I heard sirens nearby.  Not just from one vehicle, but several, all getting closer.

Anyone who’s in a car when Shatterbird hits is fucked.

So are they coming to assist after reports of Skitter’s rude awakenings and bug text?

I could sense my neighborhood, and the black widows that were still where I’d put them.  Every step brought more bugs into my focus.

Oh yeah, the black widows that wove the costume I just mentioned!

Ants beneath people’s lawns, earthworms in gardens, pillbugs and earwigs under stones and objects in garages and carports, cockroaches in the darkest corners of cabinets.  I woke the people I could and left them their warnings.

I think this makes for the second chapter of Worm to explicitly feature actual worms, after 7.2.

I knew the time had to have run out.  But I was so close.  I could sense the block my house was on, the neighbor’s house.

Taylor’s house is still there, right? Didn’t she at some point mention checking on it?

I get the sense that she’s about to arrive just in time to sense her house getting glassploded, possibly with Danny inside.

Danny’s death flag isn’t catching anywhere near as much wind as it was during Buzz and Extermination, but him potentially dying and Taylor having to deal with that is not an idea I’m willing to dismiss offhandedly.

I’m not sure whether the fact that he’s currently Taylor’s only real tie back to her civilian identity makes that more likely or less likely. It can be argued either way.

Then I couldn’t look anymore. I threw it aside, trusting my bugs to nudge it into a storm drain where it wouldn’t be found.  The time wasn’t exact; I couldn’t be sure exactly how much time had passed since Jack had told us about Shatterbird’s attack.

Fair.

Bit of a waste of a useful phone, though – not because of cost but because she might still need one – but I can’t blame her for wanting the clock out of her arm’s reach.

…oh wait, right. It’s not about emotions, it’s that the phone is going to explode along with everything else.

I couldn’t say if Shatterbird’s clock was a few minutes fast or a few minutes late.  There was no point on dwelling on the final minutes, and keeping my cell phone on me was dangerous.

Yeah, that.

That, and I wasn’t sure I could bear to watch the clock hit zero.

This is the part I was thinking of. Well, not just watching the clock hit zero, but nervously watching the clock in those last few minutes rather than focusing on warning people and getting to shelter herself.

Oh yeah, by the way, Taylor, you may want to do that. Spidersilk costume or not.

Judging by how far down the page I’m getting, I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that this chapter ends right when the figurative fireworks go off, or at most a minute later.

The window of opportunity for getting to the house and getting my costume off and getting dad somewhere safe was long gone.

You’d probably be better off going to him in costume, honestly.

But I’m guessing there’s no time for that either.

Even the window for doing all of that without taking the time to get my costume off was long past.  I was too far away.

Yeah.

That left only one option.  Could I save him with my power the same way I’d been trying to do with everyone else that fell in my range?

Better hope the range boost is big enough. How far away is he?

I still needed to get closer, fast.

Too far away for now, at least.

I held my phone in one hand, sneaking glances as I made my way from one block to the next.  The six-minute mark came all too fast.  The clock on my cell phone ticked to 12:36.  Four minutes left.  Three.

I managed to squeeze between the edge of the second fence and the neighboring building.  My phone showed the time as 12:33 at night.

Hey, nice, no more climbing. That ought to count for a few seconds, unless it took her a while to find and squeeze through the gap.

I had seven minutes.  Something as stupid as fences had cost me so much time.

To be fair, fences are designed for this exact purpose: keeping people from passing through.

But yeah. Might’ve been faster going around after all.

That doubt and fear that had rested with me the second I’d realized how far I’d need to travel in this short span of time was crystallizing into a dawning realization that I wasn’t going to make it.

Well, shit.

The thin metal wire pressed hard against the deep tissue of my gloved fingers as I climbed the fence, while my toes scrabbled for a hold on the metal hinge that divided one section of fence from another.

Up, up and away!

Precious long seconds, maybe a minute or two and I knew I’d have to get by the fence on the far side as well.  I wobbled on top of the fence and then hopped down with a splash.  I was running again the second I had my feet under me.

I know she means once she’s steadied herself, but the idea of Taylor’s feet literally not being under her while she climbed entered my head and now I can’t help but imagine her climbing the fence upside-down.

Why wasn’t I stronger?  My disappointment in my luck and the power it had given me was an almost physical pain.

Maybe it’s because with all that daily running, you skipped arm day?

I could warn people, but I couldn’t push down a fence.  I felt cheated.

Hehe.

