Worm

by John Mccrae Wildbow

  Sophia let go of my cheek to cover my mouth with her hand. Using this fresh hold, she wrenched my head as far to the right as it would go, so I could see her looming over me, her hair hanging down around her face. She looked like a panther, black-skinned, savage, teeth bared just a little as she panted.

  She let go of my ear and tapped hard against the lens of my glasses as she continued, “This is your reminder that everyone has their place in life, Hebert, and you should stick to yours. Trying to act better than you are only embarrasses you and irritates me, get it?”

  She yanked on my ear again, as if to make her point clear.

  “Nod if you understand, and I’ll let you run off home.”

  I glared up at her.

  My fingertips traced against the books on the bottom shelf until I found the hardcovers. I got hold of one, pulled it free, and in the same motion, drove one of the corners of the text into Sophia’s side.

  She fell over, and I flipped onto my back to swing again, switching to a two-handed grip to add more power to the swing. The time it had taken me to get into position for another swing, however, bought Sophia time to get out of the way. I had Brian’s tips on fighting in mind, keeping on the offensive, and the only way to do that was to fling the hardcovered reference book at her head. She used her arms to knock it out of the air, then winced, rubbing her arm.

  “What the fuck is your derangement?!” I shouted at her. “In what twisted perspective is it all right to stalk and attack someone because they kissed a boy?”

  “It’s not just that,” Sophia started toward me, then stopped when I let my backpack fall to the ground and straightened, ready for another confrontation. “You got me fucking suspended. I don’t care about missing class, but I’m off the track team until further notice. And it’s all because you ran off to whimper for the grown-ups. I need that shit.”

  “Boo fucking hoo. If I knew it mattered that much to you, I’d have written a letter to your coach days ago, just to drive the point home and make sure you never got back on the team.”

  Sophia gave me a look of pure loathing, “You’re a coward, Hebert. A rat. You know you’re a nerd, you’re flat chested, scrawny. Nobody likes you, nobody wants you for a friend, you’re not good at anything. So you run, you hide, skip school, stay quiet, don’t do anything with your waste of a life. And if things get tough, if anyone decides to have a little fun at your expense, you go crying to the people in charge, because you can’t take it.”

  My ear throbbed. I put my hand up to tenderly touch the base of it, and pulled away when I felt a bitter stinging pain in response. My fingertips were red with blood when I lowered them.

  “FYI, it was Emma’s dad who called the meeting at the school, not me,” I replied without anger in my voice. I was sobered by the sight of my own blood. Odd as it sounded, I felt more comfortable with the situation. I’d dealt with more serious fights, and I felt like I could handle this better, having seen the blood, knowing the ante was higher.

  “You still told someone.”

  “So what if I did? What did you expect, that I’d keep my mouth shut, put up with it?”

  “That’s exactly what I expected. It seems you didn’t get my point about knowing your place.” Her eyes flickered to the spot where she’d just held me down. “Maybe you’ll get the message after round two.”

  She started toward me, and I had a good sense of how this would go. She was my height, but she was a stronger than me, with more room for muscle on her frame. Not that she was fat, or heavy in any way, but her physique was athletic, slender, and mine was that of a scarecrow – just plain thin.

  There was also the broader context – I was already hurting, and she was fucking psycho. If it came down to it, I suspected I’d get the worst of it in the fight, unless I either found a way to get to my weapons in my bag or used my powers. That didn’t mean I wouldn’t be able to do some damage to her in the meantime, it just meant she’d kick my ass in the process.

  If that was how it turned out, I was okay with that.

  “Enough,” the male voice cut in.

  Sophia halted in her advance. She turned an impassive expression to Brian, who stood to her left. He set plastic bags of food on the ground as she watched. “The boyfriend.”

  Brian looked at me, and there was a touch of concern in the expression.

  I turned my attention back to her. “Meet Sophia. One of the girls that’s been giving me a hard time at school.”

