57

Exsanguination 4

Despite all I had done to defend everyone along with Glory Girl's quick takedown of Shatterbird, there were still a lot of casualties. Many people were already injured and at death's door, and only a small additional attack was what was needed to send them over the line. Death by a thousand cuts, applied to a thousand people at once. I had primarily focused my bots on keeping the defenders alive, so we could mount a proper resistance. While I did manage to shield a few hundred patients against Shatterbird's second attack, hundreds more still died.

Even worse was the building itself. The hospital had fiberglass insulation in the walls. While most of the window-glass had been cleared out after her first attack, much of the fiberglass had still been sitting around in the walls and ventilation. Shatterbird used the tiny fibers to shred through the walls and ceilings as much as she had with people's lungs. It wasn't just the glass that was causing people problems; all the dust that had been thrown up gave even people with healthy lungs a difficult time breathing. Not to mention the a few who died simply by falling through holes in the floors.

We needed to evacuate, because the building itself was now completely unsuitable for basic shelter, much less medical treatment. Maybe I could repurpose my bots again, as air filters, but it would take hours, and that did nothing to repair the holes in the walls, and prevented me from using them medically. The main issue was where we could evacuate to.

"Is everyone okay? Where is she?"

Miss Militia's voice interrupted my mental survey of the hospital. The search team had come back. They had found some people, but only a few could keep up with them in the rush back here.

"We're fine," Kid Win told her, pointing at the remains. "Shatterbird is dead. Did you find many other survivors?"

"Quite a few. They're on their way. Will we be able to house them?"

I stepped up and shook my head. "The last attack did too much damage to the building. It's unsafe to stay inside."

"Where should we go? None of the buildings we passed by seem suitable."

I agreed, as I had been monitoring their progress through my bots. Still, there were other places to go with.

"Children's hospital?" I suggested. It wasn't just an attempt to pander at their emotions. The children's hospital had, surprisingly enough, not been hit by Shatterbird. Mostly because it was a little further away from the city center. And that meant it probably still had some medical supplies and equipment intact.

"I'm all for saving the kids, but it's quite a distance from here," one of the police officers said. "Can these people even make it that far? Do we have any cars that still work?"

"If we move as a group, I can shorten the distance by a lot," Vista said.

"We passed by an older truck that might still work. Glass is broken but engine should still run. We'll have to round people up and sit them in an empty cargo container. Won't be comfortable," one guy said. He did look a bit like a trucker, so I deferred to his judgment.

"I can help them with the comfort thing," I said. My bots could provide a bit of suspension along with the mattresses for patients that were difficult to move.

"This might take a few trips and a couple hours."

"The sooner we start, the sooner we finish," I said. I'd have to talk to some of the doctors and nurses to convince them, but those who had seen the conditions inside would probably agree quickly.

There was another reason I wanted to get everyone going as soon as possible. We needed to be in a better position, a more defensible position. And that was because more of the Slaughterhouse Nine were converging on us from both sides.

On one side, there was less happening in Concord. The fight between Burnscar, the Master, and Faultline's mercenary crew was over. The mercenaries had taken some casualties, but Burnscar was dead, and I still hadn't found the Master. Civilian casualties were even worse, and I couldn't do anything for the people who had been incinerated. The Case-53 members must have all had minor Brute ratings, since they seemed to have suffered the least injuries. Or maybe their biology was just weird enough that I couldn't tell.

Still, I set some of my bots to help them. Anyone who was capable or willing to fight against the Slaughterhouse Nine was going to be needed. While I had treated Newter once, he was still weird to me. He had a concussion, and at least his brain was somewhat human-like. Gregor the Snail was even weirder. Thankfully he had no concussion, and that was probably because he didn't have a central nervous system at all. It was distributed across his body, a bit like a snail, true to his name. It certainly didn't hinder his intelligence, but it made him hard to decipher for me.

Bonesaw hadn't stopped moving and perhaps the Master had joined her. I couldn't see what had happened after that, because Bonesaw had far more of the nanobot-killing bacteria near her. Kind of obvious that there would be more at the source, but it meant I still couldn't keep track of her precisely, though I had a vague idea of where she was. Which was minutes away from the city. I could only hope she wasn't headed straight for the children's hospital like we were.

