Worm

by wildbow

  “Maybe Canary could shed light on this?” Tattletale suggested.

  Canary’s eyes opened wide.

  “You bought Cauldron powers?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Pretty rare for a natural cape to get powers with physical changes,” Tattletale said. “Cauldron capes? Yeah. You definitely see stuff like feathers.”

  “I wasn’t disgruntled,” Canary said. “I freaked, and I couldn’t exactly charge back on my credit card or sue them. But I adjusted. I got what I really wanted in the end. By the time I realized I’d gotten too much of what I wanted, I was already in jail.”

  “Shit sucks,” Aisha said. “Scammed hard, grow yellow feathers on top of a shitty fashion sense, get what you want and then boom, it’s all over. Off to jail.”

  “I dress colorfully so people don’t connect me to the Simurgh so easily,” Canary said. “Keeps me from getting cussed out or beaten by someone who lost a friend or family member.”

  “Getting back to the question, with all of the issues you’ve faced, you could see where someone else would be less cool about it, yeah?” Tattletale asked.

  Canary nodded. “Um, definitely. The stuff they give you isn’t always reliable. You’re always gambling, whether it’s on the amount of raw power, the nature of the power, all of that crap.

  “And if someone like Weld showed up, saying he has contacts in the Protectorate and the Wards, good friends, who told him they’ve got a way to break into another universe if they can find a spot where a portal was opened, and they just need you to tell them where Cauldron opened one?”

  “They stepped through into my dad’s house once, so I could talk to a therapist before I took anything. Yeah. If things had gone differently, I could have pointed them to the right place.”

  “Another possibility for how the Irregulars are managing,” Tattletale said, sounding satisfied. “With Contessa and Cauldron’s other hit squads being too busy with more important matters to retaliate.”

  I nodded. It wasn’t sound, but there was enough there for me to acknowledge it was very possible.

  “Issue number four.”

  “Wait,” I said.

  Tattletale paused.

  “This is a thing? There’s a pattern here?”

  “Isn’t it obvious? I mean, you can connect the dots.”

  I could.

  “You said it before,” Canary told me. “Remember? There are reasons for people to fight, reasons to keep going when all is lost. Pride, revenge, stubbornness.”

  “Fuck me,” I said. I stepped back, leaning against the wall. The blunt ends of tacks poked me in the back and shoulders where I leaned against a bulletin board. “Fuck! They’re all fighting, and they’re not fucking capable of turning this aggression towards Scion? What the fuck?”

  Tattletale shook her head. “Scion trounced some of our strongest capes and as far as we can tell, we didn’t even slow him down. We only gave him the bright idea of attacking other Earths, buying our world a few days at most, but we screw over a trillion other people in the process. Might be they want to do something that isn’t futile, before humanity gets wiped out.”

  I hung my head, and my hair fell forward. I clenched my fists, and I could still feel the alien sensation in my hand. I rubbed my fingers against the palm.

  “I’m going to keep going, just so you know what’s up,” Tattletale said. “Issue four. Elites, Vegas Dark, less pleasant members of the Thanda. We’ve got the businessmen and bastards of Vegas’s underworld, guys who were already gaming the system, only now they’re moving into refugee locations on the far sides of the portals and trying to elbow their way in while things are just starting up. Hoping to make themselves a fixture like we made ourselves fixtures, so everything grows up around them, dependent on them.”

  I nodded, feeling just a touch numb. “I don’t need in depth explanations.”

  “Fine. Five? Sleeper on Zayin. Six? Warlords on Bet, preying on those who decided not to leave. There’s shit sprouting up all over, so maybe I could say issue seven is everything else put together. We could get wiped out under the combined weight of a thousand lesser issues.”

  “Not a problem,” Aisha commented, her tone ironic. “Easy peasy.”

  I stared at the screens.

  Tattletale studied me, then added, “The Simurgh showed up on Bet, but there’s nothing really left for her to destroy,” Tattletale said. “There’s refugees, people who didn’t leave, holed up here and there, but she doesn’t seem to care enough to go after them. She’s… still. A non-threat, at least for now.”

