Amy wasn’t in the impact site, and she probably wouldn’t have been even if I hadn’t warned her.  Still, it was a demonstration of power, it was intended to scare an already terrified Amy, and it served both purposes.

“I may not be able to find you right now, but if I have to, I can bring down this entire neighborhood on your head.”

She was running directly away from the site of the devastation, ignoring the bugs I had on her hand.  In her pell-mell run , Amy stumbled into a post meant to keep carts from being taken out of the mall and fell hard.

Whoops.

“Right,” I spoke into Grue’s darkness.  He obeyed.

Siberian was giving chase, entering one end of the mall at the same time Amy made her way out of the opposite side.  Siberian had guessed the most likely hiding spot and then used the falling building to dash Amy’s hopes of safety and get her out of hiding and running.

It keeps coming down to malls…

With the way the roads funneled together into one four-lane road, Amy would either have to take a left, take a right, or go straight.  Chances were good she would take the latter, because it put her the furthest from Siberian.

Makes sense to me.

Faster and easier than explaining with words.

Still, I included one word for good measure:  ‘RUN’.

Honestly I’m not sure you needed more than that.

I could feel Amy making a break for it.  She headed in the wrong direction at first, northwest instead of northeast, and I used a giant arrow to direct her.

“No, that way!”

The building began to collapse only ten or fifteen seconds after I’d transmitted the message.  Grue’s power didn’t do anything to stop the rumble from reaching us.  From what my bugs could gather in the chaos that followed, the building seemed to slump, the lower levels buckling and crackling.

This wouldn’t be nearly as big a problem if the city didn’t have 6+ story buildings around everywhere.

Just when I thought it had settled, the upper portion tipped over, crashing into the small parking lot and the entrance of the mall.

Malls do not get treated well in Worm.

Siberian was on the far side of the two-lane road that stood beside Amy’s hideout.  She didn’t walk straight for Amy, but walked down the street with an almost casual slowness.

Tiger’s on the prowl.

She had one arm out, a hand tracing the side of the building she was walking by, as if to guide her through the effects Grue’s lightless world.

Hm. Can she sense the shape of the building through the part of her power that lets her extend her invulnerability to her surroundings?

My swarm felt dust shower onto them in her wake.  It was unexpected, and it demanded investigation.  I moved them across the wall, and felt a gap. 

Rude. Can’t you use the door every once in a while?

She wasn’t just putting her hand on the wall, but her hand and forearm through it.  What did that mean?

Oh, I see.

It means you’d better hope that wall isn’t too critical to the structure.

My bugs felt more dust fall from above.  A moth was bludgeoned by a rock that fell from above.

And down it comes.

I felt realization hit me like a bucket of cold water.

Her hand was punching through the exterior wall of the building, but it was also tearing through the supports and load bearing areas.  She’d made her way halfway through the ground floor.

Yeah, this wall is coming down, at the very least.

By the time she finished, part of the building was going to collapse and fall.

If the building tipped in the direction of the shattered area, it could easily fall on the mall where Amy was hiding.

Not to mention that there might be people inside.

My bugs formed a picture on a wall near Amy.  A rectangle to represent the skyscraper Siberian intended to bring down, a squatter rectangle to represent the mall, a ladybug for Amy and a moth to represent Siberian.  I demonstrated what was about to happen.

“Get out of there, now.”

Along similar lines, if she depended on him to keep her going, then she had to keep him safe from the other members of the Nine.  There was infighting in the group, apparently, though I’d seen no sign of it with the team thus far.

Which is why I don’t think anyone except Cherish, Bonesaw and maybe Jack know about it. Maybe not even Bonesaw.

Notably, this means the real body must be kept out of the way of the Nine’s general rampage, not just out of the way of members going specifically after Siberian. That’s a point that’s been lurking in the back of my mind for a while, actually.

Keeping the ordinary man safe wouldn’t be a problem if he shared Siberian’s senses like I shared those of my bugs.  She could keep an eye out for trouble and he could slip away or hide if a member of the Nine came around.

I mean, yeah, it’d be less of a problem. There’d still be a lot of Nine to keep track of.

Until Cherish joined the group.  I wonder how that had played out.  Some sort of deal?  Threats, overt or implied?

Hmm. So how long would Cherish be able to manipulate Siberian before she was torn to pieces?

She was heading in Amy’s general direction.

Fuck.

I reached up and pulled on Grue’s right arm.  He veered in that direction.

Couldn’t find Siberian’s real body.  Was it really close, like Cherish had said?  I noted one man who fit the general description, but he was barricaded in his room, surrounded by cans of food.

Honestly, if apocalypse preppers decided to treat the Endbringer attack and subsequent reign of terror by the Nine as an apocalypse like the ones they’ve prepped for, I wouldn’t blame them.

There was no reason for Siberian’s real persona to situate himself here.  Even so, I tested him, attacking him with bugs to see if it got a response.

And yeah, the barricading would be odd for someone who’d need to move around quite a bit.

