Worm

by wildbow

  She backed up, spreading out across the lawn. One copy swatted at the bugs that crawled on her, another was gagging and coughing from the capsaicin, but they seemed to be holding out remarkably well.

  One by one, they started towards me, running across the lawn. I did what I could to obstruct and hamper them, but the rightmost copy slipped past the line of my bugs and bent down, the other copies snapping back into her body. She flashed with light as she leaped with incredible strength. She arced through the air until she was higher than the rooftop, set to land in front of me.

  I sent the swarm forward to meet her, lines of silk stretched between them. If I could disrupt her landing or even push her back enough that she missed the roof—

  She split into three copies in mid-air. The swarm caught the central one and tangled it. It landed hard on the roof and rolled, falling a solid twenty feet to the ground, while the other two landed and skidded for a grip on the shallow slope of the building. An instant later, she split off a replacement third, surrounding me.

  Okay. This wasn’t as bad as it looked. I had Atlas. Yes, she could shoot him—and me—out of the air, but I had an escape route and this terrain suited me fairly well. The shingled roof had a shallow slope leading to gargoyles and gutters at the edges, but I stood at the roof’s peak, giving me the steadiest footing.

  She was pacing, each of her copies slowly moving clockwise around me as they searched for a glimpse of me or some weakness. I was doing much the same, trying to think of an approach that would work here.

  What did I know about her? Prism was one of Legend’s people, which meant it was very likely she was being groomed to manage her own team somewhere. Or she was considered effective enough to warrant fighting at Legend’s side. She would be good, if nothing else. In a way, that was useful to me. Any points where I’d had the advantage would be pretty indicative of her limits and weaknesses, since I wouldn’t necessarily have to account for mistakes, accidents and idiocy on her part.

  She hadn’t immediately opened with her duplicates. Why? Did she have a reserve of power she drew on? Some restriction on when or where she could duplicate herself?

  I’d seen her fight alongside Battery when they’d been tackling Mannequin. They’d paced the fight so each of them took turns. It made me think that maybe she needed to charge before she made her duplicates. It would explain why she hadn’t made them the second I’d outed them as superheroes. That, or she’d had another reason and she needed time to recharge after using her power.

  One of her copies rubbed at her eye, then disappeared. She replaced it with a version of herself that wasn’t suffering. That’s one question answered, sort of.

  It was all too easy to see how she’d gotten this far. I couldn’t keep all three versions of her in sight at the same time and taking her out of action necessitated taking all three versions of her down before her power recharged. Couple that with how hard and fast she could hit? She could be a nightmare.

  Could be a nightmare. Emphasis on the could. I countered her powers, in large part. If my suspicions were right, I had some kind of enhanced multitasking as a side-benefit of my powers. I wasn’t limited to seeing with just my eyes, so her circling me wasn’t such a drawback, either. And I could easily attack all three at once.

  The trick would be doing it without giving her an avenue for attack. She seemed reluctant to charge blindly into the swarm, but I was equally reluctant to use those same bugs to attack when I needed them for cover. If I waited, her reinforcements would arrive, which put the pressure on me to end this.

  I let out one deep breath, then carried out my plan of attack. I unwound the silk cords I’d gathered and climbed off Atlas, sending him out with one, taking hold of another. Crouching to make myself a smaller target, I sent my bugs out to carry the string.

  She moved to try to find a point where the swarm was thinner, while avoiding the clusters of bugs. It wasn’t quite fast enough.

  I’d used my silk to grab Triumph’s cell phone and yank it from his hand. I did much the same thing here. One silk cord wound around the throat of Prism A, masked by the presence of bugs. Another wound around the leg of Prism B.

  In the same moment I pulled on the cord leading to Prism B’s leg, Atlas pulled back on the cord leading to Prism A’s throat and my swarm bull-rushed Prism C, aiming to drive her off the roof through sheer force of numbers, surprise and the pull of silk cords.

