“He’s veering left!” I shouted to my teammates, “Faster, Sirius!  He’s getting away!”

Of course, the other option here, other than that he’s leading them back to Taylor’s territory, is that he’s leading them all into a trap. A Snare.

I could feel a tremor in Sirius’ body, like the momentary tremor of a twitching muscle, but in every muscle.  My legs spread a fraction further apart as he grew larger, his ribs expanding further in either direction.

Nice work, Bitch.

The increase in his speed was small but noticeable.

I cast a glance over my shoulder at Bitch.  Her mask had fallen off at some point when we’d been retrieving Lucy or during our ride.  She looked drawn, the lines of her mouth and the bones of her face that much more prominent.

She’s really taking it hard.

There’s no time I feel for Bitch as much as when one of the doggos die. The result is Bitch at her most sympathetic.

Had I failed to notice she was like that before, was it pain from her injuries that did it, or was it anger?

I’m guessing a mix of anger and grief.

It wouldn’t matter if I couldn’t find him or catch up to him.

See, this is why I think it’s important. First during the first Mannequin fight, and now with this, Taylor’s been musing about his senses and then dismissing the issue as a low-priority thing. I do agree that she’s had more immediately important things to think about in both situations, but the fact that it’s being repeatedly discussed in spite of being dismissed like this leads me to believe that the tides will turn against Mannequin when Taylor finally realizes how his senses actually work.

Once I did, I wasn’t sure I’d catch him again.  He could apparently see my bugs and since our last confrontation he’d gained the ability to see the spider silk I was placing on him or in his vicinity.

I suspect the details of how exactly Mannequin’s senses work is going to be important to his eventual defeat, if it happens.

It was remarkably high-resolution vision for someone who hadn’t been able to notice that I didn’t have a pool of blood spreading out beneath me during our last fight.

Or someone with no apparent eyes, for that matter. He does have a way, or ways, to sense things like the letters on Scrabble pieces, but I don’t think it’s vision per se.

Or was his inability to see that because he was calibrated to see the small things?

Can’t see the forest for the trees? I guess that’s not unreasonable, though you’d think he’d see the movements of breath, then.

She wanted to press on, and I wasn’t about to try and change her mind.  I wouldn’t be able to stop her, for one thing, and I did want to help my people.

For once, Bitch’s unstoppable rage and Skitter’s desire to protect are working in the same direction.

Mannequin moved in a straight line, onto rooftops, down to the ground, or halfway down and through windows that had been stripped of glass, emerging from the far side.

That can’t be the most effective route, even with his mobility.

My bugs swarmed him where I could get them to, trying to snag him with lines and threads of silk and hamper his movements, but I could only get him with a small few at a time.

Yeeah, that doesn’t sound particularly effective.

He was approaching the edge of my effect’s reach, and I knew I’d lose track of him shortly.

Well. At least you have a decent idea of where he’s going?

It might be seen as a waste of precious time in a crucial moment, but I doubted we would have had Bitch in our corner otherwise, and without her, we wouldn’t have a ride, so to speak.

That is a fair point. Besides, their ride is also their strongest offense against Mannequin in terms of raw power. If anything they have can crack his casing, it’s the hellhounds. Although Genesis might be able to come up with something.

I’d consoled myself with the fact that we had a pair of massive, muscular steeds that could outpace any car you’d see on the street, and Mannequin was limited to his two legs.

Yeah, but those are some incredibly long legs aided by Mannequin’s body being able to contort and move in ways a regular human body shouldn’t.

The thing was, somewhere around the point where he stopped trying to evade my tripwires and my bugs and picked up speed, when he really started moving, I realized he was actually faster than the dogs.

This is still impressive, though.

Mannequin covered a lot of ground with his long legs and seemingly endless energy, and he didn’t have any injuries.  The dogs, Bitch and Grue did.

Ah, yeah, that would slow them down a bit.

Mannequin had been aiming at the animals more than he’d aimed at Grue or Bitch, so the damage to my teammates was more or less limited to a few flecks embedded in the legs, buttock and feet.

And he may have done that on purpose, leaving them slowed down so he could get to Taylor’s territory before them but still let them catch up in time for Taylor to see him at work turning her gang into a pile of corpses.

The injuries were small, but one in Bitch’s stomach worried me.  There were way too many vitals that could be hit with that location, and it was bleeding worse than any of the others.

Ouch. And there’s no way she’s going to admit to any massive pain in it if you ask.

Hmm. Jack would’ve succeeded if he tried… Maybe the key to defeating the squishies is to encourage friendly fire, either through accidents, through disturbing Jack’s carefully orchestrated team balance, or through shogi.