Not that I was sure that there was a link connecting his real self and her projected form.  It was an assumption, and maybe a dangerous one.

Hmm, true. You’d have to ask Grue, I guess?

I wasn’t sure exactly how much control Brian had managed with his own projection when he’d borrowed that fragment of Siberian’s powers.

No.  My gut told me Siberian wouldn’t operate like this if there wasn’t some link.  There had to be some kind of range limit on the projection, or he wouldn’t have any reason to follow Siberian from city to city.

Yeah, they could just stay at home while terrorizing the world if there wasn’t a range.

The fact that he was supposedly in this area meant it might even be a fairly short range.  If he was an unwilling participant, a recipient of a power with unfortunate side effects, like Labyrinth, then she’d have to direct him from one place to another with threats.

Maybe it’s worth trying to lure Siberian out of range while keeping an eye out for men trying to follow?

It would require more interactions between her selves, and that would mean something would have been given away.

Good point.

So are they going to steer towards Amy so as to pick her up on the doggos?

“I have a bit of her power.  Don’t trust myself to use it,” he grunted.  “Missing something in the interpretation and analysis part of it.”

Fair enough. This one’s super easy to fuck someone up with by accident.

“Clear the darkness around her so she can find a spot to hide.”

Seems reasonable.

He grunted a response, and the darkness folded around us a second time.

I was focusing on four things at once: staying seated behind Grue, guiding Amy, tracking Siberian’s location and trying to find Siberian’s real body.  I could sense her as she made her way up the side of a building.

Man, it’s really good your power seems to improve your multitasking skills.

Which is not just convenient for Taylor’s tactics, it’s also quite thematically appropriate. Taylor’s mind reflects a swarm, where parts of the swarm can break off and act independently.

Grue’s darkness was heavier, now.  It sat lower on the streets.  From her vantage point, Siberian couldn’t see us, couldn’t see Amy, but she could see the tops of taller buildings.

At least leaping up to them wouldn’t help all that much.

What was she looking at?

Ooh, do we have a clue to where her creator / real body is?

Through my swarm-sense, I could feel her dropping back down to ground level.  I expected a splash or shattered pavement, but there was nothing.

…soft kitty landing?

She was snapping her invulnerability out to affect the surface she was landing on.

See, I thought of that, but I was confused as to why Taylor wouldn’t expect it.

Would she figure it out?

She moved her hand again, and I adjusted the placement of the bugs.  From the way she picked up speed, I could tell she was taking my directions.  The bugs would serve her as a compass.

Sweet.

She wasn’t running as fast as she might, otherwise, but she seemed willing to trust that I wouldn’t direct her straight into a wall.

Right now, trusting Skitter is pretty much all she can do.

That left the problem of Siberian and whether she would come after us when she lost Amy’s trail.

Ah yes. That might be a slight issue.

“Let’s go,” I spoke.  “Let’s check the twelve o’clock position from Siberian to see if we can’t find her creator further on.  Loop around.”

Seems like as good a direction to go as any.

Grue and Tattletale kicked the dogs into action.

I judged that Amy and Siberian were far enough apart, now.  I used my bugs to direct her to a door that was ajar, leading her into a small shopping mall.

now why would you make her hide inside a jar, that’s obviously gonna be way too small

I tapped hard on Grue’s shoulder, and the darkness immediately around us began to fade.  I asked, “You can tell where Amy is?”

Oh! I just realized how they’ll be able to fix Amy’s hand. It’s pretty obvious in retrospect, but I needed this reminder of Grue being able to use his new power on her to realize it: He can borrow a fraction of her power and use it on her.

Unless the power just doesn’t let anyone use it on her rather than not letting them use it on whoever is casting it, but that seems unlikely.

She was experienced in this sort of thing, and would be an experienced tracker.  The water that layered the street was something of a blessing, I suspected.  Even as it slowed Amy down, it meant there weren’t tracks of mud or anything for Siberian to follow.

For once it’s helpful!

At worst, there would be clouds of muck stirred up by Amy’s footfalls, and there was little enough sunlight that I wasn’t sure how much of it Siberian would be able to see.

I mean, if the tiger aesthetic is actually something their powerset is going for rather than something they made up to explain the stripes, low-light vision is not far-fetched.

I waited, tense, as Amy ran.  I felt the darkness roll over the bugs I’d gathered on and around her, and crossed my fingers that Siberian didn’t have any tricks up her sleeve.

Of course, even low-light vision won’t help against Grue’s darkness.

Needed a way to communicate with her.  Shifting a small group of bugs onto Amy’s right hand, I felt her shake them off.

Oh yeah, given Amy’s acute life-senses, spelling things out on her skin might work.

I tried again, and she left them there.  I moved them gradually, until they were gathered on the tips of her ring and pinky fingers.  She moved her hand to the right, and I shifted the bugs to her middle and index fingers.

So you’re making them act like a sort of compass towards where you need Amy to go? Neat.

In other news, we’re back in business!