Worm

by wildbow

  Imp was giving somebody CPR. Unlike the movies, most CPR attempts weren’t successful. Her patient was probably dead already, but she kept trying. Ages ago, Grue hadn’t been able to get her to take the first aid class.

  Parian and Foil were moving around the outskirts of the battlefield, riding a stuffed animal. Foil wasn’t shooting, and it wasn’t due to a lack of ammunition.

  All the people I cared about, the things I wanted to hold on to, no matter what.

  I found my mom’s grave. It was a part of the ruined landscape, and the earth had cracked open. I could see the insect life surrounding the site. Experimentally, I opened a portal. My relay bugs passed through, and I cleared up the area, bringing the bugs to me.

  Vanity, stupidity, but I felt a little better. The area was cleaner. Still in ruins, but cleaner.

  And my dad…

  I hesitated.

  I’ve lost so much, I thought. Forgive me, dad. I need to have the hope you’re still alive more than I need to know either way.

  I exhaled slowly.

  Little anchors, more things to tie me down to reality. I double checked the others were in place. The least important of all, the mantle, the costume, for lack of a better word, with the honeycombed portals, it was secure. I had my goal, I had my mission.

  I was still me. I was managing.

  I turned my attention to Scion. Apparently Tattletale had been right. A bit of a fib on Cauldron’s part, that they couldn’t use the Clairvoyant on him. They’d wanted to avoid Scion finding them, avoid having him find his way to their laboratories.

  When I looked, I saw him screaming.

  Even for someone who had only ever spoken twice, it was an eerie, unsettling sound. Raw, like he was being actively tortured, a sound of pain and anger distilled, given volume by his power.

  He wasn’t being tortured, though. He was winning, tearing into the crowd with more ferocity than before, that same crowd where the others, people I cared about, were—

  “Pose?” Teacher asked, interrupting my thoughts. I’d missed the beginning of what he’d said.

  I raised my head. It was more like I saw the movement of my head through a telescope than it was like owning the head itself.

  Right. I’d zoned out again. Taking in too much.

  Needed to move.

  I was omniscient. More accurately, I was as close to omniscient as I could hope to get. It came with an Achilles heel, but I’d make do.

  My phone had the last known location of the C.U.I. portal. I opened a door to it.

  I left Teacher behind. He didn’t warrant a goodbye. If there was such a thing as Karma, he’d get it soon enough. For now, I would put off getting revenge for what he’d done to Dragon. He’d be inconvenienced by the loss of his soldiers and disruption of his base of operations, but he’d recover.

  Twenty parahumans flanked me as I walked down the dirt road. I stopped when we’d come to the portal’s location. The C.U.I. had invaded, killing the refugees on the other side, then moved in.

  The clairvoyant, moving at my bidding, took hold of the device I’d fastened onto my belt.

  He hit the white button.

  Teacher had sealed himself off in one world, to build up his students and work with Dragon. He’d given that technology to the C.U.I., and they’d used it to secure their position.

  Now I was breaking in.

  The blind spot fractured, then dissolved. I could see the C.U.I.’s empire. Three hundred million people, many still migrating to places where they could settle, physically walking to separate themselves from others, so Scion couldn’t kill too many at once. I could see where Scion had attacked at one point, and they were still performing disaster relief.

  There was a member of the C.U.I. who was officially known as Ziggurat, though she was really ‘Tōng Líng Tǎ’ to her allies and countrymen. She’d used her power to erect stone walls and start the construction of a palace for the Imperial family. Three walls stretched between three impressive towers, with the palace at the center of the acres of empty space within.

  I could see the Yàngbǎn in full force. Three groups of sixty to one hundred and thirty capes, arranged on broad, square platforms of stone that had been raised off of the ground, each facing outward, their backs to the palace. Every one of them was in a matching outfit, their masks white, purple, and yellow, in turn. They were tending to wounds, and the gaps in their number suggested they’d taken heavy losses.

