The technology in my right eye winked out. It was still highlighting random things, showing text, and countdowns I could no longer ascertain the meaning or relevance of, and it went dark, turning my eye into an ordinary eye. If there was a light there, and I had no idea if there had been… there was nothing.
For a long, spine-chilling moment, I didn’t move a muscle or take a breath as I came to terms with the fact that that might be the world ending.
Medical monitors beeped, machines hissed, and at least one person was out of it and either didn’t care or didn’t know how much noise they were making. Screams, grunts, and inarticulate cries. People looked stressed and they had a thousand times a thousand reasons to look that way.
The area, at least, was well lit, although the brightness of the lights and the fact everything was white made my eyes hurt. My head was pounding, even if my short sit-down with Jessica had let me recuperate enough I didn’t feel like even flying would make me pass out.
A crew of nurses made their way through the throng of people who were sitting in the waiting area. Ten minutes had passed from my arrival, and I’d spent most of those ten minutes dwelling on the problem at hand. The Wardens would be telling Dauntless and Fume Hood not to engage. That gave us a short, short clock when it came to the Simurgh’s plan to end the world.
Around the time those ten minutes had passed, I’d stopped thinking about plans and counter-plans entirely. I’d started watching the nurse that looked like he was going to get to me first, my full focus turned toward him, the checklist of questions he was asking, and the answers I’d give. Could I make small talk? What would I say?
If the world was really ending, could I make the interaction as pleasant as possible?
It was stupid, so minor, it didn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. But it kept my mind off of the raspy burr to each of my breaths, the pain, and more than any of that, the fact I didn’t really have any hope for the future.
If my estimation was right, then literally any moment now, the Simurgh would be merging with Fortuna. If she’d miscalculated, then it could be a few minutes more. If I’d lost track of time to a sufficient degree, then it could be already happening, the scream imminent.
And I was waiting in line, so to speak. Sitting in a chair with a plasticky-white cover on the padding, elbow to elbow with the people to my left and right in matching chairs.
I turned my head- too quickly. I winced as neck muscles pulled at my collarbone.
A female nurse, not the one I’d been anticipating. The guy was stuck talking to someone elderly. A refugee or a cape’s family.
“Antares, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” I said. My voice had that same just-been-sick burr to it.
My hand was holding the washcloth-sized pad of cotton to my collarbone. The cotton was stuck to blood, and pulled at my skin, which pulled at the bone. I felt it grate and click, my expression changing to something like I was screaming, even though the air was locked in my throat.
A dribble of blood ran down from the pad’s edge to the heel of my hand, down to my sleeve. It wasn’t like I didn’t already have a ton there.
“Okay. Don’t remove that. Come with me.”
“I think other people arrived before I did. I don’t want special treatment.”
“It’s on a requirement basis. That’s a clear break and serious blood loss. Do you need help? A chair?”
Technically, I knew that they were giving us triage. I knew it wouldn’t be a first-come, first-serve basis. At the same time, I was aware I didn’t have any friends. The Wardens didn’t trust me after my altercations with Eric, non-Wardens had reasons to distrust me because they’d heard Chris’ filtered version of my plan. Too many civilians were anti-parahumans.
On a level, I just wanted to minimize stress on as many fronts as possible.
I floated after the woman, who had ear decorations that threaded through holes in each ear- something that might have come from one of the cultures we ran into with all the interdimensional stuff. She kept looking back to check on me, her eyes flicking down to my feet, as if to confirm to herself that I really was flying. I didn’t run into that a lot.
The hallway had a u-curve, with sections separated by walls, privacy provided by curtains that slid out in front to form a fourth barrier. People in Patrol uniforms stood guard here and there, keeping the peace. Two of them were helping to carry a stretcher with a cape in heavy armor on it.
I’m sorry. I really hope the Wardens have something.
My thoughts were jarred as I saw Marquis. He glanced at me, saying nothing, before pushing a curtain aside just enough to step into the enclosure.
If there was a small peace to be found in the small kindnesses and smaller distractions, that possibility erased it, destroyed it.
“Doctor Close?” the nurse asked. The doctor was in the center area, surrounded by nurses and papers that had been written on, not printed.
“Antares,” he said. “I’ve seen you on television.”
