She turned on the saw, and it screamed, a shrill whine on par with nails on a blackboard, but unending, ceaseless. 

So nails on a blackboard then.

The stuffed animal was turning around, coming back down the hallway, towards us.

If I’m right about how Parian is sensing things, this is basically an invisible maze for her, where she has to “feel” her way around walls she can’t see.

Also, I suspect she can sense threads from further away than she can control the stuffed animals. That would be why she’d come back into control range, upon sensing the spider threads.

Have to stall her.

A hand-sized hole through the skull might be somewhat more comfortable than someone poking at the top of your brain through your nose, but the best option is “neither”.

I looked up at her, then deliberately blinked three times in a row.

The saw stopped.

…alright, that’s progress. What did Bonesaw read into that?

“Trying to say something?”

I blinked once, hard.

Blink once for yes, blink twice for no, blink three times for “I’m gazing into the cold unending void of the human soul, and the void is gazing back with the eeeeeye, of the tiger”.

“Is that one blink for yes, two for no?”

That’s a stupid question, you’ll have no idea what the amount of blinks Taylor gives you mean! Especially if she gives you two.

Hey, Taylor, blink twice.

I blinked twice.  Just to confuse matters.

y e s

“Outlet, outlet, need an outlet.  You’d think there’d be more in a kitchen, but nooooo,” Bonesaw muttered.

Heh. There are never enough outlets.

She passed through my field of view, holding a saw twice the size of the one she’d held before.

Oh, I was imagining something much bigger.

The stuffed animal moved forward clumsily.  My swarm’s contact with it was intermittent as it made its way towards us, then past us, venturing into a hallway.

Oops, wrong way!

I suppose not sensing doorways remotely might make this a bit harder for her.

“Gonna have to cut a hole in your skull, Skitter.  Unavoidable.  I’d go up through your nose, but I couldn’t reach the top of your brain with the equipment I have.

Yeeah, honestly a hole through the skull might be more comfortable.

Going to make a little window.  Just big enough to get my hand through.”

Pfft. 😛

My bugs felt movement.  Except nobody had entered the building, to the best of my knowledge.  It was in one of the hallways.  Big.

Hmm.

Genesis?

The huge stuffed animal I’d noted in the hallway.

Oh fuck yes! Go Parian!

Of course.  Parian’s creations had deflated without her power to sustain them, hadn’t they?  The stuffed thing was inflated, heavy, so she was here.

I suppose that makes sense, yeah!

My bugs couldn’t detect her, but she was here.

Hmm, I wonder where she’s hiding. Also, didn’t I end up concluding that Parian couldn’t see through her creations or something, back in Extermination? Although she’s definitely capable of sensing them and other… threads…

So does that mean Parian set up the threads Bonesaw mentioned, and/or sensed them? Maybe she’s coming to investigate why new threads are showing up out of what to her remote thread sense seems like thin air as the spiders weave them?

I would have resigned myself to a fate worse than death, but how did one do that?  How was I supposed to convince myself to give up?

Doesn’t seem like your kind of thing.

Wait.

It used to be the kind of thing you’d do, though not on the same scale. But then you started growing a spine (ironically around the same time as, and largely because of, your life becoming defined by your relationship to invertebrates) and stopped hiding from the bullies.

It would be so easy, on a level.  It was alluring, the idea that I could stop worrying, stop caring, after so much pressure for so many weeks and months.  After so many years, if I counted the bullying.  I wanted to give up, but a bigger, more stubborn, stupider part of my brain refused to let me.

Please tell me it’s not the part that wants to save Dinah.

Please tell me it’s the part that wants Taylor to live on, for her own sake.

Bonesaw returned all too soon.  “Threads, Skitter?  These yours, or leftovers from before?”

Wait, what? Did the spiders start spinning when she was thinking about using silk to pull the vials?

Threads?  I hadn’t set any tripwires.  I should have, but I’d been more focused on a quick rescue mission than preparations for a potential fight.

Well, you’re the one who wanted your power to act on your subconscious. You don’t always know consciously what your subconscious is up to.

I tried to move and failed.  My fingertips twitched, I could blink if I focused on it to the exclusion of everything else.  My eyes, at least, moved readily enough.

Well, that’s something at least.

I couldn’t do anything.  Even an instruction as basic as ‘find Bitch’ was beyond my abilities at present.

Oh right, she’s out there too, I forgot about that! Another potential rescuer. Maybe.

Bonesaw had talked about this ‘passenger’.  My ally, my partner, after a fashion.  Was there some way to use it?  To put more power in its hands?

