Worm

by John Mccrae Wildbow

Scrub’s power had torn through the clusters of Merchants during the fighting, and Bryce’s new ‘family’ was no exception. The girlfriend was dead, her head and shoulders gone, muscle and fluids flowing out where the flesh had been annihilated. The girl’s mother was a goner too. She lay on her back, her face missing. Had she been behind her daughter, holding her, hit by the same blast?

  ‘Thomas’ was still alive, the black man with the scar on his lips. The man who had hurt Sierra’s friend from the church, who had literally torn the guy a new asshole, if I’d gotten Sierra’s meaning right. Thomas crawled slowly for the nearest arch, breathing hard, his face drawn with pain. A slice had been taken out of his arm, shoulder, and a section of his back, as though a guillotine had grazed him from behind. I wasn’t quite sure how he hadn’t died yet, with the amount he was bleeding.

  Brooks stooped down to help Bryce, who had gotten off lightly compared to the others. He was missing a large portion of his right hand, and he’d had the presence of mind to try to loop his belt around the injury to control the blood loss, pulling it tight. He seemed like he’d lose consciousness any second. Brooks retrieved some medical supplies from his backpack and began tending to the boy.

  I watched Thomas struggle towards the door.

  Minor arrived fifteen or twenty seconds after Brooks had started to work on the boy, standing guard while our medic took care of Bryce’s hand.

  Brooks helped Minor to get the boy to a standing position, while I watched Thomas struggle on. He was getting weaker, fast. The blood loss had been too severe.

  Skidmark had several parahumans working for him, and I didn’t know all their powers. Maybe Thomas would get care. Maybe Skidmark would attend to his people.

  Probably not. I knew that by leaving him here, I might be leaving him here to die, but the chance of him surviving anyways was pretty slim. Besides, bringing him would slow us down, and I wasn’t sure we could afford that.

  I shook my head a little, as if it could cast away the layers of little justifications and excuses I was putting together. I was searching for a rationale, a reason to leave him behind. Also, maybe, I suspected I was trying to give a reason to the fact that I had almost no sympathy for the man.

  If I was going to leave him there, I’d own up to what I was doing.

  Sierra had wanted Thomas and his followers to suffer, and I’d agreed to make it happen. I couldn’t do anything about Bryce’s girlfriend or her mom. They were dead, and it had probably been instantaneous and painless. Thomas, though?

  Brooks followed my gaze to Thomas. In his accented voice, he asked me, “You want me to bandage him up? Don’t know how much I can do.”

  Thomas heard and stopped crawling, dropping onto his belly. He didn’t look toward me, but I knew he was listening.

  “It’s fine,” I told Brooks. “Focus on the boy.”

  He nodded, then helped hold Bryce’s prone form while Minor got a better grip. Thomas didn’t move, react or say anything.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  We ran, and with Brooks keeping one hand on my shoulder to guide me, I glanced behind us to get a sense of what was going on.

  The battle was still ongoing. Gregor the Snail was here, but unlike the others, he wasn’t operating in Labyrinth’s world. He passed through the walls of the maze, spraying streams of slime at Trainwreck, who had apparently advanced halfway up the stairs by using his hands to help him walk. Trainwreck retaliated by throwing a chunk of stairs at Gregor with one hand while trying to block the stream of slime with the other. The section of stairs hit the wall of the maze just in front of Gregor, some of it bouncing over to pass through Gregor. Not real, as far as he was concerned.

  What did this look like to Gregor? Was he standing in the mall as it had been, while Trainwreck seemed to stand on thin air? Or was Trainwreck on the ground? I couldn’t parse it.

  Mush had started pulling himself together, but Labyrinth was making his job into a struggle. His right arm had divided, stretched, forked out and reconfigured until it looked like a mass of reaching veins and arteries. He plunged it into one of the trash cans that Labyrinth was absorbing into the floor, and when he withdrew it, the tendrils had formed the connective tissue for an oversized hand crafted out of garbage. His other arm and much of his lower body had already gathered some garbage around it, letting him stand several feet taller than he had before. The skin of his head and body was peeling off into more tendrils, reaching for more trash and distributing some from his arms to his torso.