“Oh no,” I said, deadpan in part because I was trying very hard not to provoke my injuries.
“I don’t take sides,” he said. “That is a lot of blood right there.”
“There’s more,” I said. “Hard to see with the black top on.”
He shined a light in my eyes, then at my mouth. I opened it.
“Close,” he said. I did. He took my hands and looked at the fingertips. Well, the ones he could see with the bandages.
“Lip color is okay. Fingernails don’t suggest circulation problems. Any confusion?”
“Thoughts are a bit rambly.”
“I just fought the Simurgh. If I wasn’t drenched in cold sweat, that’d be the problem.”
“I’d rather not. My ribs are…” Fractured? Broken? “Fucked. Pretty fucked. My collarbone’s really fucked. Broken. I’m not sure about the ribs.”
So much for that thinking I’d done earlier about talking to that nurse and being really concise, making everything easier. It wasn’t just my thoughts that were rambling.
“Could be a fracture,” he said.
I peeled the pad of bandage away, as much as I could. It helped I’d just done it a minute and a half ago.
Minute and a half. The world is ending. The Simurgh is winning.
“Oh,” he said, with enough surprise in his voice to bring me to the present. I almost jumped, and the only reason I didn’t might have been that I was way too fucking tired.
“That’s what I said,” I answered, my voice a whisper.
I wasn’t sure he heard, because he was preoccupied saying something to the nurse. He looked back to me. “Abdominal pain? Chest pain?”
“My ribs are pretty fucked,” I reminded him, my tone tense. I felt bad enough sitting in a hospital cubicle while the world was fucking ending, without him wasting time.
“Just running through ,” he said. “I’d like to get this costume top off you, so we can get a better look at that. Nurse? If you could help miss- help Antares here with her costume.”
My forcefield peeled away from me, moving me as little as possible. Forcefield hands brushed my hair off to the side, over my good shoulder, tugging it where blood made it stick to cloth or skin. I began pulling it off in increments.
“I’ll give you a moment of privacy while I check things,” Doctor Close told me. “Help her if she needs it, Leah.”
Did I scare him? I wondered.
I didn’t need it. I debated tearing at the cloth, but, for one thing, I didn’t want to scare them, and for another, I wasn’t sure it was actually easier. It was sticking to my body from armpit to waist.
Besides, I liked my costume, even if it was soaked in blood.
I let her hold my arms, gently raising and bracing them, holding them with a strength that didn’t let them waver or shake. Handprints stood out against my skin.
“Do you have water?” I asked. “And a cloth or paper towel?”
“We have bottled water. Why?” nurse Leah asked.
“Please,” I said, my voice tense and my words curt because breathing was hard in this position, the breaks and fractures making every sound an effort.
She left, and I worked on extricating myself from my costume. Forcefield hands removed the breastplate, setting it aside.
She returned with the water and a bit more of the cotton pad bandage.
With forcefield hands, I wet the cloth and used it to soak the parts of me where sweat didn’t reach but blood had. It had clotted, and clung to tiny, translucent body hairs all down my back, until skin, costume, and clotted blood were inextricable. The water helped.
Once I got past the small of my back and my stomach, it was easier.
My costume and the long-sleeved shirt I’d been wearing were inexorably bound together. I put them to one side, folding them.
Nurse Leah touched the forcefield, and I stopped.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said. She reached out tentatively, touching it again, a hand on a shoulder.
The Fragile One slipped out of her grip, moving up to the bed, sitting just behind and around me. It was like I was the Wretch again, but only a part of me that was still shaped like ordinary two-arms, two-legs, one-headed Victoria was there. The rest was invisible, invincible, and fragile.
“She’s out of your way now.”
“Secret,” I said. The Fragile One lifted the wet, scrunched-together cotton cloth to my lips, the fold in roughly the dimensions and length of a finger.
Not that secrets matter anymore.
“Bra off too. I have a paper gown for you.”
The athletic bra hugged my upper body, and more blood had settled into it, adhering it to my body. I was not looking forward to removing it. It was one of my favorites, too, though two days of exertion had probably halved its lifetime.
I tore it off, the Fragile One applying gentle pressure to my body to approximate the light constriction of it before digging into it with fingernails, tearing the cloth. Skin pulled and wet bandage helped with the tricky spots when it came to the stickiest bits of bloody cloth.
