Worm

by wildbow

  Bentley and the wolf cub both planted their feet further apart, while the pitbull was looking around, all of a sudden.

  There. Bentley’s shoulders were bulging slightly. Bitch was using her powers.

  “So?” Bitch asked.

  “So… that’s it. That’s why we’re here,” Regent said. “We’re here to talk about this, to plan.”

  “She’ll be back,” Bitch said.

  Will she? Parian couldn’t help but wonder.

  “I’m not so sure,” Grue said, echoing Parian’s thoughts.

  “She makes plans,” Bitch said. “She’s smart like that. I’m not. I don’t try to understand what she’s doing.”

  “She paid me a visit,” Grue said. “I didn’t realize it until I got the call from Tattletale. She was saying goodbye. Not out loud, but… checking I was okay, making sure I’d be able to manage… after she was gone.”

  Bentley was still growing. His flesh split at the shoulder, and he brought one back leg up, kicking at the air as if he had an itch he wanted to reach but couldn’t.

  The pitbull and wolf puppy were growing too. The pitbull looked a lot less comfortable with the process than the other animals, more alarmed. Bitch tugged the chain absently to keep him in line.

  “She visited us too,” Regent said. “Imp and me.”

  “Me too,” Tattletale spoke from her perch on the stairs, quiet.

  Not me, Parian thought. Unless I count that meeting with Miss Militia and Lily.

  That served the same purposes, didn’t it? Getting things settled? Making sure things would be okay in the future. Ensuring the heroes could help out with my territory?

  Parian felt a sinking feeling in her gut. Skitter hadn’t been leaving for the short-term.

  And that sinking feeling couldn’t even compare to what the others were feeling, here.

  Tattletale, nearly incapacitated. Grue, with his darkness a virtual storm around him. Regent and Imp, standing back, together. And Bitch. Stock still, radiating something more than tension. Restrained aggression, even.

  “Doesn’t mean anything,” Bitch said.

  “It’s telling,” Grue said. “She was saying goodbye.”

  “It doesn’t mean anything,” Bitch said, and her voice was harder. “It’s a plan.”

  Why am I even here? The thought struck Parian, out of place, out of time, a non-sequitur, yet somehow profound. As if this point, in the middle of the discussion, was when she realized how out of place she was in the dynamic.

  “Of course it’s a plan,” Regent was saying. “It might not be a good plan—”

  Bitch cut him off. “She goes there, she defeats them, and then she comes back.”

  “Um,” Imp said. “Why wouldn’t she tell us?”

  “She’ll have a reason,” Bitch said.

  Loyalty, Parian thought. Misguided loyalty, blinding Bitch to the truth, but loyalty nonetheless.

  “Look, it’s not important,” Tattletale said.

  “It’s important,” Bitch growled. “You’re supposed to be her friends, and you’re talking about her like she’s gone.”

  The pitbull seemed to take her cue, and began growling steadily. He was still growing, his body straining against the chain harness he wore.

  “She’s not gone for sure,” Tattletale said. “We don’t know how this is going to play out, not exactly.”

  Bitch didn’t seem the least bit satisfied with that, but the pitbull stopped growling. Had she stopped using her power?

  “What do we know?” Regent asked.

  “That she wanted to keep us in the dark,” Tattletale said. “That she wanted to go…”

  “And she planned to be gone long time,” Grue said. “She was asking me about leadership, about whether I was ready to take the reins. I said no, but she did it anyways.”

  “She thought this was important,” Tattletale said. “Enough to put you out of your depth, as much as you don’t want it, as much as she didn’t want it for you.”

  I don’t even figure into this, Parian thought. I’m not even sure I’m an official member of the group.

  “So I’m leader in the interim,” Grue said. There was a note of something in his voice, behind that haunting echo that his power laced it with. Not as severe as despair, bigger than unhappiness. Defeat?

  “…Unless there’s any objections,” he said.

  Hopeful?

  Nobody voiced any.

  “Then we run damage control,” Grue said. “Her territory?”

