Chapter Text
Year One. Day 13.
Lisa opened her eyes into total darkness.
Blind. Result of brain damage? No, deaf also; Grue’s power.
In the absence of sight and sound, she focused on sensation. She ran her hands over grass and dirt beneath her. She was laying down, head propped up in someone’s lap. Hands gripped her head at the temples.
Waking up in this position not unusual in recent days; Darkness to soothe overstimulation, companionship, head massage consistent with care for Tattletale-self after fainting spell, seizure.
Her migraine was gone. The relief after days without mercy could have made her dance a jig, if she wasn’t so tired.
Hands on head are clammy, too soft, too small, not Rachel or Taylor, Parian possible but unlikely, not close enough with Tattletale-self for such contact; Hands shaking, afraid, not massage, not companionship.
Lisa found broken pieces of her short-term memory scattered across the crowded warehouse floor of her brain. She tried to use her power to filter out the random nonsense that was mixed in with the relevant memories, but found as she exerted herself, the nonsense multiplied tenfold. Thoughts rose that were entirely out of time and place, worries and dilemmas she hadn’t dwelled on in months or weeks springing into her head like popcorn in a hot pan.
Had to keep from panicking. She couldn’t afford to lose control of her power, not now. How was she going to word this in her report to Coil?
Coil has been dead for nine months, seventeen days.
Okay, well that’s good, but what’s she going to do about Brian breaking Taylor’s heart after she confessed to him? What advice could she give?
Taylor and Brian entered entanglement following initial rejection, separated months ago; Still engage in intercourse as obligations allow, Brian out of desire to be source of comfort, Taylor out of desire to feel human; No commitment at insistence of Taylor, neither seeing anyone else; Colloquial summation: ‘situationship’.
Down, girl. Lisa didn’t need to hear the sordid details of her best friend’s love life. She was gonna be late for school!
Tattletale-self does not attend school. Non-sequiturs result of brain damage, memories out of order, must not think of
Reggie’s going to get scolded since he’s the one who drives them to school, even though they both know it’s because she slept through her alarm and couldn’t find her shoes, Tattletale-self must stop but he doesn’t get irritated like he might have, maybe because he hasn’t been as stressed as he used to be stop or maybe because he’s already given up on life and nothing can hurt him because he’ll be dead soon anyway
Pain lanced through Lisa’s skull like a gunshot, snapping her out of her spiral. The hands shook her head violently, frustrated, and she felt lips at her ear, could tell by the forcefulness of their movement that the person was shouting even if no sound reached her through the darkness.
Lips shaping words: “Stop doing that, you stupid bitch”.
Lisa’s arms weren’t cooperating with the current state of her central nervous system, but she managed to reach for the head above hers, grab a fistful of frizzy hair and pull. The body over her bent forward, and she felt huffing exhalations against her face, curses flung into the soundless void. Another jolt of agony struck her like a splash of cold water, and when she let go, the pain was switched off again.
Feeling her body’s processes being toyed with, she placed the hands as belonging to Panacea. That recognition shuffled some of her short term memories back into place.
They’d gathered under the oak to trade. Panacea agreed to heal Lisa, then tried to leverage the situation like some would-be villain on her first night out. Lisa flirted a little to throw the idiot off-kilter, and it worked, because it didn’t take her power to see that Amy was weak for blondes with a mean streak.
Perhaps her goal of getting Amy to act stupid in front of her allies worked too well. She remembered nothing but kaleidoscopes and unicorns after that point. She assumed a fight broke out while her brain was sauteeing itself.
Her suspicion was confirmed when something enormous galloped close and leaped over them, Lisa tracking the movement by the displacement of air. Angelica, most likely. The ground shuddered as the dog collided with a flier only feet from their position, kicking up a spray of dirt and grass clumps.
Panacea flinched. The swiss cheese she’d made of her brain was knit back together with greater urgency, and Lisa felt her nerves flare to life. She knew how to whistle and shuffle cards again! Yippee!
Panacea prioritizing sections of brain associated with motor control, reflexes, balance; Hesitation, preparing self to cross moral line, justification: survival situation; supporting factors: no authority to stop her, no record of crime except word of villains known to be liars, acceptable risk.