I had more that would be a nightmare. I couldn’t really see with my current posture and my inability to turn my head without feeling like my collarbone was being broken all over again, but I was very aware that blood had run down my body to adhere costume bottoms to underwear and underwear to skin.
The nurse held the paper gown up against my front, and I had the Fragile One hold it there. I didn’t put my arms through the sleeve and the nurse didn’t ask me to. It was a pointless movement of my arms when every movement of my arms hurt and I’d need to take it off anyway.
“Antares?” the doctor asked.
“Yes. You can come in.”
“I was just thinking, would you rather use your real name? You don’t wear a mask.”
“Victoria, Ms. Dallon, Antares, whatever you want to call me,” I said.
He nodded. He had a pad, and was writing things down. He put it down, then bent down, investigating my ribs.
“Tell me if it hurts.”
“It hurts every damn time my heart beats, Doctor.”
He poked and prodded for a bit, then lifted his stethoscope. “This’ll be cold.”
“Everything’s cold, Doctor.”
“That’s a concern when our most immediate concern is blood loss and-or internal bleeding,” he said.
“I mean, it’s winter, I’m not wearing a top, this building facility has holes in it you could fly an Endbringer or Dragon mech through…”
“I didn’t know about the holes,” he said. He pressed the stethoscope to my chest. It was cold. He touched my wrist, then my hand. “Your body temperature’s a bit low, even with all of that.”
If nothing else, I appreciated being in this hospital room because it was distracting me. I could focus on the little things, like keeping the rest of my blood in, not passing out, how to articulate the damage to my ribs, and how to gently remove articles of clothing using alien engines of chaos and conflict.
Fuck. I’d choose to feel like this for the rest of my life, broken collarbone, every breath sparking a thought-disturbing bit of pain, cold and sticky, if only it meant I didn’t have to feel the heartbreak.
I would have forgone any fixes at all, let these wounds stay open, if only someone from somewhere else in the facility would walk in and say there was a plan.
“Do you happen to know your blood type off the top of your head?” Doctor Close asked me, as he jotted some things down.
“We’re going to get you some,” he said, without looking up.
“Disrupts powers, doesn’t it?” I asked him. “Temporarily.”
“I was about to mention that. No guarantees, but there’s a small chance you won’t be able to do that trick with the… what’s that? Telekinesis?”
“Basically,” I said. “I’d like to keep my powers available, just in case.”
“You won’t have anything if you go into hypovolemic shock. Can I get you to lie down? The nurse can assist.”
I made the transition to lie flat on my back. The Fragile One held the paper gown up against my front.
“Leah, a blanket, if you please. I think they just brought more in.”
It was harder to breathe while lying down. I let the doctor putter around, preparing the space for things to come. My flight kept me from pressing down too hard on the bed.
A distant screech built up in volume. Horror gripped me, lingering even as I processed it as hospital equipment or someone’s power. Not the Simurgh’s scream.
I winced, because the sound had induced a bit of panic, and the panic came with heavier, faster breathing. My hand gripped the edge of the bed.
“We’ll need you to sign a consent form,” he told me. In the wake of the noise, it hit me harder. I shivered.
The blood transfusion- if I said yes to it, I was effectively surrendering. Saying there was nothing more. My fight was done, no powers, no nothing.
Ugh, fuck. Was this a bad thing? A good thing?
The doctor looked at me. “A friend?”
I didn’t know how to answer that.
“I’m topless, except for a bit of paper, I don’t know if you care about that,” I said, raising my voice.
“I was a warlord, I’ve cut throats, had my throat cut, I’ve shot people,” Tattletale said, as she let herself in. “I really don’t care about your boobs.”
I rolled my eyes. I wanted to move my head too, but that wasn’t an option.
“Are you here for a particular reason, Tattletale?” I asked.
“Chastity. She got a good knock to the noggin. Cassie’s fretting and Rachel needed to be told it’d be better if she stepped away instead of getting cranky about it. I saw Marquis and a certain someone take their leave, realized you were here.”
“Mm. My neck and side hurt like fuck, did you think I need a pointed pain in my ass instead? You don’t have to.”
“Nah, hon. Just checking in. You did your ‘brute destroy, grr argh’ thing, you apparently forgot you’re supposed to be invincible, now your job is done. Mine is ongoing.”
