The PRT building was just as squat and solid as I remembered, but that solidity was comforting right now. Even the bars over the shattered windows made it feel less like a prison than a fortress. In sharp contrast to the gutted lower floors of the surrounding buildings, lights glimmered within, and I could feel people moving with purpose inside. If there was panic, it wasn't obvious. They even had a cordon of armed agents maintaining a perimeter, which implied impressive discipline considering that a wave had hit minutes before.
There were perhaps three dozen civilians being escorted through the main doors and outside the perimeter, gently but firmly. Some of them were protesting quite loudly about how 'even the children' were being forced back out into danger.
They had a point.
The lead agent was explaining, patiently and firmly, that temporary shelter from a wave was one thing, but the PRT building was not a proper shelter, that doctrine forbade establishing civilian shelters beneath any of the planned crisis response headquarters as Endbringers often targeted defenders, and that there were two shelters each less than a mile away, to which they should hurry.
He had a point, too.
The bickering paused as we approached, and they all parted to let us through.
Some of the agents braced and saluted, even.
I had a momentary flashback to those hours of following Coil around remotely, watching as he walked through his base and inspected his soldiers, being treated to every military courtesy. Not something I'd expected to experience for myself, but right now anyone wearing a costume and headed toward the Endbringer fight got a lot of deference. Hero, villain, it didn't matter. Today, the only fight worth thinking about was the one for the survival of humanity, the one where we beat the end back one day more.
Amy and I strode through the lobby and to the elevator bank. There was water here and there, and if the person manning the reception desk had a working computer I'd eat my mask… but there was someone manning the reception desk. Director Piggot ran a tight ship. The receptionist spoke into her headset and waved us toward the elevator banks, where an elevator opened as we approached. It didn't feel like we were moving at all, but I could sense the relative positions of my bugs, and we were moving. Much faster than the elevator had gone on my last visit, as if the building itself was on an emergency footing.
Maybe it was.
The elevator ride took seconds, and the deceleration was just as imperceptible as the acceleration: that had to be a Tinker's work, at least in part.
When the doors finally opened, we stood on the roof of the PRT building, and a figure in gunmetal power-armor waited before the doors.
"Amy, Tailor. Glad to see you both, though I could wish it were under happier circumstances. If you'll follow me?"
His voice was calm and his manners polished: maybe it was how he dealt with stress, maybe it was just who he was. Admirable either way — secret identities meant about the only thing you could be sure of a Ward was that they had family in their city.
A lot of people had lost family today.
If he was among them, he wasn't letting it show.
He moved toward a tent of sorts set up on a corner of the roof. Clockblocker sat there between two gurneys, legs crossed at the ankles, a hand on each of the bodies beside him.
Assault, I recognized. Triumph… was just a torso, a snapshot of a man bleeding out, frozen in time.
Clockblocker looked up as we approached, but didn't wave.
"Panacea! Welcome to my humble triage corner. Business is slow so far, but I have hopes of it picking up later today."
She just shook her head and rested her hands on exposed skin for each of them; Clockblocker stood up and stretched his arms behind his back.
"Just refroze Triumph, but it's anyone's guess which of them will come out first."
Amy's voice was firmer than I'd ever heard it, and it carried through the tent.
"Barring brain injury, both will survive. Triumph won't walk until I get enough biomass, though."
"Will insects do?"
She nodded.
"I'll take care of it."
My swarms, already gathering on this roof and the others to provide vision, started redirecting slightly. I sieved through the bugs in the PRT building, searching out the less useful bugs first, and directed them to gather nearby.
Assault half-twitched, and then his flesh began rippling beneath his costume.
"Shattered spine, burst organs — extreme blunt force trauma. Water inhalation, rib puncturing a lung… and done. He's still got traumatic brain injury, and it's serious. Prognosis, positive with time. Oxygen uptake optimum, blood pressure stabilized. I've put him under. Recommend transport to a hospital." Amy's voice remained firm and detached as she lifted her left hand, the right staying poised on Triumph, as if to push his time-frozen viscera back in.
Clockblocker nodded and removed Assault's earpiece before handing it to Amy.
She absently nudged it into her left ear.
He tapped his own, and spoke. "Browbeat, let Battery know Assault's injuries are down to head stuff, return today unlikely. Then tie his earpiece into the medical net, and designate it Panacea."
I turned, surveying the roof.
Vista leaned against a wall perhaps ten feet from me, her eyes on Gallant.
There were a half dozen individuals with binoculars and radios, two focused on the horizon, the rest on the fight.
At the calm center of the bustle stood Miss Militia, flare pistol in hand, talking to Director Piggot.
They weren't speaking loudly, but some phrases carried clearly across the distance.
"… limited, in the time we…"
"… about Strider, or…
"… some in, but considering…"
I looked around the roof again, looking not for who was there but who wasn't. No Kid Win. No one from other cities that I'd seen… except for the Triumvirate, and each of them could circle the earth in minutes, at need.