Panacea startled by ease of intuiting how to modify Tattletale-self for needed purpose: convert excess fat (rude!) into muscle, alter reward center, use Tattletale-self to carry Panacea to heroes, keep Tattletale-self as hostage to prevent retaliation until rescue.
Hesitation, guilt soothed by thought-terminating cliche: survival situation, must be done; Internal justification: Tattletale-self is evil, thus deserving; High likelihood of true motivation: satisfies vendetta, repressed sadist, derives pleasure from thought of Tattletale-self laid low.
Not gonna happen, bitch.
In the moment of Panacea’s hesitation, before she could start hijacking Lisa’s brain kill order-style, Lisa delivered a punch into the darkness somewhere above her head. Teeth clacked together as her gloved fist connected with Panacea’s chin.
Tattletale thrashed out of Panacea’s grip in the same instant and threw her weight to the side. Her only skin exposed while in costume was her ears and lower face, meaning Panacea couldn’t do much to her so long as she kept her head away. She felt the other girl scramble to grab handfuls of her long hair, trying to drag her back within reach.
It was an unfortunate fact of the cape world that when two backliners got into a fight, the result was rarely impressive. Hair-pulling, biting, and face clawing might have been beneath the dignity of the average self-respecting Brute, but for a Thinker or Master caught on the back foot, it was a way of life, AKA a way to continue life. Playing fair was how a rookie cape became a red smear on the pavement, their only graveside accolade being “Well, at least he never kicked anyone in the balls.”
Panacea lacked balls in every sense of the phrase, so Tattletale settled on driving her elbow into the most tender parts of Amy’s injured legs while she leveraged herself up and away. Where Panacea was a backliner kind of cape who relied on her sister in a direct fight, Tattletale was a scrapper, her instincts honed over biting and clawing her way through countless foolhardy gambits and jobs gone sideways.
It helped that her opponent had two broken legs and no Thinker power to help her function in the pitch black, but a girl had to celebrate her wins where she could.
Tattletale scurried free, crawling forward until she couldn’t feel Panacea’s hands grabbing at her legs, then climbed into a wobbly standing position.
duck
She doubled over. Something heavy flew above her, so close and so fast she could feel an immense rush of air kicked up in its wake. The tips of thin, leafy branches slapped her and caught her hair. Did Glory Hole seriously throw a tree into the battlefield blind? No, it came back from the other direction, and with it another rush of wind.
For a moment, Tattletale could see the sky above like looking through a smoked glass window. Glory Girl had uprooted a tree and was using it as a huge hand fan, clutching the end of the trunk in her arms, pivoting and strafing back and forth. It looked ridiculous, but wind was moving, dispersing more of Grue’s darkness with every pass.
Shit. Tattletale toddled forward on wobbly legs, relying on her power to point her in the right direction. She grabbed the ankle end of one of Amy’s splinted legs and dragged her, who fought back as best she could, digging her fingers into the ground and using her other foot like a club to batter Tattletale’s hands. Tattletale felt something pop out of place in her hand with a good heelstrike from Amy, but with her capacity to feel pain still turned off, she was unhindered.
Someone grabbed Panacea’s other ankle, and Tattletale felt insects buzz over her skin by way of greeting. Skitter. They dragged Amy along twice as fast. Tattletale pointed in a direction her power reported was away from the heroes, and Skitter followed the gesture without needing to see it.
Tattletale shouted into the void. “Grue, we got Panacea! She isn’t done fixing me!”
The Undersiders were well-versed in scattering like cockroaches when the situation called for it, and if it wasn’t for her brain damage problem, they’d have already been gone. Much as Tattletale didn’t like to admit it, with Bitch down to a single dog who’s seen better days, no henchmen to call, and no civilians to leverage or back alleys to duck into, the villains were at a disadvantage. If they twisted Panacea’s arm into finishing the job she started, she was confident they could give the heroes the slip in the woods before the fight wore on too long and things turned ugly.