  “It’s too early for her to show up,” I said.

  “They’re attracted to conflict,” Tattletale replied. Answer enough.

  “It’s funny,” Aisha observed. “In this really sad, demented, ‘everything sucks’ way. ‘Oh hey, here to destroy everything… oh, is everything already destroyed? Shit, fuck. Guess I’ll hang out, dick around over here while humanity winds down like an unwound clock that some golden asshole is stomping into little pieces’.”

  “Your metaphors tend to fall apart,” Tattletale observed.

  Aisha shrugged.

  “People have given up, then,” I said. “We mustered our strength, gathered some of our best, and he took us down. He killed one of our strongest. So now they’re focused on petty things. Even if we could fix it all, we’ve still got the Endbringers and Scion waiting to systematically murder us all.”

  “All of the great things humanity’s done,” Canary said. “Innovation, society, great works of art, the music… I kind of hoped we go out in some noble way.”

  “I don’t think humanity is noble,” I said. “Not in the least. It’s not just or fair on an intrinsic level. It’s not even good. But I kind of hoped we’d go out fighting the other guy. Dinah said Scion would take out just about everyone, leaving anywhere from a few billion to a few hundred still alive. Probably the people who’ve scattered far enough apart it’s not worth hunting them down.”

  “Probably,” Tattletale said.

  “Looking at this stuff, hearing you describe it all, I’m starting to think that maybe we’ll destroy ourselves in the end. Infighting, stupidity, revenge, all of that. Humanity will clean up whatever members of humanity Scion leaves alive, or leave us too screwed up to bounce back.”

  “Ergo, the dog is fucked,” Aisha murmured, barely audible.

  Tattletale snorted a half-laugh, despite herself. That, in turn, made me smirk stupidly.

  Tattletale saw that, and she laughed a little, which started me going.

  Aisha joined in. Not a full belly laugh, but a giggle fit, all the more infectious because of how out of place it was.

  I glanced at Canary, who was looking at us like we were batshit insane, and that only started me going again.

  It took us a minute or two to stop altogether.

  “Where the hell did you learn a word like ergo?” Tattletale asked. I had to bite my tongue to keep myself from laughing any more.

  Aisha shrugged, smiling a little.

  “So. Want to join in on the petty shit? Anyone in particular you want revenge on?” Tattletale asked. “Aisha? Taylor? Canary? Feel free to speak up. No judgement here.”

  “I’ll judge you a teeny bit,” Aisha said.

  “No,” Canary said. “Don’t want any revenge. Like I said, I’m not big on violence or any of that.”

  “I’m not one to put off revenge,” Aisha said.

  “What about the bullies?” Tattletale asked me.

  “I made peace with that some time ago. No petty shit I’m that invested in.”

  Rachel had returned, tying her dogs up outside. I followed her with the bugs that clung to her as she made her way inside and upstairs.

  “Want to go get laid?” Tattletale asked. “Seems like something people tend to do in the movies, when the end is nigh.”

  “Were you just inviting Taylor or—”

  Tattletale swiveled in her chair and kicked Aisha in the shin.
“No. I’m not interested in that kind of thing. My power makes it way less fun than it ought to be. Information overload during sex is squick.”

  “Sure,” Aisha said. “Sure.”

  Tattletale kicked at her again. Aisha only cackled.

  “No,” I said. “I’ve enjoyed that sort of thing, but that was more to do with who I was with than anything else.”

  “Ew, ew, ew. TMI. Unless you’re talking about someone else. Tell me you’re talking about someone else.”

  “No.”

  “Ew, ew, ew.”

  Rachel entered the room. Bastard was bigger than an ordinary dog, smaller than a pony. He followed her, the collapsed on a pile of sheets in one corner of the room. He heaved out a sigh.

  “Welcome back,” I said.

  Rachel nodded. She surveyed the room, taking us all in. “You’re all in a good mood.”

  “Just having fun,” Tattletale said. “End of the fucking world, people are stupid beyond belief. It’s at the point where you can either laugh or cry, and I promised myself I wouldn’t cry a long, long time ago.”

  “Mm,” Rachel grunted. “Right.”

