Orb Weaver: Wrath of God, 9

Victor returned to his house at around 4AM. I was risking much, with the timeline shrinking, but…

The hammer blows had to come fast.  Victor, Othala, Rune. Not the Empire’s front line fighters, but vital force multipliers. I expected that Victor played a major role in the Empire’s paperwork.

But death… Was not an option here. As much as I wanted to kill Victor, Victor’s powers and his tactics were unlikely to lead to mass death. Lebensraum, as everything collapsed, was most likely to go on a rampage, so his death was… useful, both to protect the Bay and demoralize the Empire. 

But Victor was the opposite. As the Empire’s skill thief, I expected he had a vast store of information about the Empire and its allies. Information that would be useful. Very useful.

And there was always the chance he had a method to return his stolen skills. Or Protectorate tinkers and healers might be able to work from examples of his power to do the same thing.

And then there were Othala and Rune. I didn’t need to be a precog to consider Emily Piggot and the Protectorate’s opinion of casually murdering a pair of underage girls.

Also, it was murder, and that was, well, wrong.

But I would have to ensure their cooperation.

There were cameras in his neighborhood. I knew where they were all aimed, and slipped by them. There were ornamental bushes and little bits of greenery, green belts where mothers could jog.

It was that kind of neighborhood. And as I came, in the silent night, the asphalt was covered by millions of tiny bodies, others flew in the air, just above the ground, so no humming swarm would give itself away.

I was far away from the house, of course.

I had made a spiral around the house, collecting my legions. My hives and bug reactors provided endless legions, everything from roaches and earwigs to black widows and wasps.

Under the ground, the drainage tunnels were packed with bugs, so tightly that I had to create passages for air to move and had bugs, bodies linked together, moving in a way to act as a primitive bellows. in that way, I ensured that the mass of bugs wouldn't smother itself.

Approximately 500 million insects were converging on the house. For this I couldn’t use cute  tricks like gassing them. I needed them alive for a chat.

Lights were on in Victor and Othala’s bedroom. I expected that the events of tonight were a matter for some discussion. But Victor had returned.

That was good. I had plans for if he was absent, but this made it easier, as bugs moved and crawled, individuals, not enough to provide any detail, but enough to detect two bodies in the bedroom.

A trap? No. There was no sign that Victor was a noctis cape, nor was Othala or Rune, and Orb Weaver very rarely attacked major targets twice in one night. Keeping them moving would exhaust them. So best to let them rest. As one of my books on military tactics said, it was all about ensuring all your enemy’s choices were equally bad.

And after all, as far as the Empire knew, Orb Weaver didn’t know where he lived.

Though Kaiser should have considered that... Well, I did leave him rather off balance.

More bugs moved in. There were pressure pads in the house, alarms in the windows. There were obvious alarms in some places, designed to alert the occupants when some clever robber noticed them and disconnected them.

But a house had one major disadvantage. It was a place people lived. You couldn’t have every square foot under an alarm, not unless you wanted to be a prisoner in your own home. The point of the alarms was to give a warning if someone came into the house. A pity I knew how to avoid that.

Out of drains, through tiny cracks widened by a million jaws, my legions came. The rest waited outside, in case Victor did send an alarm. Trails moved up into the attic, more and more and more.  I had to even out the load—I didn’t want to alert Victor by collapsing his ceiling on him.

I heard nothing from the room with Victor and Othala. I expected they had been told to expect an early morning.

If only they knew.

Outside their room, bugs moved. Hundreds of thousands. Legions levered up the access to the attic, providing room for them.

And in Rune’s room… Tiny bugs flittered over her things, creating a map of the room, and through the door and a partly cracked window, legions came pouring in, holding on to the ceiling, rigid insects, holding onto each other forming braces extending out from the walls, for more.

I needed Rune to scream. If Victor moved fast, he’d open the door and, well, let the legions in the hallway in. The sole question was what to do if he decided to call it in first.

Well, that’s why I had so many bugs at my disposal and the PRT on speed-dial. It wouldn’t be as useful as what I intended, but without their flyer, and with the PRT coming, not to mention my legions making the neighborhood an ah, interesting location, we could capture them.

But it wouldn’t be…elegant, nor as frightening as I wanted.

So hopefully he’d check first, probably with a gun, and when he opened the door, he wouldn’t have time to use any panic button.

But how to… Well, there had been a show, the Nightmare Before Christmas, and Jack Skellington was a very spooky individual. Above Rune, where she twisted and turned under her adult blankets, while wearing cartoon pajamas, my bugs started moving. Forming a head, a body, disjointed, inhuman, that walked up close to her.

I started my bugs “breathing”.

Rune twitched, and her eyes remained closed. I couldn’t “see” her, but I had enough little bugs to make that determination.

“Rune…” I breathed.

Her eyes clenched shut.

“It’s time to get up…”

“Fuck, Victor, it’s like the middle of the—“ my bugs detected her opening eyes as her voice fell silent. I gave her a huge smile from my body, reached out with my spidery hand and lightly tapped her on the nose.

“Boop.”

Her scream was very satisfying. And then, as I felt the vibrations showing that Victor was up and moving for the door, I let the insects above Rune release their grip and land on the teen, burying her in a mass of bugs, and other creatures, ranging from earwigs to scorpions.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m just here for a little chat.”

Her screams were muffled as Victor pulled the door open, a pistol in one hand, but it didn’t help him as he stared at a hallway nearly full of bugs before it roared into his and Othala’s bedroom like a living tidal wave.

Oh yes. We were going to have a chat…