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Thomas Calvert tapped his foot impatiently in both his realities. In one, he awaited the imminent arrival of Skitter with a loaded pistol pointed at the space in which she would appear, flanked by soldiers with guns at the ready. In another, he was standing outside the house entirely, watching the building through a gas mask at a distance while a firing squad of his soldiers stood ready to gun her down the instant she teleported in. In both timelines, the house was barricaded with wooden boards, completely enclosed by fencing, lit up on all sides by headlights, and utterly surrounded by his soldiers. There was no such thing as being too paranoid, he reminded himself.
He admitted to himself that, were he being truly paranoid, there would simply be a firing squad in both realities, but he had decided to permit himself the satisfaction of ending Miss Taylor Hebert’s life with his own hands. Between the recent interference from Dragon and his preparations for the intervention at the mayoral debates, the last few days had been a narrow tightrope to walk as he executed the final steps of his plan; the following week promised to be similarly stressful as he navigated the obstacles required to ascend to the role of PRT Director without arousing suspicion.
All this to say, he hadn’t had the luxury of expending a timeline to engage in his usual methods of stress relief in over a week, and he likely wouldn’t have the opportunity to do so again for quite a while. He looked forward to Skitter’s execution with eager anticipation.
Skitter was, in many respects, as much of a nuisance as her bugs were. She incessantly requested an endless array of supplies and manpower, to the point it actively hampered some of his lower priority operations. Not to mention how she consistently and publicly undermined his authority, in a million subtle ways. Several of the powered teenagers in his employ had a habit of doing so, but Skitter seemed to be uniquely skilled at getting under his skin. He supposed it was due to her underlying tone of superiority, of challenging his competence, of implying “I could do this better than you, and you’re an idiot for not doing it my way.”
Also, he still grit his teeth at the memory of the girl rudely awakening him at 5:45 in the morning to simply request some untrained laborers. The gall.
It was obvious that she had despised him almost from the start, and at this point the feeling was decidedly mutual.
Even all of that wouldn’t necessarily be a problem by itself. He occasionally worked with associates he disliked or found unreasonable, if they proved themselves valuable enough; Ballistic and Accord came to mind, for example. The deciding factor in arranging for Skitter’s removal had been her unceasing, increasingly insistent demands that he release his pet. She apparently was under the absurd delusion that she, a cape who controlled bugs, could somehow be more useful to him than a modern-day Oracle of Delphi. Resisting the urge to laugh in her face whenever she’d brought up the subject hadn’t been easy.
He could say that it was a shame she’d stubbornly decided to force his hand on the matter, but that would be a lie. He was rather looking forward to being rid of her.
“Skitter’s arrived at the safehouse. ETA, 20 seconds,” a voice squawked from a radio on the hip of a nearby guard.
The version of himself standing outside the house watched the room through a camera affixed to one of his soldiers, while the version inside the room took a breath and tightened his grip on his weapon. In the final moments before his target arrived, he mentally went over the monologue we would treat her to upon her entrance. There were few opportunities as perfect as this one for supervillain monologuing, and he intended to savor it thoroughly.
Skitter appeared in a flash of light on the other side of the waist-high barrier of containment foam that split the room. She barely moved, aside from crouching slightly into a combat position, her body tense. Bugs flowed outward from her costume in a circular explosion. Her head didn’t move at all. She wasn’t even looking at him, in fact.
In one reality, a half dozen mercenaries simultaneously opened fire.
Skitter was hit repeatedly, slamming back into the wooden wall behind her as the hail of bullets peppered her torso. As her body lifelessly slid down the wall to the floor, a swarm of insects emerged from the various crevices in her costume and haphazardly launched themselves towards his men. No matter. She was dead, and he could afford to have some fun now that he had a secure timeline. He grinned and turned his attention to the Skitter in front of him, gun still pointed at her chest.
“You bastard,” she snarled. He grinned. He opened his mouth to begin his speech, but—
In the other reality, Skitter limply raised a gun with a badly shaking hand and shot directly through the exterior wall of the house into his head.
The timeline collapsed.
What?
How the hell had she survived that? When had she gotten a gun? How had she managed to—
He realized that Skitter was saying something while he was distracted, abruptly bringing his attention back to the very alive, very armed, very angry Skitter standing directly in front of him while he had only a single timeline running. Oh fuck.