Then Gallant whalloped her from behind with a blast of pure shame. The concussive bolt would have sent her sprawling if Skitter didn’t catch her, though she only arrested Tattletale’s movement enough so she wouldn’t land on top of Amy.
Shit. How could Lisa be so clueless? Gallant could see emotion auras, and the trio of girls’ auras and their positioning likely allowed him to make an educated guess and a lucky shot. She knew the wave of shame that filled her was Gallant’s doing, but it didn’t lessen how it made her weak in the knees. She was so tired.
A rush of wind heralded a new complication. Gallant must have pointed Glory Girl in her sister’s direction. Tattletale felt a questing hand brush her leg as Glory Girl swooped low in the dark to feel for where her sister lay, flying slower than usual to avoid an injurious collision while her forcefield was up.
The hand followed Tattletale’s thigh up to her hip--buy a girl a drink first--and Tattletale yelped as she was grabbed by her utility belt and chucked twenty feet into bright, brutal sunlight.
The sounds of combat erupted back into Tattletale’s perception, and her power devoured the volley of new information, turning her vision fuzzy around the edges. She could almost feel the engine of her brain whirring into overdrive.
Clockblocker’s movements frustrated by swarm, unable to tag opponents without opening self for another attack, memories of roaches and wasps in his throat, sweat soaking his costume, not again not again
Angelica and Bitch missing, dog thrown hundreds of feet into forest by Glory Girl, Bitch ran to follow, cannot be relied on while Glory Girl in play
Flechette bound in silk by Parian, kind of into it, feels shame; Deposited away from fight, squirming to reach discarded bolt on ground, will cut loose and rejoin fight in twelve seconds
Shadow Stalker hindered by Grue’s darkness, attempted to accost Regent, tased by Imp, down
Kid Win’s tech suffering from lack of charge, few tools for maintenance, feels useless, swarmed and bound by Parian, down
She got the sense that while not being able to feel her raging migraine was nice, it also meant she couldn’t be forced to stop overtaxing her power, and she couldn’t gauge how badly she was hurting herself. The last thing she needed was another stroke.
Tattletale rolled to a stop near Parian, who often fought at the edges of Grue’s cloud to weave her constructs in and out of it and ambush opponents. She was riding a white stag that gleamed in the sunlight, a construct made of spider silk that was likely strong enough to take a punch or two from Glory Girl without tearing. A pair of similarly iridescent creatures accompanied her, a bear and ram, the result of innumerable hours of Taylor’s time spent gathering and then micromanaging a legion of spiders.
While Tattletale would have liked the constructs to have better camouflage, she had to give points for style. Taylor offered to dye the silk a more muted color, but Parian insisted she liked the look. With a crown of flowers woven into her wig and a suede overdress to replace her damaged frock, Parian looked like a forest spirit out of a fairytale.
At present, that forest spirit was siccing her woodland minions on Aegis. He was covered in venomous spiders and stinging wasps, and the bear and ram were taking turns stomping him into a bloody little crater in the dirt. Neither Parian nor Aegis seemed happy about what they were doing.
Glory Girl, absolutely covered in an angrily buzzing swarm, exploded out of Grue’s darkness. By her thrashing and clawing at her own face, it was safe to assume Taylor had popped her forcefield with a well-aimed bullet. She dove toward the lake and crashed into the water with such force it kicked up a splash ten feet high.
Tattletale crawled to her feet just as more of Gallant’s concussive bolts went flying in her direction. Parian’s bear construct was bowled over by a concentrated volley and Aegis was freed, leaping into the air despite having enough spider venom in his body to put down a rhinoceros. Two rhinoceroses.
Cold dread replaced the shame that still burbled at the edges of Tattletale’s emotional landscape. She was struck square in the chest by one of Gallant’s bolts and toppled to the grass, clutching her head out of fear she might hit it against the ground and make everything worse.
What if her head never stopped hurting? What if Amy never fixed it, or made it worse out of spite? She couldn’t live like she had been for much longer. She couldn’t do it. What if they were never rescued?
She tried to run. Another blast struck her, crushing despair.
She didn’t need to consult her power to know they were going to die out here. Each side was going to kill each other until Aisha or Aegis or maybe Taylor was left, and then that lone survivor could kill themselves when the reality of their situation inevitably sank in.