Maybe the Master had managed to master Bonesaw? Either way, Bonesaw wasn't dead, and in all likelihood the Master was coming here, too.

That meant it was all on me and my anti-master plan to figure things out. For each of the people who had agreed to my test subjects – mainly, Vicky, some civilian volunteers, and a few of the Wards, I created a duplicate brain of theirs in a safe location. Far away from all the chaos here, I had them sitting in the northern reaches of my network in a completely boring forest. These brains took me a while to make, though I did have practice with it from the experiments I had done with the neurologists in Brockton Bay.

Shame they were no longer here to see this.

I did my best to not just replicate what their brains were doing, but I had to try to predict how they would act. It wasn't perfect, and I had to constantly update and fix any differences, no matter how small. I was no true mind-reader in that sense, but I would have to be if this was going to work. And I had to do that for every single little thought and action. When Vicky looked at Amy, what did she look at first? Did she notice the dust in her hair? The scratches on her cheek? The rips in her costume? Why did she look in the sequence that she did? Was she even conscious of it? How did she feel, react to it?

Needless to say, predicting was far more difficult than merely recording. And I had to get the predicting part down right, otherwise I had no real way to detect a Master's influence. By my estimates, I had only another hour to do it before the Master would be in town with Bonesaw. I could do it, yes. But that would require a lot of focus. Focus that would be taken away from other things I had to do, like directly watching the streets or building and expanding my bot count.

But I had seen the effects of the Master. They were reckless, uncaring, probably psychopathic. They had helped stop Burnscar, sure, but only by sending hundreds of people at her in a mindless rage, while also forcing Burnscar into a destructive self-loathing spiral. The Master was just as much responsible for the body count as Burnscar was, and I could easily see her turning all of us on each other if I couldn't get this working properly.

So, the anti-Master experiment took priority until I managed to identify the Master and deal with them.

Meanwhile, over in Brockton Bay, Jack Slash was getting bored. Partly, that was my fault. I certainly didn't want the Travelers to hunt down people and feed it to their pet monster friend. So, I had taken them down quickly with my bots.

That just disappointed Jack Slash and the Siberian, who had taken care of the "problem" by feeding Noelle her friends. The ultra-Brute even went as far as taking bites out of them just before she shoved them at the many mouths. Noelle spat out weird clones of her former friends, all of whom seemed more willing than before to go hunt people for Noelle to eat.

That wasn't a huge problem for me. While their bodies weren't exact clones, made from the flesh of the monster, they weren't as tough as the monster itself. My bots could still pierce their skin and get inside them. The problem was that I still had to actually get my bots in there. They popped out of the monster, fresh and ready to go, naked, blank slates that only seemed to care about fulfilling Jack's suggestion to feed their creator.

They didn't care that they were naked. There was no embarrassment at being in the middle of the street without clothing. They just went straight to collecting more victims. Unlike the originals, there was no hesitation or reluctance – in fact, they were absolutely eager to kill and cannibalize. Perfect fits for the Slaughterhouse Nine.

Jack Slash seemed to agree. "Oh! You can make people better!" he cried out with glee.

They went hunting for more capes to feed to Noelle. The largest collection of which was now the PRT director Tagg along with all his capes and conscripts. He was being extremely ineffective, barking orders left and right expecting them to be obeyed without question. Maybe PRT officers, many of whom had been ex-military or police, would have. His Protectorate and conscripted capes, though? None of them were willing to lay their lives down for a commanding officer they had no respect for. And even the trained PRT troops were probably thinking about abandoning their duty.

It was mostly a free-for-all scramble to get away from Jack Slash, Noelle, the Siberian, and all the homicidal clones. And Jack was following.

I was killing the clones as quickly as I could, but Noelle could apparently clone the clones. They came out even more deformed and imperfect each time, but more murder and cannibalism would continue until I managed to find that limit.

