Worm

by wildbow

  Night stood closer to me than the others. I could see how she had various pieces of equipment strapped to her hips, forearms, and back. Grenades, canisters, knives, something that looked like spray paint. She swatted at the bugs that were crawling around her face and eyes, but her attention was on Tattletale. I could have stood, maybe, but I didn’t want to draw her attention.

  “So I was at a loss to figure out how to fuck with you. You’re two dimensional. Until I remembered that you left the Empire when Purity did. And when she came back? So did you.”

  Night cocked her head a little to one side, listening. Again, she slapped at the bugs on one side of her face. Her face didn’t feel swollen, from what my swarm was conveying. Her eyes were open, blinking closed when a bug touched her eyelash. I suspected she healed back to perfect condition whenever she entered her other form, which would include cleansing herself of any toxins or allergens.

  Night looked down at me. Pale blue eyes.

  “Hey!” Tattletale spoke, “Pay attention!”

  Night drew a knife from a hip sheath. She bent down over me. I dropped her cloak and struggled to reach behind my back for my own knife, but she was faster. The blade pressed against my throat. My hand caught her wrist, stopping her from going any further. I was pretty sure my costume could take a cut from a knife, but if she found the gap where my mask was separate from the body portion of my costume that extended around the lower part of my neck, she could slide the blade through with no difficulty.

  “Damn you!” Tattletale shouted. I was only aware of Night’s unwavering, unblinking gaze, the feel of her wrist in my grip. Then the gunshots.

  Night didn’t even scream. She dropped partway on top of me, falling onto her side, her weight on my legs.

  The villainess lay there, silently writhing, hands behind her back. Blood welled from holes in her lower back and the space where her buttock met her thigh. I glanced at Tattletale, who had her gun raised, looking slightly surprised and disturbed by what she’d just had to do.

  Any sense of relief I felt at Night being taken out of action was short lived.

  Too bright to look at, Purity hurtled down from the sky to land just beside Night and me. I saw her raise one hand toward Tattletale and the others, energy welling up.

  The blast of light momentarily blinded me, and it struck me just why Purity had Night and Fog working as part of her personal squad. There were no happy coincidences there. She must have calculated how their powers could collectively work together. Her light and Fog’s mist could blind their foes, with Night leveraging any opportunities gained. Alabaster and Crusader? Probably intended as the front line, to slow the enemy down, take out the problem targets and buy time for the core group to do what they needed. Or to do what they were doing now, and occupy enemies elsewhere.

  When I could see again, I tried to grasp what had changed and what had happened. Dust filled much of the alley, Night stood beside Purity, unhurt, and my teammates were on the ground. No blood. Nobody dead or dying. At least, nobody that hadn’t been dead or dying when Purity arrived. I was getting worried about Grue. He didn’t look nearly as lively as he had two minutes ago.

  A channel had been carved out of the brick wall to Purity’s right. Motes of light still danced around it. An intentional miss? No. It would have been Regent throwing off her aim.

  “Purity! Kayden! Not looking for a fight!” Tattletale called out. She raised her hands, her gun dangling from one finger by the trigger guard.

  Purity just raised her hand, and more light began glowing in her palm.

  “Dale and Emerson!” Tattletale added.

  Purity didn’t lower her hand, but she didn’t shoot either. “What?”

  “Aster.” Tattletale stood up, “She’s at Dale and Emerson. Outskirts of town. The PRT has a safehouse there, for when a villain’s after someone, or in case some member of the Protectorate or Wards gets outed, and their family needs a spot to stay.”

  “How—”

  “You worked alongside me when we were dealing with the ABB. Your subordinates and allies have as well. You know I have my sources.”

  “Don’t believe you. You have no reason to tell me this, you told everyone—”

  Tattletale interrupted, “We didn’t tell the media that stuff. I’m even a little pissed about it. Not just about us getting blamed, but that they didn’t just attack you, but your families? It’s fucked up. Entire reason we came here was to set the record straight and get you your kid back.”

