Archive of Our Own ^beta

The girl woke up in the crushing dark and groaned. She was sore all over, sore and damp and itchy. Was she sweaty? She didn’t feel particularly warm. She opened her eyes, gummy with sleep, and immediately closed them again - something in the air made them itch too. Pet hair, maybe? She didn’t think she was allergic to pet hair, but it was right in her face, so maybe she just wasn’t usually exposed enough to react to it.

She tried to stretch, to lift her head a bit, but her body felt - odd. Like it wasn’t moving right. Not like it was injured, but like the impulses being sent from her brain were getting confused somewhere along the way, and the sensory inputs that she was getting back were just as garbled. Was she hungover? Drunk? High? She didn’t think she was the type, but she also didn’t think she was the type to pass out on a stranger’s… couch?

No, she was laying on something hard. Floor? Maybe; she was under some blankets after all, maybe she’d made a blanket nest.

But was it blankets she was under? They were pretty heavy, and, now that she thought about it, pretty rough and rigid too. In fact, there was what felt like an edge digging into her… back? Shoulder?

The girl could feel the disorientation getting to her, could feel panic creeping in around the edges. She was trapped and she needed out, needed to breathe, to stretch, to see, needed it like her heart needed blood. She began to flail, rolling and twisting, her limbs scrabbling aimlessly against whatever was bearing down on her. Why couldn’t they do what she wanted?

Something shifted with a groan above her, and light hit her closed eyelids. A breeze tickled her cheeks, cool but humid, and she squirmed towards it, writhing on her belly until suddenly she popped free.

The girl opened her eyes, and blinked them hard several times, trying to clear them, trying to make sense of the fuzzy masses of light and shadow. They refused to resolve properly; she knew things usually looked sharper than this, but she could make out enough to feel a moment of relief, followed quickly by a renewed panic.

She wasn’t on the floor in a stranger’s apartment. She was in an alleyway, a filthy alleyway, with puddles of stagnant standing water, a scatter of rotting trash, and heaps of other moldering refuse - wood, concrete, a paste that maybe used to be drywall or fiberglass? She looked behind her and saw that she had just extricated herself from one such stack.

How on Earth had she ended up sleeping on the street, and what the fuck had possessed her to pick this one? What had she done last night? She needed to find out so she could make sure to never do it again.

Fuck it. She’d sort it out once she got home, back to…

Back to where?

A nervous chuckle escaped from her lips, though it quickly turned to a cough. She must really be fucked up, if she was blanking on that, but it wasn’t a problem, it was right on the tip of her tongue. Obviously, she lived…

Where did she live?

Forget last night, where had she been yesterday morning? Where did she go to school? Or work; did she have a job? Where did she go when she wasn’t there, when she was doing whatever it was she liked to do? What was one place she had ever been?

What was her name?

And the girl began to panic.

She needed to get out of here, needed to find something, anything , that was familiar. She stood up -

She - she stood up -

She stood up!

She couldn’t stand up. She knew she was on her belly, could see the filthy ground a few inches below her, but her limbs were convinced that they were supporting her weight, feet resting flat on the ground. Frantically, she scrabbled over to a puddle, hoping that her reflection would reveal what was wrong with her.

What she beheld was so horrifying that she looked behind her, because surely that was something sneaking up on her, it couldn’t be her, it couldn’t be-

Her face was pale, its features long. Not pretty, but normal enough, in isolation. A black, horseshoe-like tattoo hugged her left earlobe, like the shadow of a large hoop earring. And she was bald - not shaved, but bald. No stubble, no visible follicles. That was enough to make her stomach lurch uncomfortably on its own, but everything else…

The flesh of her neck faded in streaks and spikes from skin to something oily, black, and chitinous. The body it connected to was more of that same chitin, arranged in segmented panels. It was narrow, pill-shaped, like something between a beetle and a millipede, but closer in size to a labrador. A dozen short, jagged legs sprayed out from the edges of the body, holding it about a foot off the ground. A horrible spiky orifice protruded from the rear, and the girl felt it twitch sickeningly. She could see it quivering.

How could she see it? She was looking at the puddle; that part of her body wasn’t far enough forward to be visible in the reflection! She closed her eyes, and the puddle vanished, but the view of her rear and the alley behind her remained. With a horrible grinding feeling, the eyes on her back shifted, looking around, and the girl fought the urge to throw up. She opened the eyes on her face again, hoping she could forget about these other ones, but now that she was aware of it, the view of the puddle simply integrated seamlessly with the rest.

Tears welled up from the eyes in her face, though the ones on her back remained dry. She was a monster.

And with that realization came another. People hated monsters. It wasn’t safe here.

The monster discovered that its legs, weak though they were, were well-suited to climbing walls. It scuttled from building to building, quick and quiet, terrified that a person might notice it before it found a place to hide. There was no shortage of nooks and crannies - so many of the buildings had holes in them. But many of those same buildings were wet and rotting, full of filth; or else, full of standing water in which the monster might be forced to glimpse itself again. Despair at that thought was enough to drive it onward, in search of somewhere better.

Fear and despair; those were its constant companions. Hunger joined its company soon enough, and when night fell, cold arrived. It was with inarticulable relief that the monster came across a warehouse, roof intact save for one corner hole just large enough for it to squeeze through. Inside it found rows of tightly packed shelves, and though it offered no true escape from the pervasive damp, there was no standing water. The monster sighed, relaxing, and allowed itself to rest for a few short, glorious minutes and just enjoy the reprieve from fear.

Its hunger, unfortunately, only grew sharper without other visceral distractions. It was a stabbing, angry thing, the hunger, a full-body hurt. It felt wrong like the rest of the monster’s body felt wrong, and the monster strove to ignore it, to deny the body it hated for at least a while longer. The cold needed to be dealt with too, and while a roof over its head was some comfort, the monster really needed a place to retreat to, to hide in if anyone came knocking. Something to sleep in as well - a bed, though it doubted it would find a real one here.

Opening a few boxes seemed like a sensible place to start, but though its legs were good for climbing, they lacked fingers. In frustration, the monster tried to grab with arms it did not have, and was surprised when two long, spindly appendages unfolded from the underside of its thorax and extended out past its head. Six delicate, spiky digits crowned the ends of these limbs - arms, the monster decided, and it felt a small glow of comfort at the idea - and though they had no thumbs, they had enough dexterity to grasp, hold, lift, and otherwise manipulate. The limbs were not strong, and it feared that they might break if exerted too heavily, but with patience and practice, it was able to open a number of boxes.

Some hours later, the monster had salvaged a large enough box to fit comfortably inside, and some slightly damp packing fluff and coarse cloth with which to make it more comfortable. Carefully, it situated that box on one of the shelves, neither the top nor the bottom, and ensured that it could be pulled closed and pushed open from the inside. Then the monster crawled in.

It was more a nest than a bed, it was forced to admit sadly. The bedding was warm, but it didn’t think it could really feel the softness the way it seemed like it should. Texturally, it wasn’t actually more comfortable than the cardboard, but there was a comfort to it nonetheless; bedding was something people slept with. The monster managed a small smile as it drifted off to sleep.

It awoke in hungry agony. The monster didn’t know what kind of digestive track it had, but whatever its form, it felt like it was on fire. It scrambled free of its den, determined to make a more thorough search of the warehouse for something edible, but in its haste, it tipped the box over. It fell from the shelf with a loud thump, scattering makeshift bedding everywhere.

The monster froze, terror overriding hunger as it listened hard for any sounds of people coming to investigate. It wanted to wait until it was absolutely sure, but its hunger was so fierce that it won out over caution in less than a minute. Still, the monster forced itself to clean up and repack its nest onto the shelf before beginning its search. It might be a monster, but it would not be an animal.

That composure grew harder and harder to maintain as the hours passed. The monster carefully pried open each container, sifted through its contents, and then returned them to their places with as much care and precision as its arms permitted. The warehouse contained a veritable treasure trove of construction materials; wooden planks and slabs in various sizes - some rotting, but not all - as well as packed fiberglass insulation, particle board, panes of glass and sheets of plastic, spools of wire, and countless other bits of hardware, along with some assorted oddities. The monster found stuffed animals, empty picture frames, decorative spoons, and one crate with nothing but shrink-wrapped stacks of dollar bills. But no food.

