Interlude 4.z

Contessa stood before the Arachne, barring Weaver from entry."Go the fuck away," Weaver snarled."No. You have to wait."Weaver reached out, commanding a nearby mechanical Wasp to-"Don't. It will end poorly - for everyone.""For everyone, or for you?" she asked.Contessa did not answer."You expect us to trust you blindly. To accept that you, and only you, can see the whole chessboard, while we pawns move at your beck and call. That's fucking bullshit.""My power-""I know what your fucking power is! And I'm not so stupid as to think that I know better than you. But that's not the point. You can see the path to every objective you wish to achieve, but what I'm asking you is if that path aligns with ours."I can trust Contessa. But Fortuna? She's the bitch who sent me to kill my friend."Contessa remained quiet, her expression solemn."Move," Taylor demanded."You don't know what you are asking, Taylor. If you do this, everything that Blackwall and I built will be for nothing. You need to wait. I'm asking for minutes, nothing more."At the name Blackwall, Taylor hesitated. Confidence shaking. But it was not enough to sway her. The young girl was well prepared against any argument Contessa could bring, knowing that the Cauldron Thinker lied as naturally as she breathed."Then, let me contact Blackwall. If she tells me to wait, I will."Contessa shook her head. "She cannot know about this.""How convenient…""We planned this in such a way that neither she nor Arsenal could remember our conversations. You were there when we terminated Slug." Slug, a Case 53 parahuman with the ability to alter memories. Named as such because the vial had caused him to lose all of his limbs, confined to an immobile body and in service of Cauldron.Weaver's face twisted at the memory. Anger at remembering what Cauldron did to the useful Case 53s like Slug."Yes. I remember, I remember how you killed the poor man with such ease. After using him for decades."Contessa remained quiet."How many people are still out there, waiting for you to whisper the right word and trigger Slug's command buried in their brain?""Few." Most had died during the purge of Cauldron's assets."Few," Weaver repeated, "you speak of it with such ease. Is there even anything left of Fortuna?""No," Contessa lied.Weaver went quiet.How much longer? Contessa thought. She was acting half-blind, unable to rely on her Paths if not for the vaguest of instructions. She trusted Blackwall and her plan, but every moment that passed increased the likelihood of something going wrong.Weaver paused. "You used Slug's power on Arsenal, didn't you? Is this about the Simurgh?""Colin used the Slug's power on himself." Contessa answered. "It was his choice. Not mine. Not anyone else's.""You're trying to convince me that Arsenal lobotomized himself, removing memories. And for what? To hide your plans from the Simurgh?""Not from the Simurgh.""What? Who else is there?""..."But Weaver was smart, at times frighteningly so, especially for such a young girl."It's not only about the Simurgh. It's about Dragon."And as Weaver whispered that name, Contessa felt her Paths change. Twisting and rearranging, adapting to the mutating environment outside. Something had happened in the fight with the Simurgh, what Contessa had been waiting for all this while. All for the purpose of this one path.Path: deploy the Arachne.Thirty-two steps.She took a step forward, drawing her knife, and sweeping Weaver's legs out from under her. The young parahuman was too distracted to react, focusing on something that was going on outside.Contessa threw the knife towards a closed door. The door opened before the knife arrived, revealing one of Dragon's suits, gun raised. The knife lodged itself right into the side of the gun, making it explode before it could fire, taking with it the left arm of the suit. Contessa drew her guns - tinkertech - and executed the next steps.The first bullet bit into the suit's helmet, activating the suit's outer forcefield. The second bullet struck the suit to the side of the thigh, breaching the suit's defenses and damaging the forcefield generator, turning it off. The shoulders of the suit opened, revealing heavy artillery, but Contessa had already shot the third bullet.It struck the suit in an opening between the shoulder and the chest. Taking another step forward, Contessa shielded Weaver with her own body as the suit exploded, filling the hangar with fire and smoke. The shockwave knocked the hat off Contessa's head, but she snatched it from the air."W- what is happening?!" Weaver shouted. She tried connecting to anyone, but the communication system was down. The Simurgh was specifically intercepting anything that came out of this room, determined to eliminate Weaver and Contessa."Dragon has been compromised." Likely dead. "You need to join the fight, now," Contessa ordered. Her words shook Weaver out of her daze. Another step of her path, completed.Weaver ran forward, jumping up on the prone Arachne. She typed a code into the panel beside the cockpit. It opened with a sudden release, and Weaver climbed inside. Contessa calmly walked to the side of the Arachne, typing on the terminal and helping with the launch sequence.Just as the launch sequence initiated, Contessa raised her gun again and shot at an invisible Dragon suit. The bullet pierced the chest-plate and struck the biological computer within, destroying it and forcing the suit into standby. The Simurgh reacted, and the suit immediately blew up: the explosion sent Contessa flying backward. She gracefully landed on her hands, rolling to her feet in one smooth