I woke with a smile on my face.
I got up and showered, humming. The spiders in the crawlspace weaving sections for my costume hummed along, and when I found my toes tapping I noticed that the spiders were tapping along too. I dressed and pulled the curtains — the sun was shining in through the window, and life was good. Not perfect, of course. I wasn't looking forward to seeing my father's headstone set beside my mothers, but I could imagine that event now.
I'd dreamt of my parents last night. Dancing together — well, what my mother called dancing, given her two left feet. Holding each other, and swaying, eyes half-closed. And when they looked over to me they smiled. Dad had never been the same after Mom died, and for all the way they would just hug each other in public had embarrassed me at the time, now… now I smiled to think of it. To think of them. I had no idea if there was an afterlife — though some theologians were citing Glaistig Uaine as definitive proof — but I liked to hope they were together again.
Happy again.
And now I was crying and laughing both.
Saturdays had been the best day of the week for me for almost a year and a half, simply because I wouldn't be going in to school. Today was shaping up to be an unusually good Saturday. There were still problems to deal with — Oni Lee had a rampage planned, and I was probably at the top of Lung's to-kill list — but there was also an enormous sense of release. Of completion.
I lay back on the bed and kicked my legs idly.
I could actually join the Wards now. There were a lot of things I wanted to do: ABB was still a major power, and I hadn't begun to touch E88, but somehow the idea of a month off wasn't intolerable any more. I could use the training and practice, too. It hadn't even been a week since I'd first gone out, and I knew I was a novice at this. I could be better. I'd have to be. Even the idea of dealing with Sophia didn't sting as much as it had before — I guess Lung had recalibrated my idea of what fear was. The idea of Sophia trying to bully me just made me grin, with extra teeth.
There was still the issue of whether she'd deliberately given my name to the ABB or not — most Tinkers had minor Thinker powers associated, and even those that didn't were perfectly capable of adding two and two and getting Pi… but I bet the Protectorate had all kinds of lie detectors available. If she had, well — the Birdcage was a terrible place. If she hadn't, putting her through a serious interrogation session would just be a harmless prank.
The smile widened.
There were other things I had to do, a different list. One of thanksgiving. Several people had gone out of their way to help me pull this off. Without Panacea, I'd still be in a hospital, or dead. Without Gallant and Clockblocker's willingness to bend the rules for me, I'd be in a padded room somewhere with a PRT psychologist, unable to do anything. Without Lisa's gift of money, I wouldn't have seen a chance to get free. Even Purity had helped, though her motives weren't exactly pure: without her repeated use of overwhelming force, would Bakuda have called in that extra security? And that was the break that led me to her. That let me get her.
I was smiling so hard it hurt.
Purity, I had a meeting with tonight. At the very least, I could warn her — through a clone, and from a safe distance — that someday, I'd be coming for the E88. Surprising her just didn't seem like a fair reply for the trust she'd extended, for the condolences she'd offered. And Lisa — somehow I thought that I wouldn't have many chances to thank her after I joined the Wards. The heroes, I could thank afterward. Well! There's today's plan. Tomorrow, the Wards.
I thought about rolling over to dig through my backpack, but instead pulled a small swarm in through the crack in the floorboard and had them undo the toggles on one of the side pockets of my backpack — I usually left it unzipped for just this reason. Actually lifting it to the bed would take a lot more bugs than I'd brought in, but if I linked a thread of silk to it like so… I jerked my hand across my chest, and then held it up to catch the cellphone. Having a bug on what I was trying to catch made things… simple.
Like trying to touch your own nose.
I repeated the trick with the cellphone battery and let my bugs clear away the silk while I fitted one into the other. A small team of flying bugs presented me with the slip of paper I'd found, and I dialed the number labeled 'Lunch!'
"Taylor?" She sounded as if she'd been asleep.
"Lisa! I know the note said to call you for lunch, but I was thinking brunch. Waffles, and bacon — you know the Waffle House down by the boardwalk? See you there in… an hour?"
