88

Chapter 88

A Darker Path

Part Eighty-Eight: Special Delivery

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

PRIVATE MESSAGE

To: Panacea

From: Atropos

Subject: Gonna need you in about half an hour

Could you please be alone in your bedroom in about half an hour? Bring the leg of ham that's going to get delivered to your front door in five minutes. You'll need it for biomass.

PRIVATE MESSAGE

To: Atropos

From: Panacea

Subject: Re: Gonna need you in about half an hour

What? Why? Who have you hurt?

PRIVATE MESSAGE

To: Panacea

From: Atropos

Subject: Re: Re: Gonna need you in about half an hour

Nobody. You'll see. Also, prep for a mess.

Monday Afternoon, March 14 2011

New York PRT Building,

Shebang

Alice stood on the roof of the building alongside Director Piggot. Accompanying them was a Trooper Ballinger, whose main reason for being there was apparently the fact that he was over six feet tall and built like the proverbial brick outhouse. Alice had a lot of equipment to take along with her, and it seemed he'd been tapped as her pack-horse for the time being.

She didn't actually have a problem with this. One of the downsides of being a Tinker, as far as she could figure, was the sheer amount of equipment she had to lug around with her if she was trying to analyse and defuse esoteric energies. With regards to Clockblocker (she still had trouble believing it wasn't the name of some joke character on a cartoon show), he'd been able to come to her, but this wasn't possible for the next stage of the project, so she and her equipment had to leave the lab. Thus, Ballinger.

One of the hidden advantages of being in the Protectorate, she was discovering, was the number of minions (read: PRT troopers) available to fetch and carry for them, if necessary. Trooper Ballinger didn't seem to have a problem with it either, especially since all indications were that the job would not involve going up against hostile capes. Alice certainly didn't intend to go into harm's way any time soon, at least until she had a better handle on her capabilities.

The helicopter coming in from the north slowed as it neared the building, then flared preparatory to landing. It didn't look big enough to comfortably carry Alice and her luggage as well as the Director and Ballinger, but appearances had been known to be deceiving. Though why the Director might have called in a chopper from out of town, Alice wasn't sure.

Its wheels touched down, then it sank onto its suspension as the engines began to spool down and the rotors slowed. The side door popped open and a red-clad cape stepped out, followed by a familiar teenage figure. After Clockblocker came a tall black man in a stylised martial-arts outfit, then finally a kid in a pastel-hued pseudo-military costume, complete with scaled-down military-style helmet. Alice frowned; she wasn't sure who she'd been expecting, but it wasn't this.

"Director Piggot," the cape in red said with a broad grin. "Good to see you again. How's life treating you in the Big Apple?"

"I'm getting by, Assault, thank you very much." Piggot even gave the man a brief smile as she replied. "Tenebrae, Miss Medic, this is Shebang. Shebang: Assault, Tenebrae, Miss Medic."

"Hi!" gushed the girl who had to be Miss Medic. "You're gonna be turning off Grey Boy loops? That's so cool!"

"Well, we're going to be working at it," Alice corrected her, though the enthusiasm was infectious. "Don't know if we'll make it on the first try." She turned her head and addressed Director Piggot. "I'm sorry, but I don't understand. What exactly is going on here? I thought this was only a test run."

"It is." Director Piggot seemed unfazed by her query. "Assault is the Protectorate volunteer to escort the Wards on this mission. Tenebrae is Miss Medic's caregiver; it's in her Wards contract that he escorts her on any missions like this. Clockblocker is along in case you manage to actually free the subject today; his job will be to freeze the freed subject so Miss Medic can get a good look at them and diagnose what needs to be fixed. Miss Medic is along to save anyone whose life needs saving."

"Oh, so that's what I'm here for," Clockblocker said in tones of enlightenment. "I got told I was needed again, and I was like 'didn't she already figure out how to break my power?'."

Alice ignored the interjection. "But what if I don't bust the loop this time? They'll have come all this way for nothing." And I'll look like an idiot in front of them, she didn't quite say out loud.

"Not for nothing." Assault raised his finger. "When you're designing new and exciting ways to blow up the scenery, you've got fire extinguishers and stuff standing by, right? Just in case?"

"Usually, yeah," she admitted. "But what … oh." Belatedly, she realised what he was getting at.

