Worm

by John Mccrae Wildbow

  “Mmm. I can feel your emotions in your body, hormones and altered chemical balances. You’re scared.”

  “Damn right, I’m scared – ouch. Fuck, that stung.” My leg jerked.

  “It’s going to happen any time my concentration slips. Best to stay quiet.”

  “No, seriously. Why are they talking to me? Is that why I’m in handcuffs? To keep me here until they, what, arrest me?”

  “No comment,” she smiled a little.

  “Hey, no. You can’t call yourself a decent person and then leave me here agonizing over details.”

  “I can. I don’t know what they want to talk to you about, though I have… strong suspicions,” her eye drifted to my manacle. “But I have been informed that you are to be lucid and fully mobile.”

  “Why?” I had a growing suspicion as to why, helped by her glance to my restraints. If they were arresting me, they couldn’t have me agree to any deals or plea bargains while I was drugged up, or it would be thrown out of court. I was pretty sure. One semester of a law class didn’t exactly leave me an expert.

  “According to the woman from the PRT that I talked to, it will work best if all of you are kept in the dark for as long as possible.”

  “All of us?” It wasn’t just me.

  “A slip of the tongue.” She smiled slightly, as if enjoying stringing me along.

  “Do these others include Tattletale?” I asked, “Did you heal her?”

  She quirked an eyebrow. “No. I can tell you I didn’t.”

  “You didn’t. Because she didn’t need your help, or because she was already dead? Ow!”

  My leg jerked again, a muscle in my thigh clenching hard, not unlike a charlie horse. It subsided.

  “I think we’re done here.”

  “Hey!” I raised my voice again, “Give me an answer! Stop fucking with me!”

  She lifted her finger from my throat, and many of my smaller bruises and scrapes began making themselves felt once more. I could breathe without a problem. I wiggled my toes experimentally, felt them move against the soles of my costume. I moved my left arm, felt no pain. Tugged on the chain with it and felt everything working as it should, no pain.

  She leaned close, so her mouth was by my ear, “Not so fun, is it? Let me tell you, this isn’t a hundredth of the mind-fuckery that your teammate was pulling on me, back then.”

  “That wasn’t-” I stopped.

  “What? Wasn’t you? You stood by and watched it happen, played along, took advantage of it. Or maybe you were going to say it wasn’t that bad? You really don’t know. You don’t know me, you don’t know Glory Girl, you don’t know what Tattletale was saying, how she was threatening to ruin my life. Imagine the person you care about most, finding our your darkest secrets. Secrets that, even if they eventually came to accept it, you know they would taint and color every single conversation you have with them afterward.”

  I couldn’t help but picture it. My dad finding out I was a villain, what I’d done. Forevermore having doubts about me.

  “I’m sorry,” I spoke, my voice low.

  “Maybe you are. I doubt it. I’m sorry to leave you wondering what happened to your teammate, what the big name capes are going to say to you, but I have others to help.”

  She didn’t sound sorry at all.

  “Hey!” I raised my voice again, “Come back here!”

  She turned her head to give me a dark look as she walked away, “Good luck with Armsmaster.”

  I pulled on the chains, angrily. I almost, almost sent the cockroaches on the bed after her. I stopped when I saw the PRT uniform hold the curtain back for her in courtesy.

  When Armsmaster and Legend arrived, it would be too late.

  I sent the roaches after him, the PRT uniform. They landed on him, individually squeezed into the pouches on his belt and bandoleer.

  Found the keys on his belt.

  Getting the keys out of the pouch was harder. I had to be smooth, and the keychain was heavy enough that the roaches couldn’t pick it up with their mouths. Instead, I tried lifting it up with the middle of a roach’s body, supported by the rest. No luck, it slipped free off of the convex exterior of the cockroach’s shell.

  I turned it upside down, instead, used the more textured underside to catch the loop of metal. The rest of the roaches latched on, hauled the roach up and out of the pouch, squeezed it through the flap-covered opening, breaking it nearly in two against the metal of the ring as they drove it through the too-narrow gap. One roach dead, but the keys were falling free of the pouch.

