(ITB) ISSUE #7: BURN MARKS

The night howled.

Wind screamed through shattered windows and down crumbling alleyways. Somewhere beyond the skyline, firelight painted the sky in furious reds and molten gold.

Brockton Bay was burning.

Taylor crouched behind a cracked concrete wall, heart rattling inside her chest like something caged and furious. Sirens wailed. Screams echoed from unseen places. And over it all, a deep, guttural roar split the air—a monstrous sound, raw, reptilian, and wrong.

Lung.

She risked a glance over the edge. A delivery truck had been hurled into a building, flames licking up its sides greedily. The street was scattered with debris—bent metal, shattered glass, and people screaming. Most had already fled, but a few were pinned behind an overturned car, cornered and cowering. Hostages, maybe. Or just unlucky. She couldn’t tell.

Miles landed beside her in a crouch, panting. His suit was singed, the spider emblem burned halfway off.

“We’re in over our heads,” she whispered.

“Little late to figure that out,” he said, voice tight.

Nearby, a scattered group of capes darted through the smoke. Small-timers, from what she could piece together. Their silhouettes were unfamiliar, except one: a tall guy in black with a skull mask. She recognized him, somewhat. One of the merchants? No—Undersiders, maybe?

Taylor didn’t know. She didn’t care.

What mattered was that they hadn’t seen her. Hadn’t seen Miles. They didn’t know who’d drawn Lung’s attention off them.

But the monster did.

He emerged through the haze like a nightmare given form. Ten feet tall and still growing. His skin shimmered with scales that weren’t there moments ago, smoke trailing from between his jagged teeth—every breath stoking the air with more heat—and claws carving grooves in the street. 

“Why are we doing this?” Taylor hissed. “They’re villains. He’s hunting villains. Let him!”

“He’s not just hunting them,” Miles said, low. “He’s burning everything. There are people inside those buildings, kids caught in the crossfire.”

A silence stretched between them, taut as wire.

Then Miles stood.

“We go on three.”

She grabbed his arm. “I’m not ready for this. We can’t fight that.”

“We don't need to fight him,” he said. “We just need to stall. Get loud. Be a distraction so that people can get out of here. Fast and smart.”

Her pulse was so loud in her ears it drowned the rest of the world.

“One,” Miles said, already moving before she could protest.

He vaulted off the edge in a whirl of momentum, webbing a nearby streetlight and slingshotting himself forward. Lung turned at the noise, and Miles struck him square in the chest with both feet. The giant reeled back, but didn’t fall. Miles didn’t stop. Another web shot. He zipped around Lung’s head, wrapping his face, and yanked him sideways into a power pole. Sparks erupted furiously. The dragon-man roared in fury.

Taylor’s body moved before her mind caught up.

Her bugs surged with her heartbeat as she threw herself into action, the swarm crashing down like a dark tide. Attack. Every wasp, hornet, fly, beetle, and other ugly thing she could gather dove into Lung’s eyes, nose, ears, and mouth.

He flailed, swatting and roaring. But he kept coming.

Then he roared.

The battle exploded.

Flames sprayed wide. Asphalt cracked and boiled. Miles danced across a wall, webbing Lung’s face mid-swing and yanking it sideways, just enough to knock the fire blast off-target. Taylor saw people running—thank god—and pushed her swarm harder. She didn’t think. She couldn’t. Just survive. Just help.

Miles tried to capitalize on the advantage, swinging in again—but Lung caught him.

He was slammed into the hood of a car, denting the frame. 

The sound of impact was sickening.

Then Lung turned, molten breath steaming in the cold air, eyes locking on her.

She froze.

Miles groaned.

She turned her head, saw him move—barely. Injured, but still trying to get up. Still trying to be a hero.

The fire rushed towards her.

He saw it first. Threw himself between her and the blast.

No.

She watched, helpless, as the flame consumed him. 

Watched helplessly as he fell to the ground and didn't move again.

Taylor froze. For a heartbeat, the world went silent—just smoke, and heat, and the echo of her own pulse in her ears.

Then her vision tunneled, and something inside her snapped.

She screamed—not words, just rage and fear and guilt—and her swarm answered.