  “Kaiser said—”

  “Kaiser thought he’d get more out of this debacle if he turned you against us, first, before directing you at the people or person who really sent the email.”

  Purity shook her head.

  Tattletale added, “It’s up to you. Who are you going to trust, when Aster is on the line? Me, or Kaiser?”

  That was her argument? I started to move to where I could attack Purity if it came down to it. A spearpoint pressing down against my collarbone stopped me. I looked up and saw Crusader behind me.

  Purity dropped her hand to her side. She told Tattletale, “You’re coming with me.”

  “Didn’t expect any less. But you’re letting my team go, and this destruction stops.”

  “And how do I know you’re not just sacrificing yourself for them?”

  “Because whatever else you might be, Kayden, you somehow, in some warped perspective, see yourself as an upstanding person. And if I wasn’t an honest person when it counted, I wouldn’t trust you to hold to that. Make sense?”

  It didn’t to me. It was circular reasoning. I wouldn’t have listened if it were Tattletale trying to convince me The question was whether it would get through to Purity.

  Purity stared at Tattletale for a long time. I was acutely aware of the spear at my chest, which Crusader could thrust through my costume and into me with a momentary use of his power. How easily Purity or Fog could give Night the opportunity she needed to slaughter my teammates.

  “You’re aware of the consequences if you’re wrong?”

  “I’m not stupid,” Tattletale spoke. “You take out your anger on me, I wind up dead or maimed.”

  Purity stepped forward and grabbed Tattletale’s wrist.

  “The others walk,” Purity spoke to her subordinates, leaving no room for argument or discussion. She wrapped one arm around Tattletale’s ribs, and they were gone in a flash of light, a trail of firefly-like lights dancing in Purity’s wake.

  In that same momentary glare that had carried our teammate and Purity away, Night had moved into the midst of our team. She had a knife held with the blade pointed out of the bottom of her fist, pressed to Regent’s throat.

  “I get it,” Regent replied, with a disinterested tone, “You could kill us right here. May we go?”

  Night sheathed the knife and walked through the group to Fog, who was gathering himself up in a human shape again, turning away to exit the alley. Crusader, on the opposite side of us, was rising back up to the sky.

  I breathed a sigh of relief as Purity’s squad disappeared. I held my breath again when I saw Grue and, further down the alleyway, Angelica. Grue’s darkness was reduced to mere wisps around his body, which I took to be a bad sign. Hurrying toward him, I retrieved my cell phone, went down to the bottom of the contact list.

  It rang three times before it picked up. I heard ambient noise, maybe a fan, but the person on the other end didn’t respond.

  “Coil,” I spoke, “it’s Skitter. We need that doctor of yours. Fast.”

  “Can you get to the same location as last time?”

  “I don’t know. Grue and the dogs are hurt. We may need a ride.”

  “I will arrange it. Expect a call from the driver shortly.” He hung up. Not quite so friendly as the last time we’d talked.

  I set to helping Alec steady Angelica while Bitch worked with Judas, who’d been effectively blinded in the fight with Night. She guided his head and shoulders under Angelica’s body, so the smaller ‘do
g’ was draped over him.

  Once Angelica was in position, I hopped up behind Grue and helped him turn him over, to examine his chest. I applied pressure and used the remainder of the bandage I had in my utility compartment to try to staunch the bleeding. When I talked to him, asked him to verify that he was okay, his replies were monosyllabic and fairly nonsensical.

  Between Judas’s canine burden and the damage Brutus had apparently sustained to his side, the two dogs moved slower than I normally walked as they plodded down the alley.

  Every moment was nerve wracking. I kept waiting for someone in the Wards, New Wave or Empire Eighty-Eight to find their way into the alley, spot us and pick a fight. Worse, I harbored grave concerns that Grue might stop breathing.

  The phone call from Coil’s people came when we’d reached the beach—the closest spot I could think of that would put us out of line of sight in the continued fighting. I directed the guy on the phone to our position, and in my nervousness, I had to get them to verify, twice, that they’d safely made it through the barricade without any trouble. All we needed was another ambush at the barricades from more of Hookwolf’s underlings.

