Worm

by wildbow

  His daughter, Brandish thought. The resemblance was uncanny. The nose was different, the brow, but she was her father’s daughter.

  The idea disturbed her.

  She couldn’t shake that dim memory of the nameless man she’d killed on the night she got her powers. She hated Marquis in a way she couldn’t articulate, and if the memories that recurred every time she crossed paths with him were any clue, it was somehow tied to that.

  She wondered if it was because she liked him on a level. Was her psyche trying to protect her from repeating her earlier mistake?

  “Little close for comfort, Brandish dear,” Marquis spoke.

  She looked down. She’d unconsciously pressed the blade closer. When she lifted it, she could see the burn at the base of his throat.

  “Thank you kindly,” he spoke. There was a trace of irony there.

  That cultured act, the civility that was real. Marquis was fair, he played by the rules. His rules, but he stuck to them without fail. It didn’t match her vision of what a criminal should be. It was jarring, creating a kind of dissonance.

  That dissonance was redoubled as she looked at the forlorn little girl. Layers upon layers, distilled in one expression. Criminal, civilized man, child.

  “You can’t take him away,” the girl told them.

  “He’s a criminal,” Brandish responded. “He’s done bad things, he needs to go to jail.”

  “No. He’s just my daddy. Reads me bedtime stories, makes me dinner, and tells me jokes. I love him more than anything else in the world. You can’t take him away from me. You can’t!”

  “We have to,” Brandish told the girl. “It’s the law.”

  “No!” the girl shouted. “I hate you! I hate you! I’ll never forgive you!”

  Brandish reached out, as if she could calm the girl by touching her.

  The girl shrank back into the closet.

  Into the dark. She felt as if she was separated from the child by a chasm.

  “Let’s call the PRT,” Manpower said. “We should get Marquis into custody stat.”

  “Wouldn’t mind some medical treatment, if you could rush that?” Marquis asked.

  “…And medical treatment,” Manpower amended his statement.

  Brandish walked away. The others would handle this. She would wait outside to guide the responders into the manor, past the traps Marquis had set in place.

  She was still waiting when Lady Photon came outside, holding the little girl’s hand. Lady Photon seated the girl in the car and shut the door.

  Lady Photon joined Brandish on the stone stairs. “We can’t let her go into foster care. It’s not just the danger his enemies pose. Once people found out she was Marquis’ child, they’d start fighting over who could get their hands on her.”

  “Sarah—” Brandish started.

  “Then they’ll kidnap her. They’ll do it to exploit her powers, and she’s bound to be pretty powerful if she inherits anything like her father’s abilities.”

  “Then you take care of her,” Brandish replied, even as she mentally prayed her sister would refuse. There was something about the idea of being around Marquis’ child, that uncanny resemblance, having those memories stirred even once in a while, even if it was just at family reunions… it made her feel uneasy.

  “You know Neil and I don’t have that much money. Neil isn’t having luck finding work, and all our funding from the team is going into the New Wave plan, which won’t happen for a few months, and we have two hungry mouths to feed…”

  Brandish grasped her sister’s meaning. With a sick feeling in her gut, she spoke the idea aloud. “You want Mark and I to take her.”

  “You should. Amelia’s Vicky’s age, I think they would be close.”

  “It’s not a good idea.”

  “Why are you so reluctant?”

  Brandish shook her head. “I… you know I never planned to have kids?”

  “I remember you saying something like that. But then you had Vicky.”

  “I only caved to having Vicky because Mark was there, and I had to think about it for a while.”

  “Mark will be there for Amelia too.”

  Brandish could have mentioned how Mark was tired all the time, how his promise had proved empty. She might have mentioned how he was seeing a psychiatrist now, the tentative possibility of clinical depression. She stayed silent.

  “It’s not just that,” she said. “You know I have trouble trusting people. You know why.”

  The change on Lady Photon’s face was so subtle she almost missed it.

  “I’m sorry to bring it up,” Brandish said. “But it’s relevant. I decided I could have Vicky because I’d know her from day one. She’d grow inside me, I’d nurture her from childhood… she’d be safe.”

