Valentine's Day

Lisa Wilbourn/Tattletale

“Alec…” The sigh I give him is wrong, it sounds real but I know it isn’t. It sounds right, it’s laced with enough guilt that frustration is almost dulled, it’s the kind of sigh you’d give to make someone pity you. As if I were the one needing that. “You know there’s a… friction between us.”

The boy across from me looks up and the thing that strikes me first is just how small he is, and not just because Brian and Rachel are on his sides. They might be big but even if they weren’t there, even if I didn’t have the comparison, Alec would still be too small.

His dress shirt hangs off of him, he tried to clean himself up in the measly time we gave him but it wasn’t enough to hide the bags under his eyes and the sallowness of his skin. He’s so thin, thinner than he’s supposed to be.

That was supposed to concern me, I know it used to bother me, I know that seeing his ribs through his shirt was enough to send me into a panic attack on some days. He shouldn’t be that thin because while Alec used to gorge himself on things just to try and fill that void inside him, so much of 2011 taught him to enjoy the world.

I remember crying to myself, so happy that he was savoring food last August. Like he’d finally remembered he was human and he had the right to have preferences. And then, last April, he ate purely for sustenance, and then, last month, he barely ate at all.

And I did that.

I took away his joy, I made eating an ordeal again and I did it because I knew the right ways to prod at him, to make comments so deniable that they didn’t hurt until late at night, when he lay awake in his bed. Little comments, little knives, and all that just to make him like this… tired and weak and staring at me with sunken blue eyes.

He’s staring at me with the resignation of an animal caught in a snare, he knows what I’m going to tell him even before I’ve said it. And yet, like an animal, he has to give one last tug at his bindings, just to see if it’s really the end.

“Between you four and I?” he clarifies, it’s a leading statement, just a formality really. He knows how things are changing and though I want him to fight, though I need him to snap some sense into me, I know he can’t. Months upon months of little cuts, little knives, how could anyone endure it for so long?

His blue eyes stare into mine and for just an instant, I can see a spark dance in his pupil. He’s savoring this, this last moment of cordiality before we throw him away. In my own head, I scream for my jaw to bite off my tongue before I answer.

“Yes,” My traitorous mouth speaks up regardless of my hate. “We… we’ve all tried to make it work but things are…”

I trail off like the coward that I am, I can divulge secrets, I can make people fight with just a few words but when it comes to the actual muscle of a decision, I always let that fall to someone else. I can start the fire but it’s up to others to get it burning.

“Bad,” Rachel finishes for me and her tone is a lot more guilty than my own. That makes sense though, I was the one who said we should do this, the one who made them all come here, to surround our friend and excommunicate him from our lives.

Alec nods at her words and when his chair lands, the clatter sounds frighteningly loud, louder than it actually was. It’s a herald.

“Yeah, I’ve noticed that too…” He replies and though he tries to hold on to his numbness, to his resignation, we made that impossible. It used to be numbness was all he was capable of. Kind’ve like an animal in a barrow, he could venture out a little bit and snatch some emotions, little tiny threads of feeling. But over the past year, we coaxed him out and without him inside, his little refuge on numbness caved in. “It’s…it hasn’t been great.”

His voice is tight and I know that’s to match the tightness in his chest. The tightness like a snake coiling around his ribcage, the feeling of entrapment, of being caged and lead to slaughter. How could I do this to him? To anyone? I know this isn’t right, I know it isn’t—

“No,” Taylor speaks up, her voice is choked, wanting more than anything for this to be over. “It hasn’t been and… for what it’s worth…” she trails off and Alec knows instinctively that she wants their eyes to meet.

The instant they do, Taylor starts to cry.

She’s never been a quiet crier, not in any sense. She bawls and wails and it’s only because of her swarm that we didn’t hear it every single day after Leviathan. She was only starting to be truly happy last October and I did this, I made her cry. All because I was too blind to see that I wasn’t in control.

She reaches over the table to grab at Alec’s sleeve, her thumb rubbing circles on to his knuckles. She needs someone to hold her, I know that, I know what she needs and all I remember thinking was that she needed to hurry up. 

“I’m sorry we couldn’t make it work, I’m sorry things played out the way it did, and… and—” she stutters into a sob and Alec smiles as best he can, trying to return that comfort and show that the knife in his guts doesn’t hurt too much.