"What?"
"Great!"
I hung up. A lesson from happier days with Emma: assume they'll get out of bed to do something, don't give them a chance to say no, and they will show. Of course, they might be late… but in this case, that just meant more pancakes for me while I waited. And you know what? I could live with that.
···---···
The Waffle House was one of the few restaurants open this morning — plenty of others were still dealing with the loss of refrigeration from the still ongoing power outages, but they were famous for their disaster response planning, and a generator was buzzing in the back. Not even Endbringer attacks (well, Simurgh excepted), would shut down one of their restaurants for more than a few days, if that. Accordingly, it was bustling with noise and people. I'd gotten there first, as expected, and was busy finding out whether waffles were best with butter and syrup, or strawberries and whipped cream (provisional answer: more testing required!) when someone sat down in the booth with me.
Not Lisa — a man. Young, tall, very dark skin, chiseled jaw… and fit. Cornrowed hair. His voice, when he spoke, was deep and even. "I'm a friend of Lisa's. Call me James."
I blinked.
"Well, any friend of Lisa's — want some waffles? I'm buying."
While he studied the menu, I thought. Why would Lisa have sent someone else? Was she called away for some urgent heist, or something? My prepaid cellphone still had the battery in, and I had insects on it: I would have felt it if it had vibrated. She hadn't called. So… why would someone like her surprise me with a strange young man?
Was this a blind date?
He ordered an omelette, with lots of extras and a plate of bacon, and then steepled his hands and looked me in the eye.
"We're on a limited buddy system after last night."
I nodded. Not a blind date, thank goodness. And if he's part of the Undersiders, that would make him… Grue. Probably. "I saw the blackout."
He nodded back. "All kinds of rumors on the streets. Bakuda tried to kill Lung in jail, but he broke out instead…"
I shook my head. "That one's false."
He blinked, and we paused while his omelette and bacon arrived, and another waffle arrived for me.
Between bites, he continued. "The official word is that Lung and Bakuda had a fight for leadership of the ABB — Lung won, but Bakuda's a sore loser. If that's not it…" he looked at me for a bit.
Lisa slid in beside him, and he moved over to make room for her.
"Taylor! You're looking… surprisingly well." She had deep circles under her eyes, but the smile was real. She promptly flagged down a waiter, asking for a pot of coffee and a stack of pancakes. A stack happened to be coming off the grill right then, and she was served less than a minute later.
Five minutes of quiet eating later, the discussion resumed with Lisa asking why I'd asked for brunch.
I shrugged. "Celebration? To say thanks? The money you gave me made a difference — gave me an alternative."
Lisa squinted a little, before smiling widely. "So you got Bakuda!"
I smiled, and James glanced back and forth between us.
Lisa elbowed him and said "Well, that tells us which rumors to believe. The one where E88 has gone to war with the ABB?"
"Kind of. I pointed Purity at some ABB targets — which reminds me, their drug warehouse had a lot of cash and should I call that 'bank' number? I thought a fight might weaken both of them."
James nodded. "Smart."
Lisa waved a hand in the air. "The Number Man is a really good banker, and very discreet. Call the number; he'll take care of you. The one where Bakuda set off bombs all over the city as a distraction, and then Oni Lee broke Lung out?"
"I think so."
"The one where Lung blames everything on 'Skitter'?"
I blinked. "I guess I see why he thought I called myself that."
"The one where you took off his right hand?"
"I threw one of Bakuda's explosives at him, he caught it."
"The one where you took off his dick?"
"Spiders."
Lisa clapped her hands over mouth, trying and failing to suppress a laughing fit. James' face didn't move a millimeter — though I did feel him cross his legs.
"He'll regenerate!"
At that, James did react: one eyebrow rose. Lisa had her face down on the table, pounding it with her fist. Me? I was mortified, and failing to shrink out of visibility. After a bit, she straightened up.
