THE RETURN

The ruins of Brockton Bay stretched before her, a corpse of a city, shattered and left to rot.

Taylor lingered at the tree line, her gelatinous form pooled in the underbrush, watching. Buildings slumped like exhausted sentinels, their walls pockmarked with damage and bullet holes. The streets were cracked, littered with debris, the rusted husks of burned-out cars lining the roads like forgotten graves.

Brockton Bay had always been rough. Even before Leviathan, before the Nine, it had been slowly bleeding out. But this? This was something else.

She had overheard the scavengers’ grim accounts, but hearing was one thing—seeing it was another. The Slaughterhouse Nine had really done their work well.

Taylor drifted forward, flattening herself against the filth-streaked pavement, her form spreading thin to blend with the grime. She didn’t want to be seen. Not yet.

Up ahead, a collapsed overpass loomed, its shattered supports repurposed into a makeshift barricade. People manned the defenses—thin, ragged figures, their clothes mismatched, their weapons scavenged from whatever they could find. Some carried rifles, others clutched crowbars or rusted machetes, their grips white-knuckled with tension.

Survivors.

Taylor inched closer, tendrils creeping up the side of a crumbling wall as she peered over the barricade.

They weren’t just survivors.

She recognized some of them. Former Empire Eighty-Eight thugs. Stragglers from the long-since collapsed ABB. People who had once sworn loyalty to gangs that had been wiped off the map. They had set aside their old allegiances, not out of unity, but necessity. The Nine had left the city in ruins, and the only ones left were those too stubborn, too desperate, or too dangerous to leave.

Her swarm skittered through the city, slipping through broken windows and shattered streets, searching for something familiar. It didn’t take long to find it: a warehouse, reinforced with scrap metal and salvaged concrete, ringed by tripwires and makeshift barricades.

They survived.

Her team were still here. And from the looks of it, they weren’t just surviving—they were protecting. People moved in and out, carrying supplies, reinforcing weak points, keeping watch. The Undersiders weren’t just hiding—they were protecting.

A flood of emotions surged through her—relief, pride… and guilt.

They kept fighting while I was gone. They’re helping people. And I… I just disappeared.

Taylor edged closer, slipping into the wreckage of a collapsed building nearby. From her vantage point, she spotted a familiar figure standing watch.

Brian.

Even from a distance, she could see the dark circles under his eyes the exhaustion in his posture. He leaned against a rusted railing, scanning the streets with a wary, practiced sharpness that spoke of constant vigilance.

Taylor wanted to reach out, to call his name, to let him know she was here.

But what would he see if he turned around?

Not Taylor Hebert. Not Skitter.

Just a shifting mass of translucent slime.

She pulled back, retreating deeper into the ruins before her emotions could override her instincts.

Then, from the distance, a scream rang out.

Someone—a scavenger—dragged from the wreckage by something lurking in the shadows.

Not one of the Undersiders. Not anyone she recognized. But they were in danger.

Taylor hesitated for only a moment.

Then she moved.