Possibly, but who knows what’ll happen if you give more power to a remnant of what is, in practice, some kind of eldritch god?

This might work a little too well.

Help!  I tried, putting every iota of willpower into the command that I could.

That’s… actually a really good idea. “Attack!” was specific, but with “Help!”, it’s a lot more vague what the passenger should do, perhaps giving it more freedom.

But it might also be too vague for it to do anything at all.

Nothing.  Too vague.  Whatever aid my ‘passenger’ provided, it wouldn’t think of something I couldn’t.

Fair enough. That’s better for the story anyway. Let Taylor do the thinking for herself, she’s good at it.

Having this work well would reduce Taylor’s agency in the long run and make it uncertain which things were Taylor being skilled and clever, and which things were just the passenger calling the shots.

Incidentally, that may be why Bonesaw calls it the passenger in the first place. It’s there, but it’s not the one at the wheel.

My bugs didn’t respond.

It was the perfect time for a rescuer to show up.

That would be nice, huh?

My bugs had stopped going after Bonesaw because we weren’t aware about her current location, so they hovered in place, clinging to walls and feeling around for people who might be their target.  There was a chance that they would bump into someone else.  If a rescuer was coming, my bugs would see them.

Hmm. Better hope that doesn’t mean they’ll assume the rescuer is Bonesaw.

There was nobody.  No people on their way.

So far, at least?

Also I suppose even if they did find a rescuer, they’d only assume it was Bonesaw if Taylor’s subconscious did.

She glanced at the circular saw, and it started up with that high-pitched whine.

Then it stopped.

Ooh, what’s up?

Regent to the rescue?

Or just Bonesaw changing her mind about how to do this?

“Clogged up with teensy-weensy bits of silk and whatever that armor’s made of, too slow.  But don’t worry!

Oh, okay.

I have a bigger saw somewhere else.  I was using it for one of the other surgeries I did earlier.

Well, that sounds nice and sterile.

Let me see if I can find it.”  She stood, then stepped out of my field of vision.  My bugs couldn’t feel her, but I could tell that she was carrying one of the steaming, smoking vials with her, as bugs died on the other side of the room, then the hallway, then a nearby room.

Ahh, yeah, makes sense. That would be a good reason for having more than one vial in the first place.

It stung, and I was momentarily blind before I managed to blink the worst of it away.  I wanted to blink more, faster, but the response was sluggish at best.  I couldn’t tell if my contacts were helping or hurting matters.

I guess at least they’d be shielding the pupil from the blood? Unless they started sliding.

I was put in mind of the incident just days before I’d gone out in costume.  The bathroom stall, the showering in juice. 

…oh yeah, this is absolutely the kind of situation where Skitter’s power would get a boost.

In fact, we’ve already seen that mentioned, indirectly. Her usual range is 2-3 blocks unless it’s grown again, but with the subconscious commanding, she pulled bugs from five blocks away.

It had started with cranberry juice in my eyes and hair.  How had I gotten from there to here? 

You fell headfirst on a rock with some raspberries hanging over it, and now the juice from those is sliding down your forehead.

Also, I didn’t think of it at the time as far as I can remember, cranberry juice is red. That’d really emphasizes the Carrie reference.

Her progress through the fabric of my mask was slow.  She stopped to clear loose material from around the tool.

Turns out underneath Taylor’s mask is another mask.

And another one underneath that one.

And so on.

“Don’t worry.  I’ll put your skull’s contents back when I’m done looking.

Very reassuring, thank you.

Then we can get to the real fun.”

She peeled my mask off.

Shit, I should’ve saved my joke about there being more masks underneath for this line.

Breathe in, breathe out.  Don’t want to pass out.  Or maybe I should?  Maybe I didn’t want to be conscious for what came next.

Unless you think you have a way to stop it, I wouldn’t recommend it, no. But I’m not sure Bonesaw would let you be asleep while she performs her art.

…I just realized why I came to think of that option: Cupcakes. Pinkiesaw won’t let Skitter Dash doze off there, because she wants to have fun with her friend before the end and can’t have said friend sleeping through it.

Her scalpel slid across my forehead, so fast and precise that it barely hurt.  I caught a glimpse of her untangling her fingers and her scalpel from my long hair before the first dribbles of blood flooded down into my eyes.

This chapter’s existence just made the Cupcakes April Fool’s gag even more dramatically ironic, didn’t it? 😛

Let’s have a look at what’s in Taylor’s head, shall we?