  A and B fell from the roof, then promptly disappeared, consolidating into C. She flashed with a light I could see through the dense cloud of my swarm and charged forward. In a heartbeat, she was out of my swarm and capable of seeing me.

  Prism reached down to her ankle and grabbed for her gun. It didn’t come free of the holster.

  She could come with baggage she wasn’t aware of? She had some control. Maybe she had to go out of her way to exclude certain matter or material from her duplicates?

  She formed two new duplicates, and I caught a glimpse of them pulling their guns free before I was back in the cover of my swarm.

  At my bidding, Atlas flew low, close to the building where he was out of sight of the rooftop. He circled around until he was behind me.

  I formed a crude swarm-clone and then stepped back onto Atlas. I didn’t sit, but relied instead on control of his flight and the angles he moved to help match my own balance. We swiftly descended to the ground as the part of my swarm that wasn’t dedicated to forming my double moved forward to attack once more. I could hear and feel Prism firing blind into the center mass of the swarm. She was mad now. I’d nearly taken her out.

  Had to think ahead. She would use the same tactic as before, consolidating to barrel through, she’d see my decoy and attack it, then come looking for me.

  I reused the cord that I’d had around her foot, winding it around one gargoyle. The trick was figuring out which copy I’d target. This wouldn’t work if she unmade the copy to supercharge one of the other ones.

  I’d have to bait her.

  My bugs tied the silk around one of her wrists, letting the rest sit slack against the rooftop.

  As I’d expected, the three of her appeared at the edge of the roof, looking down to the ground to find me. I was already heading for Triumph, putting myself roughly between them and him. It would serve two purposes, the primary purpose being that it would give them reason to think twice before shooting.

  They leaped, then consolidated with a flash of light before they hit ground, to absorb the impact with superior strength and durability.

  Only the silk thread connected the gargoyle to the Prism-duplicate closest to me. She didn’t make it all the way to the ground. In the blink of an eye, she was whipped sideways, one arm hyperextended. She dangled for a second or two before the silk gave way and she fell to the ground.

  The power boost was temporary enough that she wasn’t invincible as she made her awkward landing.

  I hurried to where Triumph and Trickster were.

  Triumph had managed to move a short distance away before collapsing again, and remained buried beneath a pile of my bugs. He wasn’t doing well. It was very much what I’d been concerned about at the outset, going a little too far. On their own, the choking bugs, the inflammation from the capsaicin and the stings weren’t too bad, but together?

  I eased up on him just a bit.

  A quick survey of the area told me that there weren’t any imminent threats in the vicinity. Prism wasn’t standing back up. There was a kernel of something where Genesis was rebuilding a body. The policeman Trickster had swapped with was making his way back here, and other cops were en route as well. I still had a minute or two. The mayor, I noted, had left the closet, heading for a room lined with bookcases and cabinets.

  My swarm sense allowed me to feel him opening one cabinet, unlocking and opening a drawer beneath. He retrieved a shotgun from the cabinet above and a box of ammunition from the drawer.

  I could have taken him out right there, hit him hard with my bugs. I didn’t. I’d
have to leave after that, and I could almost believe that he’d be angry, that he’d argue for the city to be condemned with even more fervor than he might have otherwise. This could backfire if we simply left him wounded.

  Instead, I focused on building up several swarm-decoys before he could make his way to the back door. I lifted Trickster up and draped him across Atlas’s back, binding him in place with silk thread.

  The mayor had loaded the gun by the time he was in the doorframe. He must have overheard Prism shouting about the tripwire, because he moved fairly gingerly through the threshold. His eyes roved over my massed decoys, his gun drifting from side to side as if he was getting ready to shoot at any instant.

  “Mayor,” I spoke to him through one decoy, buzzing and droning the words.

  He turned and fired, blowing a hole through its chest.

  “Your son is—” another spoke, while the first reformed.

  He fired again, blasting the head off the second decoy.

  “—dying” the first finished.

  He was in the midst of reloading the shotgun when he stopped. “What?”