"Yeah. 'Oh.'" He clicked his tongue as he 'fired' dual finger-guns at her. "Better to have the people on hand and not need them than not have them and need them. Besides, getting the Wards out and about every now and again gives them a sense of purpose and reduces disciplinary problems." From the flat, uninflected tone he put on, Alice got the impression that he was either quoting or paraphrasing from a manual of regulations.

"Not that Miss Medic has any ongoing disciplinary issues," Tenebrae noted.

Assault nodded. "You're not wrong there. Kid's about as buttoned-down as you can get."

"I'm glad to hear it." Gathering the capes in by eye, Director Piggot herded them toward the second helipad, while Trooper Ballinger followed along behind with the cases full of Alice's equipment. "Strider will be arriving shortly, to convey you to the Grey Boy victim we believe will be the best test case for Shebang's attentions. I won't be coming along, so Assault will be in command of this mission. I look forward to your after-action reports."

"And that's … it?" Alice flinched as the flat crack heralded the appearance of the teleporter on the helipad. "We're just going to go and do it?"

"Would you prefer six months of paperwork back and forth before we decided to go ahead?" Piggot's tone was both rhetorical and sarcastic. "Go. Shoo. Make me proud."

Atropos

Cherie watched as I pulled on a protective nitrile glove, then put one of my spare set of Atropos gloves on over the top of them. "That's a level of protection you don't normally take, even when you're handling the stuff Riley made to kill powers with," she observed. "Should I be worried?"

"Not particularly." I flexed my fingers inside the double layered glove and decided it would do. "This latest concoction I got her to throw together is nastier than the other stuff, and I'll have exactly zero room for error. My power says I need the glove."

"Nastier?" Cherie didn't sound thrilled to hear that. "How the hell is it worse than the other stuff?"

"Because it doesn't kill your powers." I grinned at her look of incomprehension. "Tell you later."

Leaving the shears and the pistol on the sofa—I wasn't going to need them—I set up the next few jumps. They were going to take pinpoint timing, but that was fine; my power was good at pinpoint timing. The not so fine aspect was what I was about to put myself through.

The things I do to maintain my brand.

Finally, I pulled on my mask and put the hat on at a jaunty angle. I knew damn well Cherie could read what bits and pieces of emotion I let slip through, but I wasn't giving her enough to realise what I was about to do.

Touching two fingers to the brim of my hat, I stepped backward into the smoky doorway as it formed behind me. The living room vanished, replaced by a scrubby hillside overlooking farmland. Abandoned farmland no doubt, entirely due to the imminent arrival of Sleeper, but farmland all the same.

It was colder than Brockton Bay here, more so than could be accounted for by the fact that it was four or five degrees farther north. A chilly wind swept across the hillside, blowing my long-coat dramatically sideways as I looked westward toward the oncoming storm generated by Sleeper. It was hard to focus on, mainly because part of the visual effect was generated within the optic nerve without first going through the retina, which was just one of the little tricks his power liked to inflict on the world.

Right then, the ongoing violation of space-time manifesting in our limited three-dimensional perception as a 'storm' was five miles across, and he had no physical body inside it. It was his fastest mode of movement, maybe two hundred miles per hour, but it also tired him. It wasn't long before he'd have to let his real body regain its form, and he'd stop to rest.

This would be my cue to go say hi.

In the meantime, I had a note to treat with Riley's newest concoction. I couldn't just put the stuff on it that killed powers … well, I could, but his powers were literally keeping him alive. Without them to keep his bullet-lacerated brainmeats in a (mostly) workable state, he would go into seizures within a few seconds, be in a coma in twenty, and be dead in five minutes.

I'd thought about bringing in Riley or Amy to fix his brain injury, but neither one was an option if he had to be forcibly depowered first. Amy was still emotionally fragile; fixing a brain injury was one thing, but doing it for a mass murderer whose vital signs were crashing hard at the same time might be a bit much for her. While Riley would likely be willing to take it on, the window of opportunity was too narrow. By the time she got to where she could start fixing stuff, a lot of what was him would be irretrievably gone.

It was true that killing Sleeper (accidentally or otherwise) would absolutely cement my rep as Can Actually Kill Anything (Yes, Really; Watch Me), but I didn't want to End him without actually giving him a chance to turn things around first. The act of killing still didn't bother me; I was just as pragmatic about it as I had been since getting my powers. However, Dragon had made a good point about not only being reliable, but having the appearance of reliability.

