Orb Weaver: Wrath of God, 7

It’s time. I was nervous. After this, there would be no going back in a number of ways. My bugs were ready. I’d tracked many of the workers of the Medhall buiding to their homes. MS. Blackwell, before she’d left (I’d suggested Boston, she’d chosen Los Angeles), had given me the information about homeschooling and I’d found out that “Sabrina the Teenaged Nazi” as some called her was listed as Mindy for homeschooling purposes. The picture was of her, and when I’d walked by (actually four blocks away) her house, I checked it and found that she stayed with two older relatives.

Victor left nothing incriminating in his house. Good tradecraft. I wonder who he stole it from.

Othala kept a diary. It was in a locked drawer, but that was no obstacle to me. It detailed so very many secrets. Not just her power, how she’d gained it, and her thoughts about being married to Victor…

At just over 15.

Reading between the lines, with my studies of psychology, even if I was just a well-read layperson, the path of her indoctrination was clear. A girl, triggering in the middle of a fight, suddenly showered with praise and lectures on her duty to the white race… With a power that granted might to others, but never herself.

She was annoyed with Rune, adoring to Victor, even if it was plain she hadn’t  expected to be married so early. But… Kinder, Küche, Kirche, as Krieg had told her when he’d kindly took her aside after her introduction… That part of her Dairy talked, at length about how Kaiser had praised her. She didn’t like Hookwolf. Thought what he did to dogs was terrible.

Which would have been more praiseworthy if the next entry hadn’t detailed her going along with some E88 capes for her initiation against a mixed-race couple.

My bugs whirled tightly. I’d known she was young, she and Cassie and yet…

How would you have turned out, Taylor if you’d been raised by the Herran clan?

Why couldn’t all my enemies be unrepentant monsters?

Well, I wouldn’t hurt her.

Physically.

But now for the start of the night. And it was time to get to my command post.

The problem with big rallies, no matter how much you kept them secret from the guests until the moment they were told where to go, was that they had to have set up. They needed guards, lights, sound systems. All I had needed to do was take a few bus rides around the E88 parts of town and look for big buildings with that kind of work to find the Rally that had been the talk of so very many “safe” E88 gang members in the diners and pool halls I’d bugged.

The E88 rally was to be the biggest one since the attack on Madison. A sign of their strength.

And now, after dark, I saw an image of Kasier standing in the empty warehouse, E88 and Nazi flags fluttering behind him.

Several hundred men and women were cheering, and more importantly, security extended out for blocks. Men on rooftops with walkie-talkies and cell phones, groups moving carefully. Crusader’s ghosts were at every door.

A show of strength… and fear.

But the problem with security was that even the E88 didn’t have enough people to cover a region, not like say, the PRT or Protectorate could. Two blocks in a city were a lot of territory, more than enough to detect an incoming attack.

I was four blocks away, eating at a little 24 hour diner.

They had very good soup. My relay audio bugs were sending Kasier’s words to a phone, and I was listening to it. It was irritating that I couldn’t directly understand the words—not yet. But I was making some progress on that. Still, for now, it was what I needed. I had slowly infiltrated millions of bugs into the structure, between the walls and in the dark spaces of the ceiling. A camera watched it, not transmitting by radio, but by a very long fiber optic line, going to another transmitter nearly a block away, itself, linked to a phone that let me watch. Fiber optic cable had just so many uses, and it was nice not having to begrudge every penny—especially since the Empire’s own ill-gotten gains had paid for this.

“Friends!” Kasier shouted, lights on his shining, armored form. “We are the Empire! We stand between the Bay and the Black Degenerates, the Jewish criminals, the Asian filth!” Cheers filled the room. “Some say we are on the backfoot, but do not believe it! The Protectorate has taken a Jew to their bosom, blackmailed and threatened a white girl into absolving her of her crime, and sending her to face Leviathan, while this “hero” Madison hid away in a shelter! But Lebensraum will show them that the Empire does not stand alone! Whites from all over the world support us in this stand of civilization against barbarism!”

I watched and listened.

“We are the Empire! And We will protect this city, not just from the degenerate hordes, but from this ‘Orb Weaver’ who takes the side of the filth, who is—“

Well, that was my cue.

Laughter started to sound in the room, and I sent bugs over some of the search lights, not cutting them off, but causing the lights to go eerie. The capes on the stage looked around, Fenja and Menja standing nearly 8 feet tall, looking around as they clenched their weapons. The others looked to Kaiser, but it was my turn.

“My, my, my, I go for a walk and what do I see? You didn’t invite me. I’m hurt.”

“Orb Weaver,” Kaiser said. “You are—“

“Come now, Max,” I said. His mouth snapped shut. “You did not expect to walk in my city without me noticing?” Crusader’s ghosts were moving, men shouting into phones, launching into what was a well-planned search, groups never losing sight of each other. Victor’s work, I expected, since it came right out of PRT anti-Stranger manuals. But I was nowhere near them, though I created humanoid masses of bugs, just at the edge of vision, whirling away by the time they got to them.