  From what I could gather, he needed some kind of loose matter to form the body of his other self. Dirt, compost, trash, maybe even sand. Problem was, however fantastic his surroundings might have been for this five minutes ago, Labyrinth was screwing him over by cleaning things up, maybe inadvertently. One upper arm, his naked upper body and his nearly bald head were all exposed and vulnerable.

  Scrub had climbed up to one corner of the platform, and was keeping to the edge of the fight. His intent was clearly to be close enough to Faultline’s group to possibly tag them, but not so close that one of his uncontrolled blasts would catch a fellow Merchant.

  My bugs told me we were close to Lisa, Charlotte, Jaw and Senegal. I caught Minor’s attention and pointed, and he put Bryce down long enough to give me a boost up to the top of the wall that stood between us. I straddled the wall and waited for Brooks and Minor to figure out how to get Bryce up to me so I could pass him down to the others.

  From my vantage point, I could see more of the battle unfolding on the far side of the mall.

  One powered Merchant charged Faultline and collapsed through the ground she had strategically weakened. She kicked him several times in the face before the next member of Skidmark’s group tried to take her on, drawing and pointing a gun. Faultline drew her feet apart, and then dropped through the floor of the platform in a spray of splinters.

  To her right, the red-headed woman was striding towards Scrub. He aimed a shot and missed by a fraction, and she didn’t even flinch. Another try, another miss. As she got close, he let his power go haywire, and a dozen flashes erupted in close vicinity to him. None touched her.

  She had her gun drawn, but she didn’t shoot him. Instead, she grabbed him by the collar, then wrenched him to one side so he tipped over the side of the platform and fell the twenty or so feet to the ground below. It wasn’t enough of a fall to guarantee that he was out of the fight, but she seemed confident enough to turn away and move on to the next target before he’d even finished falling.

  Gregor was keeping up his steady pressure, alternating between blasting Trainwreck and blasting Mush with one hand and aiming at Skidmark with the other. Skidmark used his power to push away the worst of the slime, but it was clear he was losing. His power wasn’t strong, it didn’t have much more push to it than a strong wind. Any attempt to get it as effective as it had been at the edge of the arena took time and multiple layers of the effect. In short, Gregor could make the slime more easily than Skidmark could get rid of it.

  A knotted bandage tied around Bryce’s good arm was thrown up to me, and I used it to draw his arm up while the others managed his lower body. Once I had his wrist, I gripped it firmly in one hand, my upper body hugging the top of the wall to keep myself from being pulled off.

  Minor gave Brooks a boost and the medic straddled the wall facing me. We worked together to raise the unconscious boy over the top of the wall and pass him down to where the others waited.

  I glanced back towards the fight. Faultline had emerged from beneath the platform and moved around to the side, and using her power to draw hand holds into the side of the platform. The cape who’d been aiming at her with the gun stooped over the hole she’d dropped into and looked down to see if she was still down there. He was oblivious as she hauled herself over the edge of the platform and attacked him from behind, striking him with one elbow, then reversing the turn of her body to sweep his legs out from under him with one extended leg. The sweep of her foot had apparently c
oincided with a use of her power, because there was a cloud of stone dust as he collapsed onto broken, uneven ground. From my angle I couldn’t see for sure, but I thought maybe he’d fallen head first into the hole she’d first descended into.

  Brooks and I hauled Minor over, and I waited while he climbed down, since I was already fairly secure where I was.

  Skidmark was losing. It was obvious from where I sat, and I could see his changing expression as he saw Mush collapse beneath Gregor’s sludge and realized he had no friends left. Gregor, Labyrinth, Faultline and the red-haired woman were all in action, and Skidmark was pretty much alone at this point.