The monster learned a number of things about itself as the work progressed. Its arms were, in fact, quite weak, and lifting or even pushing moderately heavy objects required quite a bit of effort and creativity. Its hands were quite dextrous, but didn’t have a particularly strong grip. And its hearing was at least good enough for it to pick up the shrill squeaking of the rats that it was, apparently, sharing the warehouse with. As time wore on, the rats grew less wary of it, coming out of hiding and into its line of sight, existing as vaguely defined fuzzy masses in its peripheral vision and as an increasingly aggravating cacophony of chitters in its ears.

It could feel its strength fading, sapped by hunger. Its limbs grew shaky, its movements less careful, its mind more frantic. Inevitably, in its haste, the monster returned a box to the shelf poorly and, when it used it as a foothold to climb up to the next level, the box shifted and fell, dragging the monster with it. The monster struck the ground back-first, cracking its head against the hard floor. The box exploded, spraying pieces of particle board all over.

It lay there in the wreckage, dust and debris settling over and around it, and tried not to cry. It took deep breaths, tried to get its feelings under control, but it wasn’t. Fucking. Fair.

Not that the world cared about fairness, obviously. If it did, the monster wouldn’t be a monster. Whoever it was before, it can’t have deserved this. Right?

That was not a possibility it wanted to contemplate.

Action would be an excellent distraction, but the monster was too weak, and opening more boxes seemed futile. Nothing it had found in the warehouse was even close to edible, and that meant it would have to venture outside. It would almost certainly have to be seen, would have to beg, and who would waste even a mouthful on it?

Maybe it could steal something. There was so much it didn’t know about the city beyond these walls - it would have to gather information first, and see what opportunities seemed promising. That would take time, though, so much time, and it was already so hungry…

Just a few more minutes. A few more minutes to work through the despair, to rally itself, and then it would get up and face the world. Just a few more minutes.

Those few minutes stretched like putty. Agony and despair and anger and hunger formed a staccato drum beat in the monster’s body, and the warehouse faded in and out in time to a rhythm that seemed to defy the very concept of continuity. The monster drifted, but it didn’t sleep - it didn’t think it did, at least. It knew it needed to get up, it intended to, but by the time it had mustered the will, its consciousness was fading again. The beat played on; the wheel turned.

Something brushed against the monster’s face, and a lightning strike of terror shattered its stupor. It struck out blindly at its assailant, its arm unfolding with the speed of a bolt gun. There was a sickening crunch, a squeal, and the patter of scampering feet. The monster rolled to its feet, its arm dragging with it the warm, wet weight of a dying rat, impaled.

Revulsion filled the monster and it shook its arm violently until the rat slid off into a limp and terribly languid mass on the floor. It had killed it! It was an accident, it was an instinct, but it had extinguished a life! It tried to rationalize the act to itself; it was a disgusting pest, but wasn’t that true of the monster too? It had probably been trying to eat the monster, but how could it hold that against it, when it was so, so hungry itself? The monster was much bigger than a rat; its body would’ve been a feast.

Maybe that would’ve been better. The monster wouldn’t have to be hungry then, it wouldn’t have to face a world that would hate it, would shun it, would mock it. And then its short existence would, at least, have made a positive impact on something .

But the opportunity had passed. Roused from its stupor, the monster couldn’t make itself lay back down and wait for death again. It raged against the very notion, however much that relief beckoned. It needed to go on, and that meant it needed to eat, and that meant it needed to grit its teeth and -

It looked at the rat, freshly dead. Its stomach turned again, but it rumbled, too. The idea was appalling, repulsive, but if it meant staying in the warehouse, staying out of sight…

The monster fell upon the corpse. It had no dignified way to eat the warm, bloody carcass; it merely pinned it with its hands and tore chunks free with its teeth. Blood spattered its face, but the taste was rich on its tongue. It was almost able to ignore how bestial the act itself was. Almost.

Hours later, the monster was regretting its decision. It had eaten the rat down to skin and bones, then set about hunting for another, but they proved to be wily creatures; it hadn’t seen hide nor hair of any of them. And though its hunger had abated somewhat, its body hurt worse than ever. Sharp, fiery cramps seized its thorax, forcing strange muscles to tense in ways that terrified the monster on some fundamental level. The rat must have made it sick; it should have known better than to eat an animal synonymous with disease.

The monster fought the cramps, fought the contortions of its body for as long as it could, but in the end, biology won out. Muscles tensed, sphincters squeezed, and something wriggled its way out of the monster’s body. It was followed by another, and another, ten in total, before finally the spasming ceased. 

The absence of pain was an incredible relief, but the monster refused to bask in it. With grim determination, it looked to see what its body had done.

Ten grey-white grubs squirmed on the ground beneath the monster’s body. No larger than grains of rice, they were almost featureless, with the bare suggestion of mouths on one end. The monster recoiled - had these parasites been infesting the rat it ate?

No, that wasn’t right; these grubs weren’t parasitic. They ate vegetable matter, wood and cork and cardboard especially. They were very efficient at it too; with enough ambient humidity to speed the degradation of their food, they could fully metabolize their food source and reproduce in a matter of hours.

The monster blinked. How did it know that? Had it been a bug enthusiast before its transformation? That seemed like a cruel joke, but more importantly, it seemed wrong. That knowledge hadn’t felt like a memory, it had felt like an observation. It couldn’t explain where it came from, how it made the connection to that information; it simply did. The floor was grey, the air smelled of mildew, and the grubs ate vegetable matter.

The monster had shifted its thorax away from the grubs in the aftermath of their… emergence, and the grubs were now squirming towards it. The monster pivoted further, disgusted at the idea of the things touching it, and the grubs changed directions on a dime, following it. The monster leapt back, alarmed, then frowned. There was no reason to be concerned; the grubs were just following its pheromones.

What pheromones?

The pheromones produced by the gland on the underside of its thorax, obviously. Why was it being so dense?

The monster shook its head. This flow of information was deeply unsettling. Hesitantly, it stuck an arm under its thorax and found itself guided inexorably to a slight protuberance that it knew with absolute certainty was the gland that produced its targeting pheromone.

The monster quickly felt around its underside, determined not to let its body take it by surprise again, and found what felt like two additional glands. No flashes of insight as to their function struck it, however, and the monster pursed its lips in frustration. First its body, now its brain - why couldn’t any part of it just be right?

It was distracted by a gurgle from its stomach, and it realized with horror that it was hungry again. It had been trying for hours to hunt another rat; what was it going to do?

Something brushed against one of its legs, and the monster glanced down to see the grubs, attempting to squirm their way up and towards the monster’s thorax. The calorically-dense, nutritionally complete grubs.

Ten wouldn’t be enough, but with sufficient food and proper conditions, they could reproduce very, very quickly, and ideas for just how to produce those conditions began to crowd the monster’s head. It gathered the remainder of the grubs up, letting them cling to its underside, and moved to a nearby crate. A feverish vigor suffused it as it emptied the crate of its contents - bricks - before using one of those bricks to break the wooden crate into rough fragments, which it arranged in a rough pile.

The monster paused for a moment, the eager urging of its instincts warring with its sense of shame and propriety. There was no one around to see and judge, it cajoled itself, and besides, what it was going to do only felt improper.

It still took several minutes to work up the nerve to tilt its thorax up, flex a muscle, and release a spray of pheromones over the pile. The effect on the grubs was immediate - they released their hold on the monster’s body, dropping to the ground, and quickly burrowed into the wood, vanishing from sight. Relieved to have that humiliation over with, the monster let itself sink into the eager pull of inspiration and began raising a structure around the pile.

In the end, many of its ideas were thwarted by a lack of tools - though the monster’s mind was quick to supply it with designs for devices to control temperature and humidity and the methods by which to follow those designs, when it looked for ideas on how to acquire the necessary implements, it found nothing. Its hunger was quick to reassert itself in that nothingness, and so the monster settled for something rougher. 

A round wall of tightly placed bricks rose several feet off the ground, encircling the pile and forming something like a silo. More vegetable matter of various textures and sizes filled the silo, providing both easy food and hardier shelter for the grubs. Using some bowls found in one box, the monster had ferried in some water that had collected on the roof, its heart pounding for the entirety of the brief foray beyond the warehouse walls. It had carefully dripped some of this water into the mulch, and used more of it to mix together a loose mortar to seal the cracks between the bricks.

