She headed for a group of people and knelt by one of the wounded who was lying on a sheet.  I could see her posture and expression soften as she talked to them.  So she wasn’t like that with other people.

Ahh. The villain effect, huh?

Whatever.  I’d been prepared to be hated when I committed to villainy.

That’s good, because that’s really something you should be able to see coming.

I gathered all of the supplies I’d brought and sent more bugs out to scout for more.

What I wouldn’t give for a working cell phone, to find out about how Tattletale was doing, even to ask after my dad.  But cell phones had computer chips, and computer chips had silicon.

Called it!

There’s also the issue of the screen, but that’s more survivable for the phone’s functionality, and some phones may have plastic screen covers instead of glass.

Everything that was electronic and more complicated than a toaster was probably fried, with exceptions for some tinker-made stuff.

Hm, interesting. I guess some tinkers use super advanced computer chips that don’t use silicon.

There was no use dwelling on the fact that two people I cared about were gravely hurt.  I couldn’t do anything about it now, and time spent wondering was time I wasn’t protecting and helping these people.

Yeah, probably best to focus for now.

I reached out my hand, and a portion of my swarm passed over it.  Thanks to the fact that many of them were in contact with the bottle, it was easy enough to position my hand and know when to close it.

Oh yeah, I suppose a couple of the things she mentioned earlier were disinfectants. Like the iodine?

The bugs drifted away, and I was left holding the three-inch tall bottle.

My theatrics didn’t seem to impress her.  Her tone was almost disparaging as she said, “Nobody uses hydrogen peroxide anymore.  It delays recovery time.”

Huh, interesting.

“That’s not necessarily a bad thing,” I said.  “If the wounds heal over embedded glass, it’ll be that much more unpleasant.”

That is a very good point.

“Do you have medical training?” she asked me, her tone disapproving.

A tiny bit, yes.

The wording does make it sound like she’s implying that she does. That ought to come in handy if she does.

“Not enough, no,” I said with a sigh.  I had the swarm pass over my hand again, picking up the hydrogen peroxide and depositing another plastic bottle in its place.  “Iodine?”

“Thank you,” she said, in a tone that was more impatient than grateful.  “We’re going to need more than this.”

I’m not so sure she can produce more. Maybe if she sends the bugs into other houses, someone’s got iodine in their cabinets? But how would the bugs open the cabinets? Better get lucky and find someone who’s left it out, and even then there’s the issue of identifying the bottles.

“I’ll see what I can do,” I told her, trying not to sound exasperated.

Yeah, this might not be so easy.

I followed the mass of people into the defunct factory that was next to the ambulances.

Sheets and cloths were pulled from machinery and laid atop boxes and on the ground, so people had places to sit and lie down.

I guess the factory functions as a makeshift hospital.

Gradually, people set about the process of marking the types of wounds and the presence of glass, buried or otherwise.

“Disinfectant?” a woman asked me.

Oh yeah, got any of that in the Hive?

I turned.  She was older, in her mid-fifties, roughly my height, and she had a pinched face. “What about it?”

“You’ve been pulling things out of the clouds of flies,” she told me, “Can you produce some disinfectant for us, or are you limited to art supplies and candles?”

Hah, I was right about how it looked! And it’s sort of backfiring. :p

I got the impression of a strict schoolteacher from her.  The kind who was a hardass with even the good students and a mortal enemy to the poor ones.

Eesh.

I’m just gonna go ahead and headcanon that she’s also the founder of a wrestling club, based on one of the hardass teachers I had.

It took some time for everyone to get moving, but they did.  My bugs passed me some candles and a lighter and I started handing them out with the pens and markers.

And then they went into the factory, set down the candles, used some chalk to draw on the floor, and summoned a demon who promptly destroyed them and all of Brockton Bay. The end.

Worm was a good story, guys! So let’s see, where do I find Ward…

He nodded and took the pen, turning to the not-quite-as-old man beside him.

Good luck!

I addressed the crowd, “Remember, dotted line around the wounds if you can see the glass or if you’re absolutely sure there’s no glass in there, circle if you can’t tell.  Once you or someone else has drawn the dotted line, you can take out the glass if it’s smaller than your thumbnail.  If it’s bigger, try to leave it alone!”

Sounds reasonable. Glass that’s smaller than a thumbnail probably doesn’t go much further than the skin. Though there is the risk of long pieces that look small on the surface.

“We need some elbow room,” the paramedic told me.  His blue gloves were slick with blood.  People were standing within two or three feet of him, watching what he was doing, trying to be close enough to be the next to get help when he was done with his current patient.

Skitter: *brings down an enormous swarm of flies over the paramedics, causing the crowd to back up*
Skitter: “Better?”

“They probably haven’t,” I replied, using my swarm to augment my voice, but not to carry it to the crowd.