He hastily split the timeline and immediately shot Skitter in the chest in both possibilities, retreating from the room as he did so. A cloud of angrily swarming insects pursued after him, obstructing his vision as they bit and stung.
In one reality, he simply sprinted out of the room to get to safety. In the other, he emptied his magazine at where Skitter had last been as he retreated back through the door. His aim was thrown off course by threads of silk tugging at his barrel, and was only made worse by the bugs attacking his eyes. He didn’t think he’d hit her, but he decided to keep the timeline anyway just in case. He slammed the door behind him as he exited, then split timelines again.
This was not the plan. He hated improvising. Still, he could salvage this.
Probably.
He briefly ordered his men to shoot into the room before reconsidering; her costume was obviously bulletproof, considering she’d just survived over a dozen bullets to the chest. He also wasn’t sure if her baffling ability to shoot him through a wall at 50 yards was some heretofore unknown aspect of her power that only triggered when she was hit by gunfire. It would be strange, to be sure, but you could never be entirely sure with powers. Grab bag capes could be full of surprises; he hadn’t thought that Skitter was one, but... better not to risk it.
A different approach, then. In one timeline, he gave the order to use grenades; in the other, incendiaries. His soldiers moved swiftly and efficiently into position in both possibilities.
As the soldier next to Calvert threw his grenade, he was surprised to discover that it had somehow attached itself to his combat vest via a long silk thread. The cord snapped with the force of the throw’s momentum, but the jolt was strong enough to yank it off course. Rather than arcing through the doorway, the grenade bounced off the frame and painfully struck Calvert in the face before dropping to the floor with a thud.
The two men looked at each other.
The grenade detonated. The timeline collapsed.
Calvert let out an exasperated sigh. Back in the incendiary timeline, it seemed as if Skitter had somehow lit one of his men on fire, if the sounds coming from the next room over were any indication. “Irritating,” he spat out as he split the timeline again.
The other Molotov-wielding soldier was beating a hasty retreat from the room containing Skitter, and burst through the door between them. The bottle of gasoline was seemingly tied to his hand.
“Damnation,” Calvert snarled. How hard could it be to kill one teenage girl? Must he do everything himself?
He decided to devote a timeline to reconnaissance, and sent one version of himself to peer through the now-open door. He could see the buzzing screen of furiously churning bugs obscuring the other end of the room. Somewhere beyond them was Skitter, hemmed in by containment foam, with no way out but through.
The fact she hadn’t immediately shot him when he stuck his head out lent some credence to his theory that her absurd accuracy was a result of the firing squad somehow. He’d have to wait until he was somewhere safe before ordering his soldiers to open fire; his car outside, he decided. But first, he’d have to ensure she was truly trapped inside this room before venturing out into the open.
The soldier who’d hit him in the face with a grenade annoyingly interrupted his thought process. “If we use grenades—”
“Do not use grenades,” he snapped, exasperated. “I assure you it does not work out the way you imagine it will.” The soldier looked momentarily confused by the outburst before regaining his composure.
Calvert pivoted to the Molotov soldier, who was still struggling to remove the bottle from his hand. “Give me that,” he spat out as he wrenched the bottle free with both hands.
He split the timeline; he wanted to ensure he got this throw right. To save time on each attempt, he elected not to light the Molotov until he found a trajectory that worked.
His first throw towards Skitter was intercepted by threads near the ceiling, and his second, slightly lower throw was caught in some sort of net hanging down from the dilapidated ceiling fan. On his third attempt, he threw it underhanded, aiming closer to the door this time. The bottle shattered, and the smell of gasoline permeated the air. There, that would work.
In the timeline where he hadn’t yet thrown the bottle, he immediately attempted to replicate the throw. As he lit the rag and prepared to toss it into the room, a spray of red liquid emerged from the cloud of bugs and hit him square in the face. Pepper spray, he realized painfully. His eyes and nose burned, although the spray had dispersed enough over the course of its travel that it wasn’t nearly as concentrated as it might have been.