Upon reflection, mortar was probably too strong of a word for the substance. It wasn’t firm enough to keep the bricks from being separated, but it should keep the grubs from slipping out between them.

It had taken several hours, and the monster was keenly aware of its fragility and numerous imperfections, but it still felt a surge of profound satisfaction as it beheld the habitat. Already it could tell that the grubs were breeding. One more hungry night, and then as long as it kept replenishing the mulch, it would have an easy, sustainable food supply. It allowed itself a moment to bask in the satisfaction of its accomplishment; and so, of course, that was when it heard the squeal of an opening door and the rumble of human voices.

The monster discovered just how quickly its spindly legs could carry it as it fled back to its den. It resisted the urge to swear repeatedly as it pulled the box free as quietly as it could, slipped inside with hopefully just enough force to shift it back onto the shelf, but not so much that it would fall off the other side, then pulled the flap shut, plunging itself into darkness. Heart racing, it listened as the sounds of people drew closer. An odd pang rose in its chest as, for the first time it could remember, words spoken by human voices reached its ears.

“This stuff is in incredible shape. It’s a damn miracle,” said one voice. It sounded masculine to the monster, jovial and tired.

“You can’t just say things like that!” exclaimed a second voice. Feminine, also tired, and trying very hard to sound upbeat. “You might as well be begging for the universe to take another big shit all over us!” The words were punctuated by the sound of something rapping rhythmically against a wooden container.

“I’ll take comfort in a promising start,” came a third voice. Another masculine one, this voice rang with grim determination, but it couldn’t quite cover the fact that it somehow sounded even more exhausted than the previous two combined. “But - I’m also not gonna leap to any conclusions. There’s some light filtering in from the roof, so it’s not completely intact. The sections we haven’t swept yet might have suffered more damage, and we should open some containers up properly to make sure that there’s not anything we can’t see from the outside. I’d hate to take up a contract only to show up with plenty of eager hands and no materials to work with.”

“I mean, it’s not like there’s any shortage of contracts if this one falls through,” argued the jovial man.

“If there’s a silver lining to be found in all this, it’s the demand for hard workers,” agreed the faux-upbeat woman. “Never took Leviathan for a union man.”

The determined man sighed. “I don’t need to tell you not to say that shit around anyone else, do I? Because a lot of people lost a lot more than we did.”

“Of course not,” the faux-upbeat woman said reassuringly. “But just between friends…”

“...Rebuilding the city does feel more achievable than getting a firm commitment out of the mayor,” the determined man admitted.

The footsteps drew closer, then abruptly stopped. One of them whistled. “Any guesses what that is?” asked the jovial man.

“It’s not not shaped like a cairn,” offered the faux-upbeat woman.

“I don’t think the placement makes sense for a cairn,” said the determined man. “It looks hollow.”

“Should we take a peek?” asked the jovial man, not so jovially. “This feels like it might be something cape-y. Maybe Uber and Leet?”

“If it is, I don’t want to set it off,” said the determined man. “Let’s get going. We can check a few crates on the way out, just to make sure that they haven’t been ruined or plundered, then come back tomorrow with more people in case this is anything. I doubt the PRT can spare the time to investigate it for us.”

Some murmuring followed that suggestion, too quiet for the monster to parse. A minute later, the footsteps resumed, the group presumably travelling back the way they came. The footsteps paused for a bit, and there was the sound of a box being opened, rifled through, and shut, and then they resumed. Then there was that same squeal of a door again, and then, finally quiet. The monster let out a breath it hadn’t realized it had been holding.

It opened the flap of its box and popped its head out to see if the people had damaged the habitat, its brain already filling with ideas for how to create a version that it might be able to transport when it needed to hide again. Those ideas ground to a screeching halt when the monster saw a tall man standing next to the habitat. He looked directly at the monster.

The monster dove back into its box in a panic. He had seen it he had seen it he had seen it ! It was hideous, weak, defenseless, and the only thing between it and its attacker was cardboard! Trembling, it braced itself for the pain.

“Hello?” called the man. It was the determined one. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. I was just playing a hunch. Want to come out and talk?”

As if the monster would fall for such an obvious trap! Did he think it was born yesterday? It waited, trying desperately to think of a plan, begging its brain to show it designs for weapons. Its brain remained traitorously quiet, though, and its stomach gave a loud rumble, dispelling any feeble hope that the man might not know exactly where it was.

“Okay then,” said the man after several long seconds. “I’m not sure why you’re hiding from me - I’m alone, I don’t have powers, and I’m mostly unarmed.” There was a pause, followed by the gentle clink of metal on concrete. “Completely unarmed,” the man amended. “I’m probably in more danger from you than the other way around, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

The monster scoffed quietly, but maybe that was something it could work with. The man must not have seen it clearly if he didn’t realize how small and frail it was; could it bluff its way to safety? 

The man’s next words were confusing enough to momentarily derail that line of thought. “Are you a recent Trigger? I’m not an expert, but one of my people Triggered on the job a few days ago, and I had to talk him down. I, uh, I know I just said you were a danger to me, but if you’re worried about control, just, uh, just talk to me. We can figure something out.”

The monster knew the words the man was saying, but the sentences he was constructing seemed like nonsense. He was at least pretending to not be an enemy for the moment; maybe the monster could gather some information, keep him placated, while it figured out how to play its shitty, shitty hand?

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The feeling of vocalizing was startling after so long in silence. The act left its throat feeling gummy and ticklish, and it tried to clear it.

“About… Triggering?” the man asked, sounding confused. “It’s when your powers first appeared, I think. Like I said, I don’t know that much.”

“What powers?” the monster asked. Its voice came a little easier, a little clearer. Being small and weak and horrible wasn’t its idea of power.

“...are you not a cape? I guess I just sort of assumed, but-”

“What do you mean by cape?” the monster interjected. “I don’t understand what you mean. I don’t think you’re asking if I’m a piece of fabric that goes around your neck.”

“Huh.”

“What do you mean, ‘huh’?” The monster was getting frustrated. 

“I just haven’t had to have that conversation for a few decades,” the man said awkwardly. “How old are you?”

“I don’t know,” the monster answered. Somehow, saying that made it feel even smaller.

“Do you know where your parents are?” The man sounded concerned now. “I know everything’s been confused recently, but a girl your age shouldn’t be…” he trailed off.

A girl your age . The monster’s heart ached; it supposed its voice did sound feminine, and probably younger than the faux-upbeat women’s. It desperately wanted to let the man’s mistake go unchallenged - as long as he never saw its body clearly, he might never know. But the idea of pretending, of letting him think that she - that it - was a real girl made it burn with shame. “I’m not a girl,” it said quietly. Its throat clenched.

“Sorry, did you say something? I’m trying to give you space, but it’s a little hard to hear.”

“I’m -” the monster started to say, louder and clearer, but the words stuck. It couldn’t bear to repeat itself. It was too weak. “I don’t know,” it said instead.

“Maybe I can help you find them,” the man offered.

“You can’t. I…” the monster trailed off. She - it - didn’t know what to say.

The man misunderstood. “If you don’t feel safe to come with me, that’s okay; I could go ask around and see if they can come to you. Can you tell me your name?” After a moment, the man added, “My name is Danny, Danny Hebert.”

“I don’t know!” The monster’s agitation reached a fever pitch. She - it, it, it! - wanted to crawl out of its skin, out of its body, out of its box, but because none of those were feasible, it let its words pour out instead. “I don’t know my name, I don’t know my parents, I don’t know how old I am, I don’t know where I am, I don’t know! ”

The silence that followed its outburst was deafening, but blessedly short. The man - Danny - cleared his throat. “That’s a lot,” he said. “I can help with some of it, at least. You’re in Brockton Bay, on the east coast of the United States. Any of that ring a bell?”

“No,” the monster said.

“Okay. Well, it’s a city, and it just got hit by Leviathan a couple of days ago - I assume that also means nothing to you?”

“A leviathan is a mythical sea monster,” it said, “but I don’t think that’s what you meant.”

Danny laughed humorlessly. “Mythical. I wish. For now, it’s enough to know that the city has been seriously damaged, and the supplies in this warehouse are important for rebuilding it.”

“I wasn’t trying to steal,” the monster said defensively. “I was just hungry.”

