A series of bright flashes caught my attention.  Between the distance and the cloud of red vapor, I could only barely make him out, but the staccato lasers let me identify him as Legend.  He was fighting.

Oh hey, guess we know where to go. Legend is such a good beacon.

I wonder how he’s gonna take Taylor coming back after he told her to scram.

I sent my bugs down into the miasma, drawing them together into a swarm and placing them strategically, painting a mental picture of the area, the layout, and the positions of the combatants.

Yes, good.

Just to be safe, I drew closer to a rooftop.  It wasn’t safe to land, but I had hopes the building would offer me some cover against Jack.

Smart.

I held the bulk of my swarm at bay, waiting for the moment I could assist Legend in fighting the Nine.

He wasn’t fighting the Nine.

Ah, shit. Hookwolf’s contingent? Someone brainwashed by the miasma?

Legend was shooting at teammates.  He shouted something, but neither my ears nor my bugs were able to pick out the words.

So here’s the question: Is this self-defense, or has Legend himself been caught by the miasma and is the one to watch out for? The former is more likely considering he flies.

Also, does the miasma make the affected people attack each other, or just those unaffected?

Really wished I could use my bugs to hear.

That would be so handy.

Had they gone berserk?  Rage?

No.  I could sense others hiding.  In fact, it seemed to be the primary concern of the people in the miasma.

…huh.

Hiding, staying out of trouble, putting distance between themselves and the others.  Even Legend was pulling his punches.  His lasers were nonlethal, as far as I could see.

Miasma of fear? Of disturbing peacefulness? Both?

I just realized something: Last chapter, I made note of the fact that Siberian had prioritized using his power to protect Bonesaw and Jack over his real body. I was forgetting the fact that the real body is immune to Siberian’s protection.

I rose higher as I approached the epicenter of the miasma.  It had continued to rise, and the place she’d used the catalyst was the place where the vapor had spread the most.

Makes sense, since it has had more time to rise.

I could see how it was threaded through the streets like veins, surrounding buildings in a crimson embrace, spilling out into the ocean.

Looks like blood, spreading in veins through the city… those are the artistic sensibilities of a biology tinker at work, for sure.

The water of the bay, I noticed, hadn’t changed.  Was the salt killing whatever organisms she’d designed to spread this effect?

Oooh!

Now where can we find tons upon tons of salt and a way to make that rain down over the entire city…

There were areas of high ground where the effect was diminished or gone.  There were hills here and there where the area hadn’t flooded and miasma wasn’t reaching so far into those spots.

You keep claiming there are dry spots, but I’m not sure I believe you.

Hopefully that meant the civilians wouldn’t be so affected; the high ground where flooding wasn’t an issue would also be the place where people congregated for shelter.

Makes sense.

However, these are also likely places the Nine might be hiding out, unless Bonesaw has made them immune to the effect.

And even if she has done that for herself and Jack, we still don’t know if she knew about Siberian’s real body.

“If I’ve picked up on anything over the last few months of wearing a costume, it’s that humans are stronger than you’d expect,” I said.

Legend, with finger guns: “eyyy”

It was as much to myself as to Sundancer.  “We can endure a hell of a lot of punishment before we break, and even after we’re broken, we tend to keep on going.  Could be physical punishment: getting stabbed, getting scarred, broken bones.  Could be mental: losing a loved one, being tortured, even the way I feel like breaking down and crying over the fact that just about every other member of my team is probably fucked, but I’m holding myself together?  Humans can put up with a hell of a lot.”

Yeah, true. If there’s anything that sets humans apart from many other animals, it’s endurance, mental and physical. We just won’t stop.

Of course, we’ve got nothing on certain microbes, but still.

“I don’t think this is the right time for optimism,” Sundancer said, bitter.

“Optimism?”  I shook my head.  “No.  It’s a double-edged sword.  If we weren’t so resilient, so tenacious as a species, I don’t think we’d be having this much trouble with Jack.

…also true.

I don’t think Mannequin or Siberian would even exist like they do now.  I’d almost call it pessimistic.  Almost.”

They would qualify as broken people that kept on going. Down a dark path, but they kept on going.

She didn’t reply.

“Speaking of Jack and Siberian-” I started.

You should probably get going?

“Go.”

I left, taking off and heading for the spot I’d left Legend.  Looking over my shoulder, I could see Sundancer creating her orb and bringing it down on top of herself.  As it had done back during our fight with Lung, it didn’t burn the area directly around her.

Ohh, nice. It’s like a little bubble the power doesn’t affect.

And Tattletale and Trickster… were still standing in the midst of the miasma.  They weren’t reacting or doing anything, but they weren’t signalling for me to come back, either, and they weren’t hopping on top of Bentley to rejoin the action.

