12.07

Chapter 12.07 Summary (1436 words)

Mannequin lunged, his bladed toes digging into the ground, moving fast, arms trailing like ribbons. He stopped short, turning to swing with his right arm, a three-foot blade attached. It extended on a chain, aimed at my head. I parried with my baton, the hit heavy, like a sledgehammer. Losing grip, I threw myself back as he spun, his arm circling. Reeling the arm in, his fingers gripped his foot. He dropped his other foot, feigning a collapse, then thrust out with a bladed leg.

It caught me in the stomach, slashing up toward my collarbone, lifting me off the ground. I landed on my back, armor absorbing the impact. Remembering Grue’s lessons, I scrambled back as Mannequin strode toward me. I drew my bugs around me, rolling and sprinting to his left. Struck from behind, I fell face-first. The surprise was as bad as the pain.

He stood over me, winding fingers into my hair, pulling my head back. I struggled, aiming for his knee with my baton, but he wrenched me, a blade pressing against my throat. He pulled the blade across my throat, smooth and hard.

In a heartbeat, I acted. I grunted, choked, then went limp, my bugs ceasing movement. Flies drifted down like snowflakes. He let go, my mask hitting the floor. I heard screams and shouts. Swallowing, I checked my throat. My costume had saved me, but the onlookers had seen. It would have been better if the bugs had blocked their view.

I needed a second to think. Mannequin could press an assault indefinitely. It was like sparring with Brian, but worse. Mannequin was stronger, faster, had more reach, didn’t tire, and was versatile in ways no ordinary human could be.

He could sense me somehow. Not sight, or his sight was limited. Not super hearing. He wasn’t using radar, my bugs would have picked it up. This wasn’t helping.

He sharpened his blades, steel on steel. A man whimpered, and Mannequin turned. He stood still, observing. I needed a plan before someone tried to run.

I needed a weak point. But he was smart, having been on the brink of solving world crises before his transformation. No blatant weaknesses. He’d fought better, learned, and improved. Like me, but with years more experience. And he was insane.

What would I do in his shoes? I’d have no vital openings, focus on being a closed system, recycling waste, dissipating excess energy, absorbing heat. Was that how he sensed the world? Heat? Or something else? Radiation? Radio waves? Electromagnetics?

Why this form? An eternal reminder of his family lost to the Simurgh? Why resemble a human? To mislead? Maybe his organs weren’t human at all. Redundancies for everything, like Aegis. No need for a heart, kidneys, or a conventional digestive system. More room for equipment, for self-sustaining systems.

His torso was the biggest section. Likely contained his brain, sensory organs, and control mechanisms. Or maybe not, to avoid putting everything in one basket. Some could be in his thighs and forearms.

I’d have spent hours balancing the ‘ecosystems’ of each part. Exacting, fine-tuned, sensitive, fragile. Resistant to impacts, but heat and cold? A crack in the exterior? It could wreak havoc.

None of that mattered if I couldn’t hurt him. Bugs dealt with hard shells all the time. A hundred solutions. That was the spark. I had a plan. Not good, but something. And just-in-case measures. It would be two minutes before I could start, judging by the time it took for my bugs to deliver supplies.

I made mental notes: an easier opening to my lair, a clock for precise time tracking. I had to guess. Two minutes. Controlling my breathing was hard, my heartbeat intense. Staying still was one of the hardest things I’d ever done.

“Mommy,” a toddler said. “I don’t want to be here!”

Mannequin went still. Shit. I stood, bugs swirling around me. I sheathed my knife, gripped my baton.

“Mannequin!”

He turned.

“Yeah,” I said. “You didn’t get me.”

He walked toward the mother and child.

“Hey!” I shouted. “Fight me! Don’t you have the balls to take on a teenage girl? Or did you cut them away!?”

He didn’t slow.

“Bastard!” I ran for him. He might be baiting me. But I couldn’t let them get hurt. I threw myself at his legs, hitting his knees and calves. He teetered and fell backward, his legs on top of me.

“Go!” I screamed. “Run!”

She did. Mannequin tried to blade her leg, but someone helped her. His leg snaked around my throat in a headlock. I tried to slip out, but couldn’t. Less than thirty seconds?

Four blades sprung from his calf, rotating like a fan. I swung my baton into the blades. They stopped, then started again, slowly. I might have been relieved, but I was still in his grip.

He heaved me up, holding me high. I drew my knife and struck at the ball joint of his leg, near my face. Once, twice, three times. He shifted on the fourth hit. He turned over, his hand closing over my face. He whipped me around, letting his arm go free, and I hurtled across the room.