Imagine Taylor banging on the fence uselessly like in the Poka Poka meme:

Complete with cutesy Japanese music. :p

I made my way through the college area that was Regent’s territory.  The buildings here were in rougher shape.  There were fewer people to warn, but they were harder to find.  I used the bugs I could afford to check my way was clear.  Five blocks ahead of me, I could feel the presence of construction equipment, of temporary fencing and barricades.

Would that be the same construction site from 11.1?

Chancing a look at my phone, I felt a chill.  Time had flown while I’d worked, my attention elsewhere.  I had eleven minutes, and I wasn’t close enough.  I couldn’t afford to take a detour.

Ah, no, it’s a hurdle.

Welp, guess we’re heading through the construction site!

I threw every bug that wasn’t warning someone at the fencing, flying insects gripping the thin metal bars, crawling insects swarming at and under the concrete pads beneath each post.  Tens of thousands of bugs gathering together to surge forward as a single mass.  I tried pushing, pulling, trying to rock it and build enough momentum with the bugs to bring it down.

Shatterbird’s power is versatile, but so is Skitter’s.

My bugs hadn’t managed to push it over by the time I reached the fence.  It had been designed to withstand strong winds, and the concrete feet at the base of each pole gave it too much stability.

Welp.

As I got there, I had to stop running for the first time, panting for breath.  My fingers clutched the grid of fine metal wire until it hurt.

What do you do now? Climb?

My legs burned, my feet throbbed, and I could feel sweat soaking the fabric of my costume where the water I was running through didn’t.  On one block, the water would be only a half-inch deep, but the next might prove to be nearly a foot in depth, adding extra resistance to each movement of my already complaining legs.

Oof.

Really wish you could fly on an insect cloud right about now, don’tcha?

The block after that, it could just as easily be a split-second decision between trying to make my way past the piles of rubble and parked cars and detouring to the next block over.  Which would cost me more time?

In short: Brockton Bay sucks for running these days, especially when you’re actually trying to get somewhere.

If only Bitch and I were on better terms, maybe she could have explained about the Nine approaching her.  If I could only trust her, if she could only trust me, I could have borrowed one of her dogs, and this wouldn’t seem as impossible as it did now.

It really is a shame Taylor’s efforts to bond with Rachel didn’t get the chance to work out before Leviathan happened and the truth about Taylor came out.

But Rachel never seemed to put in any effort to meet Taylor halfway. She does have the whole dog-brain thing going to explain her behavior, but it doesn’t necessarily excuse it.

At this point, it’s getting kind of difficult to sympathize with Rachel much.

“The Slaughterhouse Nine are here?”

“They’ve been here a little while.  Go!”

“Sorry, it’s just, that’s a bit of a bombshell to drop on me like this–”

“The time to deal with bombshells was eight Arcs ago. Shut up and go warn people!”

“I don’t… how?  How do I tell everyone?”

“Tell as many people as you can, tell them to tell as many people as they can.  Now go!”  I hung up, to force her to move sooner and because I couldn’t spare the breath.

The best and worst part of word of mouth: Exponential growth.

My range and fine control were extending.  This not only kept the people behind me in my range for a precious few extra seconds, but it extended my range forward and to either side, adding one hundred people to the total who fell within my range.

Oh hey, range boost time.

I’m not sure Taylor has correctly identified what state of mind relating to her trigger event is causing this. She doesn’t seem to be feeling “trapped” right now, although she does want to be somewhere else (wherever Danny is), but she is in a frantic, worried rush to help people, much like in Extermination. Not so much like Hive, though.

Come to think of it, here’s the main thing Hive, Extermination and this situation do have in common: Large portions of the city were being threatened.

However, I don’t think that’s it, at least if Tattle was right. It doesn’t relate to her trigger event, and in Hive, she was motivated more by escapism than by fighting the ABB’s threat to the city, suggesting it wasn’t really that prominent a part of her mindset right then.

Soon that became two, three and four hundred more.

Niiice.

I was short on breath from the running.  “Emergency.  Shatterbird’s about to hit the city.  Twenty-seven minutes.  Warn the hospital, now.  Convince them.”

On one hand, that might be a difficult task because they have to be a bit skeptical of a random teen giving them a warning most people shouldn’t be able to give, but on the other hand? They can’t afford to be skeptical, especially in this world of capes.

It’s like a bomb threat. They have to treat it as if it’s real, even if they’re skeptical, because losses if it’s fake are much lower than losses if it’s real.

“I’ll try,” she said.  I hung up and dialed Charlotte.

“Skitter?”

“Twenty-seven minutes and change before Shatterbird hits the city with her power.  Spread the word, fast.  Avoid glass, take cover from a potential sandstorm.”

Damn, I didn’t even think of that potential use of it.

Hookwolf was right: Shatterbird’s power is versatile as fuck.