I tried to get my feet under me, but it was slow and awkward as I was unable to use my hands.  I had to wrap my arms around my head to shield my face against the continued flurry of slashes. Jack had a knife in each hand now, and he wasn’t giving me a half second between cuts, if that.

Wow.

Watch out for Jack sticking his hand out to cut you from the side.

My forearms and hands didn’t cover enough of my head.  I could feel the cuts nicking my ears, slashing through my hair by my temple.  A few slashes made their way through gaps between my arms and fingers.

Oww. This is clearly unsustainable.

Blindly, I rushed for the classroom.  Needed a second to breathe, to think, before I was whittled down to a bleeding ruin.  I could hear footsteps behind me.  I felt a hand seize my shoulder.

Jack? Or Amy?

I whirled and knocked it away, felt another knife slash crossing the back of my head.

But if the knife slash is coming from the back after she whirled around to knock the hand away…

I had blood in my eyes, my ears were a bloody ruin, and cuts burned like fire around my scalp and neck.

A shout.  Not Jack’s.  I heard it again, the same words, but I couldn’t make them out.  There was blood in my ears.

Amy, we need you over here. Badly.

I stumbled into the classroom, and Panacea was at my side in a moment.

There you are. 🙂

He’s trying to distract me.

Yeah, and also get you talking about things you’ve done that might be offputting to Amy.

I scampered along the length of the hallway, keeping low enough that I wouldn’t be visible from the window while I moved to the point just beyond the effects of the bug-killing cloud.  I could send bugs after Bonesaw and the sister -Victoria, was it?- but Bonesaw would still have that cloud of smoke around her.

Yeah, you should probably just let Victoria handle that side of the fight for now.

I doubted my ability to achieve anything on that front.

“There’s always some guilt related to family.  Tell me, what would your mother think, to see you on an average day?

Dude.

You made her not remember that.

Or can’t you remember her with the miasma?  I’d almost forgotten.”

Oh, okay, he pretended not to realize that so he could make a jab about the lack of memory with the miasma.

…I think. He might be telling the truth here, but it just comes across so smug, I have a hard time believing he didn’t set that line up for himself.

Even if I couldn’t remember her face, who she was, or even where she was, I could feel a pang of regret that knotted in my gut.

or even where she was

ouch

I grit my teeth to remind myself to keep from opening my mouth and grasped the cords that my bugs had threaded together.  I looped them around Atlas’ horn, and then I ran down the hallway, still keeping low.

…what is she doing? Is she making a web to catch him in?

“I had bad information.  Cherish has her uses, but she was never going to be a long-term member of the group.  The people who can are truly special.  Bonesaw, Siberian, me.  Perhaps Mannequin, but it’s hard to say.  He’s not terribly social, but he’s been with us for some time.”

Hm. Still doesn’t seem to be aware of Mannequin’s fate.

I stayed silent.  I could hear his voice changing in volume as he spoke.  Was he moving?

Hrm.

There were two doors leading into the classroom.  Was he moving toward one, aiming to leap out and strike at me?  I glanced down the length of the hall.  Bathroom, janitorial closet, another bathroom, storage room… it made sense that there wouldn’t be other classrooms adjacent to a music room with minimal soundproofing.

That does sound reasonable, yeah.

“You two have your differences, of course.  Amelia, you’re burdened by guilt, as you’re burdened by your rules and so much else.  I’d like you to think again about how nice it would be to be free-”

Nah, Jack, I think the ship has sailed. And not the fandom-related kind of ship.

“No,” Amelia’s interruption was curt, almost defensive.

“Alas.  Well, while I’m interpreting you two, I’d say Skitter is driven by guilt.

That does seem like a good way to describe the difference between them. Taylor takes guilt and uses it as motivation to carry on. Amy’s guilt causes her to shut down and withdraw.

What makes you feel so guilty, bug girl?”

A lot of things she shouldn’t feel guilty about.

“Skitter!  I don’t care if I die,” Panacea called out, “I’d rather live, if only to turn Victoria back to normal, but… just don’t worry about the hostage part.

Sorry, Amy, Taylor really needs you alive.

If I have to die so you can kill this fucker, I will.”

It’s very noble of you, though. And a bit disturbing due to the low desire to live

(that’s another thing Amy and Taylor have in common sometimes), but noble.

It isn’t that simple.  Killing a monster like Jack or Bonesaw?  That was one thing.  I could push myself to do it.  Killing a bystander in the process?  That was something else entirely.

Let alone a bystander who is the key to saving everyone you hold dear including yourself.

Man, though, healing thousands of people who are paranoid that the girl who wants to touch them might be a member of the Nine might be a hassle. Maybe microbes could be the solution, just as it is the problem?