  Instinct took over, and I unconsciously bid roaches to move into place beneath the keys as they fell to the floor, muting the noise of metal against the ground. They skittered my way, the weight of the keychain managed between them.

  Hopefully people were too busy to notice the falling keys or the small number of bugs. I suspected it was crowded and busy out there, from what I had glimpsed when I was brought in. If people did notice, well, I was still getting arrested anyways, right?

  Getting the keys up onto the bed would be harder. I had the roaches put the keys beneath the bed, set them on the blanket, to start unraveling it. Ten sets of mandibles -eleven now, as another cockroach came from the air vent- each working at individual threads.

  I was torn between rushing this and doing it right. I had to convince myself that I wouldn’t be dragged off to jail in the next five or ten minutes. Probably.

  It probably took that long to get a long enough piece of thread. One group of bugs set to looping the thread around the keychain, tying it into a firm knot, while the others brought it up the side of the bed, up my body, my arm, and to my hand. Once I had the thread in my fingers, I started winding it up around my fingers with a circular motion of my hands, reeling in the keys.

  In a matter of seconds, I had the keys in hand. Good.

  The cockroach that had brought me the thread helped me figure out the keys that would work, traveling over them to eliminate the ones that were too large, acting as an added digit to help sort through them and putting the right keys between my fingers. It guided the end of the keys into the lock. The first key didn’t fit, too large.

  The second unlocked the cuff.

  I hurried to unlock the cuff on my left hand, flexed my hand and arm, rubbed at my wrists.

  I pulled the covers off, swung my legs over the side of the bed, and gingerly tested them against the ground. They supported my weight.

  The relief was palpable. Almost something I could feel, making me want to hug my arms around my body in quiet joy.

  But my priority was getting out of here. Not so easy, with the amount of capes and PRT personnel around. No windows around me, but if I stepped outside the curtain and into the main area, I risked running into someone like Legend or Armsmaster. I was assuming from what Panacea had said that they had been treated for the injuries that had taken them out of the fight and were up and about.

  No, a better plan of action would be to keep out of sight.

  I sent my bugs forward, tracing the lines of the curtains and wall. Once I was sure that the curtains in the next few patient enclosures were closed, I moved the curtain to my right and headed that way.

  Some cape I didn’t know was unconscious, blood smeared around his nose and mouth, almost caking the upper half of his mask to his face.

  Another enclosure, an empty cot, with red stains on the sheets from whatever patient had been there earlier.

  There was a window past the next enclosure. I wasn’t sure if I could climb out, or if there would be somewhere to go once I had, but it gave me hope.

  I pushed my way into the next curtained enclosure. Stopped.

  Oh.

  There were shouts behind me, which might have been someone noting my absence. I was at the point of not caring anymore.

  I tried to take a step forward, to move to the bedside or around it, but my newly healed legs gave out under me. I crumpled into a kneeling position.

  Staring up at the oc
cupant of the bed, a few things came to me. For one thing, I got to experience first hand what Brian had told me, about how he’d gone cold, still and quiet inside on that day he’d gotten his powers.

  For another, I realized why they’d had me chained up. Kind of stupid not to, in retrospect. A glance at the curtain showed a blue tag, the same style as the red one that had been on my curtain, plastic, unlabeled.

  The bed’s occupant lay on her back, tubes running into her nose and mouth, an IV in her arm. An ugly cut marred her right breast and shoulder, which were bare. Smaller cuts covered the rest of her body.

  Running footsteps and the sound of a curtain being heaved open in a neighboring section didn’t stir me from my daze.

  The bed’s occupant wore Shadow Stalker’s costume, sans mask.

  I recognized her. Sophia Hess.

  8.07

  Sophia Hess was Shadow Stalker.

  I tried to pull all the individual pieces and clues together, fill in the blanks. Did this mean Emma was a cape, too? No – I’d seen Emma in the presence of other capes. At those times, I knew, she’d have reason to be in costume if she had powers.

