Worm

by John Mccrae Wildbow

  Elle nodded.

  “I’m… I’m sorry about your friends. I didn’t come here planning to do that. It’s just… you know.”

  Elle nodded, trying to keep her outrage off her face.

  “I- Fuck. I’m really sorry, you know? I can’t help it.”

  You can. You just don’t try hard enough.

  But Elle didn’t voice her thoughts. She nodded.

  “I don’t think I did any permanent damage. They’re alive.”

  “Thank you,” Elle managed. She couldn’t entirely suppress the bitterness in her voice. Burnscar didn’t seem to notice.

  “I- I wanted to talk. Like old times.”

  Old times. Elle couldn’t help it. Her thoughts turned to the bad place, the biggest of her worlds, the world she had spent the most time.

  “Back when we were both having our good days? We’d talk, and I really liked those times. I look back on them fondly. One of the few moments I treasure.”

  Elle nodded. Behind Burnscar, the door to her room was changing to metal. A tiny window was expanding, bars already closing down like teeth. The wall around the door was growing tatters of cloth that rippled like they were blowing in the wind.

  “Fuck,” Burnscar said, “I don’t even know where to start. Since I learned you were in this city, and the group wanted to come here, I’ve been looking forward to this, seeing you again, but now I don’t know what to say.”

  “The weather?” Elle tried, lightly joking. The wrong thing to say.

  “I don’t want to talk about the weather!” Burnscar snapped the words, in a mixture of desperation and anger. Her eyes flashed orange and flame flared around her hands, then it all faded.

  “Sorry.”

  “I… um. How are you? How have you been, since you escaped?”

  “Been… been good. Good people.” So hard to articulate my thoughts, even on a good day. “They take care of me. Faultline helped… more than any doctor I’ve had.”

  “The doctors,” Burnscar scowled.

  “You?”

  “I… did you know I escaped at the same time you did?”

  Elle shook her head.

  “I did. But I had no place to go. I had some bad days. I was lonely, scared. Some guy tried to convince me to be his whore, earn some cash, get fed… I refused, but he kept coming after me.”

  “Sorry.”

  “I… I really wanted to be good. I’d told myself I wouldn’t use my power. But I had to protect myself, you understand?”

  Elle nodded. The cloth around the door had started to settle into a shape. Padded walls, lined with barbed wire and jagged rows of glass. There were stains of shit and blood on some of the cloth, now, growing and swelling. She tried to will it to stop, to focus on her high temple. Her safe place. But looking at Burnscar, that place felt so far away. It was out of her reach.

  Burnscar went on, “So I used it to scare him off… but you know how it works. You know what happens with my power.”

  “I remember.”

  “I… the doctors say that using my power, it adjusts the chemical balances and connections in my brain. Empathy, impulse control, my emotions, they disappear as I use my power, and I can’t help using my power if there’s fire nearby. It snowballs, because I use my power more when I don’t have that self-control, when I don’t care about the people I’m near, and when I’m in that headspace I don’t want to leave it.”

  “Yeah.” And you retreat into that state to avoid facing the guilt over things you’ve done. You use it to hide from your own fears. If I blame you for anything, it’s for that.

  Burnscar shook her head. ”If you hadn’t put out most of the fire out there… I dunno what I would have done.”

  I have a pretty good idea.

  “So I burned the pimp to scare him, then I burned him to hurt him, for payback over his hounding me, and then I couldn’t really stop myself. I burned him to death. Fuck. That was the start of a bad few weeks.”

  “Sorry.”

  “I- before I knew it, the Slaughterhouse Nine had found me. Shatterbird recruited me. And now I’m stuck. I’m trapped. You know there’s a kill order out on me? If I try to quit, either the Nine or the cops will off me. So I keep going, I work for them, and it all just gets worse.”

  “Surrender? Go to the birdcage?”