“We had a good run,” he tells her, the smile fracturing with each word. His eyes glisten with tears and the nod that Taylor gives almost makes them fall. That little gesture hurt him so much, the acknowledgment that: ‘yeah, we did have a good run… but now it’s over.’

She tries to ask him if he has somewhere to stay and the phantom annoyance inside me reels at her. I take over again and the inner me, the real me, is beyond angry. How could I do this?

He’s saying he has a place to stay but I know he doesn't, I know he got rid of all of his old spots because he wanted the tower to work more than anything. He wanted to stay so badly, he wanted to be a part of us so damn badly

“I… uh, I’ll send a guy to get my shit some time this week, I’ll,” his eyes snap shut and a few tears fall as he walks from our table, his steps hurried as he wipes at his face. “Bye.”

The second he’s out of sight, my body becomes my own, my power and tongue become mine again and the first thing I try to do is bolt out of the chair. I need to go after him, I need to see if I can piece him together again, I need to try and bring him back, I need to, I need to, I need to!

But the instant I try to move, a pair of hands push me back down to my chair.

I look up and snarl at the face that greets me.

Nikos Vasil smiles like the devil himself, his sharp beard doing nothing to obscure teeth too white for something so venomous. His long hair hangs to frame his face and his throat bobs with a chuckle when I try to match his eyes.

But they aren’t there.

In place of them is just more skin, sunken divots that drift down to cover the empty sockets.

I try to move but his grip is unyielding and his fingers dig into the muscle of my shoulders like claws. The skin over his eyes split with a wet tear and the two pinpricks of light within flash with the brightest blue.

The light fades and I find that my body isn’t mine anymore. I can’t move a muscle, I want to get up, I want to find Alec, I want to tell him that it wasn’t me, that I would never turn my tongue on him like that, I want to kill the man holding me down, I want to rip off his jaw and beat him with it but I can’t fucking move!

My jaw tingles with awareness and my power pulses in my head. I want to tell him that his brother isn’t dead, that he ran from him, that he would prefer Nikos burn than to ever see him again, but before I can speak, his eyes flash blue.

He’s gone and he’s not.

I can see it in the reflection of my silverware. My eyes aren’t green anymore.

“We should—” Taylor cuts herself off as she leans up, her hand darting to her pocket, probably to retrieve her phone. “We should call him, get him to—”

“No, no!” I chastise, my voice is hard and uncompromising and it isn’t mine. No, it is but it isn’t just mine, I can hear it. Underneath my own vocals is another voice, one deeper, one oilier, one that is soaked in unearned ego. “We need to stay strong. We’ve been… let’s not beat around the bush here, we’ve been miserable, he’s been miserable! This… it’s the best course of action, I know it hurts but we can’t go back now.”

The voice of Nikos Vasil guides mine, makes arguments tinged with his own brand of emotional manipulation and despite how steadfastly they wanted to help Alec, one by one, they abandon him and when all’s said and done and my body leans back in my chair, we’re laughing at how distraught we made him.

I reach for my drink and suddenly, there’s a tightness wrapping around my throat, a hand that’s closing around me and choking the air out. No, not a hand. A snake, a snake that hisses words I so often heard through the phone. He coils like a noose and his voice is that of a man that’s body has long since cooled.

“That’s all you’ll ever be,” he whispers and I struggle against the scales around me. He’s dead, he’s been dead for months but he— he— “Just a pawn to be played.”

His words spark a fire inside of me and when I turn my chin down, I chomp on his body. The snake hisses in pain and his blood tastes like ash in my mouth. I grab on to him and throw him across the room, the diner having turned into an endless black expanse.

The snake is upright in moments, the black and white scales shift and switch colors like a hypnosis ring as I yell.

“I am no one’s fucking pawn!”

He hears my war cry and laughs, his body changing until he’s a man again. His scales become fabric, the pattern turning into a skintight bodysuit, the tightness of it just betraying the man underneath. He might look like a tall skeleton but inside is a monster that took everything from me.

“If you’re not a pawn,” he asks, his strides getting longer as he walks towards me. “How was Alec taken from you so easily? Why did you dance to Heartbreaker’s tune? Listened to his words like a dog on a leash? I kept you in a cage for almost two years and though you fought me every single moment, maybe you prefer to be someone elses? Did you really think you’d be safe? That no one would try to use you?”

