Worm

by John Mccrae Wildbow

  I had only seconds.

  Having my bugs in the area, I knew exactly where to find what I was looking for. I hurried over to the corner and hefted a cinder block.

  I wasn’t halfway back to the head when I saw Mannequin stand. I abandoned my plan, dropped the block and stepped away, circling him, putting distance between myself and his head. His attention seemed to be on me.

  Had I pissed him off?

  He wasn’t spinning any more, and I could see the damage the bugs had wrought. Dense webs and scraps of cloth had collected across his body, and only half of the blades had succeeded in retracting in the face of the silk, glue and other gunk. Color streaked him, both liquid from the paints and powder from the dyes.

  I gathered my bugs into another formation. We were running low on silk, but I’d have to deal.

  He stepped forward, and his movements were more awkward than usual. Good. That might mean the ball joints weren’t in pristine condition anymore.

  He moved again, disconnecting the chain to free himself from the metal frame I’d tied the neck-chain to. He wasn’t focusing on me. I felt out with my bugs and sought his target.

  His arm. It crawled weakly for him, using the fingertips to scrape forward.

  The moment I realized what he was after, I redirected a portion of my web-spinning swarm to the hand. Then I limped to my left to put myself between him and his target. My swarm passed over him. The seventh strafing run. He slashed at it as it passed in a surprising display of emotion.

  He reached into the hole where his neck and head were supposed to be and withdrew a small knife.

  I adjusted my posture. He was a tinker, and that knife could be anything.

  He pressed a switch, and it was soon surrounded with a gray blur. I recognized it as Armsmaster’s tech.

  A weapon with that exact same visual effect had done horrendous damage to Leviathan.

  He stepped forward, and I stepped back. Behind me, the arm jumped. Mannequin was using the telescoping blade to help push it in the right direction. It was trying to take a circuitous route around me.

  My bugs made their eighth sweep past the headless Mannequin.

  He lunged for me once again. This time, there was no blocking the hit, no letting my armor absorb it. His movements were ungainly, unbalanced by his lack of an arm, but he stood nine feet tall, usually, and that meant he had reach, no matter the type of weapon he was wielding.

  I backed off, rapidly stepping away, all too aware that my spiders weren’t working fast enough to stop him before he landed a hit. I was swiftly running out of room to retreat.

  There was a sound, a heavy impact followed by the noise of ringing metal. Mannequin stopped and whirled on the spot, striding back the way he’d come.

  The sound came again. I chased, trying not to limp, knowing there was little I could do to stop the monster. I crossed half the factory floor before I saw what had earned Mannequin’s attention.

  The man who’d helped me with Mannequin had the concrete block in his hand, and for the third time, be brought it down on Mannequin’s head. The head came free of the chain and fell to the ground, rolling briefly.

  The man hefted the cinder block again, saw Mannequin approaching, and changed his mind. He dropped the block onto the head and then ran.

  Mannequin didn’t give chase to his attacker. Instead, he stooped down to pick up his head, then stood straight. I stopped where I was.

  For long moments, Mannequin held the head at arm’s length. Then it fell to the ground.

  Seconds stretched on as his arm flopped its way towards him. My spiders swarmed it, surrounding it in silk. Only the blade was really allowing it to move, now, the fingers struggling around the silk to move it into position for the next sudden thrust of the blade.

  Mannequin turned his attention to his arm, and I set my swarm on it. A thousand threads of silk, each held by as many flying insects as I could grip it with, all carrying the arm aloft. I brought it up to the ceiling, and began fixing it in place, building a cocoon around it. My enemy turned his attention to me, his shoulders facing me square-on. As he no longer had a head, I found his body language doubly hard to read. Had I irritated him, doing that?

  He stepped forward, as if to lunge, and the silk that wreathed him hampered his full range of movement. His leg didn’t move as far as he intended, and his missing arm displaced his sense of balance. He collapsed.

  “Want to keep going?” I asked his fallen form, my heart in my throat. I stood ready to jump and react at a moment’s notice.