  “They’d find me. You don’t even know what these guys are capable of. Our newest member, she replaced Hatchet Face, though he’s still around… kind of. She can find people. There’s no place secure enough to keep me safe until they took me to the Birdcage. I almost think they’d be able to get me in there, if they wanted to. Siberian? She’d be able to get me. Even in the Birdcage. She always gets her prey.”

  “Can’t keep hurting people, Mimi.”

  “I have to. I- I can just use my power. Stay in that headspace where I don’t feel bad, where I act the way the Nine expect me to.”

  The bad place was intruding on the room further. Elle spoke up, “Mimi… Can I touch you? Anchor you? Don’t want my power to hurt you.”

  “So you want to keep me out of your world?” Mimi smiled and shook her head. ”No way. Half the reason I came here was because I heard you were making beautiful things these days. I have to see it. The things you can make, now.”

  Then she turned and looked around. Her face fell as she saw the padded walls, the bed that had become a cot, the shit stains, the blood, the needles in the corner, the broken glass and the razorblades that were embedded in every surface, waiting to catch anyone unsuspecting that put their hand or foot in the wrong place.

  “No,” Burnscar said.

  Elle tensed. ”Sorry.”

  Burnscar’s face fell. ”This… this isn’t beautiful. I remember this.”

  “Would show you the others… if I could.”

  Burnscar’s voice was choked. ”But you can’t. Because I remind you of the asylum. I remind you of the bad times, the times you were most miserable.”

  Elle looked down at her feet, swallowed past the lump in her throat.

  “I thought we were friends. We had our moments, didn’t we? Only a few times, when we were both allowed out of our cells, when we were having good days. A few jokes, stories. I mean, I know that some of the time I was coming off a bad spell, so maybe I snapped, or I called you names, or threatened you…”

  Burnscar trailed off. Elle stayed silent.

  “It. It wasn’t, um.” Burnscar stuttered. Her eyes flashed orange. ”Did you see me as a friend? Don’t you dare lie to me.”

  Elle couldn’t come up with a reply. They used me as an enticement to get you to cooperate.

  “Oh fuck. Fuck me, I’m sorry,” Burnscar said. She turned away, fumbled with the metal door. Elle realized it had locked, adjusted things to allow it to open. Burnscar pulled it open, then stopped in the doorway. Her back turned, the girl said, “I’m sorry about your friends. I really hope they’re okay.”

  “I do too.”

  “I’m glad you’re doing well. I hope I didn’t fuck everything up.”

  It took a bit of courage, but Elle hurried to cross the room and wrap her arms around Burnscar, hugging her from behind.

  “We had some good times,” Elle lied. ”Take care.”

  Burnscar pulled away, and Elle let the girl go. She saw Burnscar find the door to the indoor balcony that overlooked the dance floor, heard her run down the stairs.

  Elle sank down against the wall, pushing away the sharp things that would cut her with a use of her power. She put her head in her hands and closed her eyes to the sights around her. She’d wait a few minutes. She’d take a few minutes wait until she could be sure Burnscar was gone, then she would leave to check on the others.

  It would be weeks before she had made up for the ground she had just lost, in terms of her mental health, in pushing past the bad memories and the bad place. She reassured herself with the thought that she would get better, in time. She’d gotten there once, she could get there again. If the others were okay.
<
br />   As for Burnscar? There would be no helping that girl.

  11.d

  There was a faint tapping sound. A clink of something hard on metal or glass.

  It came again, a second later.

  Colin looked up from his computer. Ears peeled, he turned his head to the left and waited. Clink. He turned his head the other way, in the hopes of pinpointing the source.

  He heard a scraping noise, then the sound once more. He couldn’t say where it came from.

  He opened an instant message window on his computer and sent a message:

  PHQ.Armsmaster: You have a sec?

  Guild.Dragon: Reading the most monotonous data on seismic activity and Behemoth’s possible movements. Ugly code. Distract me, I beg you.

  PHQ.Armsmaster: Hearing something. Can you listen in?

  A few seconds passed, then it came again.

  Guild.Dragon: I hear it. Wait. Changing the settings on your microphones so I can triangulate the source.