His questions make my head ache, like each one is a pulse from my power and when I shake my head to clear the noise, I find that he isn’t there anymore.

In his place is a doorway, one made out of steel and inside is a little concrete room, the pink and soft furniture inside betrays what it really is. A cell for the little girl inside, the one with so many needles in her arms that she looks like a porcupine.

The little girl looks at me like she’s on her way out, like there’s barely enough strength in her to breath. And yet, she still somehow musters enough to speak.

“Why?” she asks, her voice little more than a wheeze. “Why did you do it?”

“I…” I gulp, for once, the words fail me completely. “I… I didn’t know, I—”

“Of course you did,” in between blinks, Coil stands in the doorway. “You knew the moment  I ordered you to rob that bank, you knew it was a diversion and you knew it was going to be a kidnapping.”

He laughs and stalks towards me, his voice taking on an otherworldly echo as the colors of his costume swap.

“You’re never able to save anyone, are you?”

“Shut up!” the command is weak and I try to bolster it as best I can. “Why don’t you go kill yourself again? Skitter would be more than happy to put another bullet between your eyes.”

My taunt only gets him to laugh again and he suddenly flickers into shape in front of me, his seven foot frame looming above me.

“Did killing me undo what I did to her?”

I answer his rhetorical question with a scream and pounce on him, my fists wailing into the white fabric and turning it a black red, the blood of my knuckles and his body mingling together when he laughs again, the sound coming from the doorway.

Another Coil takes a step back and I’m too slow to make it to the door before it slams shut.

Without thought, I force it open and—

Dinah’s not the one on the bed.

The room has changed, all of the furniture has turned into an almost angelic white, the curtains hand long and lacey from the windows, blowing gently enough that I can barely hear them flutter. All those details just serve to make the scene even worse. The white just makes the red stand out more, the wind smells like iron and the body lying on decadent sheets is far too bruised for that bed.

Alec lays there, dead to the world, more bruised than not and as bile rushes up my throat, a hand lands on my shoulder. A voice like suede whispers in my ear and I just barely catch a flash of blue before he speaks.

“Would killing me undo what you did to him?”

Lisa Wilbourn/Tattletale

February 6th, 2013

I wake up with a gasp, my legs try to jolt out wildly and it’s only because there’s two more pairs tangling between them that I don’t end up kicking a dog. My breath comes in ragged bursts and the sleeping bodies on either side of me shift just enough that there isn’t so much weight on my chest.

It takes me almost half a minute to remember where I am, the nightmare keeps playing on loop, that damn voice, that monster with Alec’s eyes, that disgusting, revolting, piece of shit. For him to have those eyes is a perversion, like when you see a cross cut into a person.

He shouldn’t have those damn eyes, I don’t care if he had them first, they don’t belong to him. They belong to our friend, they belong to the boy who runs his hand through his hair when he’s nervous, the one who tells stupid jokes to break the tension, the one that…

Thinking of him chases the nightmare away, I know that today isn’t going to be easy, I know that Heartbreaker is going to make us fight to get him back but still… there’s a thrumming relief inside my chest at the thought that I’ll get to see him again.

That relief is dulled a bit when I remind myself what we’ll have to say to him. A man like Heartbreaker, there’s no doubt in my mind that he pushed Alec into believing that everything we did was of our own volition.

Just saying his dad was the one who warped us might go a long way but it might not. Alec has had a year to internalize everything that happened last Spring and regardless of how he takes the truth, we’ve got a lot of work ahead of us if we want to earn his trust back.

And that’s not including what we have to do today.

The reminder is enough to shock the last dregs of sleep from my mind. In less than an hour, we’re going to go out there, sneak into the home of the most dangerous Master on earth, free his son right under his nose, and hopefully, before he even knows what’s happening, he’ll be dead.

That thought sends a pulse into my muscles, my legs beg me to run and trigger finger itches to be the one to put him down. We’re going to kill him today and I think we’re as ready as we’ll ever be.

A rustling from outside the tent gets my attention and when the zipper by our feet glides open, I lift my head up to stare at the face poking through the flap.