  Slowly, he pulled himself to his feet again. Twice, he used the knife to slash at the silk. On the second attempt, I hit him with the formation of bugs for an eighth sweep of the silk net, hoping to throw him off-balance enough that he’d stab himself. No such luck.

  Standing straight, Mannequin shifted his grip on his knife and then raised one finger. Wagged it left and right, that same gesture of disapproval, condemnation.

  Then he turned to leave, striding for the door. I didn’t try to stop him. I didn’t have it in me.

  I watched him leave with my bugs. Felt him get three, four, then five blocks away with my power, before he was out of my range. The second he was gone, all the strength went out of my legs. I collapsed onto my knees in the center of the room.

  I hurt all over. If Mannequin hadn’t broken something in my ribs or collarbone, he’d fractured something. But pain was only part of it. Physically, I was exhausted. Emotionally? Doubly so.

  Charlotte appeared at my side and offered me a hand. The murmurs of conversation started to sound around me. I tuned it out. I couldn’t take the criticism, and I didn’t deserve any praise. How many people had been hurt while I fought Mannequin? How many people had died because I hadn’t been on the alert?

  With Charlotte’s help, I stood. I shook my head at her offer for support standing. Moving slowly and carefully, not wanting to embarrass myself, I walked over to the dismembered head.

  It was miniscule, but there was a drop of black fluid beading at the seam in the neck where the chain had been threaded. Apparently that was enough of a flaw for Mannequin to abandon it. I left it where it was.

  Then I hobbled over to the body of the gray-haired doctor. Getting onto my knees was painful, but I did. I gently turned her head and stared into her open eyes. Light blue, surprised.

  “I’m sorry,” I told her.

  I couldn’t think of anything more to add or say. A minute or two passed before I gave up on it. I left her eyes open; using my fingertips to close her eyes seemed presumptuous and trite.

  I cut the threads with my bugs and let the arm fall from the ceiling. More than one person was startled at the sudden drop and impact.

  “Throw the head and the arm into the ocean,” I said, to nobody in particular. “If you can find a boat, drop it somewhere deep.”

  “Okay,” Charlotte said, her voice quiet.

  “I’m going to go. I’ll be using my bugs to watch for more trouble,” I said, as I began limping toward the door.

  I’d won. So to speak.

  12.08

  I hadn’t actually slept in for a long, long time. It was not the start I wanted for my day.

  I’d been too tired to sleep, I hadn’t been able to get my thoughts to slow down, and I hadn’t been able to resist just one more check of my territory to ensure people were safe and sound. Compounding it all were my injuries, which did an excellent job of jolting me from the twilight of almost-sleep any time I moved the wrong way or shifted position. When daylight had started to stream in through the slits in the metal shutters, I’d pulled a pillow over my head and tried to get just a few hours more.

  If I wound up having to face down Mannequin or any other members of the Nine, I’d need to be well rested. Running on two or three hours of sleep would get me killed.

  It sure didn’t feel like the added sleep I got made any difference.

  My injuries and the general aches from running barefoot and fighting Mannequin had
all melded together into one giant, stiff bruise. It would be easier to name the parts of me that didn’t hurt. My chest was the worst, each of my breaths drawing a stab of pain from the lowermost ribs of the right side of my body. It took me two tries to get up from my bed and stand.

  A quick investigation showed that bruises had spread across my abdomen, yellow and blue. Some careful prodding showed that the tissues beneath the bruises weren’t rigid or particularly tender. That meant there was no serious internal bleeding, if I was remembering right.

  If this kept up, I was going to need another go at the first aid courses, to refresh my memory on the particulars and brush up on my skills. February felt so very long ago. So much had happened in the last few months.