Still, he coughed reflexively, and the disturbance messed up his aim just enough that he threw the Molotov harder than he’d intended. The bottle was intercepted, just barely, by yet another net.
God damn it. Why hadn’t he worn a mask in this reality? Just to taunt Skitter with his true identity? What a colossal mistake.
He split the timeline from the reality where he’d at least managed to successfully throw the unlit bottle. Now he just had to find a way to light the gasoline spilled across the floor.
The man who’d somehow managed to set himself on fire pathetically bleated out a startled “No!” as he ran for the door. His sleeve was still burning.
Aha.
Without hesitation, Calvert shot him in the chest and directed the soldier next to him to forcibly kick him back into the room. As the fire on the man’s sleeve made contact with the gasoline, the room went up in flames in an explosion of heat. Calvert closed the door, ignoring the man’s wails as he ordered his soldiers to barricade the room with furniture.
Shooting a fellow soldier just to save his own skin reminded him of something unpleasant. He pushed the memory out of his mind.
He was salvaging the situation, slowly but steadily, even if he wasn’t quite in the clear yet. He sighed with annoyance; this was throwing a serious wrench into his extremely tight schedule.
He split the timeline, keeping one version inside the house as a precaution while the other left to take refuge in his car. As he made his way out of the house and walked out through the chain link fence, he felt a quick succession of bites at his neck at three separate locations. He rapidly swatted at the sites until the biting stopped, but not before he’d been bitten over a dozen times. He inspected one of the corpses: a black widow spider.
“Damn,” he cursed under his breath as he flicked away the remains. He briefly debated abandoning the timeline, until his other self suffered a similar fate back inside the house. He scowled. Even with the antivenin he’d taken beforehand, the sheer amount of venom now coursing through his system meant he was liable to have a deeply, deeply unpleasant next few hours.
His already intense irritation with Skitter was rapidly curdling into a fiery rage. “Burn it to the ground,” he ordered, putting considerable effort into restraining his frustration and projecting an air of unconcerned confidence. It wouldn’t do to appear flustered in front of his men.
As he strode over to his vehicle, he glanced over his shoulder to see a volley of Molotovs being thrown over the fence and impacting the building in numerous places. The fires raged excitedly, consuming the wooden exterior as the faded paint curled from the sheer heat. He smiled slightly at the sight. As he entered the car and shut the door behind him, everything went quiet, muffled by the two inches of bulletproof glass that now stood between him and Skitter. He was safe.
Now, to finish the job.
He split the timeline, looking up at the barricaded second story window behind which Skitter was now cooking to death. There were no signs of activity yet. He waited, surveying the scene carefully.
Unusual, for him to be in such a reactive position. The nature of his power gave him infinite attempts to attempt a task, so long as doing nothing remained an option. Situations such as this, in which there was both a rapidly evolving state of affairs and an active time constraint, severely limited his ability to simply repeat his approaches until something stuck.
Speaking of time constraints…
He used one of his timelines to review his schedule for the next day on his phone. No use in wasting both timelines to watch a single window, after all.
His radio squawked. “Gunshots from inside. Might be trying to shoot through the window boards,” his lieutenant conveyed.
He considered the situation. He debated ordering for containment foam to be sprayed on the window, but the distance between the fence and the house was too far for the handheld dispensers to feasibly reach. If he’d had one of the PRT’s containment foam trucks… ah well.
“Saturate the room with automatic weapon fire,” he ordered. “Don’t let up.” Depending on whether his theory about Skitter’s hidden power was accurate, it was possible he might lose a few soldiers to return fire as a result of the barrage, but that was an acceptable cost.
Through the car window, he saw his lieutenant relay the order to the assembled troops. They readied their assault rifles, aiming squarely at the window— Skitter’s one escape route. They opened fire.
Even with over two dozen automatic weapons firing at once, the thick windows of the car muted the sound into merely a dull roar. It reminded him of the sound of rainfall. It was strangely comforting.
When the collective magazines of the group ran out nearly simultaneously, he sent an update to his lieutenant. “Fire in shifts, don’t leave her an opening.” The man copied, then relayed the order.
