Skitter had been gone for roughly as long as Tattletale.

“Is that it?” Bryce asked.

I’m sorry, Sierra, but I have to say it: Bryce is an inconsiderate, ungrateful little fucker.

“I was hoping for more than two words of response.  How’s your hand?”

“Hurts.”

“Here, have a third word.”

“That’s going to happen.  You lost all four fingers.”

“No.  It hurts like my fingers are still there and they’re being crushed.”

That’s called phantom pains, right? The nerves have been cut off at the roots of the fingers, but the brain can’t tell the signals don’t come from further out.

She didn’t know what to say to that.  I’m sorry?  You deserved what you got?

I’m not sure I’d say he deserved it, but he sure as hell didn’t make it so he didn’t deserve it.

If that makes any sense.

“Ask Tattletale about it?”

I think this is a normal result of amputations. I’ve heard of the same thing happening with entire limbs, like leg amputees thinking they can feel toe pains.

Of course, it’s also possible that there’s some parahuman stuff going on, but I doubt it.

“She’s gone.  Has been for more than a day, now.  Jaw said she’s not to be disturbed with phone calls or anything like that.”

Well, that’s gonna sound familiar to Sierra.

Skitter had been gone for roughly as long as Tattletale.

Alright, so she hasn’t been away for that long. Might even be a bit early for Charlotte to be thinking “what if she never comes back”.

According to Charlotte, Skitter had invited a bunch of local villains over and then left shortly after.  They were probably the other eight territory bosses who were working to occupy the city.  That had been over forty-eight hours ago.

Ah, two days. Yeah, sounds about right.

That was the hardest part.  The rest was easy – finding the doorway, entering the cellar, then heading upstairs to the main floor.  She was glad to see light, to let go of that fear that she’d miss the gap and find herself wandering the storm drains and getting lost, unable to find a way back to the surface or the beach.  She wondered if Skitter had felt the same way.

Probably not, given her tendency to navigate with her power.

I notice that Sierra is talking about Skitter in past perfect here. Does she think Skitter didn’t make it, or something, since she hasn’t returned? Or is it just “when she used to actually be here”?

She nearly tripped over a small child as she made her way into the kitchen.

Heh. Did Charlotte turn the place into an orphanage?

Charlotte was there, and she was busy emptying the cupboards.  Everything edible was on the counter or on the floor, neatly arranged.  Sierra estimated roughly twenty children were on the ground floor.

Seems like it.

I love the idea of Charlotte just being really good with kids.

“There’s more than there used to be.”

“O’Daly clan.”

Was that the family that volunteered to help with the shelter?

Or maybe it’s another set of victims.

Sierra frowned.  “They need to take care of their own kids.”

“They’re kind of preoccupied.  They were hit harder than anyone else by the attack.  I think only six of the twenty who were with us are left.”

Damn.

That doesn’t include the kids, right?

“I know.  But they still need to take care of their kids.”

“Give them one more day to mourn?”  Charlotte asked.

Fair enough, I suppose, if you’re up for taking care of the kids.

“It’s your call.  You’re the one babysitting in the meantime.”

“I’m trying,” Charlotte said.  “But they’re switching between playing and being pretty normal kids to crying because their parents are… you know.”

Yeeeah, that’s not easy.

All the more reason for those who still have parents to be taken care of by them, I suppose.

Dead.

“Yeah,” Sierra confirmed.

Charlotte had taken off her mask and was using it to tie her hair back.  She straightened it and tied it over her forehead again.  “Isn’t the city supposed to handle this?  There should be something like foster care, or a special evacuation plan for orphaned kids.”

There should be, but have you met Brockton Bay?

“I don’t think the city knows.  It’s not just the kids.  We’ve got thirty dead bodies and it’s not exactly cool out, and there aren’t any ambulances or anything showing up to handle it.

Oh yeah, that’s fair. They kinda need to know about it to do anything.

You should probably tell them.

We just spent the entire afternoon moving them to a new spot with Jay and two locals.

We were talking about burning them in a mass grave, but I’m worried that’s against the law.

Hmm.

I don’t know, is it?

I would think the burning might be the most legally iffy bit there.

And since half of them don’t have ID, we might ruin any chance of their families identifying them.”

“Not easy.”

“No,” Sierra admitted. “How’s the rationing?”

“Irrational.”

Exhausted and unnerved, Sierra headed back to Skitter’s headquarters.  She double-checked that nobody was following before entering the storm drain.  It was pitch black inside.  Humid.

How long has it been since Skitter was home?

Few days? A week?

She walked with fingertips tracing the right-hand wall.  When that wall ended, she kept walking.  It was disorienting, uncomfortable, walking without a guide in darkness so absolute she couldn’t see her hand in front of her face.

Taylor’s used to it, in part because of Brian and in part because she has thousands of “hands” to touch the walls with. Sierra, not so much.

She felt the wall again, and she kept her hand on it as she rounded the next corner.  There was a wet patch where some small amounts of water were trickling down from the street above… two more paces, then a left hand turn.  She fumbled around briefly to find the opening.

Is Skitter going to be inside for once?

“No,” she said.  “I’ve hit my limit.  Can you find someone else to move the last two bodies from the factory to here?”

“Okay.”

It’s important to know when to stop even if you’re not entirely done.

She stared at the bodies.  Hopefully they could arrange something early in the morning.  Maybe if she put together a group and sent them downtown to verbally request help?  It was only one of a growing number of issues she was having to solve.

Help from whom exactly? The other Undertravelers? The PRT?

She sighed.  “I’m going to go see how things are inside.”

“Okay.”

She watched as he left to rejoin Yan and Sugita, the other two ex-ABB members.

I guess Sugita is the Japanese one?

He must have said something to them, because Yan turned to look at Sierra.  The look was intense.

Woah, chill.

It wasn’t jealousy from the Chinese-American girl.  It was something else.  As creepy as Jay was, his girlfriend’s stare scared Sierra more.

…

I’m disturbed and I can’t even see it except in my head.

When they’d started working yesterday, that sort of thinking had made her want to cry.  Now she felt numb.

Too many people to cry for.

Too few tears.

She could have thought about something else, but a part of her wanted to pay John Doe his due respect.  If nothing else, he deserved to be looked at as a human being rather than another body.

Yeah, this is true. Each one counts. Each one is a person the world no longer has.

She bent down to set the door on the ground.  Jay took hold of the man by the shoulders, she lifted by the pants legs, and they moved him three feet to the right.  John Doe was set down on the concrete floor.  He joined twenty-nine other bodies, now arranged in two rows of fifteen people.  Too many were fellow John and Jane Does.

That’s a lot of people, and I’m guessing they’re nowhere near done.

Oh man, I mentioned receiving the news about the Nine earlier, but you know what’d be even better? Seeing Sierra’s reaction to Skitter’s reaction to finally coming back to NeoPets the territory and seeing this. It’d mean we’d most likely miss out on seeing Taylor’s perspective on this, but that’s fine. I’d love to see what Sierra thinks of Skitter when she sees something like that, whichever way Taylor’s reaction plays out.

A blister had popped on her hand as she’d carried the door.  It smarted, but her focus was on the man.  Forty or so, but the yellow of his skin pointed to liver problems.

Alcohol, perhaps?

He could be as young as thirty, prematurely aged by alcoholism; it wasn’t like she hadn’t seen enough drunks around the city to be blind to the signs.

Ahh, yeah.