“No food here, unfortunately,” Danny said. “But I could-”

“I know!” the monster said, cutting him off. “That’s why I had to make the habitat, and in a few hours, I’ll have plenty of food, and - and I just need you to leave me alone!” It knew it couldn’t take him in a fight, but given the caution he was displaying, it seemed like he might not know that. Maybe it could bluff him into backing off.

Unfortunately, his next words sounded more intrigued than afraid. “You can feed yourself off of this - habitat, did you say? We’ve got food shortages too - could you feed others?”

“I don’t know,” it hedged, even as its brain calculated that a habitat of the size it made could sustainably produce enough grubs for twenty additional people with some tweaking. “I just want to be left alone.”

Danny sucked in a breath, and it was sure he was going to argue, but then he said, “Alright. Fair enough. If you don’t mind our people coming in and out to get the supplies we need, we’ll leave you be. Just - don’t take any more of our supplies, okay? We could probably arrange some kind of trade, but we don’t have enough to meet our own needs. I’d give you what you needed for free if I could, but…”

“I get it,” the monster said shortly. “I won’t take anything else.” It would have to be careful to grab food for the grubs only from spots where it wouldn’t be easily noticed.

“Well,” Danny said, “I suppose that’ll do. I’ll tell the others that you’re here and what our agreement is. What would you like to be called?”

“It doesn’t matter,” the monster said - it was more focused on the fact that people would know about it at all. “Tell them to announce themselves before coming in, please? I don’t want to be snuck up on.”

“Sure.” Danny paused. “If you don’t care, I’m going to call you Jane. Is that fine?”

“It’s fine.”

“Then I’ll talk to you later Jane.”

The monster didn’t answer. A moment later, Danny’s footsteps moved away. When the door squeaked shut, she let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.

It. That it had been holding. It let out a breath that it had -

Fuck it.

It wasn’t like she would forget what she actually was. She could allow herself this.

The monster crept out of her box and began sweeping the warehouse, checking to make sure no one else had tried to remain without her noticing. Once that was done, there was nothing to do but wait.

After what seemed like an eternity, the monster judged that her grubs should have multiplied enough for her to harvest a proper meal. Eagerly, she scuttled to the top of the habitat and peered in. There was no sign of her grubs in the pit of mulch, and for a moment she was overcome with panic, but then her brain caught up with her stomach.

Awkwardly, she reached beneath her thorax and found her pheromone gland. It took some awkward fiddling and groping, but she managed to squeeze out a small spray onto her hand. The unpleasant warmth of the fluid dispelled any notions she’d had about this method feeling more dignified, but it did at least seem easier to direct. She lowered her hand and rested it atop the pile.

She didn’t have to wait long; within seconds, grubs were squirming to the surface and vigorously wiggling towards the scent of pheromones. Once she had a decent handful of fat, happy grubs, the monster withdrew her hand and dumped them into her mouth.

The wriggling sensation that immediately greeted her was almost nauseating enough to make her spit them out. Fortunately, it didn’t last past the first few moments of chewing. She’d been braced for them to burst disgustingly between her teeth, but they almost seemed to melt, quickly forming a paste approximately the consistency of peanut butter. The flavor wasn’t bad either - a bit nutty, in fact, though definitely a bland nutty. It was a flavor that seemed likely to lose its relish quickly in the absence of variety, but she wouldn’t complain; it wasn’t like she could do anything about it.

An idea popped into her head, and the monster froze mid-bite. The idea was - holy shit, did she not have the supplies she needed for that! She’d need specific materials that she doubted she’d be able to find in any boxes here, and special tools that she certainly wouldn’t. Her mind raced to provide methods for making those tools herself, but it offered her nothing for the materials.

Not an option, then. She tried to put the idea from her mind, but she couldn’t quite ignore it, shining alluringly from the backburner. That was going to be annoying.

On the bright side, she was pretty sure she knew what the other two glands on her underside were for. She had more options than she’d even begun to suspect.

The monster chewed, swallowed, and grabbed another handful, the grubs eagerly racing towards their demise. After three more handfuls, she was satisfied. For the first time she could remember, the monster went to sleep feeling comfortable.

Of course, it turned out to be too much to ask for her to actually sleep well. The monster awoke in cramping pain. She thrashed in confusion for a moment, thinking first that she’d been stabbed, then that she was going to throw up, and only then, finally, did she recognize the feeling. It had been foolish to think it was a one-off.

With grit teeth, the monster crawled from her nest, and strained. They came quicker this time; ten more bugs slid free of her body’s wretched rear orifice. No point fighting it - as soon as they’d grabbed on, she started towards the habitat.

Then she hesitated. The way they were clinging to her felt different, somehow. She tried to crane around to see them, but her head couldn’t twist far enough, and the eyes on her back were, well, on her back, and her bugs were clinging to her underside. With a sigh, she felt around blindly with one hand until her fingers closed around an oddly bristly-feeling grub. 

She held it up to her face and saw, to her surprise, something distinctly non-grub like. Its body, though still roughly tubular, was both larger and significantly longer, dark grey in color, and bristling with legs. One end bore a pair of dramatic fangs that glistened an oily black. The thing brought its head down quickly towards her hand, and she reflexively recoiled, trying to drop it before it could bite her.

But the centipede-thing clung to her, refusing to be flung off. It pulled itself fully onto her arm, ignoring her increasingly frantic shaking, and… proceeded to crawl sedately back towards her pheromone gland. Feeling annoyed with her own squeamishness, the monster grabbed it again with her other hand for a closer look.

As with her grubs, the monster found that looking closely at the centipede revealed an absurd amount of information. The venom on its fangs would cause an intense pain response almost immediately, but the venom sacks only seeped; they couldn’t pump. As such, the fangs remained almost constantly coated, allowing it to bite repeatedly, but it had no capacity to inject a larger dose of venom. It would require a truly ridiculous number of bites in close proximity to cause any real or lasting damage to anything larger than a squirrel.

In addition to being larger and more structurally complicated than her grubs, the centipedes were also slightly more neurologically sophisticated. They would react aggressively to the proximity of any living creature, which they identified through some combination of movement, heat, scent, and - vibrations? They had a receptor sensitive enough to detect a heartbeat in creatures that they were in contact with - that was insane! But then, why hadn’t they bitten her?

Oh, wait, obviously there was a pheromone produced by her - sweat glands? She had those? - that caused their brains to dismiss any aggression triggers from her. It was similar to but distinct from the pheromone that the centipedes produced to make themselves non-targets for one another, and very different from the targeting pheromone produced by her gland.

The monster felt a smile creep across her face. These would’ve been just what she needed when cowering in her den yesterday - their selective aggression made them the perfect defensive tool, and their extremely limited capacity for permanent damage meant she didn’t have to worry about them injuring someone who didn’t deserve it - like Danny, or so she hoped. It would be difficult to use them proactively - an image of a glass bulb with centipedes in one chamber and targeting pheromone in the other, ready to shatter with a hard throw, popped into her head - but setting them up in key locations ahead of time to act as ambushers or booby traps seemed very promising. She could also keep some on her person for emergency defense.

Of course, that meant she’d need more of them.

Their predatory instincts served another purpose, it seemed - they were obligate carnivores. Cardboard and wood pulp wouldn’t cut it. Grubs, on the other hand…

The monster returned the centipede to her thorax. Her fingers itched to start building the new habitat unfolding in her mind’s eye, but she hesitated. She’d known it wouldn’t be feasible to keep her deal with Danny in its entirety, but ransacking boxes for more bricks - and other, more specific materials - went against the spirit of the thing a lot more than tearing off bits of cardboard from dozens of different boxes to feed to her grubs did. Not to mention that a new habitat would be obvious when his people - she grimaced at the idea of more strangers in her sanctuary - came by to retrieve their materials.

In theory, her new bugs should be enough to keep them from driving her out, but she wasn’t eager to test them with so much on the line, especially since they couldn’t inflict lasting damage. It also sat poorly with her, the idea of turning to hostilities like this. She didn’t trust Danny, but she could admit that she wanted to. She wanted to believe that, as long as she stayed unobtrusive and out of sight, he would continue to tolerate her. If he intruded further, she was more than willing to escalate, but she didn’t want to be the one to resort to violence first.

Regretfully, she discarded the idea of a second habitat. She needed another way to nurture her new bugs. Nothing immediately occurred to her, so she began flicking through the other ideas she’d had earlier. The centipede grenade used two chambers to keep complimentary payloads from mingling until necessary - could she use a similar design to integrate both of her bug types into a single habitat?