Taylor’s got half her mask on, the amber lenses cover her eyes but the dark silk is bunched up around her nose, the crumbs of granola still on her lips tells me that the breakfast we’re going to have will be especially crappy.

“Morning,” she greets, swallowing a mouthful. “Can you wake them up?”

I nod silently and she leaves the tent, keeping the flap open and letting the Winter chill help me wake our teammates. At least, that’s what I think it was meant for.

But instead of urging them to get up, Brian and Rachel take the loss of heat to just hold me tighter, literally sharing my body heat like I’m a warm water bottle. The embrace might actually be somewhat nice if it didn’t also cut off circulation to every one of my limbs.

“Brian—” using the little space I have to angle my wrist, I slap at his chin gently, trying to get him more aware. “Brian, you have to—”

He groans and when I try to slap at him again, he lifts his chin just enough to bring it down on my fingers, pinning my hand between his head and the pillow. I sigh and try to wrench my hand free when he starts to mumble.

“Mmm, five more mins…” his slurred words are punctuated by a soft kiss to the heel of my palm and despite the warmth of their arms already making me flush, my face decides it can get even warmer as I blush crimson.

“Damnit—” I turn my head to look at my other captor and startle a bit when her amber eyes stare into mine, seemingly glowing in the low light.

Not seemingly, is actually glowing, transformation left canine artifact organs and organelles in non cerebral areas, eyes glow as a result of tapetum lucidum, a reflective lining behind the retina

Wait, her power caused that, not Amy? Does that mean if she keeps doing it, she’ll become more doglike? No, that doesn’t make sense, powers do all sorts of weird things whenever they want to but aside from Case 53’s, powers don’t seem to like making their users nonhuman. That said, using Amy’s power like we have been is definitely going beyond the controlled experiments the PRT do.

At least there’s nothing going on in her head, some people might say her behavior was dog-like already but that’s not really the case. Just because she prefers dogs to humans, hates social interactions, and would rather not speak doesn’t make her dog-like.

“Lisa,” Rachel murmurs, her eyes suddenly going a bit dull as a haze of sleepiness clouds them. “I had a dream about you—,” she yawns loudly and my eyes dart to her incisors, they’d almost look like vampire fangs if they weren’t so wide. “—you and Alec I mean.”

“You can tell me all about it when we get up,” I bargain, wiggling my torso as best I can. She hums in acknowledgement and after a long blink, she slowly starts to let me go.

“Maybe later,” she tells me, her voice a little quieter, almost turning into a rasp as she scoots away, her eyes fixed on the exit. “When we get back home.”

I tilt my head at her, like I said, Rachel doesn’t typically seek out social interactions but the tone she just used and that almost timid turn of her head… if I didn’t know any better, I’d say she was shy.

Is shy, my power confirms for me and before my eyes can even widen at such uncharacteristic news, it whispers again. Is struggling with emotions, isn’t struggling with emotions, is struggling to put emotions into words, understands these emotions, knows these emotions, wants to act on these emotions, can’t, won’t, emotions pertain to Alec, require Alec to—

Oh.

That makes more sense.

I duck my head down into Brian’s forearm and close my eyes, trying to shield my burning face from Rachel as I sigh. I got the same thing from Taylor too, yesterday when we were trekking through the snow, the little pieces finally slotted in for her.

Her mask might hide her eyes well but without enough bugs to dump off the emotional excess, her posture gave away plenty to me. She had to confront the feelings Brian had already faced himself the night before and Rachel before him.

…and I before all of them.

I figured it out the moment we made it back from our meeting with Lionheart. In between all that turmoil, feeling my emotions run backwards through my head, a whole year of twisted around feelings finally turning the right way, my power explained everything.

He didn’t just make us hate Alec, he didn’t just turn our… our love for him into hate, he burnt off the ends of our own love for each other. I don’t know why he did it, between the crying my eyes out and feeling like my power was trying to stab me through my own brain, the actual reason escaped me.

But I don’t need to know it. All I need to know is that he hurt us in a way I didn’t think anyone could hurt anyone. And for that, he won’t see the dawn.

“Brian,” Rachel shakes me out of my thoughts and leans over to place her hands on Brian’s shoulders, literally shaking him up. “Get up, we’re going to get Alec home today.”

Her blunt promise gets his eyes to snap open and with a shaking stretch, he eases up his grip on me with a flush up his neck.