Maybe that’s its basic effect. No zombie apocalypse, just… unmoving people. Just standing there, eerie in their unresponsiveness. Quite possibly awake and physically unable to do anything, even use their powers.

Something was up, I just had no idea what.

I consoled myself with the bittersweet idea that Bonesaw would want to draw this out.  It wouldn’t be as simple as murdering my teammates.

And simply paralyzing them doesn’t sound like the full effect, as eerie as it’d be when applied to a whole city.

It wasn’t exactly reassuring, especially when I thought back to what had happened to Brian, but it gave me hope that this wasn’t the last time I’d see my teammates.  My friends.

I appreciate that the word is actually brought in here, emphasized like this. It helps to drive the point home.

“I hate being alone,” Sundancer said.  She settled into a sitting position.  “It’s like, I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve actually been on my own.  When I was little, I was always with my mom, or always in school, always in afterschool activities.  Ballet, violin, lyrical dance, voice lessons, acting lessons… never a moment to think for myself.

Sudden Sunny backstory and feels!

I wonder if some of those activities are part of why she named herself Sundancer.

Even after I stopped all that, I was with my friends.  Always in a group.”

And this in a chapter where the girl who used to be lonely is facing the – probably temporary – loss of her friends to a seemingly unstoppable and nearly inescapable evil force.

But I’m not entirely sure Sundancer isn’t lonely, even in a group. Maybe her situation is set up to be a dark mirror of Taylor’s: Taylor used to be lonely until she joined the Undersiders. Sunny used to have friends, but now she’s lonely after joining the Travelers. Alone does not mean lonely and not alone does not mean not lonely.

I stared at Tattletale and Trickster.  I couldn’t make out their faces, but my bugs could make out the shapes of sounds that had to be words.  They were having a conversation, just like we were.

I can’t imagine theirs is much brighter.

“I remember you said it was lonely, being in the Travelers.”

Oh yeah, she did already make it that explicit.

“It was.  It is.  But I was still with them.  Part of the group.  The time I’ve spent in my territory is the longest I’ve spent on my own.  Actually managing the territory, scaring off Hookwolf’s people, that was easy.  Being all on my own was unfamiliar ground.  Soul crushing.  I wound up going back to Coil’s base and spending time with Noelle and Oliver.

Seems like she’d have been better off with an arrangement like what Grue and Imp have, but this doesn’t seem like the kind of thing you tell your boss while divvying up territories.

But being alone, agonizing over everything that’s been going on, no distractions…”

The miasma had reached the rooftop where Tattletale and Trickster stood.  

Welp, here we go.

Trickster was pacing, while Tattletale stood with her back to me, her hand rubbing Bentley’s blunted snout.

It took only a few seconds for the mist to close in around them.  There was no immediate reaction.  The two teenagers and the dog simply stood, silhouettes in a stirring cloud of vapor that ranged from ruby-red to crimson in shade.

But are they still themselves? Are they standing there like that because they want to?

I swallowed past the growing lump in my throat.

“And now I’m alone,” Sundancer said.  “You’re going to go after the Nine, and I’ll wait here, all on my own, going crazy as I wait and watch and see just what happens to them.”

And it’s not as easy as “hey, come with me”.

Man, if Trickster knew any of this it’d be downright cruel to send Sunny up here. Should probably have asked if she wanted to go, first.

“Why isn’t he telporting Tattletale out?  Or himself?  There’s still time for…”  I looked at the cloud.  Not enough time to save both, now.  “He could save one of them, and I could probably get Atlas there and get out of harm’s way before the miasma reached me.”

Yeah… they’ve given up.

“His power gets slower with distance and difference in mass,”  Sundancer hugged herself, “Maybe it’s too slow, and he doesn’t think you’d have time to run.  Or-”

Also a fair point.

“Or.”  I said.  The sentence didn’t deserve to be finished.  There was the other reason.  The notion that he was deliberately avoiding using his power, because he knew I didn’t have the time to get back to them before the miasma reached them.

Yep. It’s genuinely better for everyone if you manage to get out of this, it seems. If the miasma gets you, that might not be possible.

“Are you going to be okay?”

“I don’t know.  When you’ve left, I’ll use my power, and I guess I’ll wait here until-”  she stopped.

You’re immune to your power, right? Stick yourself in the middle of one of your suns, and the miasma might not be able to get you. Though you might go blind if you’re not immune to the brightness of the inside of a sun.

Until when?  There was nothing saying this miasma of Bonesaw’s would disappear or settle anytime soon.

Especially if it’s continuously generated. You’d better hope they’re using a limited resource in the water to make this.

Tattletale frowned.  “Fine.  But you’ll have to hurry.  That’s a lot of distance to cover, and the miasma’s nearly here.”