There were quite a few national powers currently observing Sleeper's progress, most of whom had spotted me already. If I just went in there and ganked him (in Cherie's inimitable phrasing) while they were watching, it would be a data point for them, but in the wrong direction.

It wouldn't matter that Sleeper was someone they all wanted dead anyway. If I was seen apparently violating my self-imposed strictures, someone would inevitably take it as evidence that I'd been paid a bounty under the table to do it, and the understanding I'd carefully crafted with the international community would take a huge step backward.

Very shortly afterward, I'd get a diplomatically worded offer of a few hundred million to arrange the End of someone like Moord Nag. The money might vary; so, too, might the target. But they'd start with large amounts, pointing me at people who were very much a negative influence on society. Bit by bit, the amounts would decrease, ramping up only when they wanted me to kill someone who wasn't all that bad, but who was a hindrance to their plans.

Well, this was the meat of at least one proposal that had been laid out by a governmental body based less than five hundred miles from Brockton Bay. Human nature being what it was, there were others of a similar nature being fostered farther afield. Yeah, good luck with that. I couldn't force people to stop being assholes, but I could absolutely refuse to fall in line with their designs for me.

So long as they indulged in no more than wishful thinking, I was happy to let them waste their time and effort trying to figure out how to move the first step out of the planning stage. The moment any of them tried to actually do something about it, I would be paying them a visit and bringing my good friend Mr Pump Action Shotgun along to air his opinions about Kneecaps and Privileges.

But it wasn't going to happen today, or any day soon. Sleeper was going to survive the next twenty-four hours, because the concoction I was applying to the note wouldn't take effect until then, if at all.

Of course, me just delivering the note and surviving would also add to my ongoing legend, so there was that.

It was still going to suck, though.

The eye-twisting storm slowed its onward advance when its leading edge was barely five yards from me, as my power had calculated. I finished brushing the liquid onto the note, then put the cap back on the container and folded my hand around the note. This was why I had needed the extra glove; my regular one wouldn't protect my hand well enough, and I had to maintain a hold on it for reasons which would soon become evident.

I moved toward the edge of the storm with measured steps; between one step and the next, the first teleport kicked in. As it did so, I let myself fall forward, appearing in a rocky niche with the storm swirling and raging just outside. My coat lost a chunk out of one corner as the twisting matter alteration caught it, but that was okay; it wasn't the one I usually wore.

Pressing into the niche, I watched as the distorted air followed me in. Sleeper wasn't fully aware of everything that happened within his sphere of influence, but the 'brain' aspect of his powers knew I was there. God only knew how he would've been if he were fully compos mentis, but for the most part it acted like a massive immune system, locating and either destroying or neutralising any potential threat from the outside.

This was why the note was clenched tightly in my fist rather than in my pocket. To put it brutally, my pockets just weren't going to survive. As part of my sleeve fizzed and sparkled, I was fully aware that anything I wasn't personally hanging on to was likely to suffer an inevitable end. This was already too close for comfort, and it was only going to get worse.

At the ten-second mark, the teleporter kicked in again, depositing me in a barn which was in the process of being enthusiastically demolished by the reality storm. I grabbed an already-teetering stack of hay bales and pulled them over on top of me; they were heavy, but not so much that it was a chore to keep breathing. My mask managed to filter out the worst of the heavy dust swirling around in my tiny refuge, which was good, because I needed to get a nice deep breath of air.

I could feel the mental aspect of Sleeper's power zeroing in on me again, and the gradual lightening of the hay-bale burden above me. The hay didn't make for a very sturdy barrier, but it was bulky, so it lasted exactly long enough. I felt my left boot-heel go just as the teleporter pulled me out of there once more. A spark of pain told me that I'd lost part of my actual heel at the same time.

The rear part of my hat-brim, the back of my long-coat, and some of the skin off my back, flashed to nothingness as I appeared inches above the surface of a stream. I fell, and was submerged, before anything more could happen; the water was absoutely freezing, numbing the open wound on my back. Above all, I kept my fist clenched around that damn note.