The monster felt her gears beginning to turn, and she liked what she felt taking shape. A restructuring of her existing habitat - it would need a few new materials, but not many, and she could hopefully acquire pieces that would work from multiple different locations in the warehouse. The centipedes wouldn’t thrive in the same conditions as the grubs - they really wanted warmer air - but they would still be able to reproduce. And this would avoid the hassle of transporting grubs from their own habitat to the centipedes’ for consumption.

Her mind made up, the monster set about gathering the necessary supplies. She was beginning to get a sense of what was stored where, and it took her only a little over an hour to retrieve what she needed. She quickly put some sort of rolling cart on her wish list - her body made carrying large plastic sheets extremely awkward..

First, she disassembled the top third of the habitat. She tried to redirect any grubs in the upper layer of mulch as she scooped it out, but some reached her thorax before she could remove them. She winced as she felt her centipedes attack them; they wouldn’t go hungry in the meantime, at least. Once that was done, she laid her sheet of rigid plastic over the top of the shortened habitat and used a nail she’d found discarded in a corner of the warehouse to score an appropriately-sized circle into it, then punched it out.

Taking the circle, she used the very tip of the nail to bore a hole just big enough to allow her grubs to squeeze through - and therefore, too small for her centipedes. She then broke some of the remaining sheet plastic down into small rectangles that matched the footprint of her bricks, and inserted them between a couple of bricks in the top and second-to-top layers of the habitat. She tested and found, to her satisfaction, that she could now easily slide the buffered brick in and out of the habitat wall. She used the nail to score an “X” onto the removable brick.

She positioned the plastic circle so that the grubhole was on the opposite side of the habitat from the removable brick, then added two layers of brick to the wall atop it, securing it in place. Rather than continuing to rebuild the wall further, she paused to carefully tear a strip of cardboard just under one brick wide and three bricks long. She wrapped it a couple of times with some thin, almost fabric-like plastic, then bent it so that it formed a small paddock around the grubhole, slipping its ends between bricks to secure them. Then she finished rebuilding the brick outer wall. Handful by handful, she returned the mulch to the newly-created upper chamber, but she only filled it to slightly under one brick height, allowing the plastic-wrapped cardboard to act as a retaining wall and keep the grubhole mostly clear of debris. She scattered a single handful of mulch into the paddock to provide enough cover to be at least a little bit appealing.

And then there was only one thing left to do. Spraying the mulch with her pheromones was still an indignity, but the satisfaction of watching her centipedes detach from her and drop eagerly into their new home was almost enough to make up for it. The monster smiled, sat back, and admired her handiwork.

The habitat was now divided into a lower chamber and an upper chamber. The lower chamber contained her grubs, and would function more or less as it had before. The removable brick would allow her to feed in fresh mulch and lure out grubs for her own meals, and the rigid plastic wasn’t a material that they would try to eat.

The upper chamber was smaller, but that was fine - even under optimal conditions, a predator population would always have to be smaller than that of its prey species. The mulch in this layer only provided cover for her centipedes, not food. To feed them, she would lower a dowel brushed with her pheromones into the paddock containing the grubhole. The pheromones would lure the grubs through the hole, and then she could lead them up over the retaining wall - carefully coated in inedible plastic - and into the waiting jaws of her centipedes. The monster wasn’t quite sure whether they’d be drawn to her pheromones strongly enough to come into the paddock, but if they were, their larger bodies would keep them from passing back through the grubhole and gorging themselves in the lower chamber.

Not bad for someone with no tools and twigs for arms.

There was a banging sound, and the monster jumped. It repeated, forming an odd rhythm, and she realized that it was coming from the door. The banging paused, and then an unfamiliar voice called out, “Uh, Jane? We were told to let you knopw before coming in? You there?”

People . The monster retreated to her den as quickly as she could, cursing the fact that her centipedes hadn’t had time to multiply yet. She’d just have to stay quiet and hope for the best.

It had been hours, and the people still hadn’t left.

Okay, that wasn’t literally true - the monster had heard people exit the warehouse many times. But they kept coming back. It was driving her insane, waiting on edge each time, listening to see if they were maybe, finally, gone for good, only to be disappointed.

And she was hungry.

Whoever she’d been before - and for now she was going to keep assuming that she had been someone before she’d become this - she couldn’t imagine that they’d ever had mouthwatering daydreams about shoveling live grubs into their mouth. Just another thing to envy her past self for.

A set of footsteps drew near, and the monster tensed. No one had come near her den since the initial foray into the warehouse, when the workers had come to gawk at her habitat and speculate loudly about what kind of food she was growing in it. Based on the lack of screams, they’d honored Danny’s word and left it alone.

As if called by her thoughts, Danny’s voice rang out in the quiet. “Hey Jane?” he called out.

The monster grimaced. She was liking that name less every time she heard it, but after refusing to give him one earlier she couldn’t exactly complain now. It wasn’t like she’d come up with anything she liked better anyway. “I’m here,” she called back reluctantly. “What do you want?”

“Just to tell you that we’re about done for the day, and we’ll be locking up behind us. Do you want lunch before we go?”

“I’m not showing you how to get food out of the habitat,” she snapped, then winced. She probably wouldn’t have been so blunt if she wasn’t so hungry.

“Oh!” Danny sounded surprised for some reason; did he think she was an idiot? “No, of course not. I, uh, brought you a sandwich.” He paused for a moment, then continued, a bit awkwardly, “It’s not very good, but I thought you might like a bit of variety.”

“I’m not trading you anything just to have variety.”

Danny laughed. “I wouldn’t accept anything for this - it’s spam and cheese, minus the cheese.”

The monster was confused, but no less suspicious for it. Just because she couldn’t see his angle didn’t mean he didn’t have one. “I don’t want it. Thanks for telling me you were done; you can go lock up now.” No need to be ruder than she already had been.

She thought she heard him sigh. “Alright Jane. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“That soon?” she asked, trying not to sound too disappointed.

“This is a good warehouse,” he said apologetically, “and there’s a lot of demand for materials. Did everyone respect your space? Do I need to tell them to do anything different?”

His apparent concern left her feeling nonplussed. “No,” she said, then added awkwardly, “Have a good afternoon.”

“You too Jane.”

She listened very closely to his retreating footsteps, then, once the squealing of the door had faded, she listened even closer until she was sure he’d really left. Very carefully, the monster emerged, eyes and ears peeled for anything out of place. She spotted something immediately, and frowned.

On the ground next to the habitat was a plastic bag containing a squished-looking sandwich.

Why would he go to such lengths to try to give her a sandwich? Her mind flashed morbidly to the poisoned bait people left out for ants. A moment later, she discarded it, feeling embarrassed. Maybe he could’ve been waiting for a chance to kill her when her guard was down, but she could admit that she was probably just paranoid.

Still, she prodded the sandwich with her pheromone dowel a couple times before picking it up. It appeared to be exactly what Danny had said - a slice of spam between white bread. It would probably be more valuable to her bugs than it was to her - her grubs were calorically dense and more nutritionally complete. They’d be able to metabolize the bread, and her centipedes would go crazy for the spam. She just had to remove the plastic first.

She took the sandwich out of its bag, and her stomach rumbled. The monster hesitated. 

Maybe just one bite.

A few minutes later, as the monster licked her fingers, she had to admit Danny had been right: a bit of variety was nice.

The next morning, the monster was unsurprised to wake up to cramps. Even so, she resisted getting up for a few minutes longer. Was her body just going to keep producing new species of bugs every day forever now? The idea seemed ridiculous; even if there were billions of unique species in nature, her bugs seemed too simple, too archetypal, to be naturally occurring. Her grubs and her centipedes fulfilled her needs for food and security respectively - how badly did she have to need something to produce a bug that provided it? What did she even need now? More space? More raw materials? She didn’t see how bugs could provide either of those.

Hopefully it would just be more centipedes to help get the population growing faster; a whole new species would probably necessitate their own unique habitat, and she was basically at the limits of her current means when it came to available space and design complexity.

So she couldn’t help but feel bitterly amused when she examined the bulky, thick-shelled reddish-brown beetles she wound up squeezing out. She determined that their shells were soft enough to sculpt in their immature state, but with the right diet and conditions they would grow to become reasonably hard and durable. She could use them to make hand tools, nails, rivets - the possibilities seemed endless.