motion.The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.At the end of the hangar, the Arachne stood up.Six limbs ended in obsidian glass blades. The central mass was compact, allowing space for the cockpit and hexagonal plating on back. A mechanical spider, towering over Contessa. The outside of the suit was mostly dark metal, a mix of crystal and glass. Underneath that there was a smattering of circuits and veins. In all of its mechanical engineering, the Arachne was, in essence, a living being.A mechanical suit, using the template of a living spider.Which meant Weaver's power had full knowledge of all of its abilities: when she took control of a bug, she instinctively learned all of its biological characteristics and tendencies. In a similar way, Weaver's power fed her every single detail regarding the Arachne.This was a weapon that Blackwall had built to fight against an Endbringer attack. And now it would fight Dragon.As Contessa watched, the ends of the spider limbs began to blur. With a step, the Arachne phased away, using another dimension as a stopgap to reappear somewhere else on the battlefield.A path completed. Onto the next. Sixty-three steps.She walked through the open door, stepping over the burning remains of Dragon's suits. Her objective was downward, towards an isolated cell that she'd arranged to be placed underneath the command centre.As she passed through the hallway, she often stopped to rip into the wall and connect a device to the building's systems. Counteracting the Simurgh's attempt to compromise more of Dragon's systems by turning them off. It was a temporary measure, but one that would suffice.Screaming came from outside, but Contessa paid no attention to it. Her objective was clear, and she continued to walk towards it. Down the stairs.A PRT officer turned the corner at the wrong time. Contessa swung the back of her hand against his chin, knocking him out instantly. She grabbed his falling body and laid him down against the wall. Without someone else's eyes to see her, the Simurgh couldn't keep track of Contessa. The deeper she went into the command centre, the fewer cameras there were. Until there was none at all.Down there, in a secluded cell filled with tinkertech screens and computers, a figure lay prone on a bed. An IV stretched from his arm, connected to a machine to the side, keeping him asleep. Contessa walked up to the machine and typed in a long series of letters and numbers.The man stirred. Before he could fully wake, she began turning on the computers in the cell, setting up the workstation."You're safe," Contessa whispered to the waking man.A gasp.Saint woke up with a sudden spasm. His eyes wide. He recognized Contessa, and then he recognized the cell around him. The computers had been set up in the same way as his base, down to the foot pedal and split keyboard."You were right, Dragon has gone rogue," Contessa continued to whisper sweet lies. "We need your help." She pointed to the chair near the computers."W- where am I?" Saint asked."As I said, safe. Nobody else knows you're here. The Simurgh has killed and replaced Dragon. Now she's puppeteering her corpse. I need you to fight back, counteract everything she does."As much as Saint was a criminal and a murderer, it took him only a second to understand the gravity of the situation. He groaned as he stood on unsteady legs, walking to the chair. Contessa helped him to sit down, and sneakily injected a syringe into the side of his neck. Saint was still too dazed to feel it."I… I warned you," he mumbled, then got to work. Weeks had passed since he last was awake, to him only a few minutes had gone by since Blackwall had captured him."We know. We will repay your work," Contessa continued to lie.Blackwall had not known about this part of the plan. This was something that only Contessa knew about. To the rest of Cauldron, Saint was still sitting in a Protectorate cell, waiting for a judge to decide his sentence.Saint would never leave this room alive.As he looked to the screens, he immediately spotted multiple vulnerabilities in the Simurgh's offence and began dismantling them. The Endbringer's focus was too thinly divided between fighting with her body and trying to control the Dragonflight. Saint typed on the keyboard, working quickly to turn off every compromised system. Dragon-crafts fell from the sky all over the world. Some fell into inhabited cities, crushing innocent people beneath. Others crashed into houses, hospitals and other buildings, igniting fires and explosions.Saint did not care. He was too focused on the task he'd been given. The task he had been preparing for ever since he first found the box left by Richter.Contessa had known the price of her choice, and she still went ahead with it. Fortuna recognized that those deaths were on her hands, not Saint's. But it didn't matter.The End of the World was at their doorstep. It wasn't a matter of weeks, or of days. Hours at best. The world was going to end before the next sunrise.If the Simurgh succeeded in her assault, Earth Bet would be too vulnerable to fight against what was to come.Every decision, every sacrifice, every experiment had led to this.Ever since the beginning, Fortuna had known the price she would likely pay for her decisions. The price so many other people had already paid. She only needed a stray thought for her power to remind her of every innocent life she'd sacrificed to save everyone else.Contessa walked to the entrance of the cell, hearing the distant sound of steps. More of Dragon's suits, running down the command centre to stop Saint.They would never reach him.