  “We can fold it into adjacent territories,” Tattletale said. “Parian, Grue, me. Maybe the others take over some of our territories to give us an easier job of it. She made other arrangements, with her residents. I can contact them so we can discuss it, put it all into action.”

  “Her people aren’t a big priority,” Grue said. “If they’re not going to riot, let’s put them on the backburner. I’m more worried about anything that could go up in flames in the next hour.”

  “Literally,” Regent said.

  “…Possibly literally,” Grue said. “Accord?”

  “I called him just after Regent and Imp showed,” Tattletale said. “He’ll be here at nine thirty, on the dot. Would have mentioned sooner, but we got caught up in talking.”

  Grue nodded, glancing back towards the TV. Parian did the same. A number blinked on the box beneath the screen: nine twenty-six. “That doesn’t give us much time to organize.”

  “The longer we wait, the more upset he’ll be,” Tattletale said. “And he’s a planner. If we give him time, he’ll work out some scheme to retaliate against us. We’re stronger against him if he’s on his toes.”

  “Granted,” Grue said. He sighed, “God, I’m not up to this. Damn her to hell.”

  There was no reply from the group.

  How many members of this group were voicing silent agreement? Parian shifted her weight nervously. How many people here had taken a life? All of them? Most?

  Parian couldn’t help but feel out of her depth. The terminology had never felt so apt, feeling like she was in the water, at that one point where she realized she couldn’t reach safety, the water around her face…

  She felt like that now, here.

  Taylor had been undercover once, hadn’t she? She’d immersed herself in this. It was impossible to imagine.

  “Accord,” Tattletale said.

  Parian thought at first that Tattletale was returning the group to the topic of conversation, but Tattletale was taking off her glasses, grimacing.

  “Undersiders,” Accord said.

  “You’re early,” Tattletale said.

  “Rest assured, I’m on time.”

  “The clock—”

  “Is slow,” Accord said. “I arrived when I said I did, and I’ll ask you once to please stop suggesting otherwise.”

  If Bitch was an ‘I’ll punch your face in for no reason’ kind of intimidating, and Grue was an ‘I’ll explain carefully just why I’m about to punch your face in’ intimidating, Accord was something else entirely.

  It was really easy to imagine him nonchalantly standing above her while she stood in a pit he’d had dug out, a cement truck slowly filling in the space around her. Or very politely eating someone’s severed leg with a knife and fork held in the proper manner.

  He was the kind of scary guy they made movies about, only he was real.

  And that made her think about the Slaughterhouse Nine.

  She hated him. She understood everything about why the Undersiders were working with him, understood that they’d be at the mercy of others like the Slaughterhouse Nine if they didn’t have muscle like his on their side, but she hated him.

  He was her height, dressed in a white business suit and tie, his intricate wood-and-silver mask moving to replicate the expressions beneath.

  He was joined by his Ambassadors. Each wore a finished mask, a suit for the men and a dress for the ladies: Citrine in yellow, with gemstones; Othello in alabaster white and jet black, all stark co
ntrasts; Ligeia in a deep blue-green that contrasted her dark skin, with a conch-shell mask that swept back over the corner of her forehead, with an ‘up’ hairstyle to match; Jacklight, with a deep royal purple dress shirt and pocket square, his mask a grinning visage that would be fitting for a child’s jack-in-the-box; and Lizardtail, bigger than the others, with a green dress shirt and pocket square, an ornate mask that looked more like a Celtic knot than anything lizardlike. Maybe the segments or spiral of it were supposed to represent a cut tail?

  He’d arrived with firepower, in short. Parian didn’t consider herself very combat-savvy, but she was aware of that much.

  “I… rather dislike surprises,” Accord said.

  “You and me both, pal,” Tattletale replied.

  It wasn’t… it didn’t seem like a smart way to talk to the perfectionist supervillain. Accord was dangerous, so why was Tattletale provoking him?

  It seemed to take Accord a second to compose himself and get his thoughts in order. “It would be polite to stand, when a guest arrives.”