On the other side of town, I considered everyone to be extremely lucky that Lung was not, in fact, eager for a fight. He was actually running away with as much haste as his pride would allow. He had no interest in fighting Crawler for fun, and he had no territory or anything of value to defend.

"SLAUGHTERHOUSE NINE CONVERGING," I used Abyssal to warn the others. It had taken quite a while for everyone to rig up enough working trucks, tractors, trailers, and other things to gather everyone together. Panacea healed people as fast as she could, as did I, so we would only need enough stretchers for those who didn't have enough nutrition inside their bodies for Panacea to use.

"Where is Bonesaw? She has a tendency to go to hospitals… especially children's hospitals," Miss Militia pointed out.

Fuck. I was getting the hang of dismantling Bonesaw's bacteria, but obviously she was carrying the incubator or whatever the source was with her. By now, Bonesaw was in the city. She may have been heading towards the children's hospital, and in fact, beaten us to the punch. At least, that was where the long chain of disabled bots and tinker bacteria led me.

"BONESAW THERE. WILL SCOUT."

I needed to deal with her now. I was becoming more effective at dealing with her bot-killer bacteria. This was my best chance at destroying her source, or incubator, once and for all. If I didn't deal with her right now, she had access to tons of medical supplies in the hospital to engineer even worse bacteria.

Surprisingly, some others agreed.

"Is she alone? That might be our best chance. The Slaughterhouse have never been spread out this much before," one of the PRT officers said.

"If we don't take her out, she's probably going to come here eventually. It's better to ambush than to be ambushed," Vista said.

"Wait! Make sure you don't kill her. She may release some super-plague on death. Tinker intel puts that at very high probability," Miss Militia said.

"I can take care of that," Panacea pointed out.

"No way I'm letting you go there to fight a friggen Slaughterhouse member!" Glory Girl shouted quickly.

"Vicky, you're not going to go there, and that's final," Brandish said.

"What, but you're okay sending Ames in?" Glory Girl shouted back at her.

"Don't put words in my mouth!"

"Why would you be okay sending her in, then? She's not even invincible!"

"She's… she's the only one that has a counter to Bonesaw's power, that's all," Brandish said, though I think the quivering in her voice meant it was just an excuse.

"We'll back up Panacea. She doesn't need to do anything unless Bonesaw releases some ultra-virus, right?" said one of the local Tinkers. Dyeman, I think his name was.

"Correct. Bonesaw rarely travels alone, and is often protected by Jack Slash himself or the Siberian. This is an opportunity for us," Miss Militia said.

"And what about the people still here?" Lady Photon asked, her arms gesturing at all the people behind her. The hospital was nearly evacuated, and almost about to crumble.

"Same as before. We maintain defenses here. We'll have an anti-Bonesaw team going to the children's hospital to clear it out."

There was a lot more arguing involved, wasting more of our time. But in the end, Glory Girl refused to budge, so Brandish went with her. Miss Militia was the only available Protectorate member, and thus insisted she went as the Protectorate representative. That, and she could summon a flamethrower in an instant if they needed to… sterilize a large area. Two PRT troops with ordinary guns joined as well, along with two more local capes. And, of course, Abyssal was already on site.

I had already begun to work on infiltrating the hospital. Bonesaw had released some kind of virus that had rendered people paralyzed. I checked their vitals where I could, and I could tell they were alive, but the virus attacked their nerve tissues. And it wasn't gentle; these people must have been in intense pain despite nothing showing on the outside. The best I could do for them was to cut off all sensation completely. The damage the virus did was permanent. Panacea or I could heal them as long as the virus didn't hit the central nervous system, but that would take time and resources.

Certainly not while I was still fighting Bonesaw's bot-killers. I could help them after I took care of that problem. I was mostly searching for Bonesaw by where my bots couldn't reach – sanitizing and cleaning the hospital as I went.

Meanwhile, the other heroes took an old pickup truck to get to the hospital. I tried to use some of my bots to help clear the way for them. While Miss Militia and Brandish had already seen much of the condition of the town, Glory Girl hadn't. I could sense her trepidation and anger as they passed by the all the crashed cars, broken glass, and bloody bodies.