  The moment the pair of ambulances arrived, we loaded Grue into the back of one, the three dogs into the other. Brutus and Judas had shrunk, having shed the layers of added bulk, and were more or less alright underneath it all. Angelica, though, had been in Fog’s mist, and wasn’t any better even though she was almost normal size. She’d inhaled the mist, drawn it into her lungs. I could only surmise that it had consequently made its way into her bloodstream, and from there, to the rest of her body. Only time would tell how much damage Fog had done to her from within.

  I went in the ambulance with Grue, and watched as they gave him extra blood and tended to his chest. Between my first time job patching up his chest, the fact that he’d torn it open, and my haphazard attempts to wad it with bandages and stall the blood loss as we retreated from the scene, it was a mess. I cringed, feeling guilty, waiting for one of Coil’s medics to call me on something I’d done wrong. They worked in silence, which was almost worse.

  I sent Tattletale a text:

  Frog A. Got Coil’s people to pick us up. Brian is getting help. Dogs are mostly okay. Text me back.

  We pulled in behind the doctor’s office, and Tattletale still hadn’t replied. I was surprised that the ambulance with Bitch, Regent and the dogs hadn’t come with us.

  The doctor was a cranky old guy that Coil’s medic referred to as Dr. Q. He was a thin-lipped man, about my height, which made him fairly small. His hair was either recently cut or he got it cut regularly, was slicked close to his scalp, and seemed too dark given how old his face and hands were. He took over for the medics as they carted Grue in, and they left with a nod to me. I nodded back, unsure of how else to respond.

  I stood by Grue’s bed with my arms folded and watched. Dr. Q checked the work the medics had done in suturing up Brian’s chest and muttered to himself that it was competent. When he’d verified they hadn’t screwed up, he took the time to clean Brian’s chest and remove the remaining threads from the first job.

  “The bug girl,” he finally commented.

  “Yeah. I’m really sorry about bringing the bugs to your place, last time. I see they’re gone now.”

  “They are,” was his response.

  I nodded. I checked my phone again. Still no response from Tattletale.

  Minutes passed.

  “Okay,” he pulled off his latex gloves, “Nothing more we can do for this lug. You unhurt?”

  I shrugged, “More or less. Got jabbed in the stomach, I have my aches and pains, hurt my ear earlier, but I already got it taken care of.”

  “I’ll verify that for myself.”

  He checked my stomach, which required me to take off the top of my costume, and he prodded the bruise Cricket had left me with cold, dry fingers. Then he had me remove my mask to examine my ear. Apparently, he didn’t deem Brian’s job satisfactory, so I was sat down on a stool so he could clean it up.

  He was partway through the job when my phone vibrated. I read it and heaved a sigh of relief.

  Tattletale:

  Avocado c. she got what she needed. omw

  Buzz 7.11

  The skeleton of a building loomed over us. Girders and beams joined together in what would become one of Brockton Bay’s high rises, twenty stories tall. At the base of it was a sea of crushed stone, with innumerable bulldozers, piledrivers, loaders, mixers and graders standing still and dark. The only light came from the buildings and streetlights on the surrounding streets.

  Tattletale put key to lock and let us through the fence that surrounded the site. She held the gate open as Grue, Regent, Bitch and I filed through, followed by Judas and Brutus. The two dogs were nearly normal in size, nothing that would raise alarm if someone saw us at a distance. When we were through, Tattletale shut the gate and reached through the gap to put the lock back in place and click it shut.

  Gravel crushed underfoot as we made our way to the unfinished high rise. Tattletale pointed to a hatch, surrounded by a rim of concrete. The hatch itself had a yellow warning sign reading ‘Drainage’, sporting images beneath of a man wearing a hazmat suit and a man wearing a gas mask. She fiddled with the keyring to get the right key, undid the lock and raised the hatch. Stairs led down into a darkness that looked and smelled very much like a storm drain.

