“That’s a mistake,” Cherish smiled.  “Without my cooperation, you won’t find them.  You won’t be able to contact Imp or know where to look for her brother.”

Perhaps.

“Tattletale?” Coil spoke.

Ah, yes, time for Tattletale to work her magic.

“You already informed us on most of that,” Tattletale told Cherish.  She leaned against the wall.  “Your method of communication with Imp.  You’re planning on meeting her.  Afternoon?  Evening?”

Well that sounds like it’d require not getting tied to a bouy.

“As if I’m-”

“Late afternoon. Thanks.”

Ahahaha!

I love when Tattle does this.

“What?”  Cherish frowned.

“What time in the afternoon?  Four… five… six.  Six o’clock.  There we go.  Where?  Upper end of town or downtown?”

Poor Cherish has no idea how Lisa is doing this and she’s so confused.

“I’m not saying anything!”

You don’t have to.

“You’re telling me everything.”  Tattletale must be reading Cherish’s tells.  Her body language, eye movements, her tone and word choice.

Ah, yeah, that makes sense. And then the power fills in the rest.

“Let’s see, you’re meeting Imp downtown around six.  You would have made it a place where you could talk with her for a minute while you were out of sight of the others.  Bathroom?”

Sounds reasonable.

Cherish didn’t move a muscle.  Maybe she realized what Tattletale was doing.

She did seem to sort of catch on last chapter, without realizing how deep it went. Not that it helped her much.

“Bathroom, then.  Same building as the rest of the Nine?  Now we just need to dig up where they are, and you’ve got no cards left.  Unless you want to share that information in good faith.”

Lisa is awesome. It’s been some time since we had as good a showing of her power as this, and I honestly didn’t realize just how much I’ve missed it.

“But what about boats coming by?” Sundancer asked.

“Almost no boats on the water,” I replied.  “Coastline is a mess, thanks to Leviathan.  Ships can’t dock here.”

As if the Docks area wasn’t already an economic disaster zone.

And hey, Danny, how’s the ferry project coming along?

“Good,” Coil said.  “Then as soon as she is given some basic medical care, I’ll have my men take her out there.  I’ll need to work out measures to ensure she doesn’t escape.”

Sounds good.

I suppose it might also be worth leaving her some food and potable water if you want her to stay alive.

“So the little girl who wanted for nothing still found a reason to run away from home.  Spent life homeless on the streets.

Wait, no, this isn’t Shatterbird’s backstory. It’s Lisa’s!

Stealing and dealing for petty cash so she could eat.  What would make someone leave home like that, Tattletale?”

Good question. Perhaps (largely verbal) abuse? I’ve long suspected that Lisa was being demeaned in her youth, especially her intelligence. She was probably called “stupid” a lot.

“It’s a bit of a crazy idea,” I said, ignoring her.  “But what if we didn’t stash her in this base?  Or any of the others?  We put her anywhere in the city, there’s the risk that some unwitting John, Dick or Harry will come by, and she’ll get them to help her somehow.

What are you suggesting, then? The ruins of the old Protectorate HQ or something?

(I suppose that might not work, if they’re building the a new Protectorate HQ there.)

Can’t station guards on her, so… why not the water?”

I… actually think I might’ve been onto something.

The other options this could imply would be stranding her on a vessel out on the sea (too much risk of her drifting ashore) or putting her on the rooftops in the middle of Lake Heroic.

“A boat?” Ballistic asked.

“I could tell you a story,” Cherish said, “Little girl grows up with money.  Daddy pulls in six figures, maybe seven.  Massive house, I expect.  Maybe horses, a mercedes, indoor and outdoor pools…”

She’s just trying to distract them, I guess, but I do think this might be Shatterbird’s backstory.

“I was thinking about a buoy,” I replied, speaking over her.  “Could even rig things so she’s out of sight.  Cuff her to it, we can be pretty damn sure she won’t be getting free.”

Hah, nice. It’s got the best of both worlds between what remains of the Protectorate HQ oil rig (steady, won’t drift ashore) and a boat (small, not much room to do things, not likely to have random pieces of tinkertech lying around, not going to have PRT workers coming to rebuild or clean).

Also it’s kind of hilarious.

Tattletale glanced at the bullet hole in Cherish’s chest.  “I’m suspicious it’s so routine for her that there wouldn’t even be a blip on the radar if she did try something.”

Hmm, she might be right.

And hey, this seems like something Tattle’s power could grab onto and use to tell her whether Bonesaw did try something.

Cherish leaned forward, “Are we going to do this?  Test your perceptive abilities against mine?  Some intellectual jousting?”

I wonder if Cherish knows what exactly Tattletale’s power does. For a long time, we’ve been seeing Tattletale make use of the fact that her power was ambiguous in order to mess with people, and I’ve seen no sign that she’s stopped being at least somewhat secretive about it, but there’s a chance Cherish’s power gives her some insight into what’s going on there.

Tattletale shook her head.  “She’s stalling.  She knows time’s on her side, because we need to rescue Grue sooner than later.  Longer we wait, the worse our position.”