"Can we do anything about them?" Glory Girl asked quietly.

"We passed by this area already. All of them are dead. We don't have time to waste on burials yet," Miss Militia said, her voice completely level.

The ride was slow and quiet, having to take detours through completely blocked streets and avoid bursting tires. Glory Girl did some work to move aside wrecks and clear a path when necessary. I formed a copy of Abyssal to help escort them and update them on what I had found inside the hospital. I had enough to form three copies of him to support the heroes.

"ARMOR. AIR FILTER," I told them with Abyssal while I gave them some additional protection with my bots.

"Hey, hey, what is this stuff?" asked Dyemin, one of the local capes.

"It's fine, you can trust him. Thanks, Abyssal," Panacea said.

"Yeah, thanks. What's going on inside?" Glory Girl asked.

I hadn't been able to find Bonesaw directly, but I knew exactly where she was. I had been able to comb through the rest of the hospital, except for one room in particular. Bonesaw had taken over a surgical suite, which I couldn't get into. The room had been… well, sterilized wouldn't be the best word for it, because I was sure she was busy crafting extremely deadly bacteria inside of it. But It was microbe-proof, both active air circulation and advanced scrubber mechanisms that were stopping my bots from getting inside. It was equipment that was far beyond anything a normal surgery room had, so it was definitely something Bonesaw had upgraded and installed quickly.

I helped give them an approximate layout as they approached and they formed a plan. The two local capes who joined us also had a few things to help us. Chessnut was classified as a Striker-master, who could enlarge and control multiple objects, but only move one at a time. He typically carried around chess pieces, but technically his power worked on just about any simple object. The other, Dyemin, was classified as a Tinker as well, but his power was mostly based on paint. Who knew how it really worked, but as far as I could figure, when he coated something in red paint it gave it a slight Mover rating, while purple paint had Stranger effects. Other colours had other effects as well… either way, our heroes were going into battle with some very unusual war paint on their faces.

For such a critical building with the most defenseless and dependent members of society, there was nobody in sight to help. We were the first. I suppose that everyone else was too busy trying to keep themselves alive.

Although Shatterbird hadn't struck this part of the city, a disaster of a different sort had come through. Inside, it looked like people had simply fallen asleep on the job. Doctors and nurses lay on the ground unmoving, but just barely breathing. I was still trying to repair their nervous systems, but at best I was only going to slow down the virus, not heal them completely.

Even worse was the silence. In a children's hospital, especially with no nurses or parents to attend to the children, there should have been plenty of crying. There wasn't. The children, too, had been rendered paralyzed right down to their vocal cords.

Deeper into the hospital, there were spiderlike robots, each the size of a dog, that were dragging patients towards Bonesaw's room. They injected some kind of toxin into people, probably some kind of live bacteria, that broke down and ate away at people's flesh. Even after their short trip down a few hallways, the internal organs of these people had been liquefied. I couldn't work fast enough to stop it. Their bodies were dumped into containers that were sucked up into tubes. Occasionally one or two of them weren't given the injection and sliced open, intact organs were extracted.

I didn't know what was worse, to die quickly to organ liquification or being alive for longer but then cut up.

I stopped trying to use my bots to stop the nerve-infecting virus and focused on destroying the robots instead as the heroes approached. They weren't taking that many people or working quickly, but I couldn't allow them to get anywhere near Panacea. I did my best to neutralize the toxin injectors, sealing them up because I couldn't be sure if I knew how to properly neutralize the toxins. But the control system was the gory part.

It was harvested from people's brains. And not anyone's brains. Children's brains. I think that was why she hit this hospital. Although I had made sure she hadn't taken any of the kids who were here, she must have killed tons of children before. Perhaps she was currently just preparing to make more of them. Those brains had been placed in some kind of nutrient bath, with plenty of electrodes sticking into them. Pain and anguish were obviously very low on Bonesaw's list of things to avoid. And the brains' frontal lobes had been active. Her victims were probably conscious in a vague sense, maybe even aware of the situation.