  As we descended, the smell got stronger. We passed through a door with metal bars, and then traveled down a long hallway. The room at the end of the hall was small, with one other door and a small surveillance camera in one corner. The door we faced had no handle, forcing us to wait. It took about twenty seconds before someone opened the door for us. One of Coil’s men.

  The interior of the sub-basement had none of the smell of the previous chambers, and consisted of two tiers with walls of poured concrete. The upper level we stood on was an arrangement of metal walkways that extended around the room’s perimeter. Crates and boxes filled the level below, and I could see fifteen or so of Coil’s people down there, sitting on crates or leaning against them, talking among themselves.

  Each soldier was outfitted in a matching uniform: shades of gray and some black, hard vests with raised collars to protect their necks. Only a few wore their balaclavas, and I could see a variety of nationalities in a group that was mostly men. All of the soldiers had assault rifles somewhere nearby, slung over shoulders with straps and leaning against walls or crates. Polished steel attachments on the underside of each gun’s barrel contrasted with the dark gunmetal tone of the rest of the equipment.

  The man who had opened the door for us inclined his head in the direction we were to go. We traversed the metal walkway, and passed more of Coil’s soldiers. I saw one squad of six below us was gearing up, pulling on masks and checking their guns. Five seconds later, we passed Circus on the walkway, in a costume and makeup of red and gold. Oblivious to us or our passing, she was leaning against a wall by a stack of cardboard boxes, standing intimately close to a young soldier with close-cropped red hair and an ugly scar running down one side of his neck.

  We found Coil at the end of the walkway, talking to four people who most definitely weren’t soldiers. Each wore a suit, and none seemed the type to carry a gun. There was a heavyset woman, a man who must’ve been fifty or sixty, a man who stood no more than four feet tall and a blonde woman who barely looked out of high school.

  “Cranston, can you have it for tomorrow?”

  “Yes, sir,” the blonde woman replied.

  “Good. Pearse, the soldiers?”

  “Squads Fish, Nora and Young are suited up and ready for your okay,” the short man spoke.

  “And the replacement recruits?”

  Pearse handed Coil a set of folders, “I’ve put post-its on the most promising. We need two to make up for one soldier that was recently injured, and one that decided to skip town.”

  Coil tucked the folders under one arm, “Good. Duchene, I’l
l talk to you later tonight about our preparations. The rest of you, I’ll see you tomorrow night.”

  The suits marched off, with all but the fat lady passing us to go the way we’d come, along the metal walkway. The woman headed down the stairs to the lower area with all the soldiers, and a group of people that weren’t in uniform flocked to her. People with clipboards and crowbars. The construction crew?

  “Undersiders,” Coil spoke. “You’ve recuperated this past week?”

  “More or less,” Grue replied. He had his arms folded.

  “Excellent. And what do you think?” He gestured to the underground complex around us with a sweep of his arm.

  “It’s impressive,” Grue spoke.

  “Once things are set up, some of this will be a base of operations for the Travelers, the rest of this space serving as a place my men can meet before they deploy.”

  “Right,” Grue replied.

  “So. I expected a reply once you felt you were healed and ready for more work, or if you decided on a reply for my deal, but I got a sense this isn’t quite that.”

  Tattletale spoke, “We can’t keep doing this, Coil.”

  It was hard to tell, but I suspected that did something to knock Coil off his stride. “Hm. Elaborate?”

  “We keep getting through these fights by the skin of our teeth. We’re not up to it. Just a few days after we helped take down the ABB, a situation that had two of our members facing down Lung and Oni Lee, we were up against the Protectorate, the Wards and Empire Eighty-Eight in the span of forty-eight hours. Even with your people and your powers to help, we’re not strong enough for this.”

  “I see,” Coil turned to face the lower section of the sub-basement and look down at his people. He rested his hands on the railing, “Are you terminating our arrangement?”

  Tattletale shook her head, “We’d rather not, but it depends on what we agree to here and now, in this meeting. We talked this over for the past week, and I’ll be blunt. The one person who wasn’t keen on taking your deal changed her mind, but the rest of us now have some serious reservations. And it’s not just the issue of our safety.”