Worm

by wildbow

  No, a better plan of action would be to keep out of sight.

  I sent my bugs forward, tracing the lines of the curtains and wall. Once I was sure that the curtains in the next few patient enclosures were closed, I moved the curtain to my right and headed that way.

  Some cape I didn’t know was unconscious, blood smeared around his nose and mouth, almost caking the upper half of his mask to his face.

  Another enclosure, an empty cot, with red stains on the sheets from whatever patient had been there earlier.

  There was a window past the next enclosure. I wasn’t sure if I could climb out, or if there would be somewhere to go once I had, but it gave me hope.

  I pushed my way into the next curtained enclosure. Stopped.

  Oh.

  There were shouts behind me, which might have been someone noting my absence. I was at the point of not caring anymore.

  I tried to take a step forward, to move to the bedside or around it, but my newly healed legs gave out under me. I crumpled into a kneeling position.

  Staring up at the occupant of the bed, a few things came to me. For one thing, I got to experience first hand what Brian had told me, about how he’d gone cold, still and quiet inside on that day he’d gotten his powers.

  For another, I realized why they’d had me chained up. Kind of stupid not to, in retrospect. A glance at the curtain showed a blue tag, the same style as the red one that had been on my curtain, plastic, unlabeled.

  The bed’s occupant lay on her back, tubes running into her nose and mouth, an IV in her arm. An ugly cut marred her right breast and shoulder, which were bare. Smaller cuts covered the rest of her body.

  Running footsteps and the sound of a curtain being heaved open in a neighboring section didn’t stir me from my daze.

  The bed’s occupant wore Shadow Stalker’s costume, sans mask.

  I recognized her. Sophia Hess.

  Extermination 8.7

  Sophia Hess was Shadow Stalker.

  I tried to pull all the individual pieces and clues together, fill in the blanks. Did this mean Emma was a cape, too? No—I’d seen Emma in the presence of other capes. At those times, I knew, she’d have reason to be in costume if she had powers.

  But those times I was thinking of, when my cape and civilian lives had crossed? Emma had been at the mall, where Shadow Stalker had been on duty. She’d been at the fundraiser, too. As Shadow Stalker’s plus one? Emma’s dad had been there as well. Was that a clue?

  A sick feeling in my gut told me that Emma knew about Sophia and Shadow Stalker.

  I could even guess that Emma had found out sometime before high school started, while I was at nature camp. It would have been an exciting revelation, a juicy secret, being a part of the cape community. Seduced by that drama, Emma would have turned her back on me, became Sophia’s best friend. The civilian sidekick and confidante to the young heroine; it was cliche, but cliches had their basis in something.

  I was probably wrong on some level, but it gave answer to questions I’d assumed I’d never get an answer to.

  A hand seized me by the back of the neck, hauled me to my feet.

  Numb, I wobbled, relying heavily on the painfully hard grip to stay balanced. He turned me around, and I saw Armsmaster, his lips curled in a silent snarl of anger. A glance at his shoulder showed no sign of the ragged mess from when I’d last seen him, but there was no arm either. I thought I saw a glimpse of a flat expanse of skin. Panacea’s work?

  “What are you doing here?!” he roared the words to my face.

  When I couldn’t formulate an answer for him, he marched me out of the curtained enclosure, kicking the curtain so it slid shut, moved me towards the nurse’s station where Miss Militia and Legend were talking.

  I apparently didn’t move fast enough for him, because he swung his arm forward, forcing me to stumble forward to keep my feet under me.

  It was looking increasingly likely that I would get arrested, but my thoughts turned to the trio, and their crime and punishment. Had Sophia, Emma and Madison had gotten off easy because Sophia was a superhero? I had my suspicions that the schools worked alongside the Wards, things wouldn’t work if they didn’t, and the schools were a government institution just like the Wards were. Did Sophia get easier treatment? Two weeks suspension when she deserved expulsion?

  Had my teachers been looking me in the eye while calculating ways to make things easier on their resident superhero?