“I just told you I was a warlord. I’m still managing, administrating, moving key pieces around.”
“So I’ll get right to it,” she told me. “A lot of the pieces are running around very upset and concerned about something that apparently started with you.”
“I want to play a little game, Vicky. If I say black, you say…”
“Yeah,” she said, like it was the most profound thing ever.
“Can I kick her out?” I asked nurse Leah, who had just made her way inside, navigated around Tattletale, and who was now draping a weighted, warm blanket over my legs.
“Listen,” Tattletale said. “That’s the way it’s supposed to be. I say black, you say white, I say let’s literally nail Teacher’s ass to a wall, and you’re supposed to say that’s wrong, I’m a bad person for using cruel and unusual punishment.”
“Do you want her to leave?” the nurse asked me.
“I’m really tempted.”
“Except you went and came up with a punishment way worse than putting a tire around someone’s neck and setting it on fire.”
“You never did that.”
“Exactly my point! You’re making me look too good, with your indefinite, jury-less detention, and now I hear you were apparently planning on mass murder?”
The nurse gave me a look, and it wasn’t her checking if I wanted Tattletale to leave. One line from Tattletale, and the nurse was wary, not entirely on my side anymore.
“Can you give us a minute?” I asked.
The doctor and nurse made their exit.
In the background, I heard someone grunting and screaming. There was a clatter.
“It’s more than just that,” I told Tattletale. “Cryptid gave a pretty trite, one-line explanation. There were contingencies, plans, post-plans.”
“Oh I know,” Tattletale said. “Which is part of the reason I’m here, checking. You had teammates going along with it, including a goody-two-shoes like Sveta and a kid who’s got a lot to redeem himself over. The Wardens were entertaining it, despite the fact you’re not in their good books.”
“I’m okay in their good books, I think.”
“You’re not in their best books.”
“Conceded,” I grunted.
“So there’s more to it,” Tattletale said.
“It was a last-ditch effort. Riley, Bonesaw, thought it would work. So did Cryptid. We send capes to fight Endbringers knowing that a good proportion will die. We have to send a certain number or they win and we lose something fundamental.”
“Sure,” Tattletale said.
“Now we’ve got forces worse and stronger than a single Endbringer lined up. It requires us to commit more, with a higher proportion of death.”
“One hundred percent.”
“Maybe,” I said. I used flight to get to a sitting position, holding the paper dress in front of me and the bandage to my shoulder. “Does it matter? We don’t have what we need. The Simurgh got out ahead of us.”
“It matters to me,” Tattletale said. “I’ve tolerated a lot, spending time with you, helping out your teammate…”
I laughed, one note, then winced with pain.
“…But I have to draw the line here,” Tattletale said. “I lost someone important to me because she wanted to make a stupid, grand gesture at the end. She made the gesture without communicating with anyone… except your sister. Then she carried it out. You, I hate to break it to you, aren’t important to me.”
“Good. I’m glad.”
“But I have no tolerance for this shit. Zero.”
“The Wardens knew. My teammates knew. Lookout excepted. The plan was to ask every single cape out there if they’d oblige us. Maybe we’d force the problem elements. The ones we’d sign off on executing anyway, I mean.”
“And… whatever. Yeah. The effect would be passed from cape to cape by contact. But it required that handshake. I think Cryptid thought it wasn’t worth it. That we’d get halfway and fail because people wouldn’t take the risk, wouldn’t make the sacrifice.”
“I have teammates who would have taken your offer. I don’t think I can be okay with that.”
“I am fucking open to better ideas, anything,” I told her. “But I’m worried the Wardens’ contingency plans won’t work-”
“Sleeper has been baited in. No luck. Saint had a trick up his sleeve when it came to dealing with A.I., in case his big red button for dealing with Dragon didn’t work. He’s trying it on the machine army.”
“And nothing. There’s talk of Dragon cooperating with him.”
I shivered. I wanted to wrap myself in the blanket and I was pretty sure my bones couldn’t bear the weight of it. My arms were limp to my side. Forcefield fingers were running through my hair, combing it, and I didn’t remember doing that. They were sharp, scraping my scalp without cutting it.