Crusader’s ghosts actually provided resistance to my bugs… So, that was interesting, and a weakness.

“But I am very happy to see the people of the Bay gathering with their peers, sharing the bonds of community. It makes it easy for me to speak to you.” I paused. I knew many of these people from my work. Time to let them know. “Why, Mr. Janks! I see you have gotten time off from work again. You should bring your daughter, Sheila to one of these meetings. She does worry so at all the overtime you work, and I’m certain she would be proud to see you with your true friends…”

Janks looked around, his eyes wide, his face pale, and he seemed to shrink down as the people around him moved away. But I had another victim to get to.

“And Ms. Willis! Taking time away from our duties as Neighborhood Watch Captain, I see…”

I didn’t know the stories behind them all, or even most of the crowd, and many of those I did know about were the typical E88 thugs. But I knew about enough as I named them and revealed little secrets in a chummy voice. Enough so that everyone, especially the ones with the respectable public identities, were wondering ‘am I next?’

And now I sent bugs whirling down, rising up from the floor, and in front of Kaiser and the other capes, a humanoid form rose, crawling insects twisting on its body. This wasn’t a fight, and Kaiser could easily disrupt the body, but… Another rose, and another. Not just on the stage. Screams sounded as several more formed at doors. Unlike the forms in Theo’s apartment, these had strange proportions, moving with a jerky, insectile look, huge, dark eyes, with just a little hint of light from a few fireflies. Overhead, a couple fluttered by, heads, followed by indistinct cloaks and bodies, strange, fearful ghosts.

“But I am not here for you, Max, not yet.” I had Kaiser on the back foot. I could see him and his inner circle looking to each other. Was it a lucky guess? Did I just know his first name? How much did I know?

Hookwolf, Stormtiger and Cricket had formed a little triangle, keeping every part of the room in sight. Had he—yes, he’d moved to a place where there were no cracks in the floor, no way for insects to come up that way. Well, it made sense that he had more poise—he had no secret identity to worry about.

“Lebensraum…” I chuckled. “A foolish name for a foolish little man.” The man, in his parody of a Wehrmacht uniform, stepped forward. “I do believe it might be hard to tell you and Krieg apart.”

He growled, his little band starting to snarl. Research showed his men acting like beserkers in combat. Maybe the power sharing aspect needed that to work, as opposed to the sense sharing? The good news was that he didn’t have the ability to control people unwillingly, or at least never used it. His minions were all proud racists, that were inducted in a ceremony involving the death or beating of a minority. Whether he needed that ceremony or not, I didn’t know.

“Orb Weav—“

“Hush Max, Adults are talking.”

Hookwolf narrowed his eyes, and the creak in Kasier’s armor was audible. I guess Hookwolf had shared my words with Skidmark to him.

“You have come to my city, Lebensraum. There is one way you leave it alive. Go to the PRT, humbly present yourself, confess your sins, and turn yourself in.”

“Fuck you, Dark—“

I cut him off, raising a hand to “examine” the endless chitin bodies. “Why yes, I am rather dark, thank you for noticing.”

Then a blade erupted from the ground, tearing my form asunder. As did others, shredding my ‘bodies’ in the crowd.

“Enough! People of the Empire 88, we do not fear games of—“

“I wasn’t finished talking.” I formed a new body, right behind Kaiser, just a little larger than him, so it seemed to loom over him. Now rats were running around the floor, squeaking little forms that conjured a few screams. “Well, Lebensraum? Your answer?”

“I’m going to find you, and when I’m done with you, you’ll—“

“A no, then.” Suddenly, I dissolved my forms, and swarms of insects headed right for Lebensraum, as he flinched back, a shimmer seeming to flicker over his body as his men clustered around him. “And as for finding me, Lebensraum, that’s easy. I am the city and you are within me…” Then I dissolved all the insects, sending them swarming around in a cloud, screams rising from the crowd, as the clouds of bugs poured out into the night, a few well-placed stings sending the rats out, as if they were also under my direct control. My laughter echoed through the building, louder and louder.

Then everything fell silent.

“This indignity will not be born—“

“Pardon me,” my voice was softer. “But I believe you failed to pay your electrical bill.”

And then the insects I’d held for that purpose, all simultaneously tore at the cables connected to the lights, and with a flare the entire structure was plunged into darkness, the moths I’d held in reserve now fluttering into the face of the most fearful, producing more screams and seeing a sudden tide of people decamping from the building, despite Kaiser’s attempts to get things back on track.

I let the bugs go. Almost as if something that had been inhabiting them was no longer there.

And I ordered pie for dessert.

It was a very good pie.