  Maybe. More likely that it was some combination of ineptitude, laziness and ignorance, on top of being influenced by the school’s link to the Wards program.

  Armsmaster slammed my upper body down against the counter of the nurse’s station, hard. I grunted, as much in reaction to being brought back to reality as in reaction to the blow.

  “Armsmaster!” Legend’s tone was a rebuke to Armsmaster for the show of force.

  More able to take it in stride than the leader of the Protectorate, Miss Militia asked, “What happened?”

  “Escaped her cautionary restraints, caught her peeping on one of the blue tags.”

  “Damn it,” Legend muttered.

  “Who?” Miss Militia asked, “And how bad?”

  “Shadow Stalker. Saw her unmasked.”

  “I see,” Miss Militia spoke, “Nurse? Would you see that everyone without clearance is put to work elsewhere, while we resolve this?”

  “Yes ma’am,” the reply came from a man I couldn’t see.

  I struggled to turn over, failed. When I found I couldn’t budge Armsmaster’s grip, I gave up, slumped onto the counter.

  “Who is she?” Legend asked.

  “Skitter, member of the Undersiders, a group of teenage villains,” Miss Militia replied. “Master five, bugs only.”

  “This situation is serious,” Legend spoke, walking around the counter until I could see him. I saw nurses and others behind him staring, some of them being ushered away by an older nurse in scrubs. “Do you understand?”

  He nodded at Armsmaster, and Armsmaster eased his grip some, as if it would make it easier to talk.

  I was opening my mouth to speak when the thought struck me—if Sophia was Shadow Stalker, did she know who I was? She’d heard me talk in costume, hadn’t she? I knew from the time the trio had overheard me in the bathroom and doused me in juice, that at least one of the girls could recognize my voice.

  I shook my head a little, as if it could get my thoughts back on track. “Nobody explained anything. You guys were going to arrest me, so I thought I’d leave.”

  “Hospital personnel aren’t permitted to talk to patients, liability reasons,” Miss Militia told me, echoing what I’d heard earlier.

  “Figured as much when the nurse didn’t answer my questions,” I muttered. No use dragging that nurse-in-training down with me. She’d been nice. “But Panacea did have words with me when she was putting me back together, and—”

  “Panacea is a member of New Wave,” Armsmaster spoke, and I got the impression the explanation or excuse was meant more for Legend than it was for me, “She’s not official.”

  “She’s the only person who would talk to me!” I raised my voice.

  “I would ask you to keep your voice down,” Legend spoke, his voice hard, “There’s very few ways a situation like this can go, with a cape’s civilian identity at stake. If you start shouting, specifically shouting what you know, it would severely curtail what options you have left to you. Understand?”

  When I didn’t come up with a response right away, he added, “If the tables were turned, if it was you who had your identity uncovered, you would want us taking the same firm hand, giving you that same respect.”

  I couldn’t help but chuckle silently for a second there. The armor of my mask clacked against the countertop as I let my head rest there. Respect? For Sophia?

  Besides, I had suspicions that if the tables were turned, Shadow Stalker wouldn’t be pinned against the counter of the nurse’s station.

  Taking a deep br
eath—no use digging myself in deeper—I asked, “You were talking options. What are they?”

  “If you were judged to have used an Endbringer situation to your advantage, you would meet the most serious penalty we can offer. Those who violate the Endbringer truce are almost always sent to the Birdcage,” he let that last word hang in the air.

  I had to keep myself from laughing again. This shit was too ridiculous. This was Sophia. She was five times the villain I was. The only difference between us were the labels that we stuck on ourselves. I told him, “It was an accident.”

  “Okay,” Legend told me.

  Armsmaster told him, “Skitter here has been building a fairly strong reputation as an adept liar, so be cautious.”

  “Oh?”

  “She’s fooled my instincts and my hardware on more than one occasion.”

  “Well, I suppose I’ll have to keep that in mind.” When Legend returned his attention to me, his lips were creased in a frown.