“Probably not.  But we have to ask, and time we spend asking is time we could spend helping them.”

Exactly.

I grasped the hand of a grungy old man who stood next to me, stretching his arm out.  “Have you had your shots?”

He shook his head.

I used the pen to draw a ‘T’ on the back of his hand, circled it and drew a line through it.  I pressed the pen into the old man’s hand, “You go to people and ask them the same question.  If they haven’t had their shots, draw the same thing.  If they have, just draw the T.”

Seems like a good pair of symbols to use. Quite straight-forward.

I saw a glimmer of confusion in his eyes.  Was he illiterate?  I turned his hand over and drew a capital ‘T’ on his palm.

Huh. Alright.

“Like that, if they have had their shots” I said, raising his hand for people to see, then turned it around.  “Like that if they haven’t.”

And by doing this, she’s ensuring that people know he’s coming and what to expect. Good. 🙂

“Or at least, glass as fine as the shrapnel that hit you,” I corrected myself.

Now that might be a different story.

A shrug and a nod from the paramedic.  I got my mental bearings and continued, “If you’re pulling the glass out of your cuts and wounds and you lose track of which ones you’ve tended to, they’re going to have to explore the wounds to investigate, queue you up for x-rays and maybe even cut you open again later, after the skin has closed up, to get at any pieces they missed.”

Ahh, yeah, that makes sense.

I could see uneasy reactions from the crowd.  I raised my hand, just in time for the first of my swarm to arrive.  I closed my hand around a pen as the cloud of airborne insects delivered it to me.  They dispersed, and the pen remained behind.

I wonder if the pen was visible through the swarm before it dispersed, or if it just looked to the crowd like Skitter just made a pen out of bugs.

“I’m going to give some of you pens and markers.  We’re going to have a system to make all of this easier on the doctors.  Dotted lines around any injuries with glass sticking out.  Circles around wounds where the glass may be deeper.”

I like this plan.

The paramedic waved me over.

Ah, yeah, I suppose it would make sense for him to have some input on this.

I moved briskly through the crowd to the stretcher.

“Tetanus,” he said, when I was close enough.  “We need to know if they’ve had their shots.”

I don’t know what tetanus is – a disease or infection, I presume – but adding more information to the system is a good idea. The more they can tell just by looking, the better.

When I was done, I called the swarm to me.

Minus the non-roach crawlies, I would assume? Since they can’t go through the water.

I turned my attention to the injured who were clustering around the ambulances.

“Listen!” I called out, using my bugs to augment my voice.  “Some of you have been picking the glass out of your skin!  I understand it hurts, but you’re slowing things down!”

How so? By not doing other things?

I got some confused and angry looks.  I held up my hand to forestall any comments or argument.

“Any paramedic, nurse or doctor that helps you has to make absolutely sure that you don’t have any glass embedded deep in your body.  I don’t believe x-rays can detect glass-”

That would make sense. X-rays are a form of light, and glass is translucent, at least to the visible range.

I paused as a paramedic snapped his head up to look at me.  Okay, so I was wrong.  I wished he hadn’t reacted, though.

Ah, okay. Fair enough!

I suppose even if the glass is translucent to x-rays (which I don’t know), that would still be detectable because flesh isn’t as translucent to them?

People were paying attention to the paramedics, they’d noticed, and it wasn’t critical that these people know the exact details of the treatment they’d get.  If he’d just let me lie or be wrong, this would have gone smoother.

Yeah, but I can’t fault a trained medical professional for reacting to medical misinformation.

More people returned with the injured.  I administrated my bugs while I gave new directions to the rescue parties.

Just carrying the things on a tide of bugs wasn’t going to work.  The crawling bugs couldn’t pass through the water, and there was no way to have flying bugs carry things – too many of the objects were too heavy, even with the flying insects gathered on every inch of their surface and working in unison.

Dang it.

And even water-walking insects can’t do that while weighed down.

Minutes passed as I tried different configurations and formations of bugs, trying to wrangle things like the small bottle of hydrogen peroxide with my swarm.

This plan… might not work out.

Then I saw the woman with the maxi-pad eyepatch and a man of roughly the same age carting someone to the ambulance using a blanket attached to two broomsticks as a stretcher.

Ohh… Inspiration! I guess flying insects might be able to lift things if a mini-stretcher were to make it possible for more of them to help out?

I could do the same thing.  I called on my black widow spiders, drawing some out from the terrariums where I had them contained.  Wasps carted them to the necessary spots, and I had them spin their silk around the objects in question and tie that silk to the necessary bugs.

Niiice.

Silk looped around the neck of a marker, then around a series of roaches, who could then be assisted by other bugs.  I did the same for the other things, the iodine, markers, pens, candles and more.

So do the roaches act as the stretchers here, with the items tied to them so they don’t fall off?