Lisa floated outside of herself. She focused on breathing, feeling the grass against her cheek where she lay. Her vision swam with ghostly shapes that she noticed upon leaving the darkness and chalked up to the sudden sunlight, but they hadn’t gone away. A kaleidoscope of colors greeted her behind her eyelids. The world began to spin the wrong way.
Lisa made eye contact with Vista’s gravestone, which sat under the oak tree by the shore of the lake, not fifty feet from the worst of the fighting. She hoped the little jerk liked the “Everybody beat up Tattletale” show.
Glory Girl returning from lake, weakened from venom but otherwise stable; Flechette re-entering fight, surprise attack tearing one of Parian’s constructs apart with volley of darts
Likelihood of capture high in event of defeat by heroes, possess excuse to take Undersiders prisoner as dangers to group survival; Safety measures to be undertaken to ensure imprisonment until arrival of authorities: biological modification via powers, threat of withholding food if noncompliant, threat of isolation if noncompliant, threat of dismemberment (no reason to hold back, no observers no PRT no laws, ideal environment to enact revenge) threat of sensory deprivation, threat of torture as punishment, threat of torture as entertainment, threat of execution as punishment, as entertainment
No rescue coming within Tattletale-self’s knowledge. Imprisonment if enacted may last years, until end of life, madness.
No rescue coming.
Lisa hardly felt the knee that rolled her over onto her stomach, nor the armored hand that pinned her wrists behind her back. “Stand down!” The man above her, Gallant, was shouting at someone else, maybe Parian. He rested a hand on the back of her head. A threat of pulverizing her brain even worse with a few point-blank concussive bolts? Lisa almost welcomed the chance to be unconscious for a spell. “We don’t need to fight like thi--urkk!”
Regent considers making Gallant shit self, settles on having him puke in his helmet, classic.
Lisa couldn’t focus on the world. She leaned into her power, braincell-killing bastard that it was.
Gallant not one to vomit on a lady, leans to one side, opening helmet visor, hand off Tattletale-self’s head, doesn’t notice darkness encroaching, doesn’t notice Skitter emerging from darkness. Visor torn open, bugs descending on his face, swarming over eyes but not yet biting, covering skin of face to conceal identity, cape courtesy. Jams barrel of gun in his mouth, not as courteous.
Grue dropped the darkness. Skitter stood over Gallant, one hand wrenching his head back by the lip of his helmet’s visor until his back arched painfully to follow. Gallant still knelt above Tattletale, his hand clasped over Lisa’s wrists, keeping her from reaching for her utility belt. Not that she could do much of anything at that moment, lost in an ocean of vertigo.
“Stand down or I blow his fucking brains out!” Skitter amplified her voice with the swarm. The words were chosen to be maximally attention-getting, something to shock everyone out of the thick of fighting.
Heads turned.
Glory Girl, soaking wet from her lake dive, made an unsteady landing a healthy distance away. Her face was flushed with bug stings and fury, eyes red and tear-filled from where Skitter presumably stung the shit out of them. Her voice was ragged. “If you pull that trigger--” She hacked, coughed, and spat out a piece of something, maybe half a grasshopper. “--your teammates are gonna be finding bits of you in every tree for a mile out, you fucking psycho.”
Aegis’s voice was stony calm. “If you go through with this, there’s no going back, Skitter.”
Skitter stood tall. “We went past that point the moment Panacea broke the truce. I would consider the allies you keep.”
Aegis didn’t respond. She yanked harder on the lip of Gallant’s open faceplate. He winced as his head was forced even further back, almost fully facing Skitter behind him, his view of her upside-down.
Lisa could hear how hard Gallant was suddenly breathing, quiet but there. He seemed calm before, stoic in the face of a fight, a hero true to his name. But in the stillness, as emotions settled in his perception and clarified, he was shaken by what he saw in Skitter.
Skitter was perfectly still after repositioning her hostage. Nobody moved, hanging on her words as she spoke. “Amy is going to finish healing Tattletale, with no tricks or leveraging the situation. Then we go our separate ways. If she fucks around or makes me wait, I’m going to empty this clip into Gallant’s skull.”
