She started up the saw and pressed it against my skull.  The horror of what she was doing was compounded by the most god-awful noise, and a grinding vibration of my skull.

You know what just occurred to me?

She might not be Panacea, but Parian at least ought to be able to stitch Taylor’s forehead up a bit.

If it hurt, I didn’t register it, because the noise of the tool had drawn the stuffed animal’s attention.  It charged for us, slamming through the glass sneeze guard of the dining hall’s serving counter.

Huh. So there is some sensory input through them. That, or Parian’s hiding spot is close.

It’s a possibility that she’s inside the thing. It makes for a decent hiding place, using it as an armor. The deflating and inflating doesn’t have to be by range, that might just be a thing she can choose to do in order to play dead.

It struck Bonesaw, hard, and the saw slid across my head, cutting through my hairline.  I didn’t care.

Honestly that’s just a minor inconvenience at this point.

My rescuer was some kind of cartoonish dinosaur made of black and blue fabric.  I could see the logo of this health club repeated several times over the stuffed animal’s exterior.

I guess you take what’s available.

Though it’s still possible that she made it. She might’ve worked for the health club before Leviathan struck.

The stuffed animal had stopped in the middle of the cafeteria.  Either it didn’t hear Bonesaw or something else had its attention.

I think for this to be effective, Taylor will need to use spider string to direct Parian. Problem is she can’t do that consciously, and first she needs to realize how Parian is sensing things.

I could feel that not unfamiliar sensation of darkness creeping in around the edges of my vision.  Was I passing out?  How much blood was I losing?

I take it it’s not Grue finally using his power.

I blinked three times.  Stall.

Who knows how she’ll take that. “I have more to say”?

“No, no.”  She stroked my hair, and my forehead lit up with a burning pain where she’d cut.  “We should get this done before you drop dead.  Don’t think I can’t see the changes in your breathing and pupil dilation.”

Right, sure.

“That’s confusing.  You’re not just trying to delay the part where I carve up your brain, are you?”

Well, duh.

But it’s your fault it’s confusing. One blink would barely have been any more of a solid answer.

I blinked twice.

Hehe.

“Not getting what you’re trying to say.  One blink for yes, two for no, okay?  Now, do you actually have something meaningful to communicate?”

Yeah, that’s much better. 😛

Three blinks? Although one blink would probably be better when it comes to delaying her.

I blinked once, hard.

“Are you going to tell me to stop?”

Nah, that’s pointless.

I blinked twice.  She wouldn’t listen if I did, and then it would be right back to the surgery.  I trembled, but I didn’t take my eyes off her.

“Tell me when to stop.  Last requests, threats, your friends, um… science, art-”

Time for a staring contest with the roof!

I blinked once.

Art? Heh, nice, sure, get her talking about art. To her, that would mean what she does, the surgeries and everything.

“Art?  Yours?  Mine?”

Another blink.  If anything would get her talking, it was her ‘art’.

Yes!

Let’s just hope she doesn’t decide to illustrate her talking points.

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.