Both of his timelines were still more or less identical at the moment, barring minor timing differences. There was no real reason to diverge them when things were going so well, and the two possibilities meant a greater possibility that Skitter had been hit in at least one of them. He still wasn’t certain how Skitter had managed to survive the firing squad— her costume certainly didn’t look like Kevlar— but she could at the very least be injured.
Without warning, the headlights of the surrounding trucks began to blink out, one by one. The previously illuminated house became increasingly shrouded in darkness.
He sat up, concerned. What was Skitter doing now? He couldn’t immediately fathom a way that bugs might be responsible for this. Was this another power of hers that she’d kept hidden until now?
In the dim red-orange glow thrown off by the burning flames, he saw a bug-covered figure emerge from the second story window. His soldiers riddled it with bullets, but it continued unabated, dropping to the ground below. Another figure escaped from the room, and then another, and then another. They started to run in different directions, their dark forms difficult to make out in the near-pitch black of the night and the inky grey smoke filling the area. It was difficult to keep track of all of them simultaneously.
A memory played in his head, perhaps spurred by his recent recollection. Hostiles, from the windows! Rattle, Mace, covering fire! Goddamit there’s too many of ‘em!
A chill went down his spine. The previously comforting sound of thundering gunfire suddenly turned sour, evoking memories of a rainy day in an abandoned town.
He shook his head, trying to clear his mind and refocus. He couldn’t afford to be distracted right now. Skitter controlled bugs. That was all. Except for her ability to unerringly shoot through walls. And her seeming ability to disrupt electronics somehow…
A thought struck him. Skitter had defeated Mannequin in single combat. Mannequin, a man more machine than flesh, who was entirely encased in airtight Tinker-tech armor. Had she really defeated him with mere bug powers, or was there something else at play here? Something he didn’t fully understand?
He ruthlessly slammed that train of thought to a halt. He was just getting antsy, that was all. He took a deep breath, closing his eyes, and tried to think rationally. Bugs could have eaten through the trucks’ wires, or short-circuited the bulbs, or numerous other possibilities. He needed to stop panicking. The situation was well and truly in hand.
The boom of a grenade detonating went off in one of his timelines. As he snapped open his eyes to look for the source, he saw that an entire section of the fence had been blown out, while soldiers scrambled for cover.
In both timelines, swarms of bugs were moving amongst his men, causing them to whip around in fear. Some of them were covering their noses or ears, terror etched into their faces. He recognized that look: it was the expression of someone being threatened with excruciating torture. He’d seen it many times.
His brief lapse of stupid, animal panic had distracted him long enough for the situation to devolve into this. He scowled, splitting the timeline from the version where the grenade hadn’t gone off and grabbing his radio. “She’s playing mind tricks. She’s still near the house, and she’s never killed or tortured before. Maintain the perimeter and do not use grenades.”
As he watched his soldiers shoot at anything that moved, he realized with mounting concern that he had no idea where Skitter was. She could feasibly be any one of the numerous bug-cloaked figures moving within the fenced area, or else hiding somewhere in the darkness. As he watched, two of the insect-covered figures managed to reach the fence and started to climb. They were promptly Molotoved, but four more bug-people rose up to replace them even as the resulting inferno forced the surrounding soldiers to retreat.
Another long-distant memory replayed itself, unbidden. Fire doesn’t work! Shit, they’re multiplying! Get back!
The smoke from the firebombs severely obstructed visibility, rendering the entire area behind it nearly impossible to see. As he inspected the area, he realized that several Molotovs had already been used around the perimeter during his brief bout of hysteria. The choking smoke was steadily turning the air into a hazy miasma, to the point it was difficult to see clearly. He could barely make out the second story window anymore, and he couldn’t even see the other side of the perimeter fence.
The memories were coming faster now. Can’t see shit. I hate this. He could be anywhere.
He clenched his fists to the point of pain. In the blindness forced upon him by the smoke, his mind began to conjure worst-case scenarios. The possibility that one of the insect-covered figures had managed to leap the fence and slip away into the night needled persistently at his brain. Even though he logically knew that she was still fenced in, that his soldiers had likely gunned down and Molotoved each of the running figures thoroughly enough to ensure it wasn’t her, some primal part of his brain couldn’t stop envisioning a vengeful Skitter creeping up on him from out of the darkness.
Another memory. Christ! Keep away from the alleys! Check your corners!