"I think we'll just assume the one where he wants you dead more than anyone else in the world is… also true. The one where you wiped out the whole ABB with more bombs?"
I blinked. "What?"
Lisa sobered up. "If that wasn't you, then… Bakuda had a deadman switch."
"How many?"
"I don't know yet… no one really knows yet. Between the bombs she set off to cut power and create disruption, the way most of the ABB went pop!, and the collateral damage from both of those… thousands, at least. The ABB has almost ceased to exist as an organization, as far as anyone can tell. But Lung's alive, and Oni Lee has spent the morning tearing up E88 territory, so…"
Thousands? Dead? I should have thought. Of course Bakuda would have a deadman switch: if she was implanting bombs in her subordinates, she'd have to make sure they didn't simply kill her in her sleep. And… how many had she implanted? Gang members, sure, but also random civilians. The conversation with Mr. Park hadn't taken more than a few minutes, and that was with her lingering over it to explain everything, to make him fear her more. Had she wanted hostages? Agents to place her other bombs for her? An army? How many could she have gotten to? The spot checks in that apartment complex had shown scars in the right place on everyone I'd checked.
The explosions I'd heard behind me as I made my escape hadn't just been leftovers from her workshop cooking off. And that was just one property.
I stood up.
"Please excuse me for a moment."
I walked to the bathroom, not even seeing where I was walking, and proceeded to bend over a toilet and throw up the morning's worth of waffles and syrup. Then I dry heaved for a while. Eventually I felt a hand on my hair, pulling it back out of the way.
Lisa.
"It's not your fault, you know. She made the bombs, she set them up to go off if she died."
I shook my head. "It was obvious that she'd do that — she had to. If a real hero had beaten her… they'd take her alive. Bring in Tinkers to take them out, disarm them. Everyone would still be alive." I'd wondered if the Protectorate let the big gangs be because they thought the price of taking them out was just too high. Now I wondered if they had been right. So many dead, because… because of what I'd done.
A pause, while Lisa kept brushing loose hairs out of the way.
"If you'd waited, she'd have more bombs in more people by now, right?"
I thought about Mr. Park and his son… and the fact Bakuda had planned to have the 'rest of his family' implanted by morning. "Some."
"You stopped this early — kept it from getting worse. And you've been at this for what, less than a week now? You'll get better."
Better? I'd been careless, and people had died. I'd learn. And next time? I wouldn't let things get this far. I stood up straight, hands fisted beside me. Lisa turned my head, checked each eye, and then stepped back.
"After you."
I walked out of the bathroom to find James looming in front of the door and an 'out of order' sign, arms crossed. He fell in with us as I returned to the table and sat down. Lisa tapped James on the shoulder, and then spoke.
"I think you need some time to think. We'll do lunch again soon."
She looked at me, smiled a little, then nodded once and turned toward the exit. James lingered a moment.
"Two things. They hit your family? They had it coming. All of it. And what you did — it's a rumor, now, but that's a still lot of rep. Use it."
I blinked. "Rep?"
"Reputation. What people know will happen if you throw down. The more rep you have, the less you need to prove it."
I tilted my head.
"You think I work out just for fun? Every time I walk home, the E88 idiots think 'wait for someone easier.' You paid for this. Use it."
He nodded at me, and turned to go after Lisa.
I sat there, a cup of coffee in my hands, and let my thoughts drift. What he'd said… it fit with Lung and Bakuda's idea of how fear was born of certainty and uncertainty — the certainty of loss, uncertainty as to the form it would take — but turned that understanding to a better purpose.
Maybe ten minutes later, maybe twenty, the waitress came by with the bill. She winked at me, and underneath the bill I found a wrinkled pamphlet on how to deal with bulimia, inscribed with 'We've all been there! ♡'
I tipped her anyway.