  Never been one to keep a conversation going, I thought. Rachel stopped at the end of the desk opposite Aisha.

  I took a step to my left, and I sort of bumped my arm against her arm, smiling a little. She bumped me back. She didn’t smile, but she put an arm up around my shoulders and set her hand on my head, mussing with my hair, like she had earlier.

  “We were talking about what we’d do,” Tattletale said. “You got any boy toys, Bitch? Any way to scratch that particular itch?”

  Rachel shook her head.

  “Where’s Grue?” I asked, all of a sudden.

  “Ew, gross. Can you not make those obvious leaps in logic?”

  “He’s gone,” Tattletale said. “He was here while Panacea put you back together. When, um, she was working on you, he borrowed her power and took over for a bit. I don’t know if you’re going to see that as weird or gross or a weirdly sweet goodbye gift or deeply invasive or whatever, but yeah. Maybe he just needed to help. Needed to know that he could save you or help you or fix you after you’d fulfilled one of his old fears and gone and got yourself murdered in a fit of recklessness.”

  “And then he left?”

  “Retired, quit. Maybe losing the fight, verifying he couldn’t do anything constructive, it took something out of him. Seeing you like that, it took something else. And then he ran into Bonesaw.”

  “She didn’t work on me?”

  “No. We didn’t let her. She’s paired up with Panacea for now, because Panacea is really the only way we can double check her work. Anyways, yeah. Grue confirmed you were on your way, he was leaving, she was walking in. They crossed paths. I think it was the straw that broke the camel’s back. He left without a word. Cozen came by, asking if we had a spot they could head off to. I sent them to a cabin we put a bit out of the way. Generator, toilets, books, movies, insulation. Pretty sure it’s just the two of them, taking care of each other until the world ends.”

  I drew in a deep breath, then exhaled.

  I couldn’t bring myself to feel envious, jealous or upset.

  “Okay,” I said. “Good.”

  Tattletale nodded.

  I thought about the others. “Parian, Foil? Are they keeping each other company too?”

  “Of course,” Aisha said.

  “Says our resident voyeur, a touch too knowingly,” Tattletale said.

  “That was the one time! Which wasn’t even fun voyeurism, because it was my brother. And I didn’t say it knowingly at all.”

  “The lady doth protests too much,” Tattletale said.

  “I’m protesting exactly enough and fuck you! Like you’re not privy to the sordid details of other people’s lives.”

  “Privy? Sordid? So soon after ergo? Have you been reading, Aisha Laborn?”

  Rachel nudged me. “They were helping with the patrols, watching for the gem-faced motherfuckers who’re probably going to cause trouble.”

  Oh, she was answering my question about Parian and Foil.

  “Gem-faced motherfuckers? The Yàngbǎn?”

  “Them. So the other two are around. They’re here for work but they don’t really hang out. They’re better at dealing with people than I am, so they do that. Investigate shit. I’m the one that drags the assholes back here.”

  “Sheriff of New Brockton Bay,” I said, speaking just a little louder to be heard over the others.

  “…fucking words because of you. Talking funny, trying to sound smart…”

  “You said something like that,” Rachel told me. “Before you left.”

  I nodded.

  “Sorry about that,” I said. “Leaving.”

  “Okay.”

  No forgiveness, but then again, I probably didn’t deserve it so easily.

  “I’ll be back,” I said. “Have to go.”

  Rachel nodded.

  I made my way to the bathroom to relieve myself, then took a minute to wash my hair and try to comb my hair into a semblance of order. Try being the operative word.

  Two days, at least, I’d been out, probably three, if I judged by the state of my hair. Rachel rubbing my head hadn’t helped.

  I took a deep breath, then exhaled.

  I made my way back to the others. Tattletale and Imp had stopped bickering.

  We settled into an easy silence. It was a sort of quiet state I’d found with Rachel, but it was rare to have with any of the others. Rarer still with Imp.

  As memories went, for bringing everything to a close, it was alright.

  It was the outsider who broke the silence.

  “This is us?” Canary asked. “We’re whiling away the time until the world ends? Giving up like everyone else?”