He locked the car doors.
An unsettling thought occurred to him. If Skitter’s bugs were capable of disabling headlights, who was to say they weren’t capable of disabling an entire car? What if he found himself unable to drive away from the scene? He would be trapped inside, unable to leave, as bugs steadily wormed their way into his refuge and forced themselves down his throat until he choked on exoskeletons and wings.
This extremely unhelpful mental image was mercifully interrupted by the concerning sight of his soldiers frantically grabbing at themselves in both timelines. Confused, he leaned forward to get a better view of what was happening: his men were agitatedly holding onto their spare magazines as insects attempted to lift them free of their various pockets. He watched as one of his men, struggling to prevent his ammo from being stolen, fumbled his weapon to the ground. The sound of gunfire became more and more sparse as the soldiers fought with bugs over their supplies instead of maintaining covering fire.
He growled in frustration, his hands clenching tightly. These were supposed to be professional mercenaries?
His anger turned to fury when, in near-perfect synchronicity between timelines, he spotted one of his men throwing a grenade over the fence. After he’d specifically told him not to. What the hell was he thinking?
Just as expected, the grenade’s trajectory abruptly changed, almost certainly due to the interference of near-invisible threads. It swung down in a perfect arc into the wet grass next to the fence and promptly detonated, tearing an entire section of the fence loose as soldiers scrambled away.
He grit his teeth and split the timeline. The situation here was rapidly worsening and would likely only continue to do so, regardless of what course of action he took next. The practical reality was that the longer he remained here, the greater the risk he was exposing himself to. If Skitter somehow found a way to lob a grenade at his car, he could very easily be killed in both timelines simultaneously.
Besides, having two timelines had barely seemed to make a difference anyway.
In one timeline, he tersely ordered his driver to head back to base. He breathed a deep sigh of relief as the car’s engine started without issue and he rolled away from the burning building to safety, leaving the sheer madness of the last few minutes behind him. At least now, he wasn’t risking his own head.
A memory. You piece of shit. Real brave man, stabbing your CO in the back and leaving him to die.
In the timeline where he’d stayed put, his lieutenant reported in. “She’s pulling the pins on the grenades sir, we gotta throw ‘em somewhere,” he said cautiously, preemptively making excuses for his men’s blatant disobeyance of orders. Calvert didn’t bother responding, instead continuing to tensely observe the situation from the single reality now available to him.
His soldiers had started throwing flares onto the property, throwing the surrounding area into stark contrast. The smoky haze took on a crimson tinge as the harsh red light of burning magnesium flickered onto the walls of a building going up in flames. Several of the flares seemed to move after they had landed, no doubt due to the meddling of Skitter’s swarm. Still, he started to breathe easier as visibility was slowly restored. Perhaps this was still recoverable.
Another grenade explosion went off. Calvert slammed a fist into the headrest next to him hard enough to make the car rock. He hadn’t even seen the moron who’d thrown it. The blast had blown a hole in the side of the burning house, releasing a wave of smoke and cinders that billowed outwards towards his men as they retreated. What little visibility had been restored was now steadily decreasing.
“Do not throw grenades,” he practically yelled over the radio, resisting the urge to curse at the imbeciles outside. As much as he would’ve loved to hurl expletives right now, losing his composure would only lead his subordinates to second-guess him in the future. Or even outright mutiny. He knew this from experience.
Memory. Move! Move! Drop the fucking ladder, you fuckers! Oh, thank fucking—
Somehow, yet more smoke appeared on the battlefield. It was denser and thicker than the rest, a solid wall of dark grey particulates. A smoke grenade, he realized. The opaque cloud rapidly advanced to consume everything around it, hiding everything and everyone within it. Soon after, more such clouds burst into existence, throwing the entire area into utter chaos as the endless smoke swallowed the battlefield whole.
He couldn’t see a thing. The majority of the fenceline was engulfed, to the point that Skitter could have easily climbed over it in a dozen places without being detected. He somehow knew, with grim certainty, that she had escaped.
The situation was irrecoverable. Or to put it another way, fucked. Absolutely, completely fucked.
He gave the order to his driver to leave, staring back at the burning house slowly collapsing in on itself as they pulled away.