I crashed into a pile of boards with nails. They jabbed at me but didn’t penetrate my costume. I tried to stand, but the boards slid. His hand was still on my face. He pulled me forward. I slammed the knife into the gap between his hand and my face.

Tattletale said it was strong enough to be a crowbar. She was right. I freed myself, his fingertips scraping my scalp. His arm clicked back into place. I had a scratch on my mask’s lens.

The pain hit me. Bruises, I could deal with. A building headache. How much time had I bought? One minute? One and a half? Could I hold out? Could the bystanders? The moment my bugs arrived, I could start my plan. But there was no guarantee it would work.

Thirty seconds to a minute. I panted, counting every second. What was going on behind that mask? A battle plan? Maybe not. He didn’t need one. Maybe he was calculating how to ruin me. Lifelong scars, or murdering the civilians. Both devastating.

Or maybe he was in mental anguish, reliving the day he lost everything.

There was nothing I could do about his past. He was a monster now. I had to stop him.

Time for battle plan number one. I set my swarm on him, smothering him. It didn’t accomplish anything. He ran toward me, unimpeded. I ducked his first swing but couldn’t avoid the second. It hit my shoulder and chest. The pain was momentary, but it knocked me out of his reach.

Some bugs squeezed into the slots where his weapons emerged. Nothing organic inside. Sealed off. I lodged bugs in the mechanisms, spilling their innards onto anything sensitive.

Mannequin stepped back, retracting his blades. A wave of pressure and heat killed the bugs. Plan one down.

For plan two, I needed my baton. I searched with my power and eyes. My bugs were almost here. I found my baton. I’d have to get by him to get it.

Fetch, I ordered, as Mannequin lunged. I didn’t have time to tell them how. This time, his attack was frenzied. I hopped back, then backed up as he spun, a whirl of blades.

I missed it when he tilted, kicking out wide with his leg. I was knocked back onto the wood pile, falling to the ground. He retracted his leg. My bugs tugged the baton, but Mannequin spotted them. He kicked it away.

Fuck. I grabbed a two-by-four. Old, dusty, damaged, with rusted screws. Better than nothing. He sharpened his blades, then lunged. I struck with the wood, hitting the uppermost blade, driving it down. He collided with me, blades striking my armor. Pain, but no impalement. He whipped his arms, throwing me.

I smiled a little. My swarm had arrived.

The bugs flowed in, half sweeping over Mannequin. He wobbled, then turned to me, uncaring. Better he didn’t pay attention. Behind him, the bugs moved in a kaleidoscopic pattern, expanding outward. He paused, looked over his shoulder. He could sense my bugs on the floor, in the air, but hadn’t known I was still alive. My plan hinged on whether he’d grasp what I was doing and if he could stop it.

The formation ceased expanding, then swept over him. He staggered. He charged through the bugs, running toward me. I parried one swing, jumped away from the second. I lost my grip on the wood when I tried to block his kick. He kicked me again, hard. Nausea rose in my throat.

Third pass with my swarm. They focused on his legs, nearly unbalancing him. He paused, head tilting. To his right, my left, the swarm gathered, expanding slowly.

The swarm consisted of pairings: flying insect and arachnid. Spiders clutching bees, wasps, or dragonflies. A thousand pairs. They drew out five hundred lines of webbing, mostly dragline silk, with enough sticky webbing to attach to him.

I hadn’t used the black widow spiders earlier, fearing he’d realize my plan. Now I brought them into play, focusing on his joints, reinforcing the stronger webs. Their silk was nothing compared to the black widows, but it was something.

He moved without a problem, unaware or uncaring. Silk strands stretched and snapped. Together, they were stronger. Like my costume.

He tried to retract the blade in his right arm, but it caught. Pressing the point against the ground, he bent it back into alignment. It retracted on his next attempt. My second just-in-case measure hadn’t worked.

That same arm disconnected and extended towards me. I turned to avoid being caught. He fired the other arm out, and I caught hold of it before it could grip my costume.

My swarm made a fourth pass, focusing on the chain of his extended arm and the joints where webbing had accumulated. Fifty or sixty spiders stayed on the extended chain, spitting out their stickiest webbing.

He tried to maneuver the arm I was holding, his fingers and wrist bending unnaturally. He changed tactics, making the blades spear out at random. When that failed, he whipped the chain. I let go just in time. He reeled it in, getting about three-quarters of the way before a snag.