  “Feeling a bit under the weather,” Tattletale said. “Forgive my bad manners. I take it you caught the essentials on TV?”

  “On the radio, while we drove,” Accord said. “Did you know of this scheme?”

  “Of course,” Tattletale said. “Do you think we’re crazy? Everything’s golden.”

  “Golden,” Accord said.

  “Copacetic, peachy keen.”

  “I wasn’t informed of any plans.”

  “You don’t have to be,” Tattletale said.

  “We’re allies.”

  “You’re subordinate to us,” Tattletale said. “If you have an issue with that, I urge you to submit a written complaint and formally declare war. Twenty four hours notice, if you please. I know you like rules and regulations.”

  “You’re mocking me.”

  “Yes. And you’re letting me mock you for some reason. You’re making a lot of concessions in our bargain here. You have a reason to be doing that,” Tattletale said. “I’m comfortable leveraging that.”

  “I made concessions because I was led to believe that Skitter was going to be the one in charge of matters here. I investigated her, I met her in person, and I decided she fit the necessary qualifications. Now I’m finding that things are definitely not what they appeared to be. She’s not in charge, for one thing, there’s the reckless attack against the Teeth that saw one of my very expensive recruits killed…”

  “You don’t really care about that,” Tattletale said. “You wanted to wean out the ones who couldn’t cut it. Codex couldn’t cut it. Good at administration, fantastic cook, skilled when it came to managing people, and could even spar, sure, but she didn’t have the wits about her in a combat situation. Couldn’t switch gears.”

  He closed his eyes, and metal shutters flicked into place as the mask mimicked the movement. “Please don’t interrupt me.”

  “I don’t think you’re getting my point. I don’t bend to your rules, Accord. If you want to talk about your dead underling, let’s talk.”

  “She was shot in the throat from behind.”

  “Are you saying I’m wrong?” Tattletale asked. “About her being poorly equipped for cape life?”

  “No. The analysis is right. I won’t disagree. But I have other concerns. This business with how you murdered Butcher. The girl at the bottom of the Boat Graveyard… Cherish… it was a risky decision.”

  “Not so risky when you’ve done a read on the situation. I had all the notes on Butcher Fourteen. She couldn’t teleport free, not into open water. She still can’t, and I had a crew use a remote control device to lash a cable to Butcher Fifteen’s pod. They’ve dropped her into a deeper area of the ocean, and the only thing she’ll be likely to kill are fish. If we’re lucky, maybe Leviathan will float that way and off himself.”

  “It was risky nonetheless. There was no assurance the plan would work.”

  “And we shouldered that risk. Bitch and Skitter, specifically. If it didn’t work out, it was their lives on the line.”

  “And now we have Skitter taking another risk. This seems to be a pattern.”

  “She’s taking the risk on our behalf,” Tattletale said. “But that’s not your concern.”

  “It’s very concerning to me.”

  “But it’s not your concern,” Tattletale said. There was a strain in her voice, and her fingernails were digging into her costume-covered thighs. “We aren’t partners, Accord. Let’s get that straight. Do we work together? Yes. Have we arranged a division of labor? Yes. But this is our city, and you’re renting a space.”

  “Tenants have rights when interacting with their landlords,” Accord said.

  “Rights, yes. But we’re supervillains. Don’t forget that,” Tattletale relied. “It’s our prerogative to be assholes. And right now? I’m going to be an asshole. The contract stands. Your provisions stand.”

  “There’s an escape clause.”

  “And you’re free to use it,” Tattletale said. “Take the clause, leave, abandon the investments you’ve already made in this city…”

  “Or attack,” Accord said, “and seize everything you have.”

  “Or attack,” Tattletale said. She sounded more tired than upset. “You could do that. Or you can take my offer.”

  “Which is?”

  “Skitter provided your notes on managing crime in Brockton Bay. I don’t think either of us can agree to implement it, without knowing the exact outcome of Skitter’s expedition…”

  “I agree,” Accord said. His interest was clearly piqued. Parian could see the way the eyebrows of his mask had raised a fraction.