“Okay,” Brian wipes a hand over his eyes and after he clears his throat, he sits up, his shoulders rolling.

He leaves the tent without a word, barely pausing to tie up his boots as he heads out. The absence of him just makes me realize how big of a space he was taking up and suddenly the tent feels too big, the same way the tower felt too big without Alec.

If everything goes well though, that problem should be solved by the end of the month.

“C’mon,” Rachel snaps for her dogs attention and with a point to the tent’s exit, they all obediently make their way out, their fur rippling a bit as Rachel gives them just enough muscle to stand the cold. “We’ve gotta get going.”

“Yep,” I flip the blanket off my legs and grab for my own boots, the things are meant for combat and roof running and though I thought the raw durability of that would translate to the snow, it did not.

I wouldn't exactly say they’re holey yet but it wouldn’t be far off to call them pious. I snort to myself, that dumb joke is the furthest thing from comedy but it makes me smile knowing who else would laugh along with it.

After today, Alec will be doing that job again, making the dumb jokes.

The boots slide on easily enough and with a few buckles tightened, I step out into the snow, the morning sun just barely tinging the world gold.

Taylor’s got a fire set up right outside our tent, the flame kept deliberately low to hide us from any prying eyes. The hills might hide our tent from Heartbreaker’s compound but the smoke would be a dead giveaway if we went all out with it.

The wind bites into me and my hands shake as I check the zipper of my jacket. Seeing it already zipped up feels like a lie, between the thick coat and the thinner but equally insulative jacket of my costume, I should be warmer.

Then again, I suppose that’s a feeling everyone has had before me. The woods are a more dangerous place than most people realize. Today, with our tech and our powers, a lot of people think that the environment is trivial, that people only died in the woods because they didn’t have our amenities.

But that’s not true, this patch of land will be just as cold tonight as it was three hundred years ago.

“Eat,” Taylor orders me from her spot on Atlas. She’s got three granola bars between her outstretched fingers, the wrappers crunching a little as she shakes her hand.

I take them and the crumbly oats and protein taste just as bad as when I was a kid, I don’t care if they’re supposed to be good for me, they could triple the bland chocolate in these and it would still taste like sand.

They go down well enough I suppose and with a big gulp from Taylor’s canteen, Brian gets up from his spot by the fire. He kicks snow into the sparking flames and instantly they die with a wet hiss, their miniscule warmth not enough to hold back to frost.

“Alright,” Brian wipes his hands before he bends down to retrieve his helmet, the white paint of the skull is chipping in the cold but it’s still undeniably his symbol. “We’ve got to be in and out in half an hour at most, the longer we draw it out, the more a chance one of them can Master us. That singer’s a wild card and I bet there’s more inside.”

“How do we get past him?” Rachel asks, pulling out her own mask from her pocket, the cheap latex flaking even worse than the white on Grue’s helmet.

“Simple,” Taylor answers. “We take him out first.”

Her resolve is a bit… harder than I think she meant and after half a second of enduring our stares, she corrects herself.

“Take him out as in knock him out, they… I don’t know the specifics of what they’ve done and maybe some of them do deserve to die but that isn’t our call. If we don’t have to kill any of them, we shouldn’t.”

“Are you sure you can find him?” Rachel asks, “There’s going to be a lot of them in there and—”

“Don’t worry about it,” I ease her, pulling out my gun and checking to see if the mag is loaded or not. Sometimes I keep it empty on purpose, the threat of it is usually enough to deter most but today I make sure it’s fully loaded. “Taylor can describe them and I’ll pick them out.”

Rachel gives a grunt of acknowledgement and in a silent agreement, we all start to ease our way towards the hill. The tracks from yesterday are still visible, from the heavy mutant paw prints to the rut we dug when we had to drag Taylor away from the bugs inside of the former boarding school.

As soon as we cross over the hill, Taylor’s demeanor changes, her spine going ramrod straight as she brings her hands together, the chitin-covered gloves clacking together as she wrings her hands.

With each step, more of the compound becomes clear to her and with each footfall, my breath catches. I’ll know the moment she has Alec in her range and right now, that could make or break us.