Very few capes could equal them in that, or in any other question of personal power. It was one of the reasons they led: sometimes, in times like this, there really was no substitute for sheer strength.
As Armsmaster had said: "I can't tell you effort trumps raw power."
Right now, I wished I had even the kind of strength Armsmaster had, let alone that of the Triumvirate.
Still.
No point in wishing right now. I'd use what I had, and do what I could.
I turned my attention outward.
Leviathan was easily found by the fliers circling above him, hurling energy beams down. Purity's magnesium-white bars of light washed out Lady Photon's softer blasts, and Laserdream's twisting tangle of wire-fine lasers snaked around them both, all converging on a single point at the small of his back. Enough force to jolt Leviathan forward, claws digging trails in the asphalt. Enough force, concentrated enough, to break his skin, and leave a patch the size of my fists weeping ichor.
Water whips snaked up in answer, converging on the group from seven different directions, only to be met by as many lasers from Legend while the other fliers fled.
For a moment threads of water dueled with threads of light, before Leviathan simply brought more water to bear. In a blink, Legend was gone, leaving tons of water to crash down on the buildings below… and in that same instant, Alexandria struck the monster from behind, flying through and catching Leviathan at the ankles, leaving him off balance and momentarily suspended in mid-air. White fires flickered as Dauntless flashed in and out, his strike leaving behind a cloud of steam that was promptly skewered by more fire from on high, a sustained burst of firepower from all the Blasters present.
When the steam cleared, there was a crater surrounded by gutted buildings… but no Leviathan.
He leapt, piercing through the roof of the building in which he'd hid — was hiding even the right word, for a being which barely seemed to feel the mightiest attacks anyone had been able to launch thus far? — and launching arcs of water upward at the fliers as he came. Purity evaded laterally with that same startling speed I'd seen her display when we first met; Lady Photon took it on her forcefield which, while it didn't hold, broke the impact enough for her to dodge. Laserdream's shield was weaker, and the water blade carried through almost unimpeded. She was fast, though, almost fast enough to dodge it.
Almost.
I saw her leg fall, and then she too fell, Lady Photon diving for her daughter as she fell toward Leviathan's claws.
With impossible speed, Legend was suddenly floating in Leviathan's reach, a blazing cluster of lasers reaching out into the monster's face, superheating it until the skin glowed orange and red. But the uneven eyes sparked green as ever in that glowing face, and Leviathan twisted in midair to switch targets, swiping at Legend, water blades again preceding his strike.
A gold and white meteorite resolved into Glory Girl, who hammered Leviathan back down toward the ground, claws just short of reaching Legend. The poster girl for New Wave floated there a moment, watching him fall and spin, his tail unfurling, until Alexandria shoved the young heroine aside and took the tail across her waist instead, Leviathan rotating again to sling the older heroine into the road beneath and flipping to drop onto her, claws first. Alexandria met him rising, and they traded blows that could — and did — shatter buildings in a few seconds of furious brawling that covered three blocks and ended with him holding her whole body with one immense hand and hitting her head with the other.
Above, Legend held his stomach for a moment, the thin red line across his torso widening, then rejoined the fight beneath with breathtaking swiftness, lasers reaching out and turning corners to unbalance Leviathan with precise strikes to his legs, letting Alexandria get clear of the grapple.
A massive metal shape flew toward the stumbling beast only to be met by its unnaturally long arm reaching out, snake-quick, and I recognized Hookwolf caught in the hand of Leviathan, clawing for all he was worth, fresh metal boiling out from him until the Endbringer held a spiny set of sharp flailing metal. Leviathan turned toward the giantess who'd thrown the villain at him — his equal in height, if nothing else. She unlimbered her spear, and they squared off for a long moment.
Then Leviathan raised his left hand, and squeezed.
I could see thin streams of ichor dripping down his fist, whether from the fight with Alexandria or the attempt to match his strength against Hookwolf's ability to extrude more metal, I couldn't say. Fenja immediately charged the beast, leading with her spear, only to be met with a hurled Hookwolf that tangled her feet up and sent her tripping through a building.
Leviathan leapt forward to land on them only to be interrupted by Armsmaster swinging up to close with him in midair. There followed a lightning exchange of blows that left no marks on either I could see, but did leave Leviathan twisted halfway around in his efforts to catch the hero when they landed.
The dust rose up and obscured the fight from my view once more.
Right now, I would have cheered at seeing more Empire capes joining the fight, led by Kaiser or Krieg. At seeing Lung, rampaging through the city like a smaller Godzilla. At having Coil standing on this roof, using whatever his Thinker power was that scared Tattletale to shift the flow of battle.
Hell, right now I would have been glad to see Squealer.
Was that why the Protectorate was so much more careful, so much less ruthless, than I would have been in their place? Than I had been?
I'd justified killing Krieg on the grounds that I preferred that to risking the lives of real heroes in a major fight. Well, right now the heroes were risking their lives, in part, because there weren't more villains to join the fight.