  The look of concern disappeared from his face in an instant. It was replaced by anger.

  “She’s lying,” Sophia told him, without the slightest trace of hesitation. “She cheated off me for a test, and got us both suspended and-”

  “Shut up,” Brian’s voice was low, not much different from his normal speech, but Sophia got the message. She closed her mouth. He turned to me, “Are you okay?”

  “My ear hurts like hell, and I don’t even know what she did to the side of my face, but I’m alive.”

  “Good.”

  Sophia bolted, and there were only two ways to go – through me, or past Brian. She chose the easy road, dashing toward me, and I lunged for her, aiming to grab her, slow her down enough for Brian to step in.

  Except she was faster than I’d anticipated, proving her position on the track team wasn’t just for show, and even my last-ditch effort at grabbing her wrist fell short.

  Brian and I gave chase, and were stopped when the guy from the front counter emerged and stepped partway between us and Sophia.

  “What’s this?” he looked between us. Behind him, Sophia turned to face us, assessed the situation and then backed up a few steps with the old man’s back was turned to her.

  “She attacked me,” I said.

  “Looks that way, sure, but the girl said it was justified, that you stole something from her on the bus. Asked me to stay at the counter and turn up the volume on my show while she got it back.”

  “It’s a lie,” I told him.

  The old man ignored me. He looked at Brian, “I thought you’d be on the other girl’s side, not sure I would’ve let you past if I knew it was any different.”

  Why had he come to that conclusion? Because Brian and Sophia were both black? I didn’t like that assumption, that I was automatically the bad guy, here.

  “No,” was Brian’s curt reply. “My friend is right. That girl attacked her.”

  Sophia backed away another few small steps, behind the old man. When Brian moved forward, the old man got in his way, angry. “Hey now, I’m not going to have any more fighting in my bookstore.”

  Sophia saw her chance and ran. I raised my hand, as if I could somehow reach out and stop her, then dropped it.

  It took us another two minutes to wrap things up with the old man. He accused me twice more of being a thief and gave us a dressing down for causing violence in his store. When he started demanding we go to the back with him and talk about the damage and mess, Brian grabbed my arm and guided me out of the store, ignoring the old guy’s insults and shouts of protest. We took the quickest route out of the mall and started walking down the street.

  I’d left the dog psychology book behind, I realized. That bummed me out as much as anything. I hadn’t really won or lost, as I saw it. Any injuries I’d sustained were balanced out by the fact that I’d fought back, and that Brian had been there to back me up.

  Well, that was my gut feeling, anyway. It was entirely possible that I’d change my mind after I saw how bad the damage was to my face and ear.

  Might as well know sooner than later. I gestured to the side of my head and asked Brian, “How bad is it?”

  “I think that ear’s going to need stitches,” Brian told me. “You’ve got a tear in the skin by the earlobe.”

  I nodded, mute.

  “You want to press assault charges?”

  I shook my head. No money to do it, no use in trying. She had Emma’s dad backing her up, and the only witness was the old guy from the bookstore, who had
given me the distinct impression he sided with Sophia over me.

  “So that’s what you’ve been dealing with at school?” he asked.

  I shook my head. When I tried to speak, a surge of emotion made my voice reedy. It took me a second to figure out how to get the words out, and the end result was that my voice sounded hollow and robotic, “That was the worst she’s tried to hurt me physically. Guess it’s different outside of school. I can defend myself more, but she has less reason to hold back.”

  “So I suppose the,” he cleared his throat, “Kiss on the bus? It was for her benefit?”

  I swallowed hard, in an effort to get my voice more normal. I probably wouldn’t get another chance. “Some, yeah. Some was for mine.”

  He turned toward me, eyebrows raised a fraction.

  I shrugged, doing everything I could to sound more casual than I felt. I wasn’t sure how successful I was. “I, um, I like you. You don’t need to make a bigger deal of it than it is, I just-” I floundered as I tried to find the words, already regretting opening my mouth.