  “What?” Tattletale asked. She gave Canary a funny look. “No. Fuck no.”

  “No,” Aisha said. “Wait, did anyone think that? Because I was thinking this was more us trying to decide what the hell we need to do before we throw ourselves into one final, suicidally reckless attack.”

  “Basically,” I said. “Minus the suicidally reckless part. There’s other stuff we can try first. But yeah. I think we’re mostly on the same page here.”

  “Go out fighting,” Rachel said.

  “Go out fighting, ” Tattletale confirmed.

  “Nothing held back,” I added. “Right. I’ll need my stuff.”

  “Put the pack and what’s left of your costume aside. I can go get it anytime.”

  I nodded.

  “We’ll need help,” Tattletale said.

  “Parian and Foil? Can we get them onboard?”

  “Probably, if we can come up with a convincing argument.”

  I nodded, thinking. “What about Shadow Stalker? Any idea where she is?”

  “She’s around. You think you can convince her?”

  “We’ll see,” I said.

  “We need a plan, first and foremost,” Tattletale said. “If we’ve got one, we’ll be able to get others on board.”

  “There are possibilities,” I said. “Need to knock some heads, get people on board, get morale up. Fix some of the crises that’ve come up, deal with the people who are fucking the system and making everyone else think there’s no hope.”

  Tattletale glanced at me as if I’d said something that provoked a thought, and then she smiled.

  I couldn’t help but feel it wasn’t a real smile. Her poker face.

  “You coming, Despairy Canary?” Tattletale asked.

  I could see the hesitation cross Canary’s face.

  “Yeah. I’ll come. Might not be, uh, knocking heads, but maybe there’s something we can resolve with my power. Nonviolent resolution.”

  “With a song and dance number,” Aisha said. She leaned forward and took hold of Canary’s hands. “Like a kid’s movie! Sing a song and fix problems!”

  “Um,” Canary said. She looked between Tattletale and me. “How am I suppose
d to respond to that?”

  “Just ignore me,” Aisha advised, adopting the demeanor of the veteran bestowing wisdom onto the novice. “Everyone else does.”

  “I guess I’ll try.”

  We gathered ourselves together, and we began making our way downstairs in two groups, with Aisha still holding Canary’s hand, leading the way. Tattletale, Rachel and I followed.

  My body still felt weird, but the alien sensations weren’t as pronounced. I was getting used to it.

  “Thanks for looking after me,” I commented.

  “Not a problem,” Tattletale said.

  “Before, you were bluffing. Can I ask? It changes how I deal with this. How much I give it, the risks I take. Can you tell me honestly that this isn’t hopeless?”

  “Honestly?” Tattletale asked. She trailed off.

  Answer enough.

  I glanced at Rachel.

  Tattletale practically seemed to read my mind. “She doesn’t give a damn.”

  “I don’t give a damn,” Rachel echoed.

  I nodded. “You’ve been wrong before, Tattletale. About important stuff.”

  “I have. See, this is the part where I can either lie to you or tell you the truth.”

  “Truth. If it doesn’t spoil the mood too much. I don’t want to hear, like, Dinah said a hundred percent chance we’re wiped out.”

  “Nothing like that. But there’s evidence. Enough for me to connect dots.”

  “You’re talking about the kid that speaks funny,” Rachel said. “The fairy whatsit. You were watching her video.”

  Tattletale sighed.

  “What?”

  “There’s moments I adore you, my adorable canine crusader, and there’s moments I hate you. All too often, they’re the same moments.”

  “Whatever.”

  “And that there is another case in point,” Tattletale said. She smiled, looking at me. “So yeah.”

  Weaver or Skitter would have pressed for the truth. During the Echidna incident, I’d gone to great lengths to strive for honesty and full disclosure. Had it worked out? Maybe. Maybe not. It had meant a lot right then, but it had sort of screwed me after I’d surrendered to the PRT.

  But Taylor? Taylor had lived a lie, had spent some time wallowing in ignorance. Ignorance of what Tattletale really knew, ignorance of what Coil was doing. Ignorance of what real monsters were capable of.