I would have resigned myself to a fate worse than death, but how did one do that?  How was I supposed to convince myself to give up?

Doesn’t seem like your kind of thing.

Wait.

It used to be the kind of thing you’d do, though not on the same scale. But then you started growing a spine (ironically around the same time as, and largely because of, your life becoming defined by your relationship to invertebrates) and stopped hiding from the bullies.

It would be so easy, on a level.  It was alluring, the idea that I could stop worrying, stop caring, after so much pressure for so many weeks and months.  After so many years, if I counted the bullying.  I wanted to give up, but a bigger, more stubborn, stupider part of my brain refused to let me.

Please tell me it’s not the part that wants to save Dinah.

Please tell me it’s the part that wants Taylor to live on, for her own sake.

Bonesaw returned all too soon.  “Threads, Skitter?  These yours, or leftovers from before?”

Wait, what? Did the spiders start spinning when she was thinking about using silk to pull the vials?

Threads?  I hadn’t set any tripwires.  I should have, but I’d been more focused on a quick rescue mission than preparations for a potential fight.

Well, you’re the one who wanted your power to act on your subconscious. You don’t always know consciously what your subconscious is up to.

I tried to move and failed.  My fingertips twitched, I could blink if I focused on it to the exclusion of everything else.  My eyes, at least, moved readily enough.

Well, that’s something at least.

I couldn’t do anything.  Even an instruction as basic as ‘find Bitch’ was beyond my abilities at present.

Oh right, she’s out there too, I forgot about that! Another potential rescuer. Maybe.

Bonesaw had talked about this ‘passenger’.  My ally, my partner, after a fashion.  Was there some way to use it?  To put more power in its hands?

Possibly, but who knows what’ll happen if you give more power to a remnant of what is, in practice, some kind of eldritch god?

This might work a little too well.

Help!  I tried, putting every iota of willpower into the command that I could.

That’s… actually a really good idea. “Attack!” was specific, but with “Help!”, it’s a lot more vague what the passenger should do, perhaps giving it more freedom.

But it might also be too vague for it to do anything at all.

Nothing.  Too vague.  Whatever aid my ‘passenger’ provided, it wouldn’t think of something I couldn’t.

Fair enough. That’s better for the story anyway. Let Taylor do the thinking for herself, she’s good at it.

Having this work well would reduce Taylor’s agency in the long run and make it uncertain which things were Taylor being skilled and clever, and which things were just the passenger calling the shots.

Incidentally, that may be why Bonesaw calls it the passenger in the first place. It’s there, but it’s not the one at the wheel.

My bugs didn’t respond.

It was the perfect time for a rescuer to show up.

That would be nice, huh?

My bugs had stopped going after Bonesaw because we weren’t aware about her current location, so they hovered in place, clinging to walls and feeling around for people who might be their target.  There was a chance that they would bump into someone else.  If a rescuer was coming, my bugs would see them.

Hmm. Better hope that doesn’t mean they’ll assume the rescuer is Bonesaw.

There was nobody.  No people on their way.

So far, at least?

Also I suppose even if they did find a rescuer, they’d only assume it was Bonesaw if Taylor’s subconscious did.

She glanced at the circular saw, and it started up with that high-pitched whine.

Then it stopped.

Ooh, what’s up?

Regent to the rescue?

Or just Bonesaw changing her mind about how to do this?

“Clogged up with teensy-weensy bits of silk and whatever that armor’s made of, too slow.  But don’t worry!

Oh, okay.

I have a bigger saw somewhere else.  I was using it for one of the other surgeries I did earlier.

Well, that sounds nice and sterile.

Let me see if I can find it.”  She stood, then stepped out of my field of vision.  My bugs couldn’t feel her, but I could tell that she was carrying one of the steaming, smoking vials with her, as bugs died on the other side of the room, then the hallway, then a nearby room.

Ahh, yeah, makes sense. That would be a good reason for having more than one vial in the first place.

It stung, and I was momentarily blind before I managed to blink the worst of it away.  I wanted to blink more, faster, but the response was sluggish at best.  I couldn’t tell if my contacts were helping or hurting matters.

I guess at least they’d be shielding the pupil from the blood? Unless they started sliding.

I was put in mind of the incident just days before I’d gone out in costume.  The bathroom stall, the showering in juice. 

…oh yeah, this is absolutely the kind of situation where Skitter’s power would get a boost.

In fact, we’ve already seen that mentioned, indirectly. Her usual range is 2-3 blocks unless it’s grown again, but with the subconscious commanding, she pulled bugs from five blocks away.

It had started with cranberry juice in my eyes and hair.  How had I gotten from there to here? 

