It hadn’t even crossed my mind while I was under the miasma’s influence, but I also had to wonder whether Regent would have maintained his control over Shatterbird.
Fuck.
At least I feel like if this was going to be an issue, we’d get it pointed out by seeing it in action, not by Taylor’s idle musings.
I’m sure he’s going to lose control at some point, but probably not right now.
What’s a bigger problem is what he’d use her for while under the miasma’s effect.
The second possibility was that they’d gone after Cherish. My conversation with Coil had clued them in.
You’re not thinking city limits are an option?
If it were to be one of these two options, my money would definitely be on Siberian.
I checked my phone. No service.
Damn the Director. Damn her for making this so hard, and for complicating matters.
Ohhh.
Right.
Some of you were probably quietly screaming when I was speculating on Jack jamming the signal, weren’t you. I forgot Piggot said she was doing it.
We’d been playing by Jack’s rules, more or less, and she’d given him an excuse to pull out all the stops.
…at least I think she did? But it seems Taylor was talking more about the miasma being her fault.
He probably would have anyways, but she gave him an excuse.
Piggot and Jack are kind of similar on that front. Piggot would be inclined to use such excuses herself.
I continued my search for the pair, but my tentative explorations of the trails of extermination-mist made a sweeping search all but hopeless.
This makes a lot of sense as a way to open this chapter. It wouldn’t be like Taylor to just immediately go, “welp, guess they’re gone”, even if the finality of 14.10′s ending line did imply she wasn’t going to hold on to the hope of finding them that strongly.
It felt like I was facing a series of decisions where every answer had some merit, but picking the wrong one would spell disaster.
Them delicious tough decisions.
I’d had to make the call between staying at the school in case Jack and Bonesaw were preparing a trap for Amy and Glory Girl, or leaving in case they’d made a run for it. I’d left, and I’d been lucky enough to be right.
Unfortunately now there’s no way of telling which way they actually went.
Fuck, can you even be sure they did go? I mean, like I said last time, you’re not supposed to have the ball under one of the shells at all. I meant that they may have dropped the gas to make Taylor not consider the one path they did take, but who’s to say they took one at all?
I don’t think they did stay behind, but it’s a genuine option Taylor is not considering here.
Except the Nine were now covering their tracks with a dozen decoys, mechanical spiders leaving trails of bug-killing smoke, leaving me to guess which direction they’d gone.
Yeah, nice recap.
Two solid possibilities dwelled with me.
The first was that they’d headed back downtown to rendezvous with Siberian. If I was drawing the right conclusions from what I’d overheard, Bonesaw had drawn together a cocoon for Siberian similar to the one that Amy had created for Glory Girl.
Yeah, seems like it. I do suppose they might go pick Siberian up.
They could be recovering her real body, maybe doing something to recover Mannequin or Crawler.
To do that they’d probably need to head back into the Bakuda Band. That’s probably not at all safe, even now, without the Monochrome going alone or holding the others.
Well! Now that your expectations for my sense of humor tonight have been dutifully set, let’s read some Worm!
So, what are we in for tonight? I’m thinking we’re getting a dénouement, for real this time, focused on reuniting with and curing the other Undertravelers of the miasma. Who even knows what sorts of antics they’ve gotten themselves into while they didn’t know who was who? We do know Bentley ended up at street level somehow, so tracking everyone down might not be as easy as going back to where she left them. Let alone curing them. But I think by the end of the chapter, at least most of them will be reunited. We’ll likely also get some discussion about the implications of Jack escaping the city.
Alternatively, in spite of the final line of 14.10, maybe Taylor isn’t ready to give up on making sure Jack and Bonesaw don’t get away and, to her knowledge, catalyze the end of the world. But I really don’t know how she’d find them in time without Cherish’s help, and I doubt Cherish is particularly willing to help out anymore, if she thinks Jack might schedule a stop by her place (I don’t think he gives a flying fuck about saving Cherish).
I’m strongly leaning towards the former option, largely because of the finality in how 14.10 ended.
So yeah, I don’t think there’s much to do but take a look!
I just came across a mention of the Russian English-language newspaper The Siberian Times, and while I know why it’d be called that, all I can imagine is the Monochrome sitting behind a desk, furiously signing “GET ME PICTURES OF BONESAW” to some poor photographer.
Survival of the fittest also includes being just bad enough to keep on surviving. If a predator is too good at what it does its prey may go extinct, causing his own specie to die from stravation.
That’s a really good point!
And we do kind of see this with the Nine, too, with them killing off large swathes of their prey at a time. The only differences are that they don’t actually need their prey for sustenance and they can just move on to another city if they run out.
In short, Jack’s social darwinist “survival of the fittest means being a monster is human nature” philosophy is full of shit.
Love following your live-read Krixwell. Have you read anything else that you found as consistently engrossing?
Glad to hear you’re enjoying it!
Hmm… I’m not sure. I don’t read anywhere near as much as I used to many years ago, except for this, so a lot of my reading experience was a) when I was way less critical about my reading material, and b) long enough ago that details about my opinions on the parts rather than the whole things slip my mind.
I have been reexperiencing the Wheel of Time series in audiobook form recently (I’ve found that the format change helps me with some of the same things liveblogging does). That’s a really good series if you’re into magic, cosmic struggles of light and dark, reluctant heroes, prophecies, cultural worldbuilding, fantasy politics, badass ladies and boys who have no idea how to talk to girls.