  He didn’t speak, giving me a chance to continue, “I think you’re good looking, I like you as a person. I respect you, more than any of the others, because you’re smart about what you do, career-wise. You know. And because you’re so comfortable in your own skin, so confident. I admire that.”

  “You sound so analytical,” Brian offered me a slight smile, but he looked a little pained, “Going through the points, step by step, like you’re checking things off a list.”

  “That’s not- I’m not trying to.”

  “I’m not criticizing you. I’m saying it seems very you.”

  “No. I just thought, um, you’ve gone out of your way to spend time with me, you were meeting me on my runs, invited me to be at your place alone. I’ve noticed maybe there was more casual body contact, and thought it might be intentional, a signal, guy flirting, I dunno. The present, the amber…” I trailed off. It had sounded like a stronger argument in my head than it did out loud. Except… what was I trying to argue? Was I trying to convince him he liked me?

  “Ah, geez. I’m sorry if I sent the wrong signals.”

  My heart dropped.

  “You’ve got to understand, the only girls I’ve spent time around are Aisha and Lisa… Bitch doesn’t count, you know?”

  I nodded, tightly.

  “Even when I was attending high school, I was always gone the second classes ended. Meeting my dad at the gym, working, or going home to plan some costumed burglary or whatever. You know? I don’t have much experience, being around girls. I don’t really think that much about the relationship thing, outside of noticing when I see a good looking girl. It’s something I always figured I’d get to later, when I wasn’t so preoccupied.”

  I offered another nod, not trusting myself to open my mouth.

  “So if I gave you the wrong impression, I guess it’s partially because I have no idea what I’m doing, and because I’m an idiot when it comes to stuff like that. I don’t see you that way. It’s… more like you’re my sister, someone I want to protect, and help, and support. I like you as a friend, I can even see us being best friends, somewhere down the line.”

  Like his sister. A friend.

  “If there was more body contact or if I was spending time with you, or any of that other stuff you mentioned, I promise I wasn’t teasing or anything. If any of it was conscious on my part, it was meant to make you feel more welcome, let you know you’ve got me around, because I knew you had a rough time of it at school.”

  And pity. There’s the trifecta. “It’s okay. You can- you can stop now.”

  We walked a few seconds in oppressive silence.

  “I’m sorry. I feel like an asshole. Like I’m kicking you while you’re down.”

  I shook my head, “It’s fine. Not a big deal. Just drop the subject?”

  “Alright.”

  I bobbed my head in mutual agreement and swallowed the lump in my throat. In a different place or situation, if Brian wasn’t around, if I had privacy, I might have cried. I didn’t have that luxury, so I focused on putting one foot in front of the other, controlling my breathing, reading street signs and store names, and just focusing on anything that wasn’t Brian or the conversation we’d just had.

  The walk back to his apartment was long-ish, maybe half an hour, and was peppered with only meaningless small talk and long, wordless pauses. We got up to his apartment, and he started putting things away and getting the first aid stuff together. I turned on the TV to liven up the awkward quiet.

  I didn’t have to wait long before something caught my eye. It was on channel 4, a live update on the Empire Eighty Eight situation. From the looks of things, there was no doubt in my mind that Kaiser’s people were giving Brockton Bay their response to the email.

  7.07

  Purity floated above the docks, an oversize firefly against a blue-gray backdrop of sky. She came to rest over a building that had been half built and left abandoned, a small crane jutting out of the middle of it. A building I recognized as Bitch’s place. Her improvised dog shelter.

  “Brian!” I called out. “You want to see this!”

  The cameraman tried to zoom in and focus on Purity, but only intensified the lens flare effect that followed her.

  He zoomed back out just in time to see her take action.

  The beams of light that blasted from her palm weren’t straight. There was a bit of a spiral to them, as they formed a rough double helix. The end result was wider than Purity was tall, tearing into the building to topple the crane against one wall. She turned the light on the other walls, obliterating them.