···---···
I hadn't really done anything in the afternoon. I'd spent it walking up and down the Boardwalk, often down on the beach itself, looking at the ocean and thinking. Six days ago, I'd gone out to try and be a hero. Now? Thousands dead and injured. Dad, dead. Set against that… Bakuda, also dead. Most of the ABB, dead. Was that what being a hero was like? Trying to make a difference, and then trying to live with how far short you fell?
My thoughts weren't really going anywhere, and most of the time I was just wandering in a daze. I had clear memories of skipping stone after stone out into the ocean, of watching some teenagers play volleyball, of sitting by while a stocky girl played fetch with her three dogs. Each of those moments might have been minutes; each of those moments might have been hours.
Night fell, and my steps led me to the old Transatlantic Shipping building. It was locked, but mostly that didn't matter when you could open it from the inside with a swarm clone, or pour the tiniest insects in the area into the keyhole to move the tumblers. Still needed a file or something to turn the lock, but I'd had one of those deep in my backpack next to my toothbrush. Looking at the crushed insects on this one, I put it in one of the 'tool' pouches, and made a note to get another one for grooming. Maybe I would have had to worry about alarms, normally, but with the building empty for a Sunday and the power still mostly down it wasn't a real issue.
I made my way up the stairs to the roof access door, and then sat on the landing one floor down, pulling my knees to my chest and wrapping my arms around them. This was as good a place to wait as any, and better than most, since I'd be alone. And for the meeting itself, well… Purity probably wouldn't waste time destroying the building since she'd already seen that her beams didn't do anything to stop me reforming swarm clones as necessary. I gathered extra swarms on the roof anyway.
Watching the clock in school had been a brutally slow way to pass time. Having insects on the hands of my little mechanical watch meant I always knew the time as soon as I thought about wanting to know it. I thought it was going to be a slow hour waiting for Purity.
It was.
8:59 and she landed; I formed a swarm clone.
"What's the target for tonight?"
My clone shook its head.
"No target."
"The lead on Bakuda?"
"Found her last night. Your strikes made her call in extra security — I followed them right to her."
Purity's soft light rippled oddly — making out facial expressions was really hard without any contrast, but that might have been a smile.
"All those explosions?"
I winced.
"She kept the gang's loyalty with implanted explosives on a deadman switch. With her gone… boom."
Purity was perfectly still for almost a minute, head lowered, before she spoke again.
"Lung? Oni Lee?"
"Wounded — but he'll heal — and sent to tear up E88 territory respectively."
"We need a way for you to get in touch with me when you find them."
My clone's head wobbled back and forth.
"I don't know what I'm doing next. I wanted to tell you thanks… and to tell you that, someday, I mean to come for Empire Eighty Eight too."
Another change in the light around her face.
"I can't say you'd be wrong to fight them." Her voice was slow, reflective.
"Them?"
"I quit two years ago. H–They wanted power, to make a bigger difference. I thought what we were doing was making things worse. So I went off on my own, and fought the gangs."
As far as everything I'd ever read went, Purity was still E88's heaviest enforcer. Two years?
"But not E88."
"It's… hard. To fight people you've fought beside, people you've had drinks with. And there have always been other things to do. Like the ABB."
I couldn't really disagree with the end of that.
"I've spent over a year, harrying them every chance I got. I was starting to worry that nothing I did would make a difference. This… this made a difference."
I wasn't really sure how I was supposed to feel about that. On the one hand, I knew exactly how that felt: I really wanted to feel like I was making a difference. That it hadn't all been a waste. On the other hand, I was being praised by a white supremacist for indirectly causing the deaths of a few thousand Asians.
Purity moved her foot in the loose gravel of the roof for a bit.
"There's a number written there — call it to reach me. And… thank you."
With that, she vanished upwards, one star among the others.
I climbed to the roof and went out on it. Another corner of my backpack had my notebook, with all the notes on the ABB members I'd been tracing. I added the number to a new page, put it back in the backpack, erased the number in the gravel and lay down spread-eagled on the roof, with my hood for a pillow.
There were a lot more stars visible tonight than I was used to.
I looked up at them for a very long time.