  “I didn’t know you were dwelling on it to that degree.”

  Brandish shrugged and shook her head, as if she could shake off this conversation, this situation. “That child deserves better than I can offer. I know I don’t have it in me to form any kind of bond with another child if there’s no blood relation.”

  Especially if she’s Marquis’.

  “She needs you. You’re her only option. I can’t, and Fleur and Lightstar aren’t old enough or in the right place in their lives for kids, and if she goes anywhere else, it’ll be disastrous.”

  Brandish decided on the most direct, clear line of argument she could muster, “I don’t want her. I can’t take her.”

  Brandish glanced at the kid that they’d stowed in the team’s car. The child was standing on the car seat, hands pressed against the window. Her stare bored into Brandish as though little girl had laser vision.

  The window was open a crack, Brandish noted. The girl could probably hear everything they’d been saying. Brandish looked away.

  Lady Photon did as she’d so often done, ignoring reason in favor of the emotional appeal. “You grew to love and trust Mark. You could grow to love and trust that little girl, too.”

  * * *

  Liar.

  Brandish stared at the teenaged girl. Amy couldn’t even look her in the eye. Tears were streaming down the girl’s face.

  “Where’s Victoria?” Brandish made the question a demand.

  “I’m so sorry,” Amy responded, her voice hoarse. She’d been crying long before anyone had showed up.

  Brandish felt choked up as well, but she suppressed the emotion. “Is my daughter dead?”

  “No.”

  “Explain.”

  “I—I don’t—No—” Amy stuttered.

  She could have slapped the girl.

  “What happened to my daughter!?”

  Amy flinched as though she’d been struck.

  “Carol—” Lady Photon spoke, her voice gentle. “Take it easy.”

  They stood in the mist of a ruined neighborhood. Amy had stepped outside within a minute of their arrival, blocking the door with her body. There was no resistance in the girl, though. It was more like the obstruction was a way of running, of forestalling the inevitable.

  The girl hugged her arms against her body, her hands trembling even as they clutched her upper arms. Her teeth chattered, as if she were cold, but it was a warm evening.

  Was the girl in shock? Carol couldn’t muster any sympathy. Amy was stopping her from getting to Victoria. Victoria, who she’d almost believed was dead.

  “Amy,” Lady Photon spoke, “What’s going on? You won’t let us inside, but you won’t explain. Just talk.”

  Amy shivered. “I… she wouldn’t let me help her, she was so angry, so I calmed her down with my power. She’d been hurt badly, so I wrapped her up. A cocoon, so she could heal.”

  “That’s good. So Victoria’s okay?” Lady Photon coaxed responses from Amy.

  Of course she’s not okay, Brandish thought. What about this situation makes you think she could be okay?

  “I… I had to wait a while before I could let her out, so I could be sure she had healed completely. I—”

&n
bsp; Amy stopped as her voice cracked.

  “Keep going,” Lady Photon urged.

  Amy glanced at Brandish, who stood with her arms folded, stone-faced.

  If I change my expression now, if I say or do anything, I’ll lose it, I’ll break, Brandish thought. Her heart thudded in her chest.

  “I didn’t want her to fight. And I didn’t want her to follow, or to hate me because I used my power on her again.”

  Again?

  “So I thought I’d put her in a trance, and make it so she’d forget everything that happened. Everything that I did, and the things that the Slaughterhouse Nine said, and everything that I said to try to make them go away. Empty promises and—”

  Her voice hitched.

  “What happened?” Brandish asked, for the Nth time.

  “She was lying there, and I wanted to say goodbye. I—I—”

  Something in Amy’s voice, her tone, her posture, it provided the final piece, clicking into place, making so many things suddenly come together.

  Brandish marched forward, fully intending to walk right past Amy. Amelia. His daughter. She could never be my daughter because she’d never stopped being his.

  A cornered rat will bite. Amy realized what Brandish intended and reached out, a reflex.