Unfortunately, a proper habitat for them was beyond her current means, even if she did break her deal with Danny. The grubs would be fine food for them, but they needed the air to be significantly warmer, both to stay alive and for their shells to harden, and though her brain was eager to lay out the design for a habitat that would accommodate them, she was quite certain that a heat lamp was not present in the warehouse - and nor, for that matter, was a working outlet to plug one into.

Despair overtook the monster. Her body had never produced the same bugs twice - if she let these ones die, would she ever be able to get more?

She held them close while she gathered wood for her grubs and grubs for her centipedes and herself, hoping that her body heat would keep them from dying before she could think of a solution. Unfortunately, she was no closer to one by the time Danny’s workers showed up. She brought the beetles with her when she retreated to her den.

Cuddling beetles for warmth. That had to be a new low.

Time passed. Footsteps came and went. Eventually, a familiar voice called out to her. “Hey Jane.”

“Hey Danny.” She stretched as best she could within her den. Her legs didn’t really cramp the way her instincts told her they should, but there was still something satisfying to the motion. “Here to tell me you’re done for the day?”

“I am.” The monster thought she could hear a note of amusement in his voice. “And I brought you another sandwich.”

She scowled, though he couldn’t see it. “Why?” she demanded. “I didn’t want the last one, but you left it anyway. You told me food was scarce. Why throw it away?”

“I didn’t throw it away,” he said, “I made it for you. It was yours, whatever you chose to do with it.”

That didn’t make any sense. “Why bring me another one today then?”

“Same reason as yesterday.”

“And if I say the same thing today as I said yesterday?”

“Then I’ll bring you another one tomorrow.” After a moment, Danny added, “Until you tell me to stop.”

The monster hesitated, torn. Finally, she said, “Set it on the ground by the habitat, then go around the corner and put your back against the far end of the shelf. No matter what you hear, don’t look up.”

She waited, tense in a way she couldn’t explain.

“Okay,” he said eventually. The monster thought he’d tried to hide it, but she was sure she could hear trepidation in his voice. She listened to his receding footsteps until they ceased.

Slowly, cautiously, she emerged from her den, all eyes peeled for any sign of a trick. If he meant her harm, she’d need to get to her habitat fast. Once she had her centipedes, she had a chance. Fuck, she should’ve waited at least another day before risking this - she’d have enough to keep some on her person by then.

But there was no one waiting for her when she emerged, just a sandwich in a bag. She picked it up and quickly scurried up to the top of the shelf. She felt horrifically exposed, and while being up high didn’t make the feeling go away, it did help; people didn’t climb as well as monsters.

Cautiously, she made her way to the end of the aisle, and peered over the edge. Danny stood directly below her, back to the aisle and eyes fixed straight ahead. His posture was stiff. Very slowly, she unsealed the sandwich bag. Danny flinched ever so slightly at the sound. The monster took a bite of the sandwich, chewing carefully so as not to spill crumbs on his balding head, and then swallowed.

And then swallowed again.

“Thanks,” she said.

Danny visibly relaxed, and the monster felt herself do the same. “You’re welcome,” he said, and produced an identical sandwich of his own.

They ate in silence for a time, the monster watching intently for any sign of him breaking his word and looking up. He never did.

Eventually, she finished her sandwich, and broke the silence. “You asked the other day if I could make enough food for other people, and I’ve been thinking… maybe we could make a deal.”

“I’m open to it,” Danny said conversationally. “What kind of food are you growing in your, uh, habitat?”

“Bugs,” she admitted. “But,” she added hurriedly, “they’re perfectly adapted for human consumption - they’re calorically dense, nutritionally complete, and the taste and texture are inoffensive. Grind them up, and you basically get peanut butter. Really nutritious peanut butter.”

Danny let out a bark of laughter, and the monster jumped. “Bugs, huh? Now I’m really glad I brought you those sandwiches. I’ve heard that some people in Africa eat those, but… Well, desperate times, I guess.”

“They’re really not that bad!” the monster said, feeling somewhat defensively. “I ate a lot worse before I got the habitat set up.” She suppressed a shudder; the rats were still keeping well clear of her.

“You’re sure they’re safe to eat?” Danny asked, sounding more than a little skeptical. “I’m not an expert, but from what I’ve seen before, Tinkertech can be a bit, uh, unstable.”

“I’ve been eating them for days - I don’t know what other assurances I can give you,” the monster said irritably. “And what’s Tinkertech?”

Danny slapped his forehead, and the monster jumped again. “Right! Ugh, dumb of me. Tinkertech is stuff that some capes make that breaks the laws of physics, I guess. I assume your power is something to do with bugs, or farming, or something? Or, wait, you said you don’t know what capes are, earlier. Let’s see… capes are-”

“I don’t care,” she said, cutting him off; she had a goal in mind, and she couldn’t afford to get sidetracked. “Not right now, at least. Are you interested, or not?”

“...I’m interested,” Danny said.

“How many people are you wanting to feed?” she asked.

“I’d have to ask around to get an exact number, but let’s say about a hundred,” Danny offered. “Is that feasible?”

“I can make it feasible,” she said, her brain already spinning up plans and calculations. “I’d need the materials and space to construct a second habitat - bricks will work if that’s what you can spare, though glass, metals, and plastics would be better.”

“Bricks I can do. Would wood work?”

“No, that’s what they eat,” the monster said. “And cardboard, and paper, and cork - most vegetable matter, really. I have enough already to last a day or two, but I’ll need your people to bring me more on a regular basis. Scraps are fine; preferable, even. You don’t need to sacrifice anything you’d otherwise use for building.”

“I can do that too. Do you need anything else?”

“Jars,” she said after a moment, “so I can portion them out. Your people will have to grind the grubs up themselves if they don’t want to eat them whole. But I can have one day’s supply of bugs for a hundred people, give or take, every day within a couple of days. Assuming that that isn’t all they’re eating - I’d need two or three times as many habitats if you want an all-grub diet.”

“I most definitely do not,” Danny assured her. “That all seems manageable to me. Do we have a deal?”

“What? No!” the monster said indignantly. “That’s just what I’d need to be able to do it; I want something for my trouble.”

Danny raised his hands in what was probably supposed to be a placating gesture, but it didn’t really work when aimed away from her and towards a random shelf. “Right, of course. What exactly would you want?”

She took a deep breath, then spoke with as much assurance as she could manage. “A heat lamp and the means to keep it continuously powered, and the space for a third habitat for my own usage. I can build it myself, mostly from bricks, but I need a pane of sturdy, clear glass, cut to my specifications. Or I’d take a large terrarium or fish tank, if you happen to have one lying around.”

Danny took a moment to respond; she couldn’t see his expression, but his posture seemed contemplative. “The glass I can do,” he said slowly, “though I’ll have to divert it from a construction site. The space and the bricks too. The rest… you have to understand, it hasn’t even been a week since Leviathan. I don’t even know how many shops that would stock heat lamps have survived, let alone reopened. And with the grid damaged and so many people without shelter, sustained access to autonomous power is a significant ask. I trust you” - the monster blinked - “and I want to reach a mutually beneficial deal here, but I’m not sure I can swing those in exchange for a food source of unverifiable quality.”

Dread rose up in the monster, but she pushed it down; she needed that heat lamp, and she wasn’t going to get it by showing weakness. She needed to come up with something more substantial to offer. “What if I also provided security?” she proposed. “You said this warehouse is unusually well-stocked and intact; that has to make it a hot commodity for looters if things are as bad in the city as you say. With your people coming and going all the time, it’s bound to draw attention. I can protect it.”

“How would you do that?” he asked.

“Nonlethally, autonomously, and selectively, allowing your people to come and go as they pleased, but incapacitating anyone else who tried to enter,” she said. “I’m not willing to divulge more than that.”

The monster watched Danny consider it with bated breath. She didn’t know what else she could offer him if he refused - she wasn’t even completely sure how she’d provide what she’d already offered, though she had the makings of a plan.

Danny rubbed his palms together. “I can sell that to my guys,” he said. “Done.” Then he hesitated. “Normally, this is where I’d shake your hand, but…”

The monster recoiled at the idea of being seen, being touched. “Why don’t we leave it at, ‘it’s a pleasure doing business with you’?”

