You walk up to them as if you think they’re your allies, that you have their back and they have yours. But you’re alone, child. You will always be alone, unless you’re with me.

The second cape lashed out. A pulse from the cape who had separated hostage from hostage taker, hers from theirs. Rain was cast aside.

The ground rumbled again. A section of the room at the end furthest from Christine collapsed.

“Give me my reinforcements, Teacher,” Christine said. “Now.”

⊙

Teacher blinked.

“Five squadrons should converge on Christine’s position at Turbine Four.”

“I’ll arrange it,” his soldier said.

He looked at the numbers.

97.7% in red. The number steadily climbed, dropped, then climbed again.

67.0% in white. The number climbed with a glacial slowness.

13% of his facility’s systems were compromised, and that number, at least, was going down.

Dangerous, but not so close that he had to change his plan.

⊙

His children crawled out of him and across the floor, scurrying to where a bloodstain had been left behind in the earlier fighting.

He liked moving, enjoyed the languid grace of even the simple action of walking. His head didn’t rise and fall with his footsteps, and his footsteps were feather-soft on the floor, despite the fact he weighed nearly three hundred pounds. All muscle.

“Hello there, little brother,” Swansong said.

Don’t call me little. Agitation sang through every part of his body, mercury-filled hydraulic channels within his body narrowing, muscles tightening. The children that lived within every cavity in his body stirred, ready to act.

She huffed for breath, crouching on the ground, one hand on the floor and the other on a storage container. She used the storage container to help find a standing position, then moved a bit further. Five seconds of effort, pain, and leaning on an object for help, just to cross a short stretch of ordinary floor.

He dropped to all fours and crossed a similar distance with a single step, before climbing up onto a larger storage container, to show her that he could, and to see what she would do.

“A Crawler wanted my sister to use my power on them. Bonesaw said no, that the evolution it provoked could kill her or hurt others. Too much. I thought you might be interested.”

He couldn’t remember much about her. Someone—he didn’t remember who, and the memory was vague because it wasn’t his own—had commented on Damsel, to say that the more she talked, the weaker she was, the more insecure she felt.

“Want me to annihilate you, little brother? It will give you room to evolve.”

He stared her down.

“Or are you scared?” She held her chin higher.

He didn’t move from his perch on the storage container, instead relaxing sphincters all across his body, to make openings large enough that his children could drop out. They hit the ground, bouncing where ridged backs hit floor, settled on their flat bases, and began scurrying in unpredictable zig-zags.