  What could I say to defend myself now? Anything I said would be colored by Armsmaster’s undeserved comment on my personality.

  “Another option would be for you to join the Wards. We were willing to offer you this when we got around to talking to you, before seeing you on your way. You would be placed under varying degrees of probation based on your past crimes, but you would earn a paycheck, you’d have a career—”

  “No.” The word left my mouth before I even thought about it.

  And when I did think about it? No. Not with Sophia there. No way, no how. If I stepped on her turf, I suspected one of us would kill the other. Besides, there wasn’t one thing about joining the Wards that was even remotely redeeming.

  “No?” he sounded surprised.

  “Just… no. I’d sooner go to the Birdcage.” I was surprised that I actually meant it. My contempt for the heroes was growing. Armsmaster had refused to cooperate with me on any level. Glory Girl and Panacea hadn’t done anything to earn my respect when I ran into them. Topping it off, they had a personality like Sophia’s on their team? I couldn’t even imagine joining them, now.

  “I don’t think you understand what you’re saying,” Legend spoke as if choosing his words carefully.

  I took a deep breath. “Is there a third option?”

  “You do not get to negotiate!” Armsmaster roared. Heads turned.

  Feeling a flare of anger, I retorted, “So he gets to yell, but I don’t?”

  “We have the authority here!” Armsmaster shouted.

  “The only authority you have is the authority people give you.” It wasn’t me who responded. The voice was male, familiar.

  “Grue!” I called out.

  “You’re alive,” Grue responded. “We thought—”

  “Is she okay? Tattletale!?”

  “I’m at about ninety percent,” Tattletale’s voice informed me. “You’re the one that gave us a scare.”

  I sagged in relief.

  “I would ask you to step back and let us handle this,” Miss Militia told him. “If any of you do decide to stay, and Skitter divulges the confidential information she’s happened upon, you could be just as culpable, face the same restrictions and penalties.”

  Grue replied, “So you want us to leave a teammate in your custody, here? No. That’s ridiculous. I can’t speak for the others, but I’m staying.”

  Teammate. He’d said I was his teammate.

  There was a pause.

  “All four of you, then,” Miss Militia replied, sighing, “I expected as much. I simply thought you should be informed.”

  “Skitter,” she went on, “just to be clear, you would be well advised to keep your mouth shut, until we’ve come to a consensus here. Or you could get your team in trouble.”

  “Noted,” I replied.

  Armsmaster let me stand, but he settled his one hand on my shoulder, held on with an steel grip that left me no illusions about my ability to walk over and join my friends. Ex-friends? I wasn’t sure where we stood. I hadn’t expected them to come to my defense.

  Grue looked much as he ever did, a human shape wreathed in smoky darkness. His skull mask showed through, when he was still like this, but his face was impossible to make out, let alone his facial expressions. Even his body language was masked beneath the layer of darkness, when it was billowing around him like it was, making him seem larger. I thought maybe he had his arms folded, but I couldn’t be sure, and he had his feet planted shoulder width apart.

  Regent looked a little worse for wear. He was wet, dirty, spattered in blood, and he had a long cut running from the side of his neck to his shoulder, down to his elbow, all neatly stitched up. I hadn’t heard any alerts about him being taken out of action, so I assumed it wasn’t that serious. That, or it was serious, and my broken armband hadn’t caught the message.

  Bitch, by contrast, looked to be in better shape than anyone present, physically. She stared at the ground, hands jammed in the pockets of mud-caked, soaking wet jeans. Her hair was wet, pulled straight back and away from her face. A hard plastic dog mask was raised so it sat on top of her head, cord dangling. She was intact. Physically.

  Mentally? Emotionally? Her dogs were the closest thing she had to family, and she had watched seven or eight of them die. She was rigid with tension and repressed anger, but she didn’t have anyone to direct it at, so it broiled inside her, just waiting for the slightest of excuses to be released and vented. I wondered if Grue had told her to keep her hands in her pockets to keep her from lashing out and hitting someone.