Tattetale took a seat on a side table, her arms folded. “The Wardens aren’t a force for change, Victoria. The PRT, aside from its initial revolution and moves, back in Bet, it wasn’t a force for change. They’re all about the status quo. The bigger they get, the more they have to hold back. They’re too used to holding back. They don’t have that frame of mind to make the big leaps. At most they prolong the inevitable.”
“That’s a little uncharitable.”
“I’ll give them their due. They’re doing their damndest.”
“We’re out of time, Tattletale,” I said, quiet. “What they’re doing isn’t working, and you’re here, trying to vet my plan.”
“Trying to fathom it, when it’s the one action you could take that’s furthest from my ability to understanding. It’s reckless.”
“There’s nothing noble about putting lives on the line, Victoria. It’s even less noble when thousands do it.”
“You say that even when… you knew Khepri?” I asked her.
“Do you have anyone you care about?” I asked her. “That you’d make a sacrifice for?”
“Most of the people I care about to that degree are people with powers, and they’d be getting the touch of death.”
“It would be a dreaming death,” I said. “Slow but inevitable. Gotta pollute the cycle. It’s critical that it take a little while. Makes the rest of it easier.”
“You said ‘most’, when you said most were capes. Are there any that aren’t?”
“One person who doesn’t have powers, who’s far, far away right now,” she said. “You haven’t really convinced me.”
“I haven’t exactly been trying. I’m a little dizzy, I’m supposed to get blood, even though it might muck with my powers and screw up my newfound relationship with this girl here…”
I touched the side of the Fragile One’s face.
Tattletale leaned to one side, peering past the gap in the curtain.
“I dunno,” I said. “I’ve been outlining it. That’s all. There’s more to it. Steps, stages.”
“What would you say, if you wanted to convince me?”
“Is there a point, Tattletale? If that’s where you draw your personal line in the sand, given your past experiences, I’m not going to fight you on that. The feelings are valid and I think we’d only fuck up our fragile truce here if I tried.”
“Not my past experiences. Current experience,” she said, meeting my eyes. “As a person left behind.”
“Sure,” I said. I shivered again.
“There’s a way,” she said.
I stared at her. The goosebumps that crawled up my arms had nothing to do with the chill.
“Tell me,” I told her.
“Tell me,” I told her, again, rising to an upright position, my toes a half-inch off the floor. I used my aura, pushing at her. Big.
All throughout the hospital complex, conversations stopped. Everything went quiet.
Tattletale stood strong. “You haven’t convinced me. You’d take Rachel from me? Grue? Again? Imp? Chicken fucking Little? The Heartbroken kids?”
“Potentially. People will die no matter what happens, Tattletale. It’s a question of whether it’s one hundred percent or sixty or twenty five percent. If we do nothing it’s one hundred percent.”
“If we do nothing the Simurgh might win. We live.”
“We won’t be us and you fucking know it, Tattletale,” I told her.
She was silent. There wasn’t a hint of a grin on her face.
“You’d rather die,” I said. “Than see people you love die.”
“My life is defined by regrets,” she said. “And I don’t know if I’m that different from Cryptid. I don’t trust the people who are pushing for status quo, and when people are taken from you… it’s not noble or good or pretty. There’s no heroism to fighting cancer or hurling yourself against an Endbringer and hoping it goes away.”
I thought of Dean. Of thoughts I’d had not long after losing him.
“It’s just an ending,” Tattletale said.
“You could go, in place of Imp, or in place of Chicken Little.”
“What number are we trying to reach, then?” Tattletale asked me. “You didn’t sound sure about how many would need to die.”
“I’m absolutely not.”
Someone moved on the other side of the curtain. Tattletale flicked at the curtain itself, reached out with a hand, as if to tell someone to stop. People reacting to the aura.
She clenched the outstretched hand, then brought it down to her side, balled into a fist. “Then how many, Victoria? How many people do we need to convince in a painfully short period of time? What’s the point I can say we’ve met the threshold, I can trick Imp into staying home? Or trick Chicken Little?”
She looked so sad, like she was about to cry. I hadn’t seen Tattletale like that, but it felt more like her than any other conversation I’d ever had with her.
“It’s the way it’s always been. Against Endbringers. Against Scion. The more the better, and if we don’t get enough, then everyone loses.”