  “Suffocating,” I spoke through a third decoy.

  “No. He—”

  “Stings aren’t helping,” I began rotating through the decoys, each speaking a different sentence. “The allergic reaction’s causing his throat to close up. He can’t swallow. There are bugs in his mouth, nose and throat. They’re making a dangerous situation worse. He can barely even cough to clear his airways to breathe.”

  “If I shoot you—” he tightened his grip on his gun.

  “My power rewrites the basic behavior patterns of my insects from moment to moment. If you shoot me, they’ll continue attacking, and there’ll be no chance of getting them to stop. You’ll be sealing Triumph’s fate. Rory’s fate.”

  “He’s stronger than that,” the mayor said. He didn’t sound sure.

  “We all need to breathe,” I replied. I could have said more, but I judged it more effective to let the thought sit with the mayor.

  I cleared the bugs away from Triumph, giving the mayor a visual of his superhero son lying on the ground, struggling. To make his struggles a little more pronounced, I briefly increased the pressure, shifting the bugs to limit the available oxygen. I wasn’t sure exactly how much danger he was in, but he wasn’t doing well. As much as I wanted to pressure the mayor, I was ready to apply the epipen the second Triumph’s breathing slowed enough.

  For long seconds, the only sounds were the small noises that Triumph could manage, gagging, feeble coughing and wheezing.

  “You’re going to kill him?”

  “I would rather not.”

  “He’s my boy,” the mayor said, his voice suddenly choked with emotion.

  “Yeah.” I blinked hard, to clear my own eyes of moisture. I couldn’t meet his eyes. I focused my attention on Triumph instead.

  “I only ever wanted what was best for him. I didn’t want this. Please.”

  I couldn’t muster a response.

  “Please.”

  This time, I thought maybe I could have said something to him. I deliberately chose to remain silent.

  “Hey!” he roared. He raised his gun, cocking it, “Don’t ignore me!”

  Triumph coughed, then his chest heaved. I forced a bug down his throat to check and found it almost entirely closed up. I moved the bug away so it wouldn’t block the already limited airway.

  “He’s almost stopped breathing,” I said, almost in shock at what this had come to. I’d been so preoccupied with Prism, I’d pushed things just a bit too far, I’d allowed my bugs to sting him because he was tough enough to take it, but I’d forgotten to account for the other variables, the pepper spray and the reduced air volume thanks to the bugs in his nose and mouth…

  I looked at the mayor and found his gun pointing at me. I spoke with my own voice.

  With a calmness that caught me off guard, I said, “It’s not too late.”

  The voice of the sixty-ish man who could address whole crowds with conviction and charisma sounded painfully feeble as he spoke, “CPR?”

  “Yes. But primarily this.” I drew an EpiPen from my utility compartment and held it up. “Do you know how to use it?”

  He shook his head.

  “I do,” I told the mayor.

  Even as I was painfully aware of Triumph’s slowing struggles, his body swiftly growing weak in the absence of air, I waited.

  “Use it!”

  Again, I didn’t move, I didn’t respond. I saw Triumph’s hand close into a fist and then stop.

  A person can hold their breath for roughly two minutes… he’s still almost breathing, but how much breath is actually getting in and out of his lungs?

  “Use it!” the mayor threatened me with a motion of the gun.

  “We both know you can’t use that. I’m the only one who can save Rory.”

  He sounded more like he was trying to convince himself than me, “There’ll be instructions. There’ll—”

  “And if I break the needle in my death throes? Or if I drop it and you can’t find it in time to read the instructions and deliver it? Or if a stray shell fragment hits the needle?”

  The mayor’s voice was a roar. It was as if he could will me to act by sheer emotion and volume. “He’s not moving! He’s dying!”

  “I know.”

  Seconds passed.

  How long can I wait until I break?

  The gun clattered to the grass, the mayor dropping to his knees. His voice was hollow. “I’ll give you what you want. Anything.”