The last quarter was slower. Silk glue gumming up the works, I hoped. He looked at his arm, flexing the fingers.

While he was distracted, I made a fifth pass, more subtle, draping the silk over him.

He attacked, stretching out the arm I hadn’t gummed up. Pain slowed me, and his fist collided with me, knocking me over. I backed it off me and hurried to my feet.

While the arm was still partially extended, I deposited spiders on the chain. They began producing silk glue around the retraction mechanisms. One spider wasn’t much, but together, it added up.

He realized what I was doing. Extending the chain, he flung it across the room, the blade cutting a wide swathe. I ducked, but two bystanders were struck down. When he tried to retract the chain, the mechanism stalled.

His body was like Armsmaster’s powersuit, but every piece of equipment necessitated cutting away flesh. Elegant, efficient design over rugged craftsmanship. Lightweight, using minimal energy, maximum effect.

He tilted his head, looking at the arm that refused to retract.

I made my sixth sweep. His head snapped up, looking at me. He knew.

I couldn’t spare the breath for a quip. I hurt too much.

The chain dropped from his elbow socket. He paced over, picked it up, tore out the remaining chain, and clicked it into place.

“Come on,” I muttered.

Blades speared out all over his body. Then he began spinning furiously, cutting webs.

Different tactic. The swarm took its time passing over him, thirty or forty spiders working at a time, cutting threads so they drifted down like strings in the wind. Falling gently, they would drape over the spinning blades, attach to other silk, forming a looser cloud.

I’d anticipated this.

What caught me off guard was when he changed tactics, going after the civilians again.

“Hey!” I shouted.

I’d hoped to be more subtle about my second phase of attack.

Half of the swarm was still waiting. I deployed them while running after Mannequin, stopping to get another two-by-four.

Someone screamed as Mannequin started cutting. Two or three people, cornered. One already in harm’s way.

“Fucker! Stop!” I shouted, useless.

I moved on to the second phase. My bugs arrived with supplies. Scraps of silk cloth from my costume work. They were caught by the blades rather than being cut. Mannequin soon had a dark blur whirling around his upper body.

Other bugs packed the remainder of my costume supplies. Tubes of paint were cut, creating small, wet, colorful explosions. A large bottle of glue made its way to my hand. I tore off the lid, and bugs carted it off, holding it upside-down over his head so streams of glue could spill onto his head and shoulders. Packages of dye were torn in half, expanding into clouds of black, brown, gray, and lavender powder, sticking to any liquid, filling every gap to highlight the hidden slots and seams.

Swinging underhand, I brought the two-by-four up toward the widest part of the buzzsaw whirl. I managed a glancing blow on the end of a blade, knocking it up. The momentum of his rotation did the rest. He tipped and crashed onto his side, literally falling apart. Lengths of chain connected everything, but nothing was in the right socket. A defense mechanism against heavy impacts?

My swarm flooded over him, drawing out more lines of silk, spilling glue where possible.

He began to reel the parts in. I grabbed the arm he’d disconnected and hurled it away. Then I seized his head.

I knew he wouldn’t have anything valuable in his head. Too obvious a target. But it was easy to get, not connected to too many things, and there was a chance he might want to keep it.

Holding the head, I hauled back, pulling more chain from the neck. With one hard pull, I hauled half of his body toward me. Another pull, and I dragged his body another half-foot, but I got one or two feet of length from the neck-chain.

Even with stuff gumming up the works, his chest clearly had stronger mechanisms. The chain began slowly retracting.

Someone appeared behind me, gripping the chain. He added his strength to mine, and Mannequin’s body was dragged another two or three feet back.

“Where?” he asked. A burly bystander with a thick beard, glasses, and a red and black striped t-shirt. One of my people.

I pointed to a metal frame that had once stood around equipment.

“Stand back,” he said. I let go and backed off. He hauled Mannequin another four or five feet, then another haul, close enough to the frame.

I hurried forward, gripping the head, winding it through and beneath the bars, tying it in a crude knot, tangling it in the bars. It dangled, the stump facing the ceiling. Fifteen feet of chain trailed between it and Mannequin’s body.

Mannequin had reconnected his remaining arm and was attaching his legs.

I had seconds.

I knew where to find what I was looking for. I hefted a cinder block.

I wasn’t halfway back to the head when I saw Mannequin stand. I dropped the block and stepped away, circling him, putting distance between myself and his head. His attention seemed to be on me.

Had I pissed him off?