  As casually as he was able, he glanced towards the window. Tinted glass, bulletproof, and reinforced with a low degree forcefield. It would be easier for someone else to go through the wall than the window, but he couldn’t see through walls. Nothing outdoors. Just an overcast sky hiding the majority of the moon, and a faint drizzle of rain. No person or animal, nothing else.

  Clink.

  Guild.Dragon: Vent, behind and above you.

  He whirled around, grabbing the model of his nanobranch disintegration weapon from the stand on his desk. It was miniaturized, a mere pocket knife that Piggot could use for demonstration. Still, it would serve better than any chair or tool he might pick up.

  He briefly debated going for the helmet with the link back to his old suit’s combat analyzer. But it wasn’t set up, it would cost him precious seconds – twenty or thirty – before he connected to the main server. Until that happened, the helmet would only render him blind. A blank display.

  Something moved in the gloom behind the vent. There was a flash of something white or light gray, and the vent rattled, a puff of dust flowing down where the screws held it in place. Again, there was the sound. Clink.

  The vent exploded from the wall with enough force to fly across the room and embed in the opposite wall. It was hard to make out in the cloud of plaster dust, but Colin saw a hand, all white, each joint segmented, fingers splayed, palm facing the room.

  The hand tipped forward, and then dropped to the floor alongside the attached forearm, a length of chain stretching from the vent to the ‘elbow’.

  Other body parts followed, each separated from the rest, encased in a white shell. An upper arm, two halves of a torso, then a head. The rest of the body followed, flowing to the ground like a liquid to pool there. The right arm and the left leg were separate, detached, with only ball joints at the end.

  Colin noted that the flat expanse that would join the left side of the chest to the right had a clear pane to it. Organs were inside, cut cleanly down the middle, and they pulsed with activity, throbbing wet against the glass or glass substitute. There was technology in there too. Regulators and filtration systems, and other gear that was designed to fit into the gaps between the most vital systems. Weapons, tools.

  He knew this one from the briefings. Mannequin.

  The realization of what he was up against spurred him to action, pushed him beyond that momentary paralysis that came with the grim sight of the internal organs. While Mannequin was incapacitated, he charged, clicking a switch on the handle of his knife to activate the disintegration effect. A static grey cloud formed around the knife.

  Colin was two paces away when a telescoping blade speared out from Mannequin’s hand, straight at him. It was luck as much as reflexes that let him stop his run, his feet sliding on the smooth ground, before he ran into the weapon. He dropped onto his back, instinctively rolling with the fall to reduce the impact.

  The blade snapped back into Mannequin’s hand with enough force that the hand and forearm it was attached to recoiled from the impact. It flipped into the air, and the blade snapped out again to impale the top of the door frame.

  The chain retracted with a faint whirr, and the forearm snapped into place on the upper arm, which soon connected to the shoulder of the torso. The chain joining the two halves of the torso together reeled in and locked into place by way of some unseen mechanism, the seam between them almost invisible. Colin felt a faint tug from his weapon as some electromagnetics kicked into effect. The unattached arm and leg flew to the shoulder and pelvis and snapped into place.

  The head was the last thing to join the tall, thin body. The chain slowly reeled it in, dragging the head along the floor, lifting it off the ground. It swung, bouncing off one leg, the stomach, then the shoulder before it finally connected to the neck, the very top of the head scraping the ceiling. There were no eyeholes, no earholes, nor any vents for air intake. There was only a head as white and smooth as an eggshell, with shallow indents where the eyes and mouth should be and a small bump for the nose.

  Mannequin raised one hand and placed it on the top of his head. With a sharp twist, he snapped it into place with an audible click. He tested the range of motion, tilting it forward, backward, to either side, then spinning it around three-hundred-and-sixty degrees.

  “Dragon,” Colin whispered, “Are you getting this?”

  “Help is on the way, Colin.” The whole room was outfitted with speakers, microphones and microcameras. Her voice came from the speaker directly behind him, so quiet that he would have thought he imagined it, if he didn’t know her.