  Inside the place itself was a kaleidoscope. Each room was mirrored several times over, the occupants moving in unison. The main chambers had nine iterations, each with a copy of the imperial family, each with a fourth squad of Yàngbǎn ringing the group in concentric circles rather than in rows and columns. This squad wore masks like the others, multifaceted gemstones large enough to cover their faces, but the gems were a jade green. The bodyguards, thirty in all. The scariest capes in their group.

  A young man, fourteen, sat on the throne. On either side, their chairs just low enough to the ground that their heads were beneath the young man’s, were family members. Too young to be his mother and father. A very young child, a girl, sat on a mat at their feet. His sister. I’d seen pictures of the new emperor and his sister when their older brother had been killed along with the Simurgh’s attack on flight BA178.

  They were joined by others. Shén Yù the strategist was a surprisingly young man, wearing a black robe that was as straight and narrow as he was. He was focused on a small tablet computer. Beside him was Jiǎ, the imperial family’s tinker, and surely the individual who had set up the kaleidoscope effect, throwing off would-be assassins and intruders. Tōng Líng Tǎ was there as well, a very thin Chinese woman with a black robe and heavily painted face.

  Just below the dais were three more Yàngbǎn members. Null, One and Two. The key components in their power structure, the ones who divided the powers, controlled the squads and gave them the strength to be effective, respectively.

  If I acted, I’d be targeted. We’d taken out one of their armies, an infiltration and raiding party with the Simurgh’s attack, but there were four groups remaining. One of the other raiding parties was less biased towards infiltration and more towards movement. They were the cavalry, the blitzers, the ones capable of flight and teleportation. In the wake of the raids, the first strikes our side had deployed against them had been viciously counterattacked. Quite possibly Shén Yù’s work. Any attempt to attack was met by equal and opposite counterattack, targeting the leaders of the offensive party.

  Even with nigh-omniscience, even with my portals, I wasn’t sure I wanted to gamble on this. Overconfidence at this juncture would be ruinous.

  Better to sunder their confidence, than let my own be too high. They weren’t anticipating an attack.

  But two hundred parahumans and a set of elite capes focused on defense and counterattacks was ominous.

  I tensed, all at once. A stray attack on Scion’s part flew through the air. I closed Doormaker’s portals in the area, and it wiped out a building, along with six people.

  I raised the portal again, connecting Gimel to the makeshift hospital.

  Tattletale muttered something under her breath. Panacea said something I couldn’t make out.

  Two of my favorite people in the world, almost wiped out without a chance to even know it was coming.

  I looked at each of these things I treasured, the things I valued. My leveled ‘house’ in Brockton Bay, the graveyard, my ex-employees, my teammates… and I looked at Scion.

  There was no right answer. No perfect battle plan on this end. There was no time.

  I exhaled slowly, forcing myself to relax.

  Then I began opening portals across all of the different worlds I could reach. I began gathering bugs en masse.

  I’d heard once there were ten quintillion bugs in my world. Eighteen zeroes. I couldn’t control that many. Or, to be precise, I couldn’t afford the time to collect that many.

  Fourteen zeroes? If I had a dozen
worlds, each with really good swamps and rainforests to tap into, my relay bugs to help extend my pitiful, three-hundred foot range? That was doable.

  Fuck it all. There was a time for strategy, and there was a time for the brute force approach. Hell, the brute force approach could be called a strategy unto itself.

  I’d find out about Shén Yù’s power the hard way. He could see attacks coming. Did it work when the attack came from every direction?

  I divided the bugs into tenths. Then I opened nine portals into the Yàngbǎn’s world.

  The tenth I opened into Earth Bet, above the portal I’d reopened.

  They did react. Shén Yù did manage a nigh-instantaneous counterattack. A hundred capes deployed to my general area, teleporting in, and then flying around with speeds that would have put them on par with cars on a highway.

  I watched from a distant location as my hand clenched, squeezing the Clairvoyant’s.