  But those times I was thinking of, when my cape and civilian lives had crossed? Emma had been at the mall, where Shadow Stalker had been on duty. She’d been at the fundraiser, too. As Shadow Stalker’s plus one? Emma’s dad had been there as well. Was that a clue?

  A sick feeling in my gut told me that Emma knew about Sophia and Shadow Stalker.

  I could even guess that Emma had found out sometime before high school started, while I was at nature camp. It would have been an exciting revelation, a juicy secret, being a part of the cape community. Seduced by that drama, Emma would have turned her back on me, became Sophia’s best friend. The civilian sidekick and confidante to the young heroine; it was cliche, but cliches had their basis in something.

  I was probably wrong on some level, but it gave answer to questions I’d assumed I’d never get an answer to.

  A hand seized me by the back of the neck, hauled me to my feet.

  Numb, I wobbled, relying heavily on the painfully hard grip to stay balanced. He turned me around, and I saw Armsmaster, his lips curled in a silent snarl of anger. A glance at his shoulder showed no sign of the ragged mess from when I’d last seen him, but there was no arm either. I thought I saw a glimpse of a flat expanse of skin. Panacea’s work?

  “What are you doing here?!” he roared the words to my face.

  When I couldn’t formulate an answer for him, he marched me out of the curtained enclosure, kicking the curtain so it slid shut, moved me towards the nurse’s station where Miss Militia and Legend were talking.

  I apparently didn’t move fast enough for him, because he swung his arm forward, forcing me to stumble forward to keep my feet under me.

  It was looking increasingly likely that I would get arrested, but my thoughts turned to the trio, and their crime and punishment. Had Sophia, Emma and Madison had gotten off easy because Sophia was a superhero? I had my suspicions that the schools worked alongside the Wards, things wouldn’t work if they didn’t, and the schools were a government institution just like the Wards were. Did Sophia get easier treatment? Two weeks suspension when she deserved expulsion?

  Had my teachers been looking me in the eye while calculating ways to make things easier on their resident superhero?

  Maybe. More likely that it was some combination of ineptitude, laziness and ignorance, on top of being influenced by the school’s link to the Wards program.

  Armsmaster slammed my upper body down against the counter of the nurse’s station, hard. I grunted, as much in reaction to being brought back to reality as in reaction to the blow.

  “Armsmaster!” Legend’s tone was a rebuke to Armsmaster for the show of force.

  More able to take it in stride than the leader of the Protectorate, Miss Militia asked, “What happened?”

  “Escaped her cautionary restraints, caught her peeping on one of the blue tags.”

  “Damn it,” Legend muttered.

  “Who?” Miss Militia asked, “And how bad?”

  “Shadow Stalker. Saw her unmasked.”

  “I see,” Miss Militia spoke, “Nurse? Would you see that everyone without clearance is put to work elsewhere, while we resolve this?”

  “Yes ma’am,” the reply came from a man I couldn’t see.

  I struggled to turn over, failed. When I found I couldn’t budge Armsmaster’s grip, I gave up, slumped onto the counter.

  “Who is she?” Legend asked.

  “Skitter, member of the Undersiders, a group of teenage villains,” Miss Militia replied. “Master-5, bugs only.”

  “This situation is serious,” Legend spoke, walking around the counter until I could see him. I saw nurses and others behind him staring, some of them being ushered away by an older nurse in scrubs. “Do you understand?”

  He nodded at Armsmaster, and Armsmaster eased his grip some, as if it would make it easier to talk.

  I was opening my mouth to speak when the thought struck me – If Sophia was Shadow Stalker, did she know who I was? She’d heard me talk in costume, hadn’t she? I knew from the time the trio had overheard me in the bathroom and doused me in juice, that at least one of the girls could recognize my voice.

  I shook my head a little, as if it could get my thoughts back on track. “Nobody explained anything. You guys were going to arrest me, so I thought I’d leave.”

  “Hospital personnel aren’t permitted to talk to patients, liability reasons,” Miss Militia told me, echoing what I’d heard earlier.