  “But I like it,” Tattletale said. “And if your concern is about instability within this city, I can read your work, see the solutions you propose and consider implementing them. We would give you a hand in shaping policy beyond this group.”

  “You’d agree to a contract where you implement a set number of my plans?”

  “Hellll no,” Tattletale said.

  Parian felt her heart skip a beat. She could see Accord bristle, and his Ambassadors had tensed, as if expecting an order to attack at any second.

  “But,” Tattletale said, “I can consider them. And that might be the best offer you’d ever get. You know your ideas are good ones. You know there are ideas that would be worth implementing. If I agreed to read through them, bring the better points up for discussion within the group, across our entire alliance, and I’m hoping we recruit more than just you… well, there’s a chance they’d see the light of day.”

  Accord frowned. “You’re not promising anything concrete.”

  “No. I am sticking to the deal we arranged. This is a bonus. It doesn’t have to be big. It’s fucking generous as it stands.”

  “Please be more civil,” Accord said. “I’d rather you didn’t swear.”

  “And I’d rather you didn’t storm in here and act like you were personally offended by our particular way of doing things,” Tattletale said. “I’ve offered you a fucking nice deal. Are you fucking interested?”

  “Tattletale,” Grue said. “Enough. I think he gets the point.”

  “You’re in charge, then, Grue?” Accord asked.

  There was a pause. “Yes. But I’m standing by what Tattletale said.”

  “I’ll have to content myself with that, and I’ll give my answer to you, as one team leader to another. I hope to continue working with the Undersiders, and I very much hope that things don’t degenerate any further, as they have with the situation at the PRT offices right now.”

  “There’ll be enemies,” Grue said.

  “Yes. But there won’t be further disturbances? Nothing further that makes national news about your group?”

  National, Parian thought, stunned. We’re national news.

  She couldn’t help but think of her family, of her friends and neighbors. Her sole remaining family member, her friend from the Fashion program. The people who’d come to her terri
tory for protection that she’d ultimately failed to provide.

  She felt a sick feeling in her gut at the thought. They’d been surgically altered, and, according to the most recent emails, they were getting surgery to slowly regain their old faces. Were they watching the news right now, thinking of her?

  “I’m on the same page as Tattletale,” Grue said. “That’s our business, not yours.”

  “I see. Well, I can hope.”

  Accord extended a hand.

  Parian felt her pulse quicken. A trap? A sneak attack?

  Grue took the hand and shook it. Parian could feel the blood pumping in her ears as she watched Accord and the Ambassadors for any sign of betrayal.

  Nothing. Accord lowered his hand, then extended it again, in Tattletale’s direction.

  She stood, then staggered.

  Trap, Parian thought.

  Except it was only Tattletale’s mental fatigue. The villainess, with her mercenary’s help, made her way to the foot of the stairs. She leaned on the man as she crossed the room to Accord.

  “Injury?” he asked. “I’m thinking a concussion.”

  “Migraines. I overused my power.”

  “Ah,” Accord said. He extended his hand a fraction further, and Tattletale shook it. “I… suppose I can sympathize with that.”

  “I bet.”

  “I appreciate your willingness to meet, in light of your condition,” he said. “That said, it would be best if we did not interact further. I’d rather not terminate our alliance by being forced to murder you. It wouldn’t be polite to say how many times I came close, just tonight.”

  “I think we’re on the same page there,” Tattletale said. “I don’t want you to kill me either. Just know that if you tried, succeed or fail, I have a lot of questions about your involvement with Cauldron that could start circulating specific channels.”

  “Ah, you’re proposing mutually assured destruction?”

  “Is there any other way we’re going to manage this long-term?”

  “No. No, I suppose not,” Accord said.

  “Great,” Tattletale said. She managed a feeble smile.

  “Then I wish you a good day,” Accord said. He managed to make it sound like fuck you, the way people in the Victorian era might have.