Above me, Sleeper's power lashed at the water itself, exploding great swathes of it into steam; fortunately, I was being swept downstream before it could get to me. It felt as though icy daggers were slashing at the intact parts of my skin, but it was only the cold, not more of his power. Not yet, anyway. I drew my knees up to my chest just as another part of my long-coat was caught and evaporated; before the rest of me could be likewise shredded, I teleported.

The next refuge my power found me was a hollowed out cut-bank, possibly the lair of an animal that had fled before the advent of Sleeper's power scouring the land. It lasted me the ten seconds, though I lost two fingers off my left hand, and some of the wrist. I was committed now; there was only one way out, and it wasn't the way I'd come in by.

Jump by jump, skip by skip, losing a chunk of my forearm muscle here and three toes there, I made my way through the maelstrom toward Sleeper. It was impossible for my power to find me a refuge that didn't brush me up against his ravening ability, but it was able to keep me alive and moving, so that was the best I could get.

Pain lashed through me from my mounting catalogue of injuries. If it weren't for my power, I wouldn't have been able to go on, but I was determined to get the note to Sleeper, no matter what it took. That was my sole focus.

Finally, I ended up at the small farmhouse he'd decided was a good place to rest. Sitting at the table, reading aloud to himself from a remarkably tattered and dog-eared book, he looked up in surprise as I appeared before him, bloody and wounded, with tatters of my costume hanging off me. My left leg wasn't working so good since most of the calf muscle had been torn away, but I was standing on it anyway. "Hi," I gritted in what I guessed was fluent Russian, as I slapped the slightly worse-for-wear folded note onto the pages in front of him with my one good hand. "You've just been served."

Before he could muster his powers to obliterate me from existence, the teleporter generated its smoky doorway behind me, and I lurched backward through it. It was so close that I'd had to time the portal to shut off before I was all the way through. In doing so, it took my right arm clear off just below the shoulder, and my right leg at the knee. Given that the alternative was to have his power billow through and destroy everything withing three city blocks, I figured I got off lightly.

But my power could only keep me upright and moving for so long, and I was rapidly running out of gas. This was why my last teleport sent me to the best place I could go for help.

As I toppled toward the carefully-placed plastic sheet—good thinking, Amy, way to go—I saw not one but two shocked expressions looking my way.

Oh, boy.

Panacea

Half an hour had been just enough time for Amy to accept the leg of ham from the delivery guy and sneak it upstairs to her room, then grab the spare shower curtain from the storage closet and spread it over her carpet. If Atropos wanted her to prep for a mess, then she was absolutely going to prep for a mess. As the last five minutes ticked down, she was still trying to figure out what was going on, with little success.

And then Vicky opened her door and leaned in. "Hey, Ames, I was … uh, why do you have a leg of ham on your bed? And why is there a shower curtain on your floor?"

"Sh-sh-sh-sh!" Amy hissed urgently. "Come in! Shut the door!" Vicky, she could trust to keep a secret. Everyone else was likely to either ask awkward questions like 'why did you just do what she said?' and 'why didn't you come tell us?' or just yell at her.

Obediently, Vicky entered the room and closed the door carefully behind her. "I'm going to assume this isn't a Parian thing," she said, hitching one eyebrow slightly. "So, my second guess is … Atropos."

"Yeah." Amy nodded jerkily, keeping a watch on the plastic out of the corner of her eye. "She messaged me half an hour ago, asked me to be in here with biomass. Said to prep for a mess."

"Shit." Vicky breathed the word. "Shit, shit, fuck. Did she say who was going to need it?"

Amy's throat was tight with worry. "I asked her who she'd hurt. She said nobody, and that I'd see."

"Doesn't mean she hasn't hurt someone since," Vicky pointed out pragmatically. "Do you, uh, do you do this sort of thing often? Just do something because she asked you to?"

"Not often." Amy decided to amend the statement toward the truth. "We've done it a bit. But always to do something good. Even if I didn't know it was good at the time." She found herself digging her nails into her palm.

"When did she say she'd be here?"

"Half an—oh, shit!" Amy jerked to her feet as a familiar smoky doorway appeared at the far end of the plastic shower curtain.

Atropos fell out of it, lunging her left arm outward as the portal closed behind her. When they'd gone to help out Damsel of Distress, Amy had been warned not to linger, and now she saw why. In closing, the portal had sheared off Atropos' right arm and part of her leg, and that wasn't the full extent of her injuries by a long way.