Lisa’s little monster. She would almost be proud if she wasn’t busy dying.
Amy propped herself up where she laid on the ground near Grue, streaked with dirt, sweat and blood. Her face was twisted by pure, bright hatred, and she opened her mouth to reply, likely a refusal. Her sister interrupted her.
“Do it, Amy.” Glory Girl wheezed.
Amy’s defiance dropped to betrayal, frustration, almost fear. She craned her neck to look at her sister’s face. “But--”
Victoria didn’t need to raise her voice to overpower Amy. She spoke softly, firmly, and Amy’s resolve fell to pieces. “None of this is worth it. Do it.”
Amy was being even more of a pushover for her sister than normal. Perhaps a side effect of being so reliant on others’ help with her legs broken, an instinctive desire to placate her primary caretaker so she didn’t get abandoned in the woods. Maybe Amy deserved to be left in the woods with her thoughts for a while.
Lisa slipped in and out of clarity.
A short exchange later, Grue hoisted Amy closer. With Gallant half-kneeling over her, his muscles shaking with the strain of maintaining the uncomfortable position, it was an awkward shuffle to get Lisa onto her back, and when she met Amy’s eyes, her heart rate spiked.
Amy’s injured eye was blood red. Lines of scarlet tears marked her left cheek, and the hand that she clasped over Lisa’s face was smeared with blood. Her tone was flat as she said, “I have to turn her pain receptors back on to test the nerve connections while I work. I did the same thing to you at the hospital, Skitter. She might get loud.”
no no no she’s lying
Skitter nodded. “Do what you have to.”
They talked about her like she wasn’t there, wasn’t staring at them with eyes wide open. Lisa tried to speak, but Amy promptly pinched her vocal cords together and dulled her ability to move. Then she opened the floodgates on the ruin Lisa’s unfettered power had made of her.
The world went white. Though her throat could not form words, she could scream, and she found herself helpless to do anything else.
–
Lisa opened her eyes to a sunlight-dappled deerpath in the woods.
Taylor was astride Parian’s bear construct with Lisa in front of her, braced by Taylor’s arms on either side. On the stag ahead of them, Imp rode behind Parian, inspecting a pair of knobbly dice.
Rachel and the boys were nowhere in sight.
On Angelica, took circuitous route to--
She waved her power off like shooing a cat from a countertop, and it obeyed. She felt almost like herself again.
One of Taylor’s arms moved to wrap around her middle when Lisa stirred, holding her steady. “Hey, you awake?”
Lisa nodded, then leaned against Taylor’s front, not minding the hard edges of her chest armor that dug into Lisa’s back. The muggy summer heat made it almost unbearable to touch anyone, but the plating at Taylor’s shoulder was nice and cool against Lisa’s cheek as she let her head loll back.
Taylor’s breathing was steady, but Lisa watched the swarm that trailed them swell and lash with energy when Lisa leaned into her, examining their surroundings with renewed interest.
Taylor struggling with thoughts of other women; Views attraction as more proof of failed femininity, fears proving bullies right, ashamed of this. Secretly relishes platonic excuses to touch Rachel and Lisa-self, feels duplicitous, ashamed of this. Mortification if ever acknowledged by Tattletale-self. Colloquial designation: ‘closet case’.
Lisa would tell her brain to fuck off, but she only just got it back. She broke the silence, something to distract. “Why are there splinters in my hair?”
“Glory Girl threw a tree at us after we let Gallant go. I don’t think she really wanted to hit us, just make a statement.”
“Hmm.” They rode on for a beat in silence. “You know what I miss?”
“What?” Taylor glanced down, but struggled to get a good look at Lisa’s face with her mask’s limited peripheral vision.
“Plumbing. I would strangle something for a cool shower and a hot bath right now.”
Taylor snorted softly. “You’re talking like we’re in a foxhole, about to be blown up.”
Lisa smiled. “Play with me, here. If you could have one thing from home, what would it be?”
Taylor considered the question.
