Worm

by wildbow

  I descended back to a safer distance, where falling wouldn’t be terminal, and tried to plan.

  Finding Tattletale was number one. With her assistance, everything else would be easier. As much as I wanted to make Grue my second priority, I knew that there were other things that took precedence. Siberian was a big one. Finding a way to distribute the cure was another. Once I started, it would set up a chain reaction, but I had to decide how to start it off.

  Tattletale first. She could help me find Siberian and figure out how to distribute the antidote.

  I tracked the trails of extermination smoke as I flew. I was faster than they were, but they were elusive, staying out of sight and moving through awkward positions. I spotted one mechanical spider moving through a trash-littered alleyway and changed my route to close in on another trail.

  My second confirmation of a mechanical spider left me with the feeling that I’d made the wrong call.

  But it was too late to turn back. It would be faster to go help Tattletale and get her assistance than to turn around and fumble along on my own.

  They were traveling on foot, I hoped, and they still had to find Cherish. She was bound to be in a remote spot, and they didn’t have many clues to work with. It would take time.

  Things hadn’t exactly been quiet while I’d been gone.

  “Calm down! If we all just stop fighting, then this doesn’t end in tragedy.”

  “Why should I believe you?”

  “I’ll tell you as soon as I can think of a convincing reason!”

  Tattletale was on the street, alone, facing down Bitch, two dogs and one wolf on full-tilt mutation-mode. They advanced with measured steps, keeping close to their master.

  I landed beside Tattletale, and the two of us made eye contact.

  “L-mist.”

  “A-Carnelian,” she answered. “You understand if I don’t trust you implicitly, here?”

  “I do. Listen, I’ve got a cure—”

  “Who the fuck are you!?” Rachel shouted.

  I shut my mouth and turned to face her.

  I was secretly glad the dogs hadn’t turned on her, as that probably would have meant the death of a teammate, but I was getting a firsthand look at what our enemies had to deal with. The dogs were big and vicious enough that if they attacked, there wasn’t a whole lot I could have done. Heck, Tattletale and I together couldn’t have managed much of a defense against one of the creatures, let alone three.

  “We’re teammates,” I told her. “I was just fighting the Nine, I’ve got a cure for this thing.”

  “Or you’re going to kill me the second I let my guard down.”

  I’d been conned by the Nine. Tricked into letting them get access to certain information. Bitch wouldn’t have fallen for that, but that came with the caveat that she was that much harder for us to reassure.

  “I can put my weapons away. Or give them to you.”

  “I’m not that stupid,” she growled the words. “Don’t treat me like I’m retarded. I’m not. I know you have powers.”

  “That wasn’t what I wanted to say,” I said. I kept my voice low, my tone as calm as I could manage. “I was just saying I’d disarm myself if it would reassure you.”

  “The only thing that’s going to make me feel any better is getting the fuck away from here. But she wouldn’t get out of my way.”

  “If you leave,” Tattletale told her, “You’ll go straight to the Trainyard, to your other dogs, and you’ll get worse. You’ll wind up isolated from the rest of us. And I think the Nine want that. They wanted people for their group, and doesn’t this set their candidates up for easy recruiting? Separate them from their previous attachments, leave them vulnerable and lost, then give them the hard sell.”

  “Not that you’re wrong,” I said, glancing at Tattletale while trying to keep the dogs in sight, “I saw Jack trying that with Panacea. But Bitch tends to see it as slimy or conniving when someone talks a lot.”

  “I see. You want to try, then?”

  Bentley growled. It didn’t sound like a dog growl. What worried me, though, was Bastard. He was untrained enough that he wouldn’t necessarily listen to Bitch, and big enough to feel confident about attacking.

  Not that I was positive she would stop him if he attacked. As much as she felt like she’d feel more secure on her own, Bitch might well decide she could resolve this situation by killing anyone who threatened her. It wasn’t that she was the murdering type, but she didn’t have the innate sympathy for her fellow humans. She cared as little about murdering us as I might feel about killing two dogs if I felt like my life was on the line.