Yeah.

“I could,” Trickster threatened.  “Or we could wait and see which happens first: Either you agree to share the information we want or you slowly bleed out.”

Hm. How exactly would he go about it? Could he target Bonesaw’s protections specifically and replace those? That would be a bit OP, especially since at least four of the Nine have those protections.

“A game of chicken?  I’m down.”  Cherish prodded her injury with a fingertip.  It was clear it hurt, but she still stuck a finger into the hole and investigated some.  “The auto-injection pump is dosing me with painkillers and antibiotics now.  First time feeling this stuff work.”

Pain is weird.

I get the purpose of it as a warning signal and a compulsion to deal with the thing that is causing the pain, but at the same time, the pain itself can often be more crippling in a dangerous situation than the injury that causes it. That’s a problem from an evolutionary standpoint, isn’t it? Milder immediate pain responses would make more sense in a lot of contexts.

Anyway, my point is that these painkillers aren’t just a convenience, they also make sense as a thing to keep the protected Nine-members going in battle.

“Letting that… lunatic perform surgery like that?” Sundancer asked, shivering a little.  “How?  Why?”

There has got to be a lot of trust involved. Though in Cherish’s case, at least she could probably sense it if Bonesaw had plans to mess with her beyond what was agreed on.

“Not much choice in the matter, but I was awake for the entire thing, and I read her emotions as she did it.  No hint of any traps or dirty tricks.”

Awake? Damn.

Tattletale glanced at me.  I looked, in turn, to Coil.  He gave me a barely perceptible shake of his head.  He wouldn’t fork over the amount.

Yeah, figured as much.

“You’re not really in a position to be making demands,” Trickster said.  “You’re bleeding to death, and we do have the ability to hurry the process along.”

True, though she has some pretty good bargaining chips to keep herself alive.

Cherish shrugged.  “Bonesaw gave me the works.  Mesh sheaths for every major artery and organ, wire reinforcement for my skeleton.  It’s not going to kill me anytime soon.”

“It’s just a bullet hole, sheesh.”

I made a mental note of that.  Chances were good that Jack, Bonesaw and the other more vulnerable members of the Nine had some similar protection.

That they do!

How differently would things have played out if Ballistic had used his power and blown them up?

Well for one thing you wouldn’t know that Grue had been captured, assuming that still ended up happening.

“And for the info on Grue?”  Tattletale asked.

“I’m thinking a billion-”  Cherish winced as she moved mid-sentence and pulled at the wound.

Pfft, a billion dollars? I suppose it makes sense that she could use some cash in her future efforts to live on and avoid the wrath of the Nine, but that’s kind of a lot. Really using that bargaining chip for all it’s worth, huh?

It wouldn’t surprise me if that’s technically doable with Coil’s assets, but a billion is a pretty big number even for some of the richest people in the world, and I doubt Grue is worth that much to Coil.

“A billion dollars so you can scamper off to the other side of the world and live the good life while you hide from those bastards,” Tattletale finished.

Seriously, though, moderation is key when you’re hiding. Don’t want to get too much of a reputation wherever you’d wind up.

“Right.  Or are you going to tell me that’s too much?  Is your teammate’s life worth a smaller amount?  Where do you draw the line, Ms. Frowny-face?”

Ouch, that nickname’s gonna sting.

I would believe that the Undersiders (except maybe Bitch) might be okay with burning a billion on Grue’s safety, but it’s not their decision to make. I highly doubt any of them have raised a billion on their own, and Coil is way more pragmatic about people’s lives and values.

“Where is he?” I growled.

Looks like we’re starting right where we left off. And Skitter is… well, not pissed so much as determined, I think.

“As if I’m going to tell you.  To think Jack called you the clever worm.”

Hey, I’ll have you know the plan that got you here was mostly, if not entirely, her idea.

“Don’t call me that.”  I felt a flare of irritation that bordered on anger.  Was that me, or was it her power at work?

See, the reason I said she wasn’t pissed was that it didn’t seem like the right emotion for Skitter to be having right now, though I could see her being annoyed at Cherish after she refused to answer. So yes, there’s a good chance Cherish is messing with her head.

But why introduce anger of all emotions? Crippling dejection seems like a much better choice. Though of course, Cherish needs to keep it subtle due to Coil’s orders to kill her if anyone acts out of character.

Tattletale put a hand on my shoulder.  I shut my mouth.  She asked Cherish, “What do you want in exchange for your help?  You want us to let you go?”

Honestly, I suspect either more, or the opposite. Cherish has reason to want to get away from the Nine. Her best options are to leave the city (which Coil could help with) or get protection.

Cherish laughed a little, and it reminded me of Alec’s own dry chuckle.  “No.  Definitely not.  In exchange for the information about what the Imp is up to, you’re going to give me medical treatment, you’re going to keep me here, and you’re going to keep me safe.”

Thought so.

(I was leaning way more towards that than help leaving the city, for the record. The leaving option was an afterthought.)

Also, I notice that she hasn’t included the information about Grue in this line. She’s reserving her other bargaining chip for something else.