  A weapon sprung into Brandish’s hand. Not so dissimilar from the first weapon she’d made, an unrefined bludgeon of raw lightstuff. She moved as if to parry the reaching hand and Amy scrambled back out of the way, eyes wide.

  Where to go? Brandish glanced to the rooms to the left, then down the hall in front of her. She looked back and saw Amy with her back to the wall. She moved toward the staircase, glanced back at Amy, and saw a reaction. Fear. Trepidation.

  Before Amy could protest, Brandish was heading up the stairs, taking them two at a time.

  “Carol!” Amy shouted, scrambling up the stairs. There was the sound of her falling on the stairs in her haste to follow, “Stop! Carol! Mom!”

  Only one door was still open. Brandish entered the room and stopped.

  She didn’t move as Amy’s spoke from behind her. “Please, let me explain.”

  Brandish couldn’t bring herself to move or speak. Amy seemed to take that silence as assent.

  “I wanted to see her smile again. To have someone hug me before I left forever. So you wouldn’t have to worry about me anymore. I—I told myself I’d leave after. Victoria wouldn’t remember. It would be a way for me to get closure. Then I’d go and spend the rest of my life healing people. Sacrifice my life. I don’t know. As payment.”

  Lady Photon had made her way upstairs. She entered the room and stopped just in front of Brandish. Her hands went to her mouth. Her words were a whispered, “Oh God.”

  Amy kept talking, her voice strangely monotone after her earlier emotion, as if she were a recording. Maybe she was, after a fashion, all of the excuses and arguments she’d planned spilling from her mouth. “I wanted her to be happy. I could adjust. Tweak, expand, change things to serve more than one purpose. I had the extra material from the cocoon. When I was done, I started undoing everything, all the mental and physical changes. I got so tired, and so scared, so lonely, so I thought we’d take another break, before I was completely finished. I changed more things. More stuff I had to fix. And days passed. I—”

  Brandish clenched her fists.

  “I lost track. I forgot how to change her back.”

  A caricature. A twisted reflection of how Amy saw Victoria, the swan curve of the nape of the neck, the delicate hands, and countless other features, repeated over and over again throughout. It might even have been something objectively beautiful, had it not been warped by desperation and loneliness and panic. As overwhelming as the image and the situation had been in Amy’s mind, Victoria was now equally imposing, in a sense. No longer able to move under her own power, her flesh spilled over from the edge of the mattress and onto the floor.

  “I don’t know what to do.”

  Betrayal. Brandish had known this would happen the moment Sarah had talked about her taking the girl. Not this, but something like it. Brandish felt a weapon form in her hand.

  “Please tell me what to do,” Amy pleaded.

  Brandish turned, arm drawn back to strike, to retaliate. She stopped.

  The girl was so weak, so powerless, a victim. A victim of herself, her own nature, but a victim nonetheless. A person sundered.

  And with everything laid bare, there was not a single resemblance to Marquis. There was no faint reminder of Brandish’s time in the dark cell, nor of her captor. If anything, Amy looked how Sarah had, as they’d stumbled from the house where they’d been kept, lost, helpless and scared.

  She looked like Carol had, all those years ago.

  The weapon dissipated, and Brandish’s arms dropped limp to her sides.

  * * *

  “I’m sorry,” the digitized voice spoke.

  Carol watched Amy through the window.

  Amy seemed to have changed, transformed. Could Carol interpret that as a burden being lifted? Relief? Even if it was only because the very worst had come to pass, and there was nothing left for Amy to agonize over? There was shame, of course, horrific guilt. That much was obvious. The girl couldn’t meet anyone’s gaze.

  “Everyone’s sorry,” Carol spoke, her voice hollow.

  “You were saying something about that before,” Dragon said. “Are you—?”

  She left the question unfinished, and the fragment of it on its own was a hard thing to hear.

  Carol stared as Amy shuffled forward. The cuffs weren’t necessary, really. A formality. Amy wasn’t about to run.

  “It’s your last chance,” Dragon prodded.