Gotta be sure you can get back, too.

Trickster cut in, “Gather bugs together like you were doing, remember that they’re not as dense as our bodies are, so we need more than you’d think if I’m going to swap them for one of us.”

That makes sense, yeah. So he can use them like this, that’s handy.

I nodded and flew for the tallest building in the area.  I turned around and waited for Trickster to swap me.

He didn’t.  They stood at the roof’s edge, looking my way, and the dark red miasma climbed up the sides of the building around them.

Dammit, Trickster.

Are the two of you trying to make Taylor go off already but just willingly submitting yourselves to the miasma?

It felt like my heart dropped out of my chest.  Brian, Rachel, now Lisa?

I guess she doesn’t particularly care about the Travelers compared to the Undersiders.

I couldn’t afford to turn around and confront them -time was too short- so I focused on gathering my bugs.  I clustered them together, pressing them into a largish human shape.  How many was enough?

Was he lying by implying that he was going to perform the swap?

I felt a jarring sensation as Trickster swapped my bugs to his location.  Sundancer appeared beside me.

Okay, I think I see what’s going on. He didn’t want to swap Taylor to them because she’d have to wait for Atlas to get back and might get caught by the miasma herself that way.

Also, Trickster is very likely going to prioritize himself next, possibly being too late to save Lisa.

“Why?”  I asked.

She shook her head, “They didn’t say anything.  They were both really quiet while you flew off, and then Tattletale said ‘It doesn’t look like her plan will work out.  Tell her I’m sorry.’

Oh jeez.

So they let Sunny go over there because she was the only one who actually wanted it.

Trickster teleported me here before I could say anything or ask what she meant.”

Well, maybe. Seems she didn’t get a say in the matter.

“It might stop rising,” I protested.

Or peter out in intensity at a certain height.

“It won’t.”

“Is that an educated guess or-”

“It’s not.”

Right.

Will it ever stop being generated, then, by whatever modified bacteria or algae or whatever Bonesaw has put in the water? What are they using as fuel for the reaction?

I found myself at a loss for words.

“What does it do?”  I asked.  “Poison?  Something else?”

Poison? Come on, Taylor, were you listening to what Lisa said earlier? Seriously, just regular ol’ poison goes against almost everything she said about how Bonesaw thinks.

“Probably something else.  Or it’s poison, but it’s designed to do something besides kill us.  How are the others doing?”

Yeah, just killing them is way too boring and unartistic.

I looked for Grue and Regent using my swarm sense.  Grue, Bitch, Ballistic and Sirius were on a rooftop lower than us, Regent directly above them.  Cursory exploration with my bugs revealed a glass dome extending around the rooftop.

How–oh! Nice use of Shatterbird’s power they, Alec!

My bugs could fit through gaps in the glass, which meant the miasma would as well.

Yeah, might wanna tighten that a bit.

I did what I could to block up the holes, and I knew it was useless.

Brian.  Rachel.

Oh jeez. Are we actually taking some casualties from this today?

“I think they’re caught,” I said.  “I-I don’t know what to do.”

“You have a gun.  You have your bugs.  If the Nine are going to let their guards down, it’s going to be now.  All the ones who are still left are priority targets.  Finish off Siberian and taking Jack and Bonesaw out of action will be doable.”

Damn, straight to the point. Make sure to keep flying higher than the miasma has gotten, though.

He and Trickster reached the second rooftop quickly enough.  The mist was still rising, not just below us, but up around buildings nearly as far as the eye could see.

Niice.

Wait, does that imply that below this building there’s one of those mythical sanctuaries called “dry spots”? 😮

“Shit,”  Tattletale said.  “Not good.”

Pfft. No shit, super-Sherlock. :p

Does your insight give you any idea of what this would do to you?

“There’s a taller building over there,” I pointed.  “We should head there before the mist gets up here.”

Tall buildings. This city is just full of ‘em.

“I’d call it miasma,” Tattletale said.  “And is there really any point?”

The word miasma has come up repeatedly for me recently. First it showed up in the Wheel of Time book I’ve been listening to, and then someone needed a reminder of the exact phrasing of “potent maternal miasma”, and now here.

This is the first time it’s actually mattered to know what the difference between miasma and other things that spread outward is, so I may finally have to look up what it actually means.

Hmm. Looks like it’s a folkloric kind of “bad air” that causes disease (also known as “night air”), or a mythological “contagious power that has an independent life of its own”. (Amusingly, the Wikipedia article for the mythological version has Panacea in the “see also” section.)

Incidentally, that means there’s no real physical grounds for what Lisa is saying here, unless she sees reason to not call it mist. It seems she’s just thinking “that’s a nicer word with connotations to ill effects”.