Ten thousand in cash wasn't much money, in some ways. Not enough to leave Brockton Bay and live somewhere else. Not enough to cover college or a boarding school. Not enough to replace the things I'd lost in the house — books, a computer, clothes, furniture. Not enough to replace the house itself.
And nothing could replace Dad.
But it was enough to buy me some clothing to replace the PRT sweats I'd been wearing, a rucksack, a space blanket, a supply of trail food, some groceries, a notebook, pens, and a really large bottle of tylenol. It was enough to pay for a week at a run-down extended-stay hotel in the Docks area — the kind of place that asked your name, but didn't ask for an ID or credit card to check it. And it was enough to get an unlimited bus-pass for the rest of April.
And that was enough for what I had in mind.
Just knowing that I had an alternative to going back to the Protectorate, going into therapy and foster care, had been enough. I'd felt for an empty house with a spare key hidden under a rock or a flower pot, explained that my aunt would be home soon, waited for the Wards to leave my radius, and then gone on my shopping expedition.
In a fit of optimism, I'd picked up a new set of the straps and lenses I'd found necessary in making my old costume. The explosion had burnt it away, or perhaps it was sitting at the Protectorate headquarters, neatly folded. Either way, it was beyond my reach for now, and though assembling the spiders necessary to reweave it would take time, it wasn't as if my to-do list had much else on it right now. Practice using my power. Reweave my costume. Find a way to thank those who'd given me this chance: Panacea, Gallant, Clockblocker, and Tattletale.
And, right there at the top, end every last gang in Brockton Bay — starting with the ABB.
I wasn't going to just start a fight. I'd learned that while a head-to-head confrontation could go very badly for me, ambush was worse. Lung was far more dangerous cape than Bakuda in a fight — he'd stood off whole Protectorate teams. Had fought an Endbringer solo, once, which was once more than anyone not named Scion or Eidolon should survive trying. But dangerous as Lung was, Bakuda had done much worse to me and mine, striking from ambush.
Fine. I could learn from that. I'd find a way to do the ambushing, in the future. And for when I couldn't control that... Battery had given some good tactical criticism, on that day, and I'd take it to heart.
All of that would start with finding the ABB, though. I spared a moment of regret for the resources the Protectorate had: Thinkers, access to undercover police agents, surveillance equipment... they probably knew exactly where I needed to start. But going with them would have meant a month or more of sitting back. Of hiding behind other people. And I was done with that.
It would also have been a month with Sophia. I was pretty sure I hadn't dreamt everything of what I'd seen and heard before I woke. And while listening through my bugs gave me a blinding headache, it was definitely something I could do while awake too. But whether or not the things I thought I'd seen or heard through my bugs was real — and parts of it were pretty strange: hearing some, but not all voices in color? Was synaesthesia a concussion symptom? — I'd seen Sophia with my own eyes, heard her with my own ears. And when I'd tried to leave, I'd found the doors of the medical wing locked against anyone without the right ID, the right iris scan or handprint or whatever.
And that meant Sophia was a Ward. Too young to be anything else. And while everyone knew the Wards all went to Arcadia, I had to wonder if that was just some expert misdirection on the Protectorate's part. Were there other Wards in my school? Had they known about the bullying? Condoned it?
Participated?
I ran through the list of the other Wards in the city, but no one at Winslow leapt to mind. At least Emma and Madison weren't part of it — there were only two female Wards active, and Vista was too young and too short to be either of them.
That made Sophia Shadow Stalker.
No wonder I'd felt threatened when I talked to her.
Lisa... Lisa had helped when I needed it, badly. I owed her. I even liked her, the two times we'd met. But she thought of this as a game of cops and robbers. Maybe that's how it really was, to her. I'd lost too much to treat it as a game, and the thought of trying made me feel sick to my stomach.
I shook my head. After my afternoon shopping, I'd spent yesterday night going all over town trying to find the the ABB, starting with sitting down in a McDonald's in ABB territory, feeling out the buildings for blocks around with my bugs. Four times I'd found prospects: someone who carried a pistol stuck in their waistband, a group of young men shaking an individual down for money — petty thugs, basically. I'd tagged them with bugs, tried to follow them as they moved around the city, hoping to find their boss.
Bus routes were not designed for rapid surveillance, and I lost them every time.
On the bright side, busses were a pretty inconspicuous way to get around. Hood up, face down, wearing drab and baggy clothing, and curled in on myself, I looked like someone with nowhere to be and nothing worth taking. And if I just sat in the back of the bus, reaching out, changing routes to crisscross the part of the city claimed by the ABB as their turf, sometimes I'd recognize one of those bugs I'd set on my targets when the bus route passed by.
Once, the bug was still on the target. The other times, I'd had to reach out through the area, trying to find the same people again, see who they were with... and repeat the process of tagging and following. It was slow, uncertain, and tedious work, and at the end of it I didn't even have half a dozen locations put down in my notebook.