Jack seemed to be able to interpret my pause.  “I suspect, Amelia, that she is worried about the hostage.  The monster that dwells in Skitter’s heart is very similar one to yours.  It’s a lonely thing, desperate for a place to belong, and the only thing it wants to be brutish to is her.”

He’s not wrong.

“Don’t pretend you know me, Jack,” I called out.  “You already tried to fuck with my head, you guessed wrong.”

True. Like he himself admitted, he didn’t know her quite right enough to pull it off.

I stood with my back to the wall, gun in hand.  Ten bullets in here, four spent, if I’d counted right.  I’d always sort of rolled my eyes at how movies treated guns and counting bullets, but it was harder than I’d thought.

You’d think counting the shots fired wouldn’t be difficult, but then everything happens so quickly.

The shock and disorientation that came with firing a gun tended to disrupt even basic arithmetic.

That too.

I couldn’t remember how many times I’d fired during the fight in the parking lot.

“I’ve been turning every microbe that touches my skin into an airborne plague, Jack,” Panacea spoke, her voice low.  “You should be dead now.”

I take it that’s what the heavy air was about.

But unfortunately Bonesaw has helped protect him against that kind of thing too.

“And me?” I called out, feeling a pang of alarm.

I think you’ve managed to dodge it? Maybe?

“I didn’t know you were there.  You should be dead too.  Sorry.”

I mean, clearly neither of them are dead yet, so something’s not quite right here.

But hey, I have previously speculated on Taylor being resistant to these sorts of things due to her bug affinity.

“A benefit of little Bonesaw’s smoke,” Jack answered.  “If I recall correctly, it’s something of a safeguard in case she accidentally deploys a concoction she hasn’t immunized herself or the rest of our team against.  The fact that it works against bugs and small rodents is a side benefit, rather than the intent. 

Oh, huh.

Bonesaw’s work has made us members of the Nine more or less immune to disease anyways.”

“And the gunshot?”

That too.

“Subdermal mesh.  There’s more protection around the spine and organs, and you landed that shot pretty close to my spine.  It hurts quite a bit.”

Hurts, but ain’t gonna kill him.

He did just tell her where she should be shooting, though. And that shooting isn’t entirely pointless. Pain can incapacitate.

If the sister had come after me, I wouldn’t have been able to fight back.  Like a deer in the headlights, I stood there, unable to think or compel my body to move.

Some people get more stubborn with the fear aura, but Taylor is apparently among those who get paralyzed.

How about Jack?

She rotated in mid-air slowly, as if getting her bearings.  As ponderously as she had moved one moment, she went tearing after Bonesaw in the next, slamming through walls as momentum carried her too far and as she turned a corner too tight and sheared through the drywall, tile and window frames.

Well, at least this school was already in disrepair.

I could hear Bonesaw laughing with childlike glee as she fled.

I love her so much.

“Not smart, not smart, either of you,” Jack chastised us.  “See, with Victoria gone, you’ve left me here with a hostage.”

Oh great.

I ducked back through the door, the knife delivering a glancing blow to my back.  It failed to penetrate my costume.

The consistent fact that knives aren’t good against Skitter’s costume is neat.

Oddly enough, moving into the hallway and putting my back to the wall made me feel like I’d committed to fighting Jack, even if I might have been in a better position to go after Bonesaw.

Huh.

“Wake,” I heard Panacea speak.  She said something else that I missed.

I felt a jolt, but it wasn’t physical.  It shook me on an emotional level.

I suppose what Amy’s done was meant to speed Victoria’s recovery?

As for the jolt… they’re not close enough to Cherish’s location for Bonesaw to have gone and fetched her this quickly, surely. That’s just not believable.

They didn’t have time to do it before coming here, either.

My voice abandoned me, not that I wanted to speak.  I felt as if I stood on the very edge of the grand canyon and any movement, even one to step back onto solid ground, was guaranteed to send me falling to certain death.

So what is this? Is this the effect of that colorless gas from earlier?

The levitating construct of flesh slammed through the door and the door-frame that Bonesaw had used to make her exit.  The mask of bone drew upward like an opened lid, to reveal a clear sphere, containing vitreous fluid and a teenage girl with blond hair.

…

Is this inspired by Bentley? Did Amy recreate whatever biological mechanisms are responsible for creating a living copy of the original dog inside the hellhounds?

And apparently Bonesaw did “something similar” to this for Siberian.

Her eyes were open, but she looked half asleep, her hair fanned out around her, floating in fluid that seemed thicker than water.  Her arms were outstretched, but her hands and lower body were hidden by the meat that surrounded her.  The edges of the shell that were unfolding around her were curved forward like the horns of a bull.

Whatever the case is, this has just the right balance of disturbing and glorious and oh I just realized what’s happening with Taylor. It’s Victoria’s fear aura.