“It’s a pleasure doing business with you.” She was almost positive he was grinning as he said it. “Take what you need from the warehouse for your habitats; I’ll bring the rest of it when I come over for lunch tomorrow. Until then?”

“Sure,” she said. “Don’t look up until you leave.”

“You’ve got it.” He nodded. “Have a good afternoon, Jane.”

“You too, Danny.”

She didn’t let herself celebrate until he was gone, but once he was, she almost gave into the urge to jump for joy. If her body wasn’t so awful, she might have. The reminder of her nature was a blow, but she felt it less keenly than usual; her beetles were going to live! The prospect of building a new habitat, of harvesting masses of grubs and storing them in jars every day, also filled her with excitement - it sounded much better than huddling in her den or wandering the aisles of the warehouse aimlessly.

She was also, she realized, looking forward to having lunch with Danny again. They hadn’t spoken much, hadn’t looked at each other, hadn’t observed almost any of the rituals of two people sharing a meal.

Even so, it had made her feel more human than she had since she first saw her reflection.

The girl spent the rest of the day constructing a copy of her first habitat and seeding the bottom chamber with grubs, as well as building as much of the habitat for her beetles as she could in the absence of the glass and the heat lamp. As she worked, her plans for her anti-intruder system grew firmer, and she conducted a few tests to make sure the key concepts would work in practice.

The girl found that, if she traced a faint line of her targeting pheromones along the ground, any of her bugs that she placed on it would travel to the end of the path, and then, in the absence of anything that seemed like food, they would turn around and follow it back the other direction, repeating ad infinitum until the pheromones degraded. Using this method, she would be able to create patrol routes for her centipedes around the likely points of entry into the warehouse. The system would require regular upkeep - refreshing the pheromone trails, bringing grubs to feed the centipedes, replacing any that got damaged or killed - but it would work. The only trick would be ensuring that Danny’s worker could come and go unharmed, and she had an idea for that.

As she fell asleep that night, she repeated to herself over and over again, I need bugs that secrete the identifying pheromone in my sweat. If her body was going to create bugs that filled her needs, she just had to make sure it knew what those needs were.

When, the next morning, the girl finished squeezing out her new bugs and discovered that they were just more centipedes, she concluded that her body was fucking with her on purpose. She shook them off quickly to keep them from eating her precious beetles. She’d made a start on sculpting their shells to form some hand tools the previous evening, but they were still soft, and she took a moment to push them back into shape after the jostling. She thought longingly of all the things she’d be able to do with even the first rudimentary generation of tools, and then froze.

She might just owe her body an apology.

She quickly stored her beetles back in her den, then gathered up the new batch of centipedes. Indistinguishable from her first batch, yes - but they didn’t need to stay that way. Excitement almost made her hands shake as she reached beneath her thorax to the second of the three glands located there. She carefully dabbed each of the centipedes with the fluid, and the information provided by her odd insight grew from a trickle to a raging flood. Countless changing variables and possibilities filled her head - she would have staggered if she was bipedal. As it was, she dropped her newly-modified centipedes into the upper chamber of her second habitat and breathed a sigh of relief when they were out of sight.

The girl had, however, managed to pick out the information she needed from the onslaught. Her second gland produced a chemical that triggered a dramatic change in her bugs, exponentially increasing their speed of reproduction and maturation as well as their incidence of mutation. Whole generations would live and die in the space of minutes. The high rate of lethal mutations and the limited available food would keep them from overrunning the warehouse, but any mutations that made them better suited to the environmental conditions in their habitat would quickly propagate.

She could witness the process of evolution play out before her very eyes, and her brain was full of ideas for how to modify their environment to encourage the development of specific traits. The logic governing the environmental pressures she wanted was simultaneously instinctive and arcane - she knew what she needed, but if she tried to articulate why she needed it she became confused almost immediately. Nevertheless, the girl was confident that, whether in hours or days, she could produce a handful of centipedes whose “venom” sacks produced the identifying pheromone that kept her centipedes from biting her. Then she’d just need to dab them with the secretions of her third gland to reverse the effects of her mutagen, and she’d have a stable population.

Calling them centipedes seemed like a disservice now; they weren’t just creepy-crawlies, they were living chemical plants. They were… chemipedes.

The girl immediately felt silly, but no other name felt right. She’d just have to be careful not to say it where anyone could hear and judge.

The remainder of the morning passed as she feverishly gathered materials and made modifications to the environment of her experimental chemipedes. She retired to her den as the workers arrived and waited for Danny. Once he gave her the all-clear, it was a matter of minutes before they were settled in for lunch, her above and him below.

“Thank you,” the girl said after a few minutes of eating in silence. “For bringing everything.” She itched to fit the glass pane to the top of her third habitat and turn the heat lamp on, but having lunch with Danny felt important, and she couldn’t ask him to wait while she worked. She wasn’t thrilled with the solution to the power problem - a pair of rechargeable batteries that she would exchange for fresh ones every day when the workers came by - as it left her extremely dependent on their continued goodwill. But it was a solution, and not one she could have accessed by herself.

“You’re welcome,” Danny said agreeably. “We probably won’t need a hundred jars of bugs a day right from the get-go, by the way. A lot of my people are cautious. Me and about a dozen others are gonna be the guinea pigs.”

“I’m tempted to take offense at that,” the girl groused, but she felt warm inside. Danny trusted her, and he was the one whose opinion mattered.

Apologetically, he said, “Don’t take it personally. People are scared right now. The damage is widespread; the heroes, the government, and the aid organizations are spread too thin, and villains are laying claim to everything that falls through the gaps. People are wary of help from unexpected places.”

“I just assumed they thought bugs were gross,” she admitted.

“Well, there’s that too.” Danny chuckled softly.

They were quiet again for a bit. Then the girl asked, “What actually happened out there?” So much of his explanation made so little sense to her.

Danny hesitated. “I told you the city was attacked by Leviathan, and you didn’t know what that meant, right?”

“Right.”

“Leviathan is an Endbringer - one of three. Giant, functionally unkillable monsters. Every four months or so, one of them shows up at a city somewhere and does their best to destroy it before they can be driven off. Brockton Bay was a victory - the city didn’t sink. But Leviathan flooded about half of it, tore down buildings, destroyed infrastructure, and killed thousands before he fled. Now we’re picking up the pieces.”

The girl processed that. Giant, unkillable monsters. Only three of them, he said, but were there others; smaller, weaker, more vulnerable? Was that what she was? She wanted to ask him, but… if that was the case, and he found out what she was, he’d hate her. He’d kill her.

The thought hurt.

She needed more information, but she had to be careful. “How do you drive off something like that?” she asked.

“Capes,” Danny said, “as many of them as will come. Heroes, villains, neither - anyone who can. Parahumans,” he elaborated before she could ask, “people with superpowers. Flying, superspeed, strength, all of that.”

“Like in comic books?” the girl asked, taken aback.

“Jane, how the hell do you know about old comic books but not about real superheroes?” Danny asked incredulously.

“I don’t know!” the girl protested. “I know things, obviously, but I don’t remember learning them. Maybe wherever I was before didn’t have capes?” If the Endbringers only appeared every couple of months and she was like them, maybe she came from wherever they came from.

“Everywhere has capes, as far as I know,” Danny said. “Or parahumans, anyway - don’t know if they’re running around in costume fighting crime over in other countries.”

“That’s what you do, then?” she asked. “Fight crime and fix things? Face off with Endbringers?”

“Me?” Danny laughed. “No! No, I’m no cape; I’m the head of the Dockworker’s Union! The most I have to do with capes usually is telling the local villain gangs that we’re not interested in making deals with them. No, I’m looking forward to getting the city fixed up and getting back to my normal life.”

A normal life. The girl was filled with longing. “Tell me about it?” she asked hesitantly. “I - I could use some normal right now.”

“You’re putting me on the spot a bit Jane; I don’t feel like I have much interesting to share.”

“Forget interesting; where do you live, what do you eat, do you have kids?” Please , she almost added. But she didn’t want to beg. Then she noticed that he had slumped a bit, and realized she must have made a mistake somewhere.

“No kids,” he said softly. “We wanted them, my wife and I, but it never worked out, and she… she died a few years ago. Car accident.”

“I’m sorry,” the girl apologized, feeling horrible. “I shouldn’t have pried.”