  I’d been in a similar headspace, trying to figure out who was friendly and who wasn’t. Jack had been more on the ball than I, and I’d fallen for his ploy. I’d deal with the guilt over what that might mean at a later point.

  “A little while ago, we spent some time in one of your shelters. I’m guessing you don’t remember who, but you remember chilling out and eating Greek food with someone?”

  “You could have found that out through someone else.”

  “I know. That’s not what I’m saying. I’m just wanting you to think about that feeling. I’d like to think we got along, as far as people like you and people like me can get along with others.”

  “Doesn’t mean anything to me now.”

  “Okay.” I let my arms drop to my sides.

  “That’s it? That’s your argument?”

  “I don’t really have much better. I know that if I tried to convince you using logic and a well worded argument, you’d feel like I was being manipulative. All I can say is that we had a good time then, we were friendly. I know we parted ways some time after that, but I’d really like to get back to that point. So I’m appealing to that emotional attachment, I guess.”

  “You think I’m attached to you?”

  This again. This situation seemed to be highlighting the worst parts of people and twisting others. Amy’s paranoia, Legend’s battle instincts, Bitch’s antisocial tendencies, and my… whatever it was, that led to me trusting Jack.

  “Yeah. I’m making that assumption,” I told her.

  “Fuck you.”

  She advanced, and I stayed put. Sirius growled.

  “I’m not your enemy,” I said.

  “We’ll attack you.”

  “If you do, maybe the cure will get transmitted to your dog, and then to you.”

  “You’re not that stupid.”

  I shook my head. “Not really. But I don’t think you’ll attack me, either.”

  She advanced closer. Sirius growled again, and she held one hand out to stop him.

  So glad they still listen to her. This would be a disaster if the dogs were on a rampage. I supposed the miasma was slower to affect them, given their mass, or the vectors it affected weren’t present or as predominant in dogs.

  She stepped close, until her nose was an inch from mine. She stared unflinching into my eyes. I met her gaze with that same unforgiving hardness.

  “No way I could like someone like you.” The words were like the twist of a knife. Hostility and aggression combined with pure, petty malice.

  “Just going by looks, when you can’t see half my face?” I asked. Without breaking eye contact, I reached up and pulled down the lower half of my mask. “You don’t recognize me?”

  She didn’t glance away from my eyes. “No. Now move. I will order them to attack.”

  She would. She could.

  I leaned forward and planted a quick kiss on her lips.

  Her punch knocked me off my feet and sent my glasses flying off my face to land in the water somewhere nearby.

  “The fuck!?” She shouted. One of the dogs growled, deep, as if to complement her anger with a threat of his own.

  “You’re cured,” I told her. “That’s it, that’s all it takes.”

  She stared down at me.

  If this doesn’t work, she might kill me for real.

  Tattletale helped me
to my feet and handed me my glasses. I got my mask in place around the lower half of my face and then gathered bugs over the mask and glasses to hide my features.

  “How’s that work?” Tattletale asked.

  “The effects are being generated by a parasite. Panacea changed the parasite to some kind of symbiotic species that overrides the effects of Bonesaw’s work and heals the effects on the brain. My bodily fluids are carrying it. That means that right now, the parasites in Bitch’s bodies should be dying or getting replaced or transformed or something. I hope.”

  I dusted myself off, wiped at my costume where I’d landed in the water, and made sure none of my belongings had dropped from their positions in my armor or my belt.

  I didn’t hurry to meet Bitch’s eyes, because I knew that when I did, I’d have to maintain that gaze. Only when I was done did I meet her eyes.

  She took her time responding. “I was going to have Bentley break you.”

  It worked.

  “Glad you didn’t.”

  “Why?”

  Why had I done it? I’d tried to explain it to her so many times. I couldn’t bring myself to do it again.

