“You know that thing where you go on about how you don’t care about people, you don’t believe in trust or common decency?” I asked. “This is the consequence. If you act like a crusty dickhole, don’t be surprised if people treat you like one.”

I put my hand out.

“Sounds like justification for you being an asshole,” Chris said. He didn’t hand me the thing.

“You know that saying? Trust, but verify?” I asked.

“Stupid saying. It’s verify, then trust, except you can never really verify one hundred percent. When you try, you end up being someone’s victim.”

I stared at him. I saw Sveta straighten, tense.

“Just give me the damn needle. There’s shit to do.”

“Ignoring me, huh?”

“Chris,” Sveta cut in.

“I’d like to. We have bigger problems.”

He didn’t budge.

“I can’t tell if you’re referring to me and my sister or Lab Rat and his past victims, and I have no idea which would be scummier.”

“Hookay,” Sveta said. She leaped forward, putting herself between Chris and I. “I’ll take your thing. Where?”

“Mathers Giant,” Chris said, not looking away from me. He tossed the syringe her way. She caught it with tendrils.

A flash of gold across my vision distracted me. New lines, new numbers. Chris and Sveta turned their heads at the same time I did, to look in the direction indicated.

New Titan, from the ongoing cracks. Pouffe, not a cape I knew. Kenzie was giving data, in script so tiny I shouldn’t have been able to read it, but the information was being fed to me by mechanisms that had nothing to do with the resolution of my actual eye. Cloud mover, mass transportation.

A good, stark reminder of what we were dealing with. I took flight, Sveta started swinging her way forward. Chris loped ahead, toward Ophion and the Mother Giant, who was almost impossible to make out in the mutated birthstuff she was outputting.

“Tristan!” Sveta called out. “Launch me!”

“You’re sure!?”

“Yes! Toward Mathers!”

Red motes began tracing their lines through the air, off to the side. She began using her tendrils to fling herself in that direction, so she’d be there.

The creation appeared. A damaged building thrust itself into existence, and catapulted Sveta into the air. Her body came undone, flat tendrils holding clothes in the right general positions, while others worked to catch her and catch hold of her target.

The Mathers Giant looked down at the person who had just latched herself onto her belly. Sveta swiftly climbed, syringe ready.

Good.

Heroes on the ground were trying to navigate the carpet of dead flesh. Here and there, the flesh poked upward, as needles protruded from the ground beneath to stab it. That flesh ulcerated, blistered, and formed tumorous lumps, discolored and constantly shifting.

The first of them began popping. Smaller creatures crawled out.