  “Figured as much when the nurse didn’t answer my questions,” I muttered. No use dragging that nurse-in-training down with me. She’d been nice. “But Panacea did have words with me when she was putting me back together, and-”

  “Panacea is a member of New Wave,” Armsmaster spoke, and I got the impression the explanation or excuse was meant more for Legend than it was for me, “She’s not official.”

  “She’s the only person who would talk to me!” I raised my voice.

  “I would ask you to keep your voice down,” Legend spoke, his voice hard, “There’s very few ways a situation like this can go, with a cape’s civilian identity at stake. If you start shouting, specifically shouting what you know, it would severely curtail what options you have left to you. Understand?”

  When I didn’t come up with a response right away, he added, “If the tables were turned, if it was you who had your identity uncovered, you would want us taking the same firm hand, giving you that same respect.”

  I couldn’t help but chuckle silently for a second there. The armor of my mask clacked against the countertop as I let my head rest there. Respect? For Sophia?

  Besides, I had suspicions that if the tables were turned, Shadow Stalker wouldn’t be pinned against the counter of the nurse’s station.

  Taking a deep breath – no use digging myself in deeper – I asked, “You were talking options. What are they?”

  “If you were judged to have used an Endbringer situation to your advantage, you would meet the most serious penalty we can offer. Those who violate the Endbringer truce are almost always sent to the Birdcage,” he let that last word hang in the air.

  I had to keep myself from laughing again. This shit was too ridiculous. This was Sophia. She was five times the villain I was. The only difference between us were the labels that we stuck on ourselves. I told him, “It was an accident.”

  “Okay,” Legend told me.

  Armsmaster told him, “Skitter here has been building a fairly strong reputation as an adept liar, so be cautious.”

  “Oh?”

  “She’s fooled my instincts and my hardware on more than one occasion.”

  “Well, I suppose I’ll have to keep that in mind.” When Legend returned his attention to me, his lips were creased in a frown.

  What could I say to defend myself now? Anything I said would be colored by Armsmaster’s undeserved comment
on my personality.

  “Another option would be for you to join the Wards. We were willing to offer you this when we got around to talking to you, before seeing you on your way. You would be placed under varying degrees of probation based on your past crimes, but you would earn a paycheck, you’d have a career-”

  “No.” The word left my mouth before I even thought about it.

  And when I did think about it? No. Not with Sophia there. No way, no how. If I stepped on her turf, I suspected one of us would kill the other. Besides, there wasn’t one thing about joining the Wards that was even remotely redeeming.

  “No?” he sounded surprised.

  “Just… no. I’d sooner go to the Birdcage.” I was surprised that I actually meant it. My contempt for the heroes was growing. Armsmaster had refused to cooperate with me on any level. Glory Girl and Panacea hadn’t done anything to earn my respect when I ran into them. Topping it off, they had a personality like Sophia’s on their team? I couldn’t even imagine joining them, now.

  “I don’t think you understand what you’re saying,” Legend spoke as if choosing his words carefully.

  I took a deep breath. “Is there a third option?”

  “You do not get to negotiate!” Armsmaster roared. Heads turned.

  Feeling a flare of anger, I retorted, “So he gets to yell, but I don’t?”

  “We have the authority here!” Armsmaster shouted.

  “The only authority you have is the authority people give you.” It wasn’t me who responded. The voice was male, familiar.

  “Grue!” I called out.

  “You’re alive,” Grue responded. “We thought-”

  “Is she okay? Tattletale!?”

  “I’m at about ninety percent,” Tattletale’s voice informed me. “You’re the one that gave us a scare.”

  I sagged in relief.

  “I would ask you to step back and let us handle this,” Miss Militia told him. “If any of you do decide to stay, and Skitter divulges the confidential information she’s happened upon, you could be just as culpable, face the same restrictions and penalties.”

  Grue replied, “So you want us to leave a teammate in your custody, here? No. That’s ridiculous. I can’t speak for the others, but I’m staying.”