“Vista doesn’t get her knight in shining armor, and Capricorn doesn’t get to blow off years of pent up steam with Vista.”
“It’s not about that. He’s not about that.”
“If you go, then you’ll break Capricorn’s parents hearts again. How about that? You’re leaving Lookout alone or you’re asking that poor kid to die alone despite the fact that it’s her worst fear. You’re asking Precipice to end his journey unfinished. Sveta never gets to be a human for a prolonged period, doesn’t get normal dorky dates with a creative boyfriend.”
“You’re using your power to get details. That’s low.”
“Of course I fucking am, Antares. I’ve been working my ass off to save those people. I’ve gone without sleep, I’ve had migraines every third fucking day. So if you want to convince me, you’ve got to tell me it’s somehow worth it to end every single one of those people’s stories where they currently are. Miserably unfinished.”
I raised my good arm, then let it fall. “That’s… not an argument.”
“It’s an argument you don’t like.”
“It’s… if it comes to that? Any one of those people? Those bad endings? I think we’re willing to do it for their own reasons.”
“We are,” Sveta said, from beyond the curtain.
She slipped through. Her tendrils were writhing. I saw a glimpse of Rain on the other side. Grue, too, his back to the curtain.
“A story half-finished is better than no story at all,” Sveta said. “If we die, there’s nothing. No legacy, nobody to remember or carry on sentiments. There’s no point to it all.”
“There are so many other people out there with their own lives,” I told Tattletale. “Civilians. Jerks. Capes who ran from these battlefields. It’s basic fucking empathy to not want to end their stories either. The world doesn’t start and finish with the people you know.”
I heard a sound, a deep voice. Brian, murmuring words that sounded agreeable, though I couldn’t make them out.
“This world isn’t worth keeping if they’re not in it,” Tattletale said.
“That’s a big if and you know it,” I said. “I don’t know if you’re disagreeing on principle, given your past-”
“A horrible, slow nightmare filled death for thousands? That may be pointless? That’s not principles,” Tattletale said.
“I think we let people choose,” I told Tattletale. “I think we give them the information, we let them choose. If we don’t end up getting enough… they’re just getting a head start. I think you know that we should, and that’s why you’re standing here arguing with me, wanting me to say words that make this easier or simpler. Or wanting me to force you to tell me, so you’re absolved.”
I knew, telling her, that there was a chance she’d realize and walk away, or hit a wall, or anything. When using my aura to evoke an emotion, I knew there was a chance that a certain person’s lens for viewing the world would alter the response. I could give a man fear and get anger in response.
I watched as Tattletale took in that information through her particular lens.
I watched her turn, pushing aside the curtain with more force than was necessary, giving people a view of me wounded and unarmored, before Sveta closed the curtain.
“You have a call,” Tattletale’s voice came from the other side of the curtain. “That communication with Fortuna you were planning. Lookout’s handling the technical side. You know where she is. You’ll want Precipice with, since he’s the one that got through to her in the first place. It might help.”
That wasn’t an answer, that wasn’t-
“If you need to get Riley or her stuff to a place you can use her, there are non-cape ways. Several.”
I picked up my blood-crusty costume top with the Fragile One, pulling it on, the rush of realization providing a dizzying rush that threatened to make me pass out at the same time it dulled the edge of the pain.
Sveta followed, with Rain jogging along.
Semiramis was out there, with Tattletale. As Tattletale gestured in my direction, I felt my collarbone pop. My costume shed crusty blood.
My first thought was that it was a trap, that she was rewinding my memories as well, in a final action of regret. But I didn’t feel anything slipping away. I felt better, as the worst of my wounds were targeted. Undoing what had been done. Giving me just a bit more strength, a bit more of what I needed.
Which fit. Outreach, possibly final, from Tattletale. It served as a push forward, and recognition that she understood, even though she’d never be able to use words to voice it.
“Fortuna. I’m… I’m hoping it’s the person that hears me. Not the Titan.”
“If you have any fight left, I need it now. I need you. You can tell your agent we’ll give them Fume Hood and Dauntless. They’ll know we’re telling the truth.”
“I need your help, and the help of the Titans you’re linked to. Pouffe, Valkyrie. One person to one place. You should be able to defeat the Simurgh, and all the pieces fall into place just as they want them.”
“Please. Thank you.”
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