You fell headfirst on a rock with some raspberries hanging over it, and now the juice from those is sliding down your forehead.

Also, I didn’t think of it at the time as far as I can remember, cranberry juice is red. That’d really emphasizes the Carrie reference.

Her progress through the fabric of my mask was slow.  She stopped to clear loose material from around the tool.

Turns out underneath Taylor’s mask is another mask.

And another one underneath that one.

And so on.

“Don’t worry.  I’ll put your skull’s contents back when I’m done looking.

Very reassuring, thank you.

Then we can get to the real fun.”

She peeled my mask off.

Shit, I should’ve saved my joke about there being more masks underneath for this line.

Breathe in, breathe out.  Don’t want to pass out.  Or maybe I should?  Maybe I didn’t want to be conscious for what came next.

Unless you think you have a way to stop it, I wouldn’t recommend it, no. But I’m not sure Bonesaw would let you be asleep while she performs her art.

…I just realized why I came to think of that option: Cupcakes. Pinkiesaw won’t let Skitter Dash doze off there, because she wants to have fun with her friend before the end and can’t have said friend sleeping through it.

Her scalpel slid across my forehead, so fast and precise that it barely hurt.  I caught a glimpse of her untangling her fingers and her scalpel from my long hair before the first dribbles of blood flooded down into my eyes.

This chapter’s existence just made the Cupcakes April Fool’s gag even more dramatically ironic, didn’t it? 😛

Let’s have a look at what’s in Taylor’s head, shall we?

Breathe in, breathe out.  I was having to consciously maintain my breathing.  Whatever her dust had done to me, it had also jammed up the part that handled the more automatic things.

Hm, I wonder if that’s important somehow.

My pounding heart wasn’t in sync with the speed of my breathing, and I was beginning to feel dizzy and disoriented.  Or maybe that was the powder.  Or fear.

I mean, to the functionality of the gemma or to the escape. It’s obviously important to Taylor in the moment.

“But I haven’t been able to find it.  It’s not physically there, or it’s so small that I haven’t been able to track it down.

Maybe it’s not enough to look up, down, left, right, back and forwards. Maybe it’s attached along the fourth dimension we can’t look in?

If your ‘passenger’ is strong enough to let you work around a disabled Gemma, if your powers work without your say-so, maybe it’ll be easier to spot.”

So not only did the subconscious command not take out Bonesaw, it gave her an objective.

She began feeling around my mask for a seam, buckle or zipper, searching.

So, uh, how did you attach this, Taylor?

She talked as she grabbed the part of my mask that bordered my scalp and tried to peel my mask down towards my chin.  “So you can see why I find it very interesting that you still have the ability to control bugs, even when your Gemma is out of order.”

Makes sense. Gotta find that subconscious controller.

She gave up on pulling my mask down.  The armor panels made it too difficult, and the fabric wouldn’t tear.  She snapped her fingers, and one of her mechanical spiders stepped close.  She removed one of the tools at the tip of the spider’s leg – a small mechanical circular saw.

“…getting this mask off is clearly not a job for human hands alone.”

It buzzed like a dentist’s drill as she turned it on.  She began taking my mask apart, thread by thread.

Time for a face reveal, it seems. And quite likely a brain reveal, if Taylor’s unlucky.

“I’m ten times as excited to take your brain apart, now!  You might give me a clue about the passenger.

I guess that’s her nickname for the part responsible for the subconscious or instinctive use of powers?

See, I think it’s something that’s hooked into your brain.  It was alive up until your powers kicked in, it helped form the Corona, then it broke down.

Ohh, interesting. She seems to be suggesting that the Dandelions left something behind.

I’ve seen it at work when I’ve provoked and recorded trigger events, seen it die after.  But I’m pretty sure some kind of trace is still there, linked in, cooperating with us and tapping into all those outside forces you and I can’t even comprehend, to make our power work.”

Sounds about right, honestly.

She angled my head and stared into my goggles with her mismatched eyes.  “Dealio is, the Corona’s way too small to be doing what it’s doing.  As parahumans, our brains are doing these amazing things.

“Dealio”.

And yeeah, there’s a limit to how far you can stretch the scientific explanations of these powers.

The framework, all the details our minds are using to decide what works and what doesn’t, the sheer potential, even the energy we’re using, it’s too much for our brains to process, and it’s waaaay too much for a growth that’s no bigger than a kiwi.

That’s still bigger than I was imagining, but I suppose it’s a reasonable size.

All of that?  It’s got to come from somewhere.  And the other reason you can’t just carve out the Corona?  If you do, the powers still work on their own.  The person just can’t control them.  It becomes instinctive, instead.”

Eyy, called it!