Dad. Worked so hard to get to an okay place again, lie of having construction job in villain territory accepted, had lunches once a week without fail; Taylor picturing Dad waiting at table thinking he was stood up because alternative is worse; Dad asking around every shelter, asking friends, coworkers, visiting villain territory out of desperation, being caught out by one of Skitter’s enemies who have run rampant in her absence, robbed and beaten or worse.
“Books, for sure.”
The longer they went without rescue, the worse things would get. Lisa had to warn the others what the heroes might do if they had the opportunity, and she would. But for now, she shut her eyes and tuned out the noise.
--
When Lily moved to Brockton Bay, it had been intended as a temporary measure, a way to shore up their roster of heroes after Leviathan’s attack. When Shadow Stalker unexpectedly transferred out, hefty incentives were offered to keep Lily on board. Only one incentive in the Bay mattered to her, and it wasn’t anything the PRT could give. So she stayed.
Over the past year she spent in Brockton Bay, she’d gotten along well enough with her fellow Wards, and even graduated on to the Protectorate with a few of them. But getting in on an established team dynamic could be difficult, and Lily had to admit she didn’t try as hard as she could to become friends. Now, as the heroes returned to camp after the disaster at the oak, Lily felt the full weight of her disconnect.
Dennis pulled off his helmet and slumped down onto a log near the unlit firepit. He kept bouncing his leg and running a hand through his sweat-slick hair, brimming with a fury that had nowhere to go.
Victoria landed across from him with Amy in her arms. She set her sister down in a chair they’d built from sturdy branches with a place to prop her legs up. She didn’t meet Amy’s eyes, even when Amy took her hand to heal her.
As the others loped into camp, they gravitated toward a seat around the fire, but Victoria remained standing, arms crossed tight over her chest. Where Dennis’s anger weighed him down, she burned from within, brimming with a restlessness that could suck all the oxygen from the room.
Dean returned from washing his face in the cabin. He approached Victoria, arms open at his sides, and she flew to him, wrapping him in a hug that left his feet hanging in the air. Amy stared at the pair, expression neutral, and looked away a moment later. Dean rubbed Victoria’s back, murmuring words of comfort Lily wasn’t privy to. She gave them their privacy and settled down at a roughshod table by the firepit to do some gear maintenance.
Lily found comfort in laying out her equipment and taking stock, checking each bolt and dart in her kit to make sure everything was in order. She frowned as she examined the state of her bolts. Most were in good condition, but Hellhound’s dog had broken two, and a third bolt had a split in the carbon fiber shaft that could turn to deadly splinters if it shattered during a fight.
She and Sophia didn’t like each other much, but their shared equipment woes had seen them working together often over the past two weeks. Lily found Sophia more tolerable when there weren’t any street crooks for Sophia to maim in front of her, and Sophia for her part seemed more subdued, less eager to challenge the others than Lily remembered. Lily hoped Sophia had done some self reflection while she’d been away, but she wouldn’t hold her breath.
Lily examined one of Sophia’s failed experiments after she finished checking over her own gear. Sophia had spent hours carving the piece of wood into a pretty decent bow shape, but when she tried to string it with a length of dried sinew Amy provided, the wood snapped. Sophia sulked in the woods for a long time after that.
Carlos landed among the loose ring of heroes. His torso was lumpy in places, and Lily tried to ignore the way he pushed at the lumps, working broken ribs and displaced organs back into place like he were adjusting the belt on his pants. “No signs of them circling back into our territory. Licking their wounds, most likely. So, debrief?”
“What the hell was that, Amy?” Victoria smashed apart any hopes Lily had of this being a calm, productive discussion. “What did you even do to her?”
Amy’s eyes were wide. She struggled to prop herself up in her chair, throwing Victoria’s energy right back at her. “What did I do? You’re the one who gave her a concussion! Dad was supposed to be a one-time thing, I don’t work on brains because shit like that can happen! It rarely ever looks good to someone on the outside looking in!”
“If you had more practice with it like I’ve been saying for years, that wouldn’t have happened in the first place!”