  It took her less than a minute to level the building and pulverize any part of the structure that stood higher than the sidewalk.

  She paused, and hovered there in the midst of the dust and the motes of light that had followed in the wake of her power. She turned and shot the next-closest building, directing a smaller, tighter beam at one corner where the structure met the ground. She hit the next corner, then swept the oscillating shaft of light through the ground floor to obliterate any supports that stood within. The building toppled messily with brick walls sloughing off and cresting plumes of dust.

  The building hadn’t even finished falling down before she started work on the next two, devoting one beam to each.

  “Were there people in there?” I asked, horrified both at the idea and at what this woman was capable of doing. “What about those other buildings?

  Brian was behind his couch, watching, “There might have been, and there might be.”

  My need to hurry overrode my modesty. I stood and pulled off my top, leaving just my bra on, making sure to keep my back to Brian. I removed the sweatshirt I had tied around my waist and untied the arms of my costume.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Getting ready,” I put my arm through one arm and worked my fingers into the gloves.

  Brian walked around the couch and I hurried to raise the top half of my costume and clutch it to my chest, covering myself. He put his hands on my bare shoulders and exerted enough force to push me back down to a sitting position. I complied, stiffly, reluctantly.

  He pulled his hands away a little more quickly than he might have a day or two ago, jamming them in his pockets. I hunched my shoulders forward self consciously.

  Brian took a deep breath. “Not your job.”

  “They’re doing that because of us,” I adjusted my grip on my costume top to free a hand so I could point it at the TV. The cameraman was retreating from the scene, and the image was wobbling as the camera rocked with his movement. The spark of light that was Purity was moving in his general direction as she leveled more buildings.

  “Because of Coil, not us. The heroes will be the ones to take care of it,” Brian retorted.

  “They could be hurting innocent people.”

  “Given who these guys are, I’m pretty sure they’ve been hurting innocent people for a long time.”

/>   I turned to frown at Brian, “You know what I mean. We-”

  “Undersiders,” A female voice cut into the conversation. “Protectorate. Take note.”

  Our heads turned back to the television screen. The camera showed a brilliant glare that could only vaguely be made out as a face. The view shifted, and I heard her command, “Hold it.”

  The camera steadied and focused on Purity’s face, from ground level looking up. I suspected the cameraman was on the ground.

  “You took the most important thing in the world from me,” her voice was without affect, flat. “Until she is returned, this doesn’t stop. I will take this city apart until I find you or you come to stop me. My subordinates will murder anyone, everyone, until the matter is settled. I don’t care if they are genetically pure or not. If they haven’t allied with us already, they missed their chance.”

  She bent down to take the camera. While the image swayed wildly, Purity spoke, “Night, Fog. Demonstrate.”

  The camera steadied, fixed on a man and a woman in gray and black costumes, respectively, featuring cowls and cloaks. Behind and to the side of them was an unnaturally pale and white haired young man.

  The man in gray evaporated into a rolling cloud of white-gray fog, moving toward the camera. Purity took flight, moving up and above the scene, keeping the camera focused on the cameraman. As the camera rose and the view of the scene expanded, I could see Crusader off to one side, leaning against a wall with his arms folded.

  As the mist enveloped the cameraman, Night strode forward, disappearing into it. The timing of what happened was wrong, too soon after she entered the fog. There was a ragged scream, and then blood sprayed out of the mist to paint the surrounding road in dozens upon dozens of long splashes of crimson.

  The fog moved as though it had a mind of its own, congealing into the man once more. When he had fully pulled himself together again, there were only a few spatters of blood six or so paces from where the body had fallen, and Night, standing in the middle of the road. No body, no clothes, no blood remained where the fog had passed.

  “We are not the ABB,” Purity spoke, not bothering to turn the camera back to herself, “We are stronger, both in powers and in numbers. We have discipline, and thanks to you, we have nothing left to lose. I will have my daughter back, and we will have our restitution.”