  But I’d deployed a tenth of the bugs on my location. I was hidden within an impenetrable cloud of bugs. I raised Doormaker’s portals as shields around me.

  Some entered the cloud, and the response was swift and brutal. The bugs consumed them, and my minions with the tinker guns shot them. I moved to a different world, closing the door behind me, just to make their job a little harder.

  The other squadrons had their own means of defense. One had eighty or so people burning red hot, torching the bugs by heating up the air.

  I began using portals, and I captured the group.

  “If you little fucks had any sense, you’d know that getting the upper hand on me, just for a moment? It’s something you should be fucking terrified of.”

  Not my voice in my head.

  “Oh? The ineffectual little girl with the bug costume is awake.”

  Memories of confusion, a pain unlike any other. Of utter helplessness.

  What would my mom think to see me now? A thought from a different moment than the others.

  I used Doormaker’s portals to capture other groups, though they were more scattered.

  When I had the majority of them, I turned them against the palace.

  Ziggurat closed up every window and door. The ring of Yàngbǎn members was standing now, on alert.

  It hardly mattered. They’d amassed this much sheer power, they’d controlled the people through manipulation, and now they were seeing what happened when the people turned on them.

  I felt a kind of anger swelling in my breast, and I knew it wasn’t mine.

  But it was still a feeling I could ride. Something that could carry me forwards.

  Fuck them. Fuck them for not cooperating. Fuck it all, I shouldn’t have had to go this far.

  The attackers tore down one wall. I saw one of the six mirror images of the kaleidoscope interior fade away. The interior was heavily trapped, laced with poisons, rooms with only vacuum within and, ironically, poisonous bugs. Had someone tried teleporting in, chances were good they would have met a grisly end.

  I moved the attackers around the outside of the palace, rather than subject them to the traps. They attacked different walls.

  One wall was penetrated, and two more shares of the mirror image faded.

  There was another contingent of Yàngbǎn within one of the revealed partitions. Red masks, like the ones I’d seen in New Delhi. A small squad of throwaways.

  I controlled them too.

  It wasn’t long before the last mirror images fell.

  My portals ensnared the remaining Yàngbǎn in a few moments. The fighting stopped all at once.

  I added Zero, One and Two to my swarm.

  Alexandria, choking on bugs. They hated me for my arrogance. For what I was.

  I exhaled slowly. They were a little more aware than the others.

  Two’s power enhanced other powers. Refracted throughout the Yàngbǎn, it was what allowed them to have sixty powers at one fifth of the strength instead of sixty at one sixtieth.

  Her power worked on my own. I felt my control clarify.

  In front of me, One extended a hand, then carefully closed it. I moved it experimentally, testing the range of motion.

  Not as perfect as if it were my own hand, back when I had full control over it, but better.

  I wouldn’t be sharing this one. I couldn’t afford to.

  Shén Yù spoke. It didn’t sound Chinese, with the wrong cadence. It was a question, by the sound of it, accusatory.

  Maybe there was a power that would have made sense of it. It didn’t matter.

  There were five layers of overlapping hexagons, now.

  I had my army.

  But it wouldn’t be enough.

  On to the Birdcage, I thought.

  I opened portals for my swarm to pass through.

  I passed through, and I found myself in the midst of ruins.

  Ruins, like I’d been thinking about before I met Teacher.

  I used the Clairvoyant’s power to search my surroundings.

  No. The structure was only partially intact, devastated by Scion’s fury, by shockwaves and literal waves. That it still stood was a testament to how solid it had once been.

  This isn’t the Birdcage.

  Gardener. My old jail.

  The disorientation rocked me. To get my bearings, I didn’t reach for more geographical reference points, but I reached for the little anchors I’d formed instead. I checked and double checked them until I could be sure I was stable.

  For the second time, I tried to make my way to the Birdcage.

  I stepped through the portal, moving myself to a peak above the Birdcage itself. Though I couldn’t really feel it, I was aware of how cool the air was, the fact that my body, so small on that vast mountain, was sweating pretty heavily.