“Are you forgetting the part where they had a fucking knife on me the whole time? Or that they attacked first? If you’re trying to say that any of this is my fault when I’ve been telling you to be more careful for YEARS--”
Dean cut Amy off. “Woah! Let’s pump the brakes.” When the sisters Dallon whipped their heads around in perfect sync to glare at him, he raised his hands in surrender. “I don’t think we should blame each other for what happened down there.”
Dennis spoke up. The sun was sinking low in the sky and his face was cast in long shadows, making him look older than he was. “Amy’s right. They had Imp ready to kill her if she couldn’t fix Tattletale the way they wanted. Plus Hellhound telling her dog to attack. They breached the truce first.”
Amy crossed her arms. “Thank you.”
Carlos sat on a stump. He grunted softly as he popped his femur back into alignment. “What happened up there while you were healing her? Why did Tattletale faint like that?”
“The damage was worse than I thought. Her power kept going off the more I worked on her. It made a feedback loop that almost outpaced my ability to heal it. I tried to place her in a brief coma to reduce the stress on her brain, but I didn’t lock her limbs in place and she dropped harder than I expected. You saw the rest.” She gestured to her injured eye.
Lily watched Dean’s eyes settle on Amy, studying her. His expression was perfectly neutral, the picture of an active and sympathetic listener, but his gaze didn’t waver.
Carlos nodded, accepting the explanation without question. “I saw you were talking. What about?”
Amy picked at the frayed edge of a tear in her leggings. “Just some questions to test her cognition and make sure everything was firing correctly while I repaired the connections. Her power was scrambling her head, so most of it was nonsense.”
Carlos shifted uncomfortably. “And what we saw when you finished the job…?”
Amy shrugged. “Like I said, healing doesn’t always look or sound pretty. I had to test the newly connected nerve endings. When that was done, I knocked her out so she wouldn’t have to feel the rest of it.”
Lily tried not to dwell on the memory. Tattletale screamed for what her power told her was only twenty-eight seconds, but it had felt much longer. It wasn’t the kind of scream that came from the chest, but the stifled half-groan, half-wail of a wounded animal unable to open its mouth fully, her face terribly still. Then she was silent until Amy was done.
Lily watched Dean’s brow furrow. He must not have enjoyed the memory either, especially considering his powers. Tattletale was a pain in the ass, sure, but Lily didn’t relish her suffering.
Victoria’s jaw was hard. “Sorry, Amy. I shouldn’t get on your case. I know you did the best you could.” Amy made a dismissive sound, waving the apology off. Victoria’s expression softened. She wrapped an arm about Amy’s shoulders and squeezed, and Amy let a little smile peek through her disaffected mask.
Carlos leaned forward in his seat, elbows on his knees. “We have to rely on and trust each other if we’re gonna make it home. It’s not often that a team gets stranded with the enemy like this, but there are protocols.”
Victoria straightened. She and Dean were always much more gung ho about knowing the finer details of PRT protocol than Lily was. Dean said, “Nonhostility agreements are acceptable if resources and space are abundant enough for us to avoid one another. We can deliver that message to them, then go no-contact until rescue arrives.”
Lily thought it was a reasonable move, though she was perhaps biased. She glanced around the firepit to see who agreed with Dean. Tough crowd.
Dennis scowled. “So we just roll over and let them do that shit to us? Skitter’s gun was tickling your tonsils not even an hour ago, dude!”
Dean looked to Victoria for backup, but she didn’t seem convinced herself. She gave him an apologetic half-shrug, and Dean sighed. “It’s not just about me or what I want. I think our best option is to avoid them. We stay on our side of the lake, they stay on theirs, and when we get picked up and the villains are in custody, we can give a scathing report of all the fucked up shit they did.”
He smirked, eyes twinkling with humor that didn’t quite fit his words. “If it’ll cheer you up, Dennis, you can tell Miss Militia all about how Skitter beat me up and fed me a gunmetal sandwich in front of my girlfriend.”
Victoria huffed through her nose, running her hands through Dean’s helmet hair to fluff it up a bit. “Don’t even joke about that. Maybe when we’re out of here.” Dean glanced back and squeezed her hand.