  Tattletale was on crutches with one leg bent to keep it away from the ground, had a bad bruise on her face, but was otherwise in one piece. Her eyes darted to watch the three heroes and myself.

  “Skitter escaped her restraints and uncovered another cape’s secret identity, and we can’t say for sure whether it was intentional or not,” Miss Militia explained to the rest of the group. “In the interest of protecting that cape, who I assume isn’t well enough to join the discussion…?”

  She looked at Armsmaster, who shook his head.

  “…We’re left with three options,” she finished her thought. “Jail time, especially if it’s discovered that this was intentional. Joining the Wards under a probationary program—”

  Regent snorted.

  “Or, as a final option, some sort of collateral.”

  “That option is generally reserved for capes we can trust,” Armsmaster spoke, his voice low.

  My pulse picked up as I heard Armsmaster’s words. This was a dangerous situation, all of a sudden.

  “Collateral? Explain?” Grue asked Miss Militia, apparently not gathering the deeper meaning of Armsmaster’s statement.

  “This isn’t the first time we’ve run into a situation like this, though this is a first for an Endbringer event that wasn’t a blatantly intentional attempt to gather information on a rival. In the previous case, the villain couldn’t be detained conventionally, and the Birdcage wasn’t yet running. To top it off, he… wasn’t Protectorate material. For reasons I won’t explain. Yet every individual involved was concerned that if we didn’t resolve the case, it would be a costly loss of resources on both sides with an ongoing pursuit by the heroes, and there would be potential escalation leading to serious harm or death on one side or the other.”

  Grue nodded, “So?”

  “So he agreed to reveal his real face to the other cape, so that any abuse of the knowledge on his part could or would be just as damaging to him.”

  Reveal myself to Sophia? No. On so many levels, no.

  “I’m sorry,” I told her, “that doesn’t work either.”

  Armsmaster tightened his grip on the armor of my shoulder until I could feel the pinch. Miss Militia leveled a very cold look at me. I saw Tattletale staring at me. I met her eyes. She was easiest to look at.

  “You’re making a difficult situation even more difficult for you, by being stubborn,” Legend spoke.

  “Knowing Skitter, I’m sure she has her reasons,”
Grue replied.

  “She always does,” Armsmaster replied.

  Grue turned his head sharply to look at the hero.

  No. He wouldn’t.

  “Well, you’ve made a good case,” Tattletale spoke. “Let me make mine?”

  “One second,” Legend spoke. He turned to Armsmaster, “I need more details on this group.”

  “The one that is speaking is Tattletale, member of the Undersiders,” Armsmaster spoke, his voice a hair away from being a growl, “A master manipulator, penchant for head games, likes to pretend she’s psychic but she isn’t. We don’t know her power, possibly clairvoyance, psychometry, or some combination thereof, but we’ve got her pegged as a thinker seven.”

  “Seven? I’m flattered,” Tattletale replied, grinning.

  “It’s reason enough to end this conversation here and now,” Armsmaster spoke. “Before you find some angle.”

  “Fine,” Legend nodded. “That’s all I need. Miss Militia? Escort them away?”

  Green-black energy leapt to Miss Militia’s hand, materialized into the shape of a gun. She didn’t raise it, and she kept her finger off the trigger, but the threat was implicit.

  “You start a fight here,” Grue spoke, “you better pray to some higher power that you can fucking spin this well enough with all those others looking, because it’s an end to the truce if you don’t, too many eyes on this.”

  Grue turned his head, and I leaned forward a little to see what he was looking at. There were capes at the far end of the hallway, staring at the scene, kept out of the main triage area by a set of PRT officers. Trickster leaned against a wall with a cell phone raised, recording video.

  “It’s not a concern,” Legend spoke. “Miss Militia?”

  “Come on, let’s walk,” she told the others.

  “No,” Grue replied, his chin raising an inch, challenging, defiant.

  Tattletale raised one hand, “If could just say my piece, I—”