  I didn’t waste a second in stepping to Triumph’s side. I tilted his head to establish the airway, swept my fingers and bugs through to clear away the worst of the blockages and mucus and then pulled his pants down. I stabbed him in the thigh with the pen.

  I couldn’t afford to stay. I couldn’t be the one to administer the ongoing care Triumph needed. Coil was still after me, the reinforcements were coming, and I wasn’t sure I could bring myself to leave if I stayed much longer.

  “Do you know how to give CPR?” I asked.

  “No. But my wife—”

  “Bring her here. Hurry.”

  He practically crawled on all fours in his hurry to get up the stairs and up to where his wife waited in the closet.

  “Sorry,” I murmured to Triumph. “I didn’t want this to go this far.”

  He wheezed, a strangled squeal.

  “Yeah,” I told him. “I know.”

  The older woman bent over her son and began administering CPR. I watched a few seconds to ensure she was doing everything right. I threw a second EpiPen to the mayor. “In fifteen minutes, if the paramedics aren’t here yet, use that.”

  His hands were shaking so violently I was momentarily worried he’d break it.

  “Washington,” I told him. “The city survives.”

  He nodded. There were tears in his eyes, this stubborn man who’d talked so casually with the supervillains who had invaded his home and threatened his family, who’d tried to take me on with a shotgun.

  I turned to walk away, my swarm-decoys moving in the same direction. Before he could think to go back for the shotgun and shoot me in the back, I had a swarm gathered around me, hiding me from view.

  Colony 15.10

  I passed the invisible boundary between the neatly manicured lawn of the mayor’s expansive backyard to the tall grass at the glade’s edge. My hands were shaking and my breathing was heavy. I hadn’t done anything more strenuous in the past few minutes than talking to the mayor and walking at a good pace, but my body was reacting like I’d just sprinted halfway across the mayor’s property.

  I put a hand on a tree as I walked, as if it could steady me and keep me from falling. I wasn’t in any danger of falling that I was aware of, but it was reassuring nonetheless.

  Damn him. How big was his property? And he could still afford to hire someone to cut his grass? Eat a nice dinner on a huge wooden table, complete with courses? Bl
ithely ignoring what was going on in the rest of the city with his superhero son and superheroine date?

  No, try as I might, I couldn’t bring myself to get angry. Couldn’t blame him for what I’d done.

  I’d deliberately let someone come within seconds of dying, and he hadn’t been a monster, like Lung or the Slaughterhouse Nine. He hadn’t even necessarily been a bad person. If I’d waited just ten or twenty seconds longer, he might have stopped breathing. CPR would be that much more difficult with a closed airway, and he could have died or suffered brain damage while they attempted to revive him.

  Of course, my first aid knowledge wasn’t all that recent or complete.

  I let go of the tree, adjusted my sling and moved on. Drawing my cell phone from the armor at my back, I made a call. “Cranston?”

  “What can I do for you, Skitter?”

  My voice sounded too calm for how my body seemed to be reacting. “Need an ambulance to the mayor’s residence, backyard. There’s a young man having breathing difficulties. Can you use untraceable channels to get in touch with emergency services?”

  “I’ll do that. Anything else?”

  “Tell Coil the job’s done.”

  “The second this phone call is over.”

  I hung up.

  Triumph’s family would probably do that anyways, but it made me feel a little better.

  I couldn’t afford to dwell. I headed for Genesis, stalling her movements by signaling her with my bugs. I wrote out a message: ‘Job done. Trickster hurt. Need help taking him to Coil.’

  I directed her to me with my bugs, drawing arrows in the air. A minute or two passed before she caught up.

  Genesis had decided on a form that was an overlarge woman’s face carved out of bone, surrounded by long, thin, branching tentacles. She would have come up with that as a counter for Triumph and either Prism or Ursa Aurora; something that could take a heavy hit, either from a bear made of forcefields or Triumph’s shouts and punches. It would also be pretty effective against Prism for the same reasons I was: multitasking and the ability to handle multiple foes at once.