Collapsing in a way that suggested consciousness was rapidly fading, Atropos didn't quite hit the floor before Vicky was there, catching her and lowering her to the plastic. "Holy fuck, what happened to her?" Vicky asked, staring at the tattered costume, with large pieces just sheared away, along with the flesh under it.

"Slee … per," rasped Atropos. "Good t'see you too." One expressive brown eye, visible due to the fact that part of the morph mask was missing, along with a slice of her cheekbone, turned to look at her, then drifted shut as Atropos went limp.

Jesus, she went after Sleeper? Amy didn't know whether to be horrified or impressed. By now, she was on her knees next to Atropos, pulling aside shreds of cloth to get skin to skin contact. There had been no deep injuries to the torso, but more than a bit of missing flesh, and two major amputations.

Once Amy got control over her body, she was able to bring the bleeding to a halt, though the amount Atropos had already lost was worrying. To make more, she was going to need fluids. "Vicky, go to the kitchen and get me the biggest pitcher of water you can. Do not tell Mom or Dad, please." They'd either freak or do something stupid, or both.

"On it." The door opened and closed, and Vicky was gone.

It was weird, Amy mused even as she hefted the leg of ham down off the bed and started looking at where Atropos was missing bits and pieces. When Vicky had first met Atropos, she would've spat in her face rather than help her. Now, she didn't like the murderous vigilante, but she had enough respect for Atropos to help her out without even complaining.

For her part, Amy was more shaken than she was willing to admit, even to herself. She'd seen footage of Atropos strolling into insanely dangerous situations before now, and barrelling out the other side without a mark on her. This time around, she looked like she'd gone ten rounds with a combine harvester, though her attitude suggested that she'd somehow won.

Okay, priorities. Arm and leg first, then the more superficial stuff.

And once Atropos was awake again, she and Vicky would be able to interrogate her for every last detail of why she'd gone after Sleeper. Because there was surely a story there.

And after giving her a fright like this, Atropos totally owed her.

Sleeper

I have stopped travelling. Tired.

Must rest.

Am resting, reading, when ghost person from outside appears.

I hear voice that is not my voice. Ghost person says words that are not my words.

"Привет," says ghost person. "Вам повестка."

There is paper in my hand. It is ghost person paper.

I know is ghost person because does not come in front door, just appears.

Also, disappears through doorway that is not doorway.

After ghost person vanishes, I look at paper. Is folded. Is note.

Do I read ghost person note?

I prefer to read book. Book is familiar.

Ghost person note sits on table. I want to destroy it.

But I pick it up.

It is long time since I read something that was not book.

I unfold ghost person note.

It has been wet, and scorched, but writing is big and thick. Can read.

Я АТРОПОС.

Я УБИЛА СИМУРГ.

ЕСЛИ ТЫ ПРОДОЛЖИШЬ ИДТИ К ДЫРЕ МЕЖДУ МИРАМИ, Я УБЬЮ ТЕБЯ.

Я МОГУ ТЕБЯ ОТПРАВИТЬ В ДРУГОЕ МЕСТО.

ПОДОЖДИ ЗДЕСЬ ОДИН ПОЛНЫЙ ДЕНЬ ПОДАВЛЯЯ СВОЮ СИЛУ, И Я ОТКРОЮ ДЛЯ ТЕБЯ ЕЩЕ ОДНУ ДЫРУ МЕЖДУ МИРАМИ.

ЕСЛИ ТЫ ХОЧЕШЬ, Я МОГУ ПРИВЕСТИ КОГО-ТО, КТО ВМЕСТО ЭТОГО ОТКЛЮЧИТ ТВОИ СИЛЫ И ПОЧИНИТ ТВОЙ МОЗГ.

Я ВЕРНУСЬ ЗА ТВОИМ ОТВЕТОМ ЧЕРЕЗ ОДИН ДЕНЬ.

When finished reading, I sit and think about ghost person words.

I am Atropos.

I killed the Simurgh.

If you keep going toward the hole between worlds, I will kill you.

I can send you somewhere else. Wait here one full day and suppress your powers, and I will open another hole between worlds for you.

If you want, I can bring someone to turn off your powers and fix your brain instead.

I will be back in one day for your reply.

When sun rises, still thinking.

End of Part Eighty-Eight