From what I could understand, Bonesaw was using the brain's natural coordination and movement centers to get the bots moving. And children's brains had an innate capacity for rapid learning, though I didn't want to think of the "learning" taking place in their situation. I could already see adaptations their brains had to the crude electrode stimulation Bonesaw used as a control scheme.

I had to kill them, for mercy if nothing else. Maybe there had been a chance to save their lives, stick their brains back in their original bodies. But those bodies were long gone, and who knew how long those brains had been suffering, their growth deliberately warped beyond recovery.

At least I was slowing down Bonesaw's work, whatever it was. At this point, I was trying to stop her before my teammates needed to deal with her. I had my bots attempt to drill directly into the room, bypassing all the filtration and sterilization units. But for some reason, the inner walls, which should be nothing more than painted drywall, was impossibly tough. Tougher than diamond. It was absolutely impenetrable, and I had no way of getting through and seeing inside.

Abyssal helped lead the way and show them a safe path (flanked by a man-sized chess piece crudely painted red). Even then, the others went in slowly and cautiously, covering corners. Amy healed who she could as others kept a lookout.

"What's wrong with them?" Brandish asked.

"There's a hyped-up version of a chicken pox virus in the building attacking everyone's nervous systems. I'm fixing up who I can. Keep your masks on."

They continued onwards until they got closer to Bonesaw's surgical room. Outside, they saw the remains of the spider-bots. "What the hell is this?"

Abyssal gestured silently at the door behind all the broken down spider-bots. The others nodded in understanding. Bonesaw hadn't noticed us, I think, so maybe that purple paint was working. Still, I wasn't going to trust a power that weird. And even if Bonesaw didn't notice us, she probably would have noticed her bots no longer working.

Miss Militia changed her weapon to some variant of a grenade launcher, aiming it at the hinges of the door. Glory Girl was ready to charge in, while Brandish was backup. Panacea hung further back with Chessnut, who had formed a barrier with several other non-mobile chess pieces.

Literally a second before they were about to charge in, the doors swung open, hitting Miss Militia and causing her to get knocked off balance. Glory Girl charged in anyway, only to come to a sudden stop by someone far stronger than her.

The Siberian.

What the hell was she doing here?

Last I checked she was still with Jack Slash… coming up from the opposite side of the city. That was less than an hour ago. What the hell?

Glory Girl screamed in pain as the Siberian grabbed her arm, and crushed it easily within her grip. Her bones crunched like they were made of crackers. The Siberian ripped off her hand and licked the blood dripping off it. Glory Girl collapsed to the ground in shock, clutching the stump of her arm.

"Vicky!" Brandish and Panacea screamed in unison, but Brandish was the one who ran forward first. I don't know what she was thinking. She probably wasn't thinking at all. Her projected light-sword did absolutely nothing to the Brute that was stronger than Alexandria.

The others scrambled to get Glory Girl away, but that only left Brandish in the Siberian's clutches, and none of us had a plan on how to deal with the monster.

"Hey! Who's that?" Bonesaw stuck her head out from behind the Siberian. Her face was covered in blood splatter, and her hands were dirty as well. "Wait, I can use her!"

The Siberian looked at Bonesaw. She held Brandish firm.

With the doors open, I was also able to get my bots into the room to figure out what was happening. The ones that were attempting to drill through the wall were suddenly able to as well, with exactly the normal amount of resistance I expected from drywall. I had gotten pretty damn good at killing Bonesaw's bacteria and now I could finally eliminate it at the source. I found the incubator she was using and sent a massive wave of bots at it.

While everyone was worried about Brandish, my bots inside the room caught my attention of who else was in there along with Bonesaw.

Dad. I nearly shouted out loud with my real body.

On some level, I had begun to accept that dad was dead. I had lost track of him in Concord, around the same time I started to realize Bonesaw was there. The Nine killed people left and right, for them killing was like breathing. I didn't have any hope believing he was alive; I just tried not to think about it.

But there he was. Chained and hanging on the wall, right beside Mr. Dallon as well. They had been cut open, but they were alive. I could tell only because his heart was visibly beating. Many robotic arms were picking away at dad, cutting and rearranging his organs in ways I couldn't fathom. Installing devices inside his abdominal cavity that I couldn't recognize. I could only hope that he was unconscious. The same thing was being done to Mr. Dallon, and I was sure Mrs. Dallon was going to join them in their fate.