And yet… was the chance of the Empire taking the field as they were today worth leaving this city to their partial control for more than a generation?
Questions for another day, if I lived that long.
No sign of reinforcements yet.
No sign of Eidolon, either.
A shout from one of the rooftop spotters confirmed my fears — it had been too long since the last wave. And they were coming closer together now. Twenty minutes, perhaps, between the first and second; fifteen between the second and the third?
The second had been almost half again as high as the first.
If this kept up, there wouldn't be a city left when the reinforcements got here.
But as this one reached the city, it was barely fifteen feet high, and… strange. Spread out. A long, slow push instead of a devastating crash.
In the distance, hovering far out to sea, I could see Eidolon standing alone on air. Beneath the clouds and above the sea, a green glitter in the distance, he fought his solitary battle against the ocean. Whatever he was doing wasn't enough to stop the waves… but he'd probably just saved thousands of lives, right there, as the wave broke on the wreckage of the Boardwalk and what made it into town was a great surge of water, but not a killing wave.
How long could he keep it up? How long could he match himself against the undisputed master of the waters, and hold him to a draw?
A gurgling splurtch beside me marked the return of Triumph to the flow of time, and I urged my swarm to boil forth from beneath the gurney and onto Triumph's torso.
"Clean cut. Perforated intestine, infections, amputation of everything below T-11; major bloodloss. All fixable."
The insects melted, a most uncomfortable feeling even second hand, twisting until they vanished from my perception as Panacea shaped them into flesh, rebuilding Triumph's legs.
"Prolonged loss of blood to the brain. Prognosis… negative." Amy sighed. "Recommend transfer to major hospital."
She lifted a blanket to cover his bare legs, spreading it gently over the young man.
Clockblocker punched the wall, once, leaning into it and resting his weight on his forearm.
He then straightened and plucked Triumph's earpiece from his ear and offered it to me.
"We never did get you that second ride-along with the Wards, did we? Well, never let it be said we didn't give you the full tour, including covering all the risks of the life. Browbeat, designate Triumph's earpiece as Tailor, and tie her into the Ward net." His voice was light, but biting.
I took it, wiped it off, and slipped it beneath my mask and into my ear as Gallant and Vista wheeled the gurneys carrying Triumph and Assault toward the elevator.
"Don't think we've met, Tailor, but welcome aboard." The voice was deep, deeper than Brian's even, and almost a drawl. "You haven't had the pleasure of sitting through the lectures on radio discipline, so here's the short version: don't worry about your settings. Tap your earpiece to talk to me. In a bit, I'll put on you on the Wards net and then if you tap and talk you'll reach all of us. If you need to reach someone specific, or another net, tap it twice and you'll get me… and I'll handle it."
I tapped my earpiece twice.
"Thanks."
"No problem."
I turned to watch Lady Photon come in for a landing.
Panacea calmly turned to her cousin, rebuilding her leg in seconds and consuming another chunk of insects in the process. The original cut was clean enough that it looked like she'd had a one-legged bodysuit from the beginning.
The three of them shared a brief hug before the two fliers lifted off again, making for the battle.
I wondered if that took more courage than going out to fight Leviathan the first time.
My swarms caught movement against the sky — to the west, coming in fast. Something fast, sleek, and nearly silent: tinker-tech. It came straight for us, decelerating with startling suddenness, and coming to a hover just inches above the roof. A hatch opened, and capes began stepping off. I recognized Narwhal, a strangely too-tall woman covered in her trademark forcefields with another forming her horn, and the power armor that stepped off last could only be Dragon, but the others were only vaguely familiar as members of the Guild and New York Protectorate.
Dragon joined Miss Militia and Director Piggot in conference.
A soft wave of air pressure, and another group of heroes, larger, appeared on a different corner. I recognized Chevalier and Myrddin, the one dressed as the archetypal knight and the other as the archetypal wizard, as they walked toward the others at the center of the roof. Their presence meant that the Chicago and Philadelphia Protectorates had both joined the fight.
A man in the center of the teleported group dropped to one knee, panting.
The various leaders talked, more quietly now.
I thought about trying to put enough bugs close enough to listen, decided against it, and looked to the Wards instead.
Gallant and Vista returned, bringing with them one of the capes I'd seen arrive with Dragon, a young woman with a crossbow, quiver, and a large wraparound visor.
Clockblocker and Vista were leaning against a wall, arms crossed. Gallant was standing between them, back straight and hands hanging easy by his sides. Panacea had taken Clockblocker's old chair between the empty replacement gurneys and had her eyes closed, apparently content to wait. The newcomer was sitting against the wall, one leg tucked under her.
All of them content to wait, even in the face of this. Did they have practice? Was that what Ward life was like? A lot of waiting?
I turned my attention outward.
Nothing. Devastation everywhere, but no sign of fighting.
I could see the fliers circling, but no lasers. No dust.
Hookwolf was on top of a building, turning about as if trying to find a scent.
Had they lost contact with Leviathan?
In the distance, I could see another wave coming.