“No, no! It’s, it’s fine. I’ve uh,” - he cleared his throat - “I’ve got my job, and a couple of friends, and people who rely on me. I’m, uh, I’m doing okay Jane. Don’t you worry about me.”

The girl didn’t know what to say.

After a few moments, Danny said, with an attempt at cheer, “Why don’t I tell you a bit about my job? I have to get back to it soon, but if you really want to hear about something mundane and boring, I’ve got that in spades.”

“I do,” she said quietly. “Want to hear about it, I mean.”

Some vigor returned to Danny’s posture, and some enthusiasm to his voice. “Okay then. Here goes.”

Days passed, and the girl’s bugs thrived. Her new batch of chemipedes stabilized, and she provided Danny and his people with little sachets of cloth marked with the identifying pheromone. She left fresh ones by the door every morning, and picked up new batteries for her heat lamp every afternoon. Her toolbugs thrived, their shells hardening into shape, and she took great satisfaction in using her new tools to shape their progeny into even better tools. Her grubgrubs - ridiculous name, but once she’d thought of it, she couldn’t unthink of it - continued to prosper, and after distributing a few test batches, demand quickly rose to the hundred-ish jars Danny had originally predicted.

She continued to have lunch with Danny, and their conversations slowly filled in the gaps in her knowledge. It wasn’t until four days later, just over a week since their first meeting, that she dared to return to the question of capes, which, she hoped, would let her probe about the Endbringers and her own nature more obliquely.

“How do superpowers actually work?” she asked. “Where do they come from?”

“Well, that’s one of the big questions,” Danny said. “The short answer is we don’t know. The slightly longer answer is that there are some patterns in who gets powers, and when, and what the powers do. But the actual underlying cause, why it started happening and why it keeps happening, is still a mystery. Take everything I say with a grain of salt, by the way,” he added, “because I’m about as far from an expert as you can get. But one of my people got powers several days ago, so I picked up a bit more than I knew before, and I’ve been doing some extra research for you as well. Turns out there’s a web forum all about parahumans. Some of the people there are real characters, though.”

“A web forum?” the girl asked, her brows furrowing. “Isn’t power still really spotty?”

“It is,” he confirmed. “Quite a line at the library for the computers these days.”

Before she could fully process the fact that he’d been taking time out of his day to look things up for her during a disaster, he was talking again. “Apparently, there are a lot of different types of powers, and a lot of arguments over what powers fall into what categories. From what little I’ve seen, though, yours seems pretty cut-and-dry - powers that are all about making things that break the laws of physics and that can be used by other people are called Tinker powers. I figure those habitats and the impossible bugs you grow in them make you a Tinker.”

“You think I’m a cape, then?” she asked, trying not to sound skeptical.

“I mean, unless you’re gonna tell me you just happened to find those bugs and are an expert entomologist who knew exactly what they were, what they could do, and how to cultivate them,” he said teasingly.

“No, I mean-” the girl hesitated, picking her words carefully. “I know I’m not… normal. But you think I’m a parahuman? Not something else?”

“Something else? Like what?”

“I don’t know, superheroes are apparently real!” The girl resisted the urge to start pacing; she was way too tense and didn’t need to get any more worked up. “Why couldn’t there also be wizards or something?”

“Well, there are some capes who claim to have magic,” Danny said, his voice tinged with amusement, “but the consensus seems to be that they got their powers the same way every parahuman did, and the rest is just showmanship.”

“What way is that?” The girl couldn’t keep the eagerness out of her voice. If she was a parahuman, if there were other people like her, real people , not monsters, not Enbringers, then…

“It’s called a Trigger event, and everyone’s pretty hush-hush about them,” he said. “Lot of conflicting claims, few verifiable examples. But apparently, when some people experience an event that causes incredibly high emotions, they develop superpowers. And it sounds like, at least most of the time, it’s bad emotions. Scary ones.”

“Oh.” The girl deflated. She should’ve known better. “I definitely freaked out a bit not long after I woke up, but whatever is different about me, it was different already. Trigger events don’t usually erase people’s memories, do they?”

It was a rhetorical question, so she wasn’t surprised when Danny softly confirmed, “No. They don’t.” She was surprised when he took a deep breath, and kept going. “But I asked around about capes with memory loss, and, well, I think I found something. There are some capes who wake up with powers and no memories. It’s not common, but it happens often enough to be a known phenomenon. There are some other things that that group has in common too; the official name for them is apparently Case 53s, but I’d actually heard of them before I started digging too, under a different name.”

He visibly braced himself.

“Monster capes.”

The girl froze. Her heart pounded. She stared down at Danny, ready to flee if he looked up, but he didn’t move, so neither did she.

“Why,” she asked carefully, her voice coming out stilted and stiff, “are they called that?”

“Because none of them look… quite how you’d expect most people to look,” Danny answered slowly. “It’s perfectly normal for them to have bodies that don’t look or act like other peoples’. And it - it isn’t something they need to be ashamed of.”

Slowly, very slowly, Danny started to turn around. Terror built in the girl’s chest. Her spindly legs itched to flee, the contents of the bizarre organs in her thorax churned, and her breath came fast and shallow. But she didn’t move.

He looked up. His eyes met hers.

“Hi, Jane,” Danny said softly. “It’s nice to meet you.” And he offered her his hand.

The next day, when Danny arrived with lunch, the girl came out of her den to meet him directly. She felt extremely silly crawling out of a box before his eyes, especially when he started giving the box itself a critical look.

“Is that comfortable?” he asked.

“Comfortable enough,” she answered, a bit defensively. “Better than where I woke up.” She reached up towards him for her sandwich, and he handed it over, frowning.

“It looks cramped.”

“I don’t take up a lot of space,” she said, a bit acridly. Why was he getting hung up on this?

He didn’t let up either. “Are you warm enough? Dry enough? Keeping clean?”

“I’m fine, Danny!”

“Okay, okay!” He raised his hands apologetically.

The girl waited for him to speak; he was obviously working up to something. She watched him swallow three times before he finally managed it.

“I just thought, maybe, you’ve been living rough,” he said awkwardly. “And - I wouldn’t want you to feel like you owed me something, but if you wanted to, to sleep in a bed - well, Annete - my wife, that is - she and I thought we’d be raising a family together, when we bought our house. There’s an extra bedroom that’s been sitting empty for years. So I wanted to offer.”

The girl stared at him, nonplussed. She must be misunderstanding him; he couldn’t be offering what she thought he was. Could he?

“You don’t have to!” he said quickly. “I don’t want to impose, or limit your freedom - you could come and go as you wanted, stay here as often as you wanted - but you could be there when you wanted too. Sleep in a bed. Use the shower. Have something to eat other than bugs or a spam sandwich. If you wanted.”

“Why?” Her voice came out raw. She felt raw. “Why would you do that for me? Why have you been doing all this for me?”

Danny looked away; the girl couldn’t read his expression. “I wanted to. You - I spend a lot of time trying to help people, and I usually can’t. I can’t give you your memories back, or a body you’re happy with, but I can give you security, and I can give you care, Jane. You deserve more, but I - I just want to help. If you want me to.”

“You-” The girl shook her head. Her throat was tight, and she swallowed. It didn’t make sense. It couldn’t be that easy.

What if it was?

“You have to call me something different,” she said. “I hate that name; I can’t- can’t live with you if I have to hear it every day.”

Danny’s eyes sparkled. “What’s wrong with it?”

“It’s literally a placeholder. Jane Doe, right?” The girl swallowed again - she didn’t want to find out how her biology handled crying right now. “I don’t want to be a blank space. I want my name to mean something.”

“What do you want me to call you, then?”

“I don’t know! I don’t remember enough for anything to be meaningful to me!” An idea crossed her mind, and she almost discarded it out of hand. It felt embarrassing, vulnerable. But it also felt right. “What’s a name that’s meaningful to you?” she asked.

Danny blinked. It took him a long moment to answer, and the girl tried not to shrivel. But then he said, very softly, “Taylor.”

Taylor. 

The girl nodded. Taylor nodded. “Will you come pick me up after your work is done? I need to do some maintenance, make sure my bugs will be okay without me overnight.”

“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. I might see if I can pick up something nice to make for dinner tonight. Or, well, nicer ,” he amended. “Since it’s a special occasion. Does that sound good?” he finished anxiously.

Taylor smiled. “That sounds great.”