  Mannequin tested the rest of his body, while Colin slowly climbed to his feet. Every joint was too flexible, and was capable of moving in every angle. For a moment, Mannequin’s fingers were like worms, each knuckle bending in impossible directions.

  Was the killer hoping to intimidate him? Nobody would test these mechanics in front of an enemy, so this was most likely a demonstration.

  Four blades sprang from Mannequin’s left forearm. The limb began to rotate, slowly at first, then faster, until the four blades were whirling like a helicopter propellor. Colin tensed, preparing to jump the moment the limb shot towards him. He’d never wanted his suit so badly.

  The propeller-like whirl of the blades gave the arm some buoyancy, and it shifted enough to come into contact with Mannequin’s leg. All at once, it ricocheted, shearing through the computer, bouncing violently off of Mannequin’s head, then his leg again, the desk, then his arm.

  Colin watched every movement of the bouncing blades, waiting for the moment it would fly free, or the second Mannequin charged. There would be no dodging that unscathed.

  But Mannequin didn’t move. The spinning slowed, and the whirling blades settled into a rhythmic bounce against Mannequin’s leg, until it had stopped entirely, the arm swinging gently. The blades retracted.

  Mannequin didn’t speak, he made no sound.

  Long moments passed.

  “Talk to me, Dragon,” he murmured. His voice shook just a touch. Any second now, Mannequin would cut to the chase and attack, and he could die at this monster’s hands.

  Her voice was quiet behind him. As much as anything, it helped keep him calm. “Mannequin. Original name Alan Gramme. Tinker, originally went by the name Sphere. Specialty is in biomes, terraforming and ecosystems… or it was.”

  Colin nodded slowly. He knew this, but it was reassuring to get a recap.

  “He became newsworthy when he took on a project to build self sustaining biospheres on the moon. He had ideas on solving world hunger, and building aquatic cities near cities plagued by overcrowding. And he was putting it all into effect. Until-”

  “The Simurgh,” Colin finished.

  “His wife and children were killed in the attack, years of work ruined. Everything fell apart. He went mad. He cut himself off from the rest of the world. Literally sealed himself away.”

  Colin looked at the cases that surrounded each individual body part. Each body part a self-c
ontained system. Everything nonessential stripped away and replaced.

  Her voice was even quieter than before as she said, “He has a body count, Colin. You know…”

  She trailed off, unwilling to finish.

  “I know,” he finished for her. Like other serial killers, Mannequin favored certain types of people as victims. His prey of choice included rogues, those individuals seeking to make a profit from their abilities, especially those looking to better the world… and tinkers.

  Mannequin swayed slightly on the spot. Like a doll with a broken neck joint, his head flopped onto one side, until it was perpendicular to the floor. There was a click as he slowly righted it.

  “What do you want, monster?” Colin growled, “Little point in coming after me. I don’t have much of a life to look forward to. I’ve already lost everything!”

  Mannequin didn’t move.

  “You’d be doing me a fucking favor!” Colin shouted, “Come on! Come get me, you freak!”

  There wasn’t a movement or sound from the killer.

  There was a sound from Dragon. In a tone that was afflicted with agonizing disappointment, like a mother who had just found out her son had been arrested for a felony, she said, “Oh, Colin.”

  Colin didn’t speak. He waited for elaboration.

  “The PRT got a tip from one of the villain teams. The Slaughterhouse Nine is in town.”

  “So I gathered.”

  “They ran it by some of the experts. Colin, the consensus they came to was that Slaughterhouse Nine are in Brockton Bay to replace their ninth member.”

  He stared at Mannequin, and the realization made his blood run cold.

  “Me!?” he shouted.

  The faceless man cocked his head to one side.

  Colin roared, “I’m a fucking soldier! I made a call that could have saved millions of lives! Billions! You’re ten times as fucked up as I thought you were if you think I belong in your group!”

  Uncaring or oblivious to the outburst, Mannequin turned and examined the ruined computer. He picked up a key that had been thrown off the ruined keyboard and turned it over in his fingers.