I was pretty sure I couldn't heal our fathers in this state. Could Panacea? Even that was doubtful, given all the contraptions hooked up to them, and any one of them could have been booby traps.

"Hey, is Panacea here? Or Eunoia? I wanna collect the whole set! I got a great experiment in mind!" Bonesaw said.

"Run! Everyone, run!" Brandish wheezed out before the Siberian crushed her throat. Though she wasn't dead, she wouldn't live long if we didn't do something. On the other hand, all of them were dead if they couldn't escape the Siberian.

"Hey, don't go away! You know, both your fathers were suffering from depression and alcohol damage. I thought you were a better healer than that, Panacea. I could fix your whole family! I can make them way better! You can be a good girl just like me!" Bonesaw said enthusiastically.

"Everyone, out! Retreat!" Miss Militia had recovered. Her gun had changed to some kind of grenade launcher, and launched a flashbang. The Manchester capes were quick to follow her orders, moving even before the flash went off.

Panacea and Glory Girl were, understandably more hesitant. I had to make the decision for them, forming Abyssal in front of them pushing them into motion.

Bonesaw just laughed. "Go get 'em, auntie Siberian! Bring me back a new big sister, kay?" She turned back to working on our dads, as well as injecting Brandish with something to knock her unconscious. I tried to use my bots to stop her, but her own robotic arms and tinkertech operated so quickly I couldn't safely undo her work without knowing exactly what she had done.

Everyone else ran for their lives while the Siberian grinned. I left Abyssal there to cover their escape. The Siberian clawed viciously at Abyssal, tearing chunks from his body. Thankfully, that didn't slow him down at all and he didn't feel any pain. He swung his sword at the Siberian, with the diamond edges rapidly tearing at her skin.

That is, my nanobots tore apart. Her skin didn't.

Even Behemoth's and Leviathan's bodies had at least shaved off a few layers before getting stuck. The Siberian was on an entirely different level of invulnerability.

With a few more quick swipes, she had torn Abyssal apart. She was ripping him apart as quickly as he could form, as if he was nothing more than a sand sculpture. As soon as that was done, she licked her lips and ran after the heroes.

Well, she did seem like she was protecting Bonesaw. While I was still moving more bots into position to cover the heroes, I had enough right in Bonesaw's room to form another. So I created another copy of him right behind the little killer, intent on snapping her neck.

Which he did.

Bonesaw, with her head hanging off her neck at a completely unnatural angle, said, "Hey! That's mean!" While she grabbed her head with her hands to set it straight, the Siberian suddenly reappeared right beside her partner and started tearing that copy of Abyssal apart.

She'd been a hundred feet down the hall, chasing the heroes just a moment before. She didn't just move fast, she teleported. What the hell!

Still, keeping her occupied with Bonesaw was my best bet at helping my friends survive the ordeal. If I was really lucky… I could maybe even free my father and the Dallons. But I wasn't getting my hopes up, especially with how quickly the Siberian continued to shred through each copy of Abyssal. But I needed to get the damn psychopaths away from our parents, first.

While I flooded Bonesaw's "operating room" with as many bots as I could to keep them occupied, I had one more, extra-heavy copy of Abyssal form in the hall outside. He sprinted forward, accelerating to near-highway vehicle speeds in the short distance. He smashed through the wall, and with my best possible control, tackled the Siberian without harming our parents any more than they already had been.

It mostly worked, although I didn't manage to grab Bonesaw before we grappled, flying out through the opposite wall and out of the building.

The Siberian and Abyssal both fell through the air, and a second later, both splattered on the ground. Or, at least, Abyssal did. The Siberian hit the ground, again taking no damage whatsoever, though that was to be expected from only a second-floor fall. When Abyssal hit the pavement, the Siberian had managed to increase the force of landing and squash him as if she weighed a thousand tons. It took me a second to rearrange the bots so I could see where she went.

The monster was gone.

