help to fix their unique problem.

There was much to do, and little time to do it in. We’d get through it somehow, though. We had to.

Together.

Part 9