Best case scenario, he’s okay, maybe walking around the compound, maybe asleep in his room, worst case…

I don’t want to think about that, about what Heartbreaker might’ve done to our Alec in the year he’s had alone with him. I don’t want to think if he even buried—

Taylor freezes and her hands fall to her sides, her arms swaying with the momentum as her knees shake. The air is taken from my lungs but before my mind can conjure any worse case scenarios, my power speaks up.

Has sensed Alec, has sensed Heartbreaker, both are alive, Alec is alive, in pain, hospitalized, hurt, Taylor is reacting to that hurt, is—

The girl in front of me clenches her knuckles tight enough that the claws on the tips of her gloves start to dig into the padded silk. Her spine reinforces itself and with a shaking hand, she calls Atlas to her side.

The beetle moves robotically, his mind completely slave to Taylor’s will as she hops on top of him.

“I don’t sense any lookouts,” she informs us and then grabs on to Atlas’ horn as the beetle scuttles off at his top speed, the wings opening just enough to help compensate for his enormous weight.

“You heard her,” Rachel grabs for me and with a muffled yelp, she lifts me in her arms as she and all her dogs start to grow. Brian hops on to Judas just as the bones inside the dog start to slip past the skin and within seconds we’re all chasing after Taylor.

The snow muffles what should be thundering stomps and it’s only when we meet the tall iron fence that we slow down at all. The crafted metal work is ornately sculpted yet unlike everything else I can see, the veneer of gaudiness is actually backed by something solid.

Taylor flies over the fence without issue and tucks Atlas between two large windows, his shining carapace hopefully hidden from whoever’s inside. The rest of us have to get through the hard way and with a nod to Rachel, she sets me down as she approaches the fence.

Her body gets impossibly bigger, her coat tearing as she surpasses the limit of human musculature. Horns start to peek out from under her hood, the tips of them running red with blood as she spits into her hands.

The iron makes surprisingly little noise as she starts to bend it, the metal groaning weakly as she pulls it away. It bends and it bends but after maybe five seconds, it’s apparent that it isn’t going to break.

With a growl that makes the snow around her vibrate, Rachel puts more of her power into herself, her spine bending forward into a spiked hunch as her hands grow big enough to wrap around the bars twice over.

With a ferocious pull, the metal finally gives way and without even a half second pause, her hands move to the other side, ripping off the whole section of fence and letting it crash down behind us with a heavy whumpf.

The dogs, Brian, and I leap through the entrance as quickly as we can and after a moment of letting herself shrink, Rachel follows through.

Taylor’s already got most of her swarm leaving Atlas’ body and skittering over the windows edges, searching for a way to let her brood inside. We’re by her side when the clump of chitin starts to shrink, the vermin having found a gap so thin that I wouldn’t think they could squeeze through.

That’s the thing about bugs though, there isn’t a home on earth that isn’t also a home for them. No matter the house, mansion or slum, there’s already thousands of little bugs that called it home long before you did.

“How’s it look?” I ask Taylor, crouching by her and Atlas’ side as the others get on the beetles opposite flank.

“Bad,” she answers, her throat bobbing with a gulp. “They must’ve called an exterminator recently, there’s maybe only a million bugs here and none of them are all that dangerous.”

For a moment I want to tell her that a million bugs are absolutely nothing to sneeze at and that, however briefly, she managed to choke out Alexandria with just a few hundred roaches. But she’s right, in Brockton, a place like this would’ve had a hundred times as many insects for her to snatch up.

I didn’t realize how comfortable we got with her near omnipresence before we didn’t have it.

“How’s your eyes?” I ask her, chancing a glance through the window. “Can you make out any specifics?”

“Yeah,” she says and I can tell by the tilt of her head that she’s got her eyes closed, with so few bugs, she has to shut off her own sight just to interpolate what they’re seeing. “It looks like a full house, lots of kids, a few our age and a lot of maids and butlers.”

“Have you found him yet?” Brian and I ask at the same time and I can tell by the heat in his voice, he doesn’t mean Alec. I look away from the window to stare at his helmeted face, the darkness wafting off his shoulders as his gloves squeak tight over the windowsill.

“Yes,” Taylor answers, “Alec is in the middle of this place, he’s…” she trails off and the pause lasts long enough to get the others concerned. 

