And even this, helping people here, striving to help my dad, wasn’t the extent of my responsibility.  I selected Sierra from my contact list and called her, trusting my bugs to give me a sense of anything I might run into or trip over while my eyes were on the screen.

Probably good to warn them too, yeah.

“Yes?”

“Where are you?”

“Hospital with my parents and Bryce.  You said I could have the night off, that you’d be busy.”

Ah shit.

Hospitals.

Full of people who can’t easily move to cover. Even more importantly, full of glass, in windows and otherwise, a lot of it in devices people need to live and in monitors right next to their beds.

And if Shatterbird’s power really does work on all silicon, then integrated circuits – essential to a lot of modern technology – likely won’t fare well either, breaking many of the devices that could survive glass exploding.

There is a good chance Sierra’s parents won’t make it, among countless others.

But what could I write?  I looked at my cell phone to see how much time I had left. For some, where I had enough bugs and space to write, I told the bugs to spell out ‘Glass explosion 28 min’.

I suppose that works. Tells what needs to be said in a way that doesn’t leave out those who don’t know about Shatterbird and her power.

For the places I didn’t, I spelled out ‘take cover’ or ‘hide under bed’.

Nice.

Thousands of people, a thousand warnings.  I couldn’t be sure that everyone saw or listened and I couldn’t hang back to make things clearer or pass on more detailed information.

This is very much a “do what you can and hope for the best” sort of situation.

It was stupid and selfish, but I had to reach my dad.  Not for any greater plan or for the greater good, but for me.

I don’t blame you, Taylor. Go find your dad.

Because I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I didn’t.

Aw 😦

I didn’t slow my pace as I worked.  Bugs swept over the surfaces of rooms for any smooth surfaces that indicated glass or mirrors.  I checked bedside tables for eyeglasses and alarm clocks.  If I found glass, a bed positioned too close to a window or mirror, something potentially dangerous on the bedside table or if there were enough attack bugs around, I attacked the residents.

Going for the chase tactic, I see.

Better some mosquito bites than glass shards.

The bugs bit, stung, or momentarily smothered them, covering their noses and mouths, waking them.

Taylor.

Taylor we’ve talked about this.

Orifices are not for bugs.

There were others, too, I was sure.  A part of me was horrified that I couldn’t even keep track of it all.

Hmm…

Park Jihoo might count, but he could be considered to fall under the Bakuda umbrella from the previous paragraph even though he and people like him went unmentioned.

At the very same time, another part of me was just as horrified at the idea that I might not have the ability to pull the trigger, to deliver the venomous payload or drive the knife home.

So much could hinge on that.

Pull the trigger, Piglet.

Yeah, this would be the part that… well, the same part that keeps me from swatting flies, except applied to a human in this case.

I don’t swat humans either.

The inch deep water splashed as I ran, my feet already sore from the impacts against the pavement.  The soft soles of my costumed feet made me quieter when I walked, but it wasn’t fit for running. 

Huh. I suppose she didn’t anticipate how much she would be skittering around while out in costume, due to her power letting her fight from a hidden location, like she started her career by doing against Lung.

How much of my decision just now had been because I didn’t want to kill a man?

Before she went into detail, I figured that would be her primary reason, so this is a question I’m interested in.

To what extent was she justifying not killing to herself?

I was indirectly responsible for the deaths of others.  I’d looked at the information on the capes who’d died during Leviathan’s attack and found Chubster, the fat man I’d failed to save.  Innumerable others had died because we hadn’t been able to stop Bakuda, giving her the chance to attack the city, killing forty-three people and inflicting horrific injuries on dozens more in the process.

Hell, if you allow more layers of indirectness, it can be argued that Taylor may have been a cause of Leviathan’s attack in the first place, unless there’s something to Coil’s hypothesis that he was attracted to Noelle for some reason.

But I don’t think these are cases for Taylor to beat herself up over. She did what she could. She failed, but she tried.

When Thomas, the man from the Merchants, had been bleeding to death, I’d given the order to leave him there to die.

This one, on the other hand…

I don’t think it quite counts as her killing him, but it’s the closest we’ve seen by far, and she was actively responsible for it.

The decision to attack and kill Jack and potentially sacrifice our lives in the process wasn’t binary, I told myself.  It wasn’t limited to two options.  I would try to save the people I could tonight.

Hm, what sort of third option do you have in mind here?

Then our teams could collectively prepare to do something about Jack and the other Nine, after we were all ready to defend ourselves.

Ah! Makes sense. She’ll untie the people on the short track and enlist their help to stop the trolley while it’s going down the long track.

As much as a small part of me wanted to make the heroic sacrifice, I couldn’t throw away my life for the mere chance to kill him, and I definitely couldn’t throw away the lives of others.

Fair enough. That is a somewhat different story than if it were a certainty.

Anyway, let’s get back to Taylor’s musings. 🙂

I remembered what Brian had said back when we’d found out about Dinah: the choices we made in terms of who we tried to save: those we cared about versus complete strangers.  I’d rebelled at the idea of people abandoning people to their fates simply because they didn’t know them and weren’t connected to them in any meaningful way.

Yet that is precisely what I think Taylor is going to do.

Could I be wrong?

But now that I faced having to make the call and decide if my life and the lives of just about everyone I cared about were worth less than everyone else’s, it didn’t seem so black and white.

Yeah.

I talk about the moral dilemma being a lot easier when it’s unbalanced like this, and on a global scale, but there’s a big difference between me and Taylor beyond just philosophies: She’s living it.

Logically, there are a lot of good reasons to send the trolley down the short path. But Taylor isn’t making this decision with just logic in mind. She’s the one who values the people tied to the short track, who has an emotional connection to them.