  I hadn’t seen Newter or Spitfire, and I couldn’t be sure if he was okay or not. Sure, the Merchants could have hit him with weapons rather than their bare hands, but he was quick, he had his tail, and he only needed to touch someone to drug them out of their minds. Spitfire might be the one babysitting Labyrinth somewhere out of the way.

  It had to suck for Skidmark, losing like this. He’d risen to power based on a streak of good luck and momentum rather than any talent, deed or ability. Now it was falling apart. He’d lost, he’d had his ass kicked in front of the bulk of his followers, and he would likely never regain what he’d had. Not that I felt bad for him. There was a kind of justice to it.

  He didn’t even have a power that would let him go down in a blaze of glory. No, his final act here would be one of petty spite.

  His power streaked from his hand to the ground where the canisters and metal case sat. I could see Faultline’s expression change behind her mask, saw her set her feet and start sprinting for the case before Skidmark’s power even took hold.

  The metal box and canisters launched out over the edge of the platform and into the air above the crowd. Only a few papers escaped the case at first, but his power had saturated the insides of the box. Just after reaching the apex of its flight, his power seized the contents and the case expelled everything from within. Papers slid off one another and into the air, forming a small cloud.

  “Taylor!” Lisa shouted.

  I knew what she wanted. I drew clouds of my bugs from the ceiling, catching the papers that weren’t saturated with Skidmark’s power, collecting my bugs on them. I could have maybe carried them directly to me with enough bugs, but I found it easier and more discreet to use the bugs and nudge the papers into floating on the air currents, like paper airplanes without the ‘airplane’ aspect of things.

  As they got close, I took a firmer hold over them and moved them directly to us. The papers crumpled as my hands closed around them. Four or five pages. I couldn’t be sure two might have been stuck together.

  “We need an exit,” I said, as I hopped down from the wall. I handed Lisa the papers.

  Lisa nodded, “I’ve been thinking on that. Look.”

  She pointed at one corner of the mall. It looked like any other section, heavily altered by Labyrinth’s powers. The shops had been almost entirely consumed by Labyrinth’s powers, and were further shrouded by the floor-to-ceiling statues of human figures that stuck out of the walls. In the corner Lisa was pointing at, there were male and female figures, expressions solemn, hands reaching, moving so slowly I might have thought it was my imagination. The shop below was nearly gone, the entrance nearly covered up.

  “Not seeing it,” I said.

  “Look at how they’re standing. The male figure is sticking out of the left wall, reaching with his right hand, the female figure is doing the opposite. Look past them, at the corner.”

  I did. Between the figures was the point where the two exterior walls of the shopping center joined… nothing jumped out at me. The walls were bare.

  “I don’t see it,” I repeated, as she tugged on my arm and started running forward. As a group we started moving toward the corner. “What am I looking for?”

  “Nothing! There’s nothing there because her power isn’t extending to that corner. She’s too far away, on the roof at the other side of the mall. Which means the interior of that shop isn’t affected by her power!”

  However ominous the giant statues were, they didn’t react to our passing. The exit was small, barely three feet across. If Lisa hadn’t given me her reasoning, I wasn’t sure I would have had the guts to go through. It was spooky to think about putting myself in a smaller space like the store interior and having it close tight behind me.

  The bodyguards had to go through the doorway in a crouch, and Minor dropped Bryce to let the others drag him inside, just so he could fit.

  As Lisa had suggested, the shop interior was largely unaffected by Labyrinth’s abilities, though it had been trashed by looters and the effects of Leviathan’s attack. We found the back rooms, and Jaw kicked the door open. From there, we made our way to the emergency exit, cleared rubble away and escaped into the parking lot.

  A handful of others had found escape routes too, I noted. Merchants were crossing the parking lot at a run, or helping wounded buddies limp away. We weren’t so conspicuous.

  I hurt. I’d been cut on the arm, and I’d taken my lumps in too many other places to count. My knuckles and fingertips were scratched raw from climbing the walls of the maze and moving rubble, my cheekbone throbbed where I’d been elbowed, and my fucking contact lenses were still irritating. Never ever something I could get used to, even with other things taking up my attention.