Has found Alec, is worried about Alec, is worried about his health, injuries sustained, injuries severe enough to warrant an IV, severe enough to warrant a heartbeat monitor, severe enough to warrant a ventila—

I cut off my power and with a steadying breath, I lay out what we’re going to do.

“Find the singer first,” I tell Taylor, “If you can get the others down too, that would be geat but focus on him. If he shuts you down, we’re all dead in the water.”

Our brown eyed teammate nods at my order and the silk of her mask scrunches up as she squints behind it.

“I’ve got two,” she says, “One’s in the… attic I think, there’s a lock on the door and she’s pacing.”

Has been locked in the attic, has been locked inside as punishment, hasn’t been locked in as punishment, has been—

I cut off my power before it can lead me down a rabbit hole, I know from experience that the less I have to go on, the more my power just tends to bullshit answers.

“What’s in the room with her? Any decorations or furniture, anything music themed or—”

“Why would it be music themed?” Brian asks, impatience lining his voice.

“Because if they’re anything like Alec, they’re going to base a lot of their interest off their power, Alec likes theater and went with that with his costume. I bet it holds for a lot of them, not all, but a lot.”

Brian can’t fault my logic and after a few seconds, Taylor shakes her head.

“Nothing music themed, just beakers, empty bottles, and a burner I think.”

Tinker my power tells me and I agree with it immediately, it be just like Heartbreaker to lock away the one kid that can’t help but use her power.

“It’s the other one,” I tell her and she turns to me with a nervous speed.

“Are you sure?” she asks me, “The other one is surrounded by people, a few maids but also—” she gulps and the little action tells me exactly who she’s worried about. There are only a few capes alive that make Skitter stumble and even fewer that genuinely have her afraid, and Heartbreaker’s got one of them on a leash. “The Butcher’s with him.”

That is a road block I knew we’d have to deal with eventually but one that I was hoping we could work around first. But of course, our bad luck just has to rear its head.

“How is she?” I ask and when she tilts her head at me, I clarify. “I don’t actually care how she’s doing but last I saw her, Heartbreaker’s power was really fucking her over. It might’ve made her obedient in the short term but fifteen times the effectiveness of his power also means fifteen times the brain damage.”

“I think she’s ready to fight,” Taylor tells me, “she’s… a lot more still than I remember Quarrel being but I think she’s grunting whenever the Singer talks to her.”

Fuck… that really isn’t good, taking him out means getting the Butcher’s attention… although.

“How quiet do you think you can manage it?” I ask, laying out a plan. “The stillness could be nonresponsivness, if we can take him out quick enough, maybe she won’t even—”

“There’s a lot of maybes in that plan,” Grue points out and frustration bubbles hot in my throat as I turn to look at him.

“I don’t see you coming up with anything,” the snap back is childish and we all know it but the point stands. I turn back to Taylor and with a pointed finger to emphasize my words, I lay out my plan.

“The moment you’ve got your bugs in position, take them out as quietly as you can, bugs down the throat, in the eyes and ears, no stinging unless you have to, you can’t let them scream.”

“Of course,” she replies, the plan already strikingly similar to the stealth takedowns we did on the Empire’s ghost organizations.

“Okay,” I try to take a steadying breath but the cold air just makes my head feel more open, like any second my brain could come out of my ears. “I know you found Alec but… where’s Heartbreaker?”

My question gets her hair to start twitching, the bugs sapping her scalp for warmth chitter and drone with her rage and even with all of her swarm fluttering in anger with her, it still isn’t enough to take the growl out of her voice.

“He’s on the other side of the house, I—” she chokes on her hatred but just barely manages to swallow it down before she continues. “I can kill him, I’d just need a few more minutes but I could—”

“No,” I shake my head and even though she, Rachel, Brian, and even Atlas try to protest, my resolve stays firm. “The moment you kill him, they kill Alec. They’ll see the bugs, know Skitter used to be Regent’s teammate and— no. Not until we’re sure we can protect him.”

As much as they want to kill him— as much as I want to kill him, we have to be practical about this. A single slip up here, a single moment of letting our emotions take control and… that’s all it will take for us to fuck it up beyond repair.

“We take out as many as we can, as quietly as we can and then we move in on Alec. After we’ve got him secured, then… we can put his father down.”

My words are a rally and quietly as she can, Taylor has Atlas lift a claw up to the window, carefully carving a way in through the glass.