  Carol nodded. She pushed the door open and stepped into the parking lot.

  Amy turned to face her as she approached.

  For a long minute, neither of them spoke.

  “Prisoner 612, please board for transport to the Baumann Parahuman Containment Center,” the announcement came from within the truck.

  The armed escort would be waiting. No court—Amy had volunteered, asked to go to the Birdcage.

  Carol couldn’t bring herself to speak.

  So she stepped forward to close the distance between herself and Amy. Hesitant at first, she reached out.

  As if she could convey everything she wanted to say in a single gesture, she folded her daughter into the tightest of hugs.

  She couldn’t forgive Amy, not ever, not in the slightest. But she was sorry.

  Amy swallowed hard and stepped back, then stepped up into the truck.

  Carol watched in silence as the doors automatically shut and locked, and remained rooted in place as the truck pulled out of the parking lot and disappeared down the road.

  Numb, she returned to the office that looked out on the lot. Dragon’s face displayed on a computer screen to the left of the door. The computer chair was unoccupied.

  “That’s it?” Carol asked.

  “She’ll be transported there and confined for the remainder of her life, barring exceptional circumstance.”

  Carol nodded. “Two daughters gone in the blink of an eye.”

  “Your husband decided not to come?”

  “He exchanged words with her in her cell this morning. He decided it was more important to accompany Victoria to Pennsylvania.”

  “I didn’t realize that was today. If you’d asked, I could have rescheduled Amy Dallon’s departure.”

  “No. It’s fine. I prefer it this way.”

  “You didn’t want to see Victoria off to the parahuman asylum?”

  “Victoria is gone. There’s nothing of her left but that mockery. Mark and I fought over it and this was what we decided.”

  “I see.”

  “If it’s no trouble, could I watch?”

  “What are you wanting to watch, specifically?”

  “Her arrival? I know the prison is segregated, but she’s still—”

  “It isn’t. There’s a bridge betwe
en the male and female sections of the Baumann center.”

  Carol nodded. “Then I have to see. Please.”

  “It’s going to be the better part of a day before she arrives.”

  “I’ll wait. If I fall asleep, will you please wake me?”

  “Of course.”

  Dragon didn’t venture a goodbye, or any further condolences. Her face disappeared from the screen, replaced by a spinning logo, showing the Guild’s emblem on one side and the Protectorate’s shield on the other.

  Carol waited patiently for hours, her mind a blank. She couldn’t dwell on the past, or she’d lose her mind. There was nothing in the present, and the future… she couldn’t imagine one. She couldn’t envision being with Mark without Victoria. Couldn’t imagine carrying on life as Brandish. Perhaps she would continue filing. Something simpler than criminal law, something lower stress. At least for a little while.

  For an hour or so, she occupied herself by reading the pamphlets and the back covers of books. Reading a novel was too much.

  Somewhere along the line, she nodded off. She was glad for the sunlight that streamed in through the window, the glare of the florescent bulbs overhead. Recent events had stirred her old fears of the dark.

  It didn’t feel like hours had passed when she was woken by Dragon’s voice. “Carol.”

  She walked over to the screen.

  It was a surveillance camera image. The camera zoomed in on a door. An elevator door, perhaps. It whisked open.

  “Would you like sound?”

  “It doesn’t really matter. Yes.”

  A second later, the sound cut in. An announcement across the prison PA system: “-one-two, Amy Dallon, AKA Amelia Lavere, AKA Panacea. Cell block E.”

  Carol watched as the girl stepped out of the elevator. She pulled off a gas mask and let it drop to the floor. A small crowd was gathering around her, others from her cell block checking out the new resident.

  How long would it take?

  She would have asked Dragon, but her breath was caught in her throat.

  He appeared two minutes later, as a woman who must have been the self-imposed leader of Cell block E was talking to Amy.

  He looks older.

  Somehow Carol had imagined Marquis had stayed as young and powerful as the day they’d last fought. The day she’d met Amy. But there were lines in his face. He looked more distinguished, even, but he looked older.