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  Tattletale pointed down at the water just behind me. I turned around and looked. Where I’d landed on my back, the water was changing from red to a relatively clear state. ‘Relatively’ only because the water hadn’t been that clear to begin with. “Guess it’s working.”

  “Good,” I said. The last swirls of red disappeared from around my feet, and the water around me began to change back to normal. With increasing speed, the water around us began to transition back to normal at nearly the speed the effect had spread in the first place. It extended out in every direction, promising to revert most or all of the affected bodies of water.

  “You couldn’t have waited until after you’d cured me before you put the bugs on your face?” Tattletale asked. She was smiling as she asked it. “Unless you want me to drink that water.”

  “Sorry. No, I’ll help you out.”

  She gave me a stern look, pointed at me, and said, “No tongue.”

  I rolled my eyes, scattered the bugs, pulled my mask down and leaned over to give her a quick peck on the lips.

  “Now fill me in. I’ll fill in the blanks as you explain, and hopefully it’ll work fast enough that I can catch up.”

  “Jack and Bonesaw tricked me and Coil to figure out where both Cherish and Amy were. I gave chase, and Jack left before he accomplished anything more than head games.”

  “State she’s in, head games are pretty serious.”

  “Maybe. But at least she didn’t cave on his demands.”

  “Sure.”

  “The bad thing is… Jack knows about Dinah’s prophecy.”

  Tattletale looked as though I’d slapped her. “Shit.”

  “I mean, her numbers weren’t that good as far as our mortality rate going up against the Nine, so maybe she’s wrong about—”

  I stopped as Tattletale shook her head.

  “Depends how you interpret it,” she said. “The kid sounded pretty certain. Anyways, keep going.”

  “Siberian’s somewhere downtown, her real body in some kind of case, maybe.”

  “I think we might have run into her,” Tattletale said. “I wasn’t paying a lot of attention to details, mostly just trying to avoid trouble. But I’m pretty sure she was hauling around something big. Fuck, I think she might have had a friend.”

  “A friend?”

  “Hookwolf.”

  I nodded slowly. “Where was she headed?”

  “North.”

  “Where did Coil stick Cherish?”

  Tattletale made a face. “North.”

  If there had been a wall in reach, I would have punched it. “Wonderful.”

  “Explain?” Bitch asked.

  “They’re heading over to Cherish’s location, I’m almost a hundred percent positive,” Tattletale explained. “If Siberian’s heading there to rendezvous with them, then any further encounters with them are going to be ugly. Doubly so if they have new blood on their team.”

  “Hookwolf’s under the influence of Bonesaw’s miasma,” I added. “Don’t know what his reasons were for staying here, but the miasma seems to have eliminated that. He’s with the Nine. Maybe permanently. Bonesaw will keep it from killing him, I guess.”

  “So they got their candidate?”

  “And,” I addressed Bitch as I spoke, “They might be looking for more candidates to round out their group. If they left Siberian behind to try to recruit Hookwolf, and they tried a pretty aggressive strategy against Panacea, then they might make another stab at recruiting you. Or Regent.”

  “Or Noelle,” Tattletale added.

  Why did that give me such a bad feeling?

  I sighed. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. I think we should give chase.”

  “Head to where Cherish is?”

  I nodded. “It hasn’t been too long, so they won’t have much time to prepare any counterattack. It does still leave the problem of finding the others and curing them before something bad happens.”

  “If the cure is contagious… Bitch, you think you could work on finding and curing the others?”

  “How?”

  I spoke up, “Cure your dogs. Spit in their mouths, whatever. Then see about tracking down the others, ambushing them, and having the dogs lick their faces?”

  She scowled. “I haven’t trained ’em to do that.”

  “You’ve got ten minutes to teach them,” Tattletale grinned.

  “Whatever.”

  “You’ll see about curing the others?”

  “Yeah.” Bitch pointed, “But it won’t work with my dogs. They kill any parasites while my power’s working.”