  Being surrounded by thousands of billions of bugs had drained me more than I’d been aware.

  Another weakness, another point where I’d disconnected just a bit too much.

  Was my own body supposed to be an anchor? Was that something I should cling to, at the expense of other things?

  I made myself draw in a deep breath, until my chest hurt, and it still felt so paltry compared to the hundreds of people I controlled. The view, this majestic image of the landscape, of a sky that still harbored the clouds of dust and debris from Scion’s earlier attacks… it was but one piece of a scene viewed from a hundred different pairs of eyes. Virtually all of them had better vision than I did. I was adrift in an ocean of input, one body, harder to control than all of the others, so easy to forget about.

  I’d done it without thinking, bringing them with me. They stood on ledges and jutting rocks all over the peak, surrounding me. More than anything else, I could feel their fear. With so many of them, it was indistinct.

  I forced my own head to move, felt the crick in my neck, where I hadn’t really moved my head in a long time.

  The ones who were still in the Birdcage were the ones the cell block leaders had felt apprehensive about. Not necessarily stronger, but less predictable, less reliable. More of a danger than a help, if given free reign.

  As far as I could tell, it was the last large group of experienced capes I could collect.

  I opened a portal within the Birdcage, to capture my first prisoner.

  Containment foam rained down from the ceiling, sealing him in place.

  Dragon, I thought.

  I didn’t make another move. I waited. I’d expected this. It was why I’d come here in person. I could use the Clairvoyant’s power and see a hangar in one mountain valley opening up.

  It took only a minute. A small armored suit arrived, a fast-moving model rather than a heavy combat model, much like the one she’d used to counteract our first attack on the Brockton Bay PRT headquarters.

  It perched on a rock in front of me.

  Dragon’s weapons were primed and ready to fire, the threat implict. When she spoke, her voice as clear as a bell in the clear mountain air.

  It was the same language Shén Yù had spoken to me. The same incomp
rehensible language Teacher had lapsed into.

  English.

  When I met Dragon’s eyes with my own, my head shook with the shock I felt. I might have collapsed, numb, if I hadn’t been holding on to the Clairvoyant, with Doormaker gripping my belt.

  It was the anger that kept me going. I’d felt a glimmer of it when attacking the palace. I’d felt it when dealing with capes and civilians every damn step of the way. The only thing I wanted was for everyone to do what they were supposed to do. To be good and to be fair, feed the hungry, give shelter, to fix the things that were broken and to fucking band together against the real monsters. Save the world. For the world to make some damn sense.

  I found myself chuckling a little, and it was just as displaced and not-quite right as any of my individual movements. Off kilter, more like I was doing a bad job of acting than real laughter.

  I couldn’t stop it, even as I tried to pull myself together. I turned my face towards the sky, my eyes streaming. Her voice continued, insistent, the gentleness giving way to concern.

  Hardly the last injustice I’d have to face down in the coming hours, but it was a front runner for the biggest. The most decent damn person I’d ever met, and she wasn’t even human. She was the only person who was definitely still alive who’d helped me without an iota of selfishness.

  I couldn’t negotiate my way out of this. Even with the rapport we’d established, I couldn’t trust her to give me the benefit of a doubt.

  As much as I didn’t want to, I knew that the only way forward would be to destroy her.

  Speck 30.4

  I didn’t break eye contact with Dragon. My eyes were damp, and it was impossible to find a balance in terms of keeping still. I either slumped over or I held myself so rigid that I trembled, an ache creeping over my body, my muscles too taut.

  Back when Emma and I had been friends, way back in middle school, we’d done one of the sleepover dares. Going into a dimly lit room and staring out our reflections. Repeat the name of the monstrous woman, a name that escaped me now, over and over, without breaking eye contact.

  The freaky thing had been that it had worked. My expression had torn, twisted and distorted, dark patches creeping over my cheeks and forehead, my mouth disappearing with only a blank stretch of skin in its place. I’d fled the room.