Three places that might be drug corners, or might just be apartments. One small business: a hole in the wall restaurant, perhaps a money-laundering front, or maybe just a place with good food. A warehouse was the biggest find: there were some innocent explanations for ABB presence in the other places — everyone had to sleep and eat. But there weren't a lot of innocent reasons for there to be a dozen mostly-naked people in a mostly empty warehouse.
Not even the obvious one: they were all standing up and working at bagging something.
That would be the place to start today I thought, pushing the remnants of an omelette around my plate. Finding a cheap diner with all-day breakfast near where I was sleeping had been a godsend: the ABB did more business at night, and that meant I had to be up then too... and I liked having a hot breakfast when I woke up. Even if I was waking up mid-afternoon.
I hadn't been sleeping well — might be the concussion, or maybe it was the dreams.
The waitress bustled by, leaving the check, and I glanced up in surprise: I'd told her I'd be eating until four. The clock said 3:57 already. The way I kept spacing out probably was the concussion. Thankfully, when I reached out to feel the world around me through my insects, I didn't have the same problems concentrating.
At least I thought I didn't.
If I spaced out, sitting on a bus while trying to conduct surveillance, or lying in bed setting spiders to weave a new costume before I slept, would I even notice the lost time?
Concussions sucked. And I couldn't keep munching this much tylenol forever — my liver would give out first.
Six hours later, I was wincing in pain. Careful effort had turned up a few more borderline locations for the notebook, places where people from the warehouse had gone, possibly on ABB business, possibly off the clock... and one major prospect: when the gunmen watching the warehouse had been relieved, they'd moved as a group to an auto repair garage where they'd stored any weaponry less concealable than a pistol. There were multiple sealed cases that my insects couldn't get inside, but the ones left carelessly unlatched had rifles, shotguns, and even grenades, along with a wide variety of things heavy, sharp, or both, and a staggering amount of ammunition.
My efforts at listening in had yielded a lot of boasting about whose 'bitch' was the hottest and the beginnings of a low, pulsing headache; my one abortive effort at looking in had shown me a lot of Army Surplus labels and stars. Lots of stars. I couldn't see right now through the pain, and I was fairly sure my eyes were crossed beneath my lids. Every few seconds, it felt like someone was hammering a bright white spike through one or the other of my eyes, about five inches into my brain. The angle of the spike kept changing slightly, and there wasn't any pattern to it so I couldn't even brace one side of my head for the pain.
On the upside, I could apparently use my insects to catch a bus while blind by feeling the area out, and I'd made my way back to the warehouse to try and trace another gang member to a fresh location. Slowly. With a lot of wincing.
If Bakuda were helping equip them, black market grenades would be the least of the explosives the ABB had available. Would she let them use any of her creations? Could I even tell them apart from other explosives? Or non-explosives, actually? Were the warehouse and garage booby-trapped?
I absent-mindedly caught a new bus, trying to follow in my elliptical way one of the ABB toughs who'd left the warehouse ten minutes ago. The hood was a lifesaver — no one even noticed my eyes were closed when I boarded the bus, head down, and swiped my pass. I might need to get sunglasses if I was going to regularly blind myself trying to see through my bugs. Another ice-pick stab of pain — they were down to about once a minute now, but damn if each one didn't hurt just as much as the first time. I felt through the rucksack with my bugs, past the spare water, the space blanket, the dried food and the lunchbox — if I had to abandon my rented room, I'd be ready! — before deciding against another dose of tylenol.
One more, and I'd be risking liver damage. Advil apparently made things worse if you had a concussion, and I wasn't going to risk a serious painkiller like this. Nor would I risk talking to a doctor, and probably getting a quiet seaside vacation with the Wards.
In more immediately lethal risks, Bakuda could probably make an explosive that fit in — and tasted like — my coffee creamer. I decided that I'd assume she was prepared, and trapping everywhere the ABB had a presence to hell and gone until I knew otherwise. I was the most junior cape in Brockton Bay by a mile, the one who knew the least about how to fight, how to prepare, how to survive. I could be pretty sure she wasn't tuning her traps to explode when insects passed by by the fact that none of the places I'd found were currently smoking holes in the ground, but I'd have to be careful about using large swarms.
And I'd have to be downright paranoid about doing anything in person, instead of from a few blocks away.
There!
The one I'd been following had joined up with two other teenagers. One male, the other female. They were walking together, slowly. I got off the bus at the next stop, and started paralleling their course from two blocks away, gradually ambling closer.
They stopped beneath an underpass. I moved toward a position from which I might see them and took a look — with my eyes, not my bugs — but all I saw was another white flash.
No pain, though.
While I was trying to figure that out, I saw a woman, glowing white too brightly to look at directly, raise a hand from which shot three corkscrewing beams so bright that they left purple afterimages across my vision. I blinked, and the next image was of the three teenagers lying crumpled at the foot of a concrete wall with about half of a stylized ABB tag spraypainted on it.
Purity.