Fair warning, though, it’s pretty long. It clocks in at about 2.75 Worms. Also, being able to keep track of a lot of names is a plus. Seriously, there are 2782 named characters (admittedly that’s largely because many of the bit characters get named), and many of the important ones have multiple names and/or titles.
I’ve been thinking about the effects of the miasma and Legend since you brought it up and I thinking i have a working explanation. Taylor remembers Legend because she doesn’t have a personal relationship with him. She knows him from TV, news, and forums. The miasma only erases personal bonds. Theoretically, she wouldn’t forget Legend anymore than she would forget Abraham Lincoln or Johnny Depp. Likewise, once she ID’s Jack, she’s knows his power and goals because he’s an (anti) celebrity.
Hmm. I’m not sure the last sentence is true. Taylor seemed to quietly figure out what Jack’s power did when he used it against her, and his main goal of getting to Amy was pretty easy to figure out from the context.
But yeah, the rest of this makes a lot of sense! She remembered the idea of Legend but not her personal experiences with him and, initially, has a hard time recognizing the mask.
There is such an AU! In “Amelia” Amy teams up with Lisa, Taylor and Bonesaw to form a new team after Prey 14.2. It’s a Amy/Taylor shipping and fix-fic, but there is enough suffering for all involved. Complete with living power armor and disposable Zerg-army. Many many biotinker shenanigans and if I remember right even Bonesaw is shipped: Theo/Vista/Bonesaw.
Oh man, that sounds really cool! Certainly one I’d like to read someday.
(Bonesaw and Vista getting three-shipped with Theo is… interesting but a bit iffy on the age side, I think? Unless I’ve misunderstood what age Theo is supposed to be.)
To make you feel better after the barrage of “you doofus” asks: Scott from the We’ve got Worm podcast (where he as a first-time reader discussed arc by arc with a preexisting fan) also missed the reveal at the end of 14.8. And he was otherwise a superbly perceptive reader (e.g. guessing by Arc 7 that Sophia was a cape and by Arc 11 that Brian would second-trigger). You should try listening to it after you finish (not before, because of other accurate guesses he made that could spoil you).
Neat! And yeah, I’m definitely going to read and listen to other Worm liveblogs down the line. I love reading liveblogs of stories I like, and this time I’ll have a record of my own reactions to compare to and a strong personal stake in the world of Worm liveblogging, which should only increase my desire to read liveblogs of it.
Also, guessing in Arc 7 that Sophia was a cape makes sense – she did put up a good fight at the mall, speaking to experience – but I’m curious about the second trigger. How did he figure that out in Arc 11, let alone that it’d be Brian specifically? What foreshadowing did I miss there?
On top of general curiosity, that’s especially relevant considering my own reaction to the second trigger was somewhat colored by an impression that the only real build-up behind it was it being indicated one time that it might be a possibility, eight Arcs before it happened.
I’m pleased with the fact that the Nine were trying to convince Amy to join them rather than to kill her. They need the members, and this led to a pretty interesting dialogue.
I’m not sure how much to care about the revelation that Jack apparently killed Allfather’s daughter rather than Marquis. It seems like Jack told Amy that to drive home that Marquis wasn’t all bad, but I don’t think his code against killing women and children redeems him much at all. I suppose it’s what Amy thinks about it that matters, though, and Amy is far more likely to respect someone’s dedication to a personal code of honor than I am.
(Let’s also take a moment to consider that – while children are one thing – specifically sparing women is not actually all that honorable in a modern setting like this. If he can spare the women, he can spare the men. If he can kill the men, he can kill the women. Treating them this differently is just sexist if anything, and I’m not even sure which gender it’s sexist against. Possibly both.)
Anyway, I did enjoy Jack’s attempts to convince Amy. He clearly knows what buttons to push. The parallels to Lisa are not lost on me, either – Jack is showing himself as roughly as much a dark counterpart to Lisa as Cherish is, and it’s very fitting that we got to see him do that to Amy in particular. I have to admit, he did manage to make some of what he was saying sound quite good – silver tongue indeed.
The fight against Jack was very good. It’d be fun to see that one in motion, I think, with all the strategic moves and rapid slashes and everything. 🙂
Next chapter… well, the Nine have escaped and the miasma’s cure has been put into motion, so I’m not sure what Taylor can do from here. Range bugs or no, she can’t cover all the paths Jack and Bonesaw might’ve taken for much longer. She could try guessing, but she’d need quite a bit of luck. Besides, it’s a shell game, and Jack is smart enough to know that the ball isn’t supposed to be under any of the shells.
So if Taylor can’t catch the Nine… what’s next? Seeking out the rest of the Undertravelers to cure them of the miasma by sweating at them? Maybe asking Amy again whether she’d like to join the Undersiders? Whatever the case, I think we’re actually going into the dénouement this time.
I do wonder if Jack will bother with attempting to save Cherish before he heads for city limits. She’s certainly a useful tool for Coil and the Undertravelers to keep around if they can, so it might serve a story purpose for her to get busted out. I’m just not sure Jack wants to.
There’s also Siberian, who is apparently in a similar cocoon-like setup as Victoria. Will they fetch him before leaving? And then there’s Shatterbird, who could break free of Alec’s control at some point. The core of the Nine may be leaving, but we’re not quite done with the team’s members yet.
So yeah. This was a good chapter. See you next time!
Krixwell Liveblogs 