Never mind, she was right behind Panacea. The heroes had nearly reached the pickup truck. Though I had just seen the Siberian teleport, it probably wouldn't hurt if they could move without tiring. The bots I kept near the heroes for protection was enough to identify the naked zebra killer. I formed another copy of Abyssal to distract her and defend the heroes while they attempted to start the car. Unfortunately, Abyssal only fared as well as he had before, and the Siberian merely tore through him as if he were made of tissue paper.

Glory Girl, who had been temporarily healed by Panacea, shot skywards with her sister to avoid the killer. I was worried that the loss of one arm would cause Panacea to slip out of her grip, but she managed to hang on and adjust to a better position.

The ground-based heroes rushed into the truck. Miss Militia jumped in the back, forming a mounted gun on the bed of the truck while Dyemin splashed some red paint on the side of it as he hopped inside. Chessnut threw down some plastic army men and a few other plastic chess pieces, all of which expanded to twice the size of a human. But they were quite literally just flimsy pieces of plastic, and were practically ignored by the Siberian. Same with Miss Militia's grenade launcher; it may as well have been a pop gun. It would only take a few more seconds before she would have been able to catch up and kill all of them.

She was definitely protective of Bonesaw, though. My only chance was to keep her busy by threatening Bonesaw as much as I could. So I did it again, forming another Abyssal and looking to hurt Bonesaw. Not kill her; only because I wasn't sure if I could deal with the super-plagues.

As I expected, the Siberian teleported again, ripping away at Abyssal's body. Sure, I managed to reform it, but at least it was enough to keep her distracted. Any time Abyssal couldn't hit Bonesaw, he would still try to take apart her equipment, maybe even free my dad and the Dallons a little bit at a time.

I know the Siberian had massively high ratings, but nobody truly described exactly how bullshit her Brute-ness was. She didn't just tear my bots apart from each other. Her fingernails and hair were sharp to a subatomic scale. When she scratched Abyssal, she literally sliced through the molecules of my bots. Even when she blinked, her eyelashes sliced through the bots on her face. When I tried to punch her, it wasn't just like punching a mountain. My bots knew what hitting rocks or reinforced concrete was like. There were vibrations, flexing, and heat. Even if it was on the atomic scale, my bots could sense it. Against the Siberian it was just a full stop. Not even a single damn electron would budge.

I didn't know how long I could keep it up, how much time I could buy the heroes. At some point, I would actually run out of bots. Or, if the Siberian stopped trying to play around, she might even just teleport right on top of them. I couldn't even touch her, though. Buying time was all I could do, hopefully enough time to get out of her range.

Bonesaw once again diverted some of her efforts to a new type of anti-bot bacteria, once she realized how much of a bother Abyssal was being to her. I tried to stop her from doing that, too, but once again, the Siberian bought her time by occasionally teleporting over to attack the heroes.

I tried to be everywhere she was. Form another copy of Abyssal, have enough bots ready as many places as she was. At the same time, she couldn't attack the heroes for very long, since I never let up on Bonesaw. She had to pop back into the children's hospital to destroy and disrupt the bots I used against Bonesaw. I couldn't truly stop her, but she couldn't stop Abyssal either.

The Siberian would pop over and threaten the heroes. I would create Abyssal and buy them time.

I would create Abyssal and move more bots to kill Bonesaw. Siberian would pop back over, shred all the bots, and save the biotinker.

Wait.

The similarities were just a little too close for me not to have a little spark of hope.

The Siberian was like Abyssal. She could just appear wherever she was necessary. Maybe she didn't take damage because that wasn't her real body, it just formed into the shape of a stripey woman. The same way I formed Abyssal. Well, not nanobots, but some kind of physics-defying substance or energy.

Maybe.

I was too desperate not to try it. She wasn't stopping. I didn't want to stop. She was destroying my bots and probably only because she was playing around. I couldn't bank on the chance that she would eventually get tired before I ran out of bots to use.

This needed to end.

I had a maximum range. Maybe The Siberian's master did, too. I hoped that my range was bigger than hers. If it was, they must have been walking around in range of my bots. But could I identify them?