  But we’d made it.

  We moved at a light jog for a good distance before Brooks called us to a stop. We lay Bryce down for him to look at, and he decided we needed call for a pickup to get the boy more serious medical attention.

  While we waited for the car to arrive, Lisa, and I sat down on a nearby set of stairs. The other bodyguards were still on duty, still watching for trouble. Charlotte stood a distance away, hugging herself. She looked like she wanted to leave, but lacked the courage to go alone.

  I was going to go reassure Charlotte, but Lisa retrieved the papers I’d given her and smoothed them out against her leg, and the widening of her eyes caught my attention.

  “It’s a letter or contract from the people who made the stuff, talking to the guy who’d bought this stuff. Let’s see, we have… page two. Pages eighteen and nineteen. Page twenty-seven. Page sixteen. Wonder if we can put a narrative together.”

  “You probably could,” I said.

  She glanced over one page, then handed it to me as she moved on to the others. I read it.

  client one, and clients two through six for confidentiality purposes. For clarity, and to help ensure that the proper clients receive the intended products, we must restate facts for client one to double-check. Client one is the negotiator for each of the clients, guardian of clients two and three and is not intending to consume the product.

  This cannot be stressed enough. Client one is not to share or use any of the product intended for other clients. Ignoring this warning or failing to adhere to any other warnings or directions within this documentation will compel Cauldron to carry out the countermeasures and call in all debts noted in sections 8b and 8c on pages seventeen, eighteen and nineteen.

  Clients two through six are noted here in as much detail as is allowed given the agreed-upon confidentiality.

  ■ Client two is the elder of client one’s two relatives noted here, female.

  ■ Client three is the younger of client one’s two relatives noted here, male.

  ■ Clients four and five are client two’s friends. Client four is female. Client five is male.

  ■ Client six is the friend of client three, male.

  Both vials and protective containers are noted with the numbers specific to each client, each containing the requested upon products from the catalogue.

  I wish to give written evidence of the verbal exchange between Cauldron and client one on February 18 2011. Client one is informed that client four scored a borderline failure on the psychological testing and that results may lead to a Deviation scenario

  “What’s on the other pages?” I asked.


  “Sixteen is accounting. Bank statements, confirmation of money exchanged, a list of what was bought. Seven figures base price, more for this Nemesis program, still more for some powers. Don’t have all the pages I’d need to get it, but I’m getting the sense the more unique powers and the stronger ones cost way more.”

  ‘The sense’, she’d said. Her power filling in the blanks.

  “Pages eighteen and nineteen refer back to something called the ‘Nemesis program’, potentially revoking it, they’re talking about debts, services required by this ‘Cauldron’ using the clients’ powers. There’s a bunch of specifics on how the time, effort and risk of said services would factor in with one another.”

  “People can buy powers? How many people are doing this?” I felt a touch offended at the idea. I’d earned my powers through my hardships. Most of us had.

  “Enough that there’s a whole enterprise here with a private army. There’s this bit that very politely notes that breaking the rules will get you hunted down and executed by Subjects, capital S. Clients are warned that these guys are entirely loyal to Cauldron, will not accept bribes. And these Subjects are apparently something different from Deviations.”

  “Cauldron calls us Subjects. The PRT calls us Case 53s,” a voice said from above us. “Regular people call us monsters.”

  Our bodyguards wheeled on the spot, a set of guns training on Newter, where he clung to the side of the building. They had been covering the possible approach points from the ground. They hadn’t been expecting trouble from directly above us.

  “I heard of the Case 53 thing,” Lisa told him, backing away. “The rest is new. You work for them? No. But you’re related to this.”

  “Gregor, Shamrock and I were test subjects. Guinea pigs to test the new formulas, so the buyers don’t get fucked. According to Shamrock, three in five of us don’t even survive. One in five Subjects are retained and brainwashed so they can protect the business and enforce the contracts. Shamrock was going to be one of them, but she escaped. The rest of us have our memories removed, and we’re released as part of the ‘Nemesis program.’”