  Right. I could remember curing Sirius of heartworm.

  I shrugged. “Another way? Maybe if you dose some fresh water with the new parasites, spit in it, then splash people? People are going to start getting better fast, with the water changing, but let’s make sure our side is okay?”

  Bitch nodded once, curt.

  “And can you loan me Bentley?” Tattletale asked.

  “I’m starting to wonder why I’m on this team,” Bitch grumbled.

  “You have to ask?” Tattletale grinned as she approached Bentley.

  “I know it’s just words,” I told Bitch, “But I’m glad you’re back.”

  She stared at me like I was speaking Klingon.

  “Let’s go,” Tattletale said, as she climbed onto Bentley. He growled, but she didn’t seem to mind. Maybe his bark was worse than his bite and she knew it?

  Either way, I decided to trust her and took off.

  I’d done my part, and I’d have to trust Bitch to complete the task.

  I was making more forward progress than Tattletale, though I could feel Atlas fatiguing. It wasn’t the same as the fatigue I experienced, but he was slowing down fractionally in his wingbeats per second. It stood to reason. He was big, and he hadn’t eaten since he was created. That was compounded by the fact that he’d been going full-bore with minimal chance to rest.

  Still, we had the advantage of being able to fly over obstacles, which was something I was gaining a greater appreciation of since I’d gotten the hang of flying him.

  With Atlas being tired, not wanting to lose track of Tattletale, I kept our flight close to the ground.

  “Where is she?” I called out, as I met her pace.

  “Boat Graveyard. Beached ship, she’s in the hold.”

  “Coil told you this?”

  “No, but he’ll forgive me for figuring it out, given circumstances.”

  “If you’re sure.”

  It wasn’t a short trip. Our destination was north of the market, and the market was a distance from my house. We were making our way from downtown to the Boat Graveyard.

  When the local industry had collapsed, the Boat Graveyard had been something of a staging ground for the irate dock workers. S
hipping companies based in Brockton Bay saw the signs of what was coming and trapped other boats in the harbor as a form of protest, to ensure they weren’t walking away empty-handed. Police had made arrests, but actually moving the ships out of the way required sailors, and the move had mobilized enough of them that clearing the upper areas of the docks of the ships became all but impossible. Things capped off with fights, gunfire and a deliberate sinking of a container ship by one of the protesters.

  Opinions varied on whether the incident had been a symptom or a cause of the collapse. Either way, the result was the Boat Graveyard—an entire section of the coastline where boats had sat for so long that they’d rusted or taken on water.

  We paused at the top of a hill overlooking the scene: forty or fifty derelict ships, some bigger in sheer mass than the skyscrapers downtown. Leviathan’s waves had slammed them all into the coastline, smashing them against one another and turning more than a few into something unrecognizable.

  Even with Tattletale’s hint, I wasn’t sure I could have found where Cherish was lurking.

  “How do we find her before she finds us?” I asked.

  “We don’t. She knows where we are.”

  I scanned the wreckage with my eyes. Would Siberian pop out? Hookwolf?

  “They aren’t attacking.”

  Tattletale shook her head, but she didn’t speak.

  My bugs began searching for signs of life.

  “You outrange her,” Tattletale spoke. “You detect them, you attack before she can whammy us.”

  “Yeah.” Fat lot of good it’ll do with Siberian there.

  I was getting a sense of why there wasn’t any foot traffic here. Even on land, the force of Leviathan’s tidal wave had sent age-worn sheets of metal flying over the landscape. Ragged edges of rusty sheet metal waited under every step I took, scraping and stabbing against the soles of my costumed feet. Tattletale was relying on Bentley’s weight and durability to handle anything that waited underfoot. He was still panting hard from the run.

  My swarm sense alerted me to life in the hold of a ship. The space was half-filled with sand, and water had leaked in through a hole in the side of the ship. If supplies were delivered by way of remote control, that was a likely route.