He wasn’t spinning, and I could see the damage. Dense webs and scraps of cloth had collected across his body, only half of the blades retracted. Color streaked him, liquid and powder.

I gathered my bugs into another formation. Low on silk, but I’d have to deal.

He stepped forward, movements awkward. Good. The ball joints might not be pristine.

He moved again, disconnecting the chain to free himself. He wasn’t focusing on me. I felt out with my bugs.

His arm. It crawled weakly for him, using the fingertips to scrape forward.

I redirected a portion of my swarm to the hand. Then I limped to put myself between him and his target. My swarm passed over him. The seventh strafing run. He slashed at it, a surprising display of emotion.

He reached into the hole where his neck should be and withdrew a small knife.

I adjusted my posture. A tinker knife. It could be anything.

He pressed a switch, and it was surrounded with a gray blur. Armsmaster’s tech.

A weapon with that effect had done horrendous damage to Leviathan.

He stepped forward, and I stepped back. Behind me, the arm jumped. Mannequin was using the telescoping blade to push it. It was trying to take a circuitous route around me.

My bugs made their eighth sweep.

He lunged for me. No blocking, no letting my armor absorb it. His movements were ungainly, but he was nine feet tall and had reach.

I backed off, aware my spiders weren’t working fast enough. I was running out of room.

There was a sound, a heavy impact, ringing metal. Mannequin stopped and whirled, striding back.

The sound came again. I chased, trying not to limp, knowing there was little I could do. I crossed half the factory before I saw what had earned Mannequin’s attention.

The man who’d helped me had the concrete block and brought it down on Mannequin’s head for the third time. The head came free and fell to the ground.

The man hefted the block, saw Mannequin approaching, and changed his mind. He dropped the block onto the head and ran.

Mannequin didn’t chase. He stooped to pick up his head, then stood straight. I stopped.

For long moments, Mannequin held the head at arm’s length. Then it fell.

Seconds stretched on as his arm flopped its way toward him. My spiders swarmed it, surrounding it in silk. Only the blade was allowing it to move, the fingers struggling around the silk.

Mannequin turned his attention to his arm. I set my swarm on it. A thousand threads of silk, each held by as many flying insects as I could grip it with, all carrying the arm aloft. I brought it up to the ceiling, fixing it in place, building a cocoon around it. My enemy turned his attention to me, shoulders facing me square-on. With no head, his body language was hard to read. Had I irritated him?

He stepped forward, and the silk hampered his movement. His leg didn’t move as far, and his missing arm displaced his balance. He collapsed.

“Want to keep going?” I asked, heart in my throat, ready to react.

Slowly, he pulled himself to his feet. Twice, he used the knife to slash at the silk. On the second attempt, I hit him with the formation of bugs for an eighth sweep, hoping to throw him off-balance enough that he’d stab himself. No such luck.

Standing straight, Mannequin shifted his grip on his knife, then raised one finger. Wagged it left and right, that same gesture of disapproval, condemnation.

Then he turned to leave, striding for the door. I didn’t try to stop him. I didn’t have it in me.

I watched him leave with my bugs. Felt him get three, four, then five blocks away before he was out of my range. The second he was gone, all the strength went out of my legs. I collapsed onto my knees.

I hurt all over. If Mannequin hadn’t broken something in my ribs or collarbone, he’d fractured something. Physically exhausted. Emotionally? Doubly so.

Charlotte appeared, offering a hand. Murmurs of conversation started. I tuned it out. I couldn’t take criticism, and I didn’t deserve praise. How many had been hurt while I fought Mannequin? How many had died because I hadn’t been on the alert?

With Charlotte’s help, I stood. I shook my head at her offer for support. Moving slowly, I walked over to the dismembered head.

A drop of black fluid beaded at the seam in the neck. Apparently that was enough of a flaw for Mannequin to abandon it. I left it.

Then I hobbled over to the body of the gray-haired doctor. Getting onto my knees was painful. I turned her head, stared into her open eyes. Light blue, surprised.

“I’m sorry,” I told her.

I couldn’t think of anything more to add. A minute or two passed before I gave up. I left her eyes open; closing them seemed presumptuous and trite.

I cut the threads with my bugs and let the arm fall from the ceiling. More than one person was startled.

“Throw the head and the arm into the ocean,” I said. “Somewhere deep.”

“Okay,” Charlotte said, her voice quiet.

“I’m going to go. I’ll be using my bugs to watch for more trouble,” I said, limping toward the door.

I’d won. So to speak.