Dennis snorted at the joke, but didn’t back down. “I’m just saying, if we tell them we want to make nice and ignore each other, they’ll take that as a chance to catch us off-guard.”
Dean squeezed Victoria’s hand a little tighter. “What reason do they have to attack us? To steal wool and deer milk? I’m still not sold on the flavor by the way.”
Amy threw her hands up in open frustration. “How about stealing me! Skitter and Tattletale tried to drag me away in the middle of the fight. What’s to stop them from kidnapping me while I can’t walk, then torturing me or using Regent to puppet me? As soon as we have something they want, they’ll attack us to get to it.”
Amy paused, then added, “And the deer milk tastes exactly like normal milk. I’m not changing it.”
“It’s a little watery,” Christopher muttered. He was in one of his moods again, trying to figure out a way to recharge the batteries on his tech without cannibalizing most of it. No success so far.
“We were a skim milk family growing up,” Victoria said, by way of explanation.
Sophia was knapping arrowheads in the flint pit near the forest’s edge. Lily saw her eyes roll so hard she looked briefly possessed.
“Can we get back to the part about me getting kidnapped and tortured please? Can we focus on that?”
“Sorry Ames.” Victoria glanced between Dean and Carlos, her expression all business. “I’m with Amy on this. Skitter’s aggressive as shit. We have to consider the possibility of one of the Undersiders getting sick or injured in a way they can’t fix on their own. They won’t just sit around and wait to die. They’ll come after us, hard, and leverage whatever gets Amy to fix them. We already saw that today.”
Dean’s expression was almost pleading. “What if Amy gives that to them, then? Just enough healing to let them function, so they have no reason to steal it. We wouldn’t be enabling them to commit any crimes, just survive. We still don’t know what’s out here, the signs of--”
Victoria looked suddenly incensed. “What, so they can stipulate that if Amy’s neutral, she should use her powers for whatever they ask for and if she doesn’t, then the truce is off again? Why are we negotiating with them at all? They’re the enemy! They made that perfectly clear when Hellhound told her dog to attack the instant she didn’t like what she was seeing! They aren’t reasonable!”
Amy’s expression was dark. “I’m not going to be a bargaining chip so we can play nice with fucking murderers. If we don’t strike first, they’re going to hit us when we aren’t expecting it, and it’s going to hurt. If they try to use Regent on me, I won’t hold back, and I don’t want to catch anyone in the crossfire.”
She stared at Dean, eyes burning. “The only way I’m healing them again is if they turn themselves in. Full and complete surrender, with collateral, so when we’re rescued, they can’t escape. If they don’t accept those terms, they’re welcome to die to infection.”
The gathered heroes went still, their idle crafts and post-combat routines put on pause. They glanced among one another. The moment passed, and Carlos asked, “What collateral?”
Amy gripped the armrests on her chair and sat back, tracing the whorls of wood at the end of a branch with her fingertips. She looked to the sheep-deer in their pen. “A time limit.”
--
As the sun dipped low over the mountains, Flechette stepped away from camp. She told the others she was going to bathe in the creek, and she walked in that direction at first, then turned and hiked east a ways.
A sizable finger of the distant mountains bisected the northern valley. Along that ridge, Flechette followed landmarks to a small waterfall tucked into an alcove, surrounded by pines and berry bushes. A private oasis, hard to find on accident.
Behind a smattering of bushes, set into the face of a tall boulder, Flechette found a natural shelf protected from rain that had pieces of charcoal laying within. On a broad, flat stone, she wrote something down with the charcoal, set it on its face, then stepped away.
From her perch high in the trees, Shadow Stalker watched Flechette disappear back the way she came, toward the bathing spot closer to camp. When the coast was clear, Sophia drifted down, light as air, and materialized. She flipped the stone over, read the message, and cursed to herself. “Fucking rat.”
The message read: [Sorry abt fight today. Meet @ sunpeak tmrw? Need to talk.]
Sophia glanced westward. From this angle, the sun was framed perfectly between two taller peaks of the mountains in that direction, and right below it, the sun was perched atop the tip of a third.
A time, a place, and a someone. She suspected she knew exactly who Flechette planned to meet. Now it was a matter of leveraging it.