It was one thing to hear about sapient spiders living in Autralia. I was quite another to see one big enough to eat your kids.

“Do you have a spider-sign dictionary?” Perry asked, reluctantly dragging his attention away from Ryan the Pilot. “Also, we’re going to need to take samples from each of you.”

Perry glanced at Tyrannus, twitching his eyebrow.

Or do you have that infrastructure you mentioned earlier that could detect them?

Tyrannus shrugged.

It was…largely a bluff designed to force the mimics to reveal themselves. Once it was penetrated, the mimics knew they were safe, and it’s effectiveness evaporated.

Perry tilted his head.

Are you serious? I would never do something like that.

Tyrannus made a dismissive motion with a claw.

I’ll believe that when Norgosh freezes over.

“Here,” The woman seemingly in charge of the super group handed him a dictionary with a chibi-fied spider on the front.

“Where were you holding this?” Perry wondered aloud.

“Ryan always carries one on him, for obvious reasons.” Perfora said, pointing at Ryan, who had moved to stand beside his friends in complete silence. The spider tapped the oversized pocket on his leather jacket.

Like so many others, Perry had grown up afraid of spiders, and in adulthood, it had eased up to a mild aversion, but this was testing his calm.

It didn’t matter to Perry’s lizard brain that he’d seen horrors beyond mortal ken. That he still saw them, even now, flitting through the void outside their little local bubble of reality.

It didn’t matter to his lizard brain that no spider on Earth regardless of size, could get its fangs past his skin, or wrap him up in silk, or conquer his mind…

It just gave him the heeby jeebies.

I need a buffer. Some kind of meat shield to put between myself and the spider.

Portal.exe

“Hey Sera, wanna meet a giant spider?”

“YAAY!” Sera practically dove through the portal, followed shortly by Gareth, who seemed more interested in Tyrannus and the Aussies.

Perry waved at Nat before closing the portal.

“Wow you’re really fuzzy! Are these your fangs!? Do you eat people?”

While Sera bugged Ryan with questions she couldn’t understand the answers to, Perry flipped through the spider sign language dictionary.

ZZZZ

The pages flipped by so fast that they made an audible sound, then when he was done, Perry tossed it over to Tyrannus.

The dragon caught it with a spell and held a claw over the dictionary, essence sinking into it for a moment before arcing into the dragon’s forehead.

“Alright, problem solved.” Perry said.

“Just like that?” one of the supers asked, a big stylized zipper on the front of his Hyperweave.

“Just like that. Now, we’re going to do a test to see if you’re a mimic.”

“Wait, one of those monsters?” Perfora asked. “If we were one of those monsters, why would we chase ourselves?”

“They’re very good at infiltration and we’re not taking any chances.” Perry said.

“The three of us have been together this whole time.” The other super said, his suit the color of an oil slick. Slick, probably?

“Even so, I’m…The three of you?” Perry asked, before glancing at Ryan, who was still trying to answer all of Sera’s question. Sera didn’t even seem bothered that she couldn’t understand him.

“Ryan was in a hotel until now.” Perfora said, shifting uncomfortably. “he met us here.”

“We’ll start with him, then.” Perry said, putting a hand on Sera’s shoulder and pulling her back from the genetically perfect killing machine. Four hundred million years of success.

“What can I do for you?” Ryan signed.

“I was pondering how I can confirm you haven’t been turned by the mimic. You don’t have any bones, and if I damage your exoskeleton you run a serious risk of bleeding out in seconds, what with the pressurized blood and everything.”

“I’m not a mimic,” Ryan signed. “Those things gave me the heebie jeebies, and they only have human senses when they’re disguised, so I was able to sneak past them just fine. You know, for being descended from tree-going apes, you sure don’t look up.”

“So you say, but…” Perry paused, rewinding the whole statement. “Did you say they give you the heebie jeebies?”

“Yep.”

“While they’re in monster form or when they’re in disguise?”

“Both?” Ryan said, drawing his foot up in a way that indicated a question. “They just feel wrong.”

Perry shared a glance with Tyrannus.

Tyrannus nodded.

A minute later, fifty people in hospital gowns strapped to gurneys were portaled in.

“Tell me, which of these people give you the heebie jeebies? If any?”

After about half an hour of testing, they determined that Ryan could identify mimics with an accuracy of roughly seventy percent.

Good enough for civilian use, but not the miracle they’d been hoping for, given that one escapee could start the issue all over again. They needed 100%.

Perry isolated the three supers and declared to each of them that his 100% foolproof test had identified them as mimics, and he was now going to dispose of them.

They struggled, obviously, but none of them flew into a murderous thrashing mutation in response, so he erased their short-term memory with a roofie spell and cleared them for duty.

Tyrannus and Perry were more concerned with Ryan anyway.

“Tell me Ryan, are you…extraordinary, among Australian spider-folk?” Tyrannus asked, angling to hire the spider’s species to help sniff out mimics. Which was a stupid idea that would eventually lead to America having giant man-eating spiders as well as mimics.