All of my brains, every one of them, tried to focus on someone – anyone – who had moved unusually. In a strange twist of fate, Shatterbird had made that easier. I knew the Siberian had started in Brockton Bay. Then she had come here, recently. I had watched her feed the Travelers to their own friend only an hour ago.

That was actually a pretty short window of time for someone to be moving somewhere between Brockton Bay and Manchester, especially while most cars had been crashed or disabled.

And I had noticed one that may have fit the bill. A man, driving a nondescript old cargo van. At the time, I had thought he was just another survivor trying to flee Brockton Bay. I hadn't paid enough attention at the time.

Where was he now? He hadn't gone towards the hospital, or tried to find anyone else. No, he had parked just on the outskirts of Manchester. He hadn't been seeking help. Just settled down in a quiet neighbourhood and was trying not to get noticed. Rather unusual for a disaster survivor.

Was it him?

If I was right, I would be ending one of the deadliest, unstoppable killers the nation had ever seen.

If I was wrong, I was just killing some random guy.

I needed to check. I hoped my friends would survive until then.

My bots quietly filtered into the truck, entering the man's bloodstream. I'd infiltrated the bloodstream of many a villain by now, and had the technique nearly perfected. I had a few bots enter his bloodstream through his ankle. Not very sensitive skin there, and at worst it would probably feel like an itchy sock.

I tried to get an approximate read on his emotions. I couldn't get anything precise on first glance, but generally positive or negative emotions could be identified. I did find a corona pollentia and gemma. Solid evidence that narrowed down the possibilities.

The Siberian had stopped chasing Miss Militia. She was running up the side of buildings and leaping in ways that defied physics. She was going straight after Panacea and Glory Girl. The two of them weren't looking behind them, thinking they were safe that high up in the air.

The man in the van was smiling. Pleasure. Aggression. I even sensed a little bit of adrenaline in the bloodstream.

I formed one copy of Abyssal on the ground with a powerful bow. I shot a massive arrow composed of nanobots – not at the Siberian, but at Glory Girl. With a broad, flattened head, combined with Glory Girl's invincibility, the momentum of the arrow managed to knock them through the air. Dodged a swipe by the Siberian. Safe, for now.

By now we had worked out a rhythm between us. The Siberian only had about ten seconds each time to attack and leave Bonesaw alone. This time I had my bots attack Bonesaw, even more aggressively than before. I was sacrificing even the ones trying to keep the innocent patients alive for the one final attack.

The Siberian appeared right on schedule. Shredded tons of bots. Made the walls, and Bonesaw, invincible like before. The man in the van was feeling anger or frustration, something like that.

The timing and his emotions were too close to have been coincidence.

I had the right target. I was sure of it.

I didn't cut off their blood supply. I just had all my bots go nuts, completely flaying the brain from the inside out. Bots flooded the vehicle to utterly destroy him from every possible angle.

The Siberian suddenly appeared inside the van, holding the man protectively. I was actually thankful for her appearance, as it meant I had the right guy. No more of my bots could touch him. The ones on the outside couldn't penetrate his skin.

The ones inside, though, still had free reign. Apparently the Siberian couldn't do anything for the man's brain, which was currently being turned into puree. The man dropped dead in seconds.

And then the Siberian vanished. She didn't show up again anywhere.

I breathed a huge sigh of relief. I was hoping to get a bit of a reprieve, and finally take Bonesaw out of the equation, but then one of my own patients at the hospital snarled and bit my arm.

Author's Notes:

- Well, I'm back from my break. Hope everyone had a good holiday! And thank goodness 2020 is over, whew.

- Micro-Cyberpunk 2077 review: I got lucky and experienced minimal bugs with my copy. Overall, pretty fun, but the character background selection seems almost pointless. Endings are good and varied, not just color-swapped copies of each other. Main missions are cool, but side gigs get repetitive. I want more interesting scripted/worldbuilding content in the future. Basically, it still feels like a pretty generic cyberpunk setting, with basic RPG elements, and a short but decent main story. The foundation is there (at least when they work the bugs out) so I hope they build on it.