Her swarm poured out from alleys, gutters, vents, and cracks in the walls. Thousands upon thousands, even those she had never called before—so many it felt like the city itself was bleeding insects. 

It became less of a tide, and more of a veritable storm. A howling, living blackness that filled the street and sky before falling on Lung—stingers, biters, and burrowers, gnawing and crawling in a frenzy not even Taylor fully controlled.

He drowned.

He staggered under her wrath, claws raking deep gouges down his neck and through his chest in a mad effort to rid himself of them, but there were too many. His fire sputtered under the sheer weight of so many living bodies, like a torch smothered in a downpour.

He screamed.

He thrashed.

He lit himself ablaze—blindly, desperately—but it wasn’t enough. He sprayed flame into the sky, into buildings, into the swarm, but they kept coming. Biting, stinging, burrowing deeper.

His roar changed. Triumph and intimidation twisted to panic.

To pain. 

To fear.

And then—he dropped.

One knee hit the ground. Then the other.

Then he became still. Just… still. His massive frame hunched forward, breath rattling in his throat. 

Taylor’s first instinct was that it was a trick—a ploy to draw her in. But her bugs were still stinging, still biting, and the flames had stopped. No more jets of fire, no heat rolling off his body. Just smoke, curling from his scaled flesh.

Her swarm hovered in place, mirroring her uncertainty. Waiting for the catch.

Then Lung collapsed sideways.

The sound was seismic—a thunderous crash that echoed down the ruined street.

Dust billowed outward, and her swarm parted around him like a curtain, revealing what lay beneath: a monstrous, half-draconic figure sprawled across the asphalt. Not dead. Not quite. But down. Unmoving. One massive limb twitched, sluggish and involuntary.

A chill spread through her chest.

She hadn’t expected it to work.

She hadn’t expected to survive.

Lung didn’t fall. He escalated. He endured and then, overwhelmed. He kept going no matter what was thrown at him. The records, the warnings, the reputation—everything said so.

And yet here he was—on the ground, unconscious.

It didn’t feel real. 

Taylor stood frozen, heart hammering in her ears. Her fingers trembled. The swarm buzzed, loud in the silence that followed, a living reminder of what she’d done.

She had taken Lung down.

Even he had limits, it turned out. But Taylor doubted she could’ve brought him down if her swarm hadn’t been working him over from the start. Every second he was distracted—by the Undersiders, by Miles, by the chaos—she’d sent wave after wave into every crack in his armor. Eyes, mouth, ears. Anywhere her bugs could crawl, they went. They stung. They bit. They injected enough venom to fell a dozen men. It took time. And pain. But it worked.

She drew in a shaky breath, her lungs full of ash and adrenaline, then looked down at Miles.

She didn’t remember lifting him up, though she was sure every motion had been careful. Didn’t remember dragging him through alleyways thick with smoke and ash. Didn’t remember kicking open the rusted door of a shuttered laundromat and pulling it closed behind her.

Only remembered pleading for him to be okay. 

Now he lay against the wall, barely conscious. Suit blackened and torn. One arm bent wrong. Breathing—thank fucking god—but shallow.

“Miles. Come on.” Her voice cracked. “Please.”

He groaned.

Relief hit so hard she almost sobbed. 

Carefully, she pulled his mask up just enough to see his face—ash and sweat streaked, skin blistered on one side.

“You idiot,” she choked out, resting a hand on his chest. “You could’ve died.”

“You’re… welcome,” he mumbled, lips twitching in a faint, albeit pain-filled, grin. 

Tears pricked her eyes, but she blinked hard. She couldn’t cry. Not here. 

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to—God, I wasn't fast enough—”

“You saved me. You saved a lot of people.” His fingers twitched, brushing hers. Barely there, but enough. “You are a hero.”

She didn’t say anything. Just stared at her hands—burned, trembling, streaked with ash and blood.

But he was alive. And that was enough.

She leaned forward, resting her forehead gently against his shoulder as the last of her swarm settled around them, quiet now. Spent.

Outside, Brockton Bay burned. Another wound. Another scar.

But in that silent space, between two kids who had no business surviving such a monster, something beautiful and precious blossomed.