“Not really. Lots of hunting spiders become pilots. There’s just something about moving fast and being above everything. Plus the eyesight.” Ryan lowered his aviators to reveal two enormous, soulless orbs of pure black, with six smaller ones around his thorax.

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Perry shuddered.

“The ability to sense mimics… even vaguely, is that something many native fauna have in Australia?” Perry asked.

“Idunno,” Ryan signed with the spider equivalent of a shrug. “We don’t have any.”

“Any native Manitians?” Perry asked.

“What are Manitians?” Ryan asked, basically answering Perry’s question.

Hmm.

“How dangerous would you say the Australian outback is?” Perry asked.

“Let’s put it this way: In America, if you get stranded in the wild, you could die. If you find yourself outside the walls back home, you will die. We’ve got teams of supers roughly equivalent to your ‘sweepers’ who control the population of the deadliest creatures you’ve ever heard of. During High Tide, we herd them onto the beach and watch the magic happen. Haven’t had a prawn on the walls in decades.”

Perry was starting to decode spider body language, and Ryan seemed to have a sense of pride for the inhospitality of his home country.

“In exchange you’re always in danger.”

“Yup. There are these little buggers about the size of your palm that can take down huge moving mountains of scales with a single sting. Needless to say, they can kill spiders and humans too.”

Ryan cocked his thorax to the side, seemingly an adopted behavior from humans.

“Although, some humans survive it, strangely enough.”

It was starting to become clear to Perry: Every living thing was always in an arms race with every other living thing, competing for limited resources, competing not to become resources to each other.

The Tide had taken those arms races and magnified them outrageously. In America, it was size. Bigger deer, bigger bison, bigger badgers and wolves.

Megafauna.

On Australia, things had taken a slightly different track as the proliferation of venomous flora and fauna had exploded beyond all comprehension, favoring venom over size.

It made Perry think of the problem of invasive species. A species from one environment that is average, when placed into another environment is a super-predator, simply because none of the natives have any kind of natural defenses against them.

Perry was fairly sure that Manitians had portaled in all over the globe in the 60’s but they hadn’t survived in Australia. Why?

Why could native Aussie spiders sense Mimics to some degree?

How did a venomous creature kill giant land animals and giant spider, but not humans?

Maybe…just maybe, Australia had something Perry could weaponize against the mimics…If his hunch was correct, their fauna might have higher natural defenses against high-Attunement weirdness like the robo-mimic.

Which apparently also has a class.

Perry could determine a few things through context:

The mimics didn’t share XP with each other. Each offshoot had to restart from zero. This was hinted at when Tyrannus said the ‘older ones’ had cybernetics. Why not all of them?

They didn’t have Garage Tinker. The sheer amount of destruction they’d created would be enough to level several of them up high enough to start seeing the exponential benefits of frontloading Attunement. Basically if they had Garage Tinker, it would’ve gone supercritical already, and Perry didn’t see any evidence of Spendthrift being used, either.

They must have a class that doesn’t do exponential growth. A non-Generalist class that doesn’t offer extra stats with it’s Primary class perk.

What did the mimic have?

From what Perry could see, the original Mimic must have chose something that allowed it to more easily incorporate mechanical structures into it’s physiology, allowing it to shift back and forth from machine to organic in the blink of an eye.

Even though it was an android originally, that wouldn’t inherently give it the ability to mimic complex machinery. The original couldn’t. Why would one of Professor Replica’s perfect clones be able to do something the original couldn’t?

What did it take? Bio-tinker? Biomechanical tinker? Cybernetic Tinker? Self-tinker?

Perry leaned toward Cybernetic Tinker. It could do everything he’d seen and a little bit more.

“Would you excuse me while I talk to Tyrannus?” Perry asked. “Here, talk to my kid.” Perry said, pushing Sera towards Ryan again.

He pulled Tyrannus aside.

“I think there might be some native fauna in Australia that could be used to detect mimics, or perhaps kill them.” Perry whispered into the dragon’s ear, looking over at Ryan.

“I had the same thought.” Tyrannus whispered back.

“The problem is, if either of us take off for a couple weeks, we have a big freakin problem on our hands when we get back.” Perry muttered.

“Not to worry. I have a reliable way to slow down their spread while you investigate our options.” Tyrannus said.

“By ‘reliable’, do you mean ‘highly unethical’?” Perry asked.

“Indeed. But now isn’t the time to be picky.”

“Shoot.”

“Total Big Brother. Full-on nineteen eighty-four, watching everything everyone does…at all times. Those high-altitude drones of yours…can they see through concrete?”

“…They can,” Perry admitted.

“I’ve avoided using them in order to preserve the element of surprise. Once they’re deployed the mimics will immediately begin working on countermeasures.”

Perry could see that. The mimic would either find a way to avoid the drone’s sensors, or fly into the stratosphere and assimilate them. Or both. It was just a matter of how much time they could buy.

“Just one question:” Perry said, holding up a finger. “Are you planning on stopping government observation once the emergency is over?”

“They’ll get used to it.”

Perry rolled his eyes.

“How long you think it can buy?” Perry asked.

“A couple weeks? I’ll have spells watching the drones so we can cut off any attacks made on them. Once they’ve learned that revealing their true form gets them instantly lasered, and they can’t attack them, they’re going to blend in more permanently, while searching for an alternative. I imagine they’ll begin to turn towards more distinctly human ways of infecting people, such as infiltrating human trafficking rings and injecting their product with a mimic that will consume it from the inside.

The spread will slow drastically, but it won’t stop.”

“And it’s not like they’ll tell you if they find a way to defeat the all-seeing eye.” Perry muttered.

Once that happened, the floodgates would open, and if they weren’t ready for it, they would lose far too much ground.

It was a risky gamble, but Ryan represented an opportunity to find an effective solution, and if Tyrannus could hit the ‘pause’ button on the spread of the mimic, then Perry should take that chance.

Also…Australia, while incredibly dangerous, is likely less dangerous than the American continent at the moment.

And we were planning on going there for vacation.

Portal.exe

Perry opened a portal leading straight to Natalie’s desk where she was poring over her latest designs for Boomer. The raven-haired tinker’s tongue slipped out of her mouth as the Tinker Twitch made her hyper focused.

“Hey, Nat, you still wanna go on that vacation to Australia?” Perry asked twice.

“What? Now?” Natalie asked incredulously, glancing up from her work. “While all…this is going on?” She gestured at ‘everything’, which was fairly accurate.

“It’s kind of a work-vacation.” Perry said with a shrug.

“Will us going with you provide you with enough help to justify taking us away from our current work?” She asked. “Or is it something you could do just as easily without us?”

“I could probably do it without you…” Perry admitted reluctantly. “But I would appreciate you being safe a lot.”

Natalie’s eyes narrowed in thought for a moment as she chewed on her pen. A moment later she seemed to come to a conclusion.

“…Take Heather.” Nat said, pointing with her chewed-up pen.

“Hey!” Heather said.

“I’m currently working on surveillance systems that are catching dozens of mimics, saving hundreds of lives, as well as logistics and the administration of Chicago, making new and exciting ways to keep the quarantine effective simply by tweaking the rules. Boomer is cleaning them up too. But Heather, well, she’s only able to take one on at a time, and most people think she is a mimic when she uses her power.”

“Oh?” Perry asked glancing at Heather, whose face was red with frustration.

“She’s been hit by friendly fire three times now.”

“Oh.” That was a lot of friendly fire.

“Fine, I’m fucking useless!” Heather shouted, throwing her hands up. “I still wanna stay with you. What if something gets past all the security?”

“I’ll be fine, even if that happens,” Nat said, patting Heather on the hip.

Heather grumbled, arms crossed.

“And besides, the twins need at least one of their moms. I would appreciate you being safe a lot.” Nat said, shifting Perry’s words onto Heather like a guilt-trip hot-potato.

“But you’ll be all alone,” Heather muttered.

“Trust me, I’ll be so busy I won’t even notice.” Nat replied.

“You’re gonna be fine?” Heather asked, peeking at Natalie.

“I will be fine.”

“Even if you die?”

“Even if I die, I’ll be fine,” Nat said with a hint of a smirk.

“That’s bullshit…but fine, I’ll go.” Heather said, glancing up at Perry. “Besides, Perry does need someone on hand in case he forgets how to breathe.”

“That is actually a concern.” Perry said. “Some of the venomous creatures in Australia can make that happen.”

“See?” Nat said, pushing Heather towards the portal. “He needs someone to watch his back.”

“Before we go,” Perry said, handing Nat a piece of chalk.

“What’s this?” Natalie asked, studying the stick.

“If you’re in serious trouble, break the stick. It’ll put you in stasis and send you to me. So it’ll save you even if you’re dying.” Perry said. He briefly considered mentioning the one that Annette had for the twins, but he didn’t know who might be listening to their conversation.

“Okay.” Nat pocketed the chalk.

“You’re sure you can break that?” Heather asked.

“Get outta here. Have fun in Australia, ya goobs.” Natalie said, shoving Heather through the portal.

Heather stumbled through the portal with a little squeak, and Perry closed it once the five of them had said their goodbyes.

“Alright,” Perry said, rubbing his hands together as he turned his attention back to the Aussie supers. “What’s the longitude and latitude of your hometown?”

“Ummm…”

“Nevermind I’ll look it up.” Perry muttered, doing a search. “Bendigo?”

“Population exploded after Melbourne got flooded.” Perfora said with a nod.

Portal.exe

“Alright, let’s go,” Perry said, nodding toward the shimmering ovoid revealing the sun-bleached walls of the Australian city.

“Just like that?” Perfora asked.

“Just like that. This is time-sensitive people, go go go.” Perry said, ushering them through.