  Shuffling over to my bathroom, I groaned quietly at the sight of the shards of mirror and shower door that were carpeting the floor. I made my way back to my room and put on some slippers, grabbed a shirt I didn’t care much about and dropped it on the bathroom floor. I kicked it around enough to get the worst of the shards out of the way, brushed the glass out of the shower and onto the tiled floor, and then cranked the shower on. The water pressure wasn’t even half of what it should be, and it was cold. It didn’t warm up over the thirty seconds I stood there holding my hand under the flow.

  I jumped in anyways, in the hopes of waking myself up and getting my hair wet enough that I could make myself look somewhat presentable. I knew from experience that not washing my hair had a way of making it frizz out hardcore. Not that I’d be able to tell, with every mirror within a thousand miles in pieces.

  I dried off, put on my contacts, combed my dripping-wet hair into place, and stepped back into my slippers to navigate through the sea of glass shards and head back to my bedroom to dress.

  My TV, laptop and phone were all useless. There was no way to get information on recent events. I couldn’t call the others, couldn’t check the news for details on the events of the past night, couldn’t even know if I’d managed to save anyone when I’d been waking them and leaving messages. I was left to expect the worst, and it soured my already iffy mood.

  I made my way downstairs, unlocking the door that led between the second and third floors. The second floor was relatively unscathed – the metal shutter had kept the floor-to-ceiling windows from sending their contents indoors, and the terrariums were hard plastic rather than glass. Knowing Shatterbird was in town, I’d been reluctant to spend much time in a room with sixty or seventy sturdy glass cases, and I was glad to have one less room to clean. Still, there was no shortage of mess.

  Sierra and Charlotte were downstairs, talking at the kitchen counter. They fell silent as I appeared.

  They didn’t speak as I walked over to the cupboard. Tea. Tea, maybe some toasted breakfast pitas, some bacon, an egg…

  Opening the cupboard, my hopes of having a solid breakfast to start my day were dashed. Bottles of spices that had been on the same shelf as the teabags had exploded, sending their contents and countless glass shards throughout the cupboard. The cupboard reeked of cinnamon and cumin and various peppers. They weren’t the only casualties there. Bottles of cooking supplies had exploded on the upper shelves, and their contents had settled overnight, most of it pooling on the shelves in layers of congealed liquid that were thick with the needle-thin particles of shattered glass.

  I looked at the pair of them. Neither spoke, and Charlotte even looked away.

  I hated this. Hated feeling flawed, knowing they saw me that way. Being bruised, sore and stiff, I was visibly mortal to them. I hadn’t been able to stop Mannequin from hurting bystanders, or protect and warn my people about Shatterbird. How were they supposed to respect me as someone in charge? Sierra was even older than I was.

  Well, I’d have to make use of them anyways. My focus on the cupboards and the damage inside, I asked, “Charlotte, you up for a job?”

  “Yeah,” she said, behind me. When I glanced back at her, she looked away again. I knew I’d taken some hits, but did I look that bad?

  “It’s a bit of a walk, but I need to get up to date on events. You’ll be going to the territory of a guy named Regent. He’s a friend, and it’s close. Tell him about the Mannequin incident, tell him I’m alive, and get details on what happened to Tattletale and the father.”

  “The father?”

  “He should know what I mean.”

  “Okay.” She met my eyes as she responded. Better. I wrote the address down for her, then watched as she headed off to pull on her shoes and make her way off to the cellar exit.

  “And me?” Sierra asked.

  “Go to the basement, get a box of supplies, and bring it up. There should be a propane stove in there. Cook up some rice, and then start cleaning out the cupboards. Wear gloves, and focus on picking out the stuff we can keep from the stuff that needs to be thrown out. Use the box from the supplies to hold some of the extra trash if you need to.”

  “Okay.”

  I walked over to the corner to find a broom and dustpan.

  “You’re cleaning up too?”

  “Yeah. You were at the hospital last night, right? How did things go?”

  “Nobody listened to me at first when I tried to warn them. It was only when Battery showed up at the hospital and confirmed that the Slaughterhouse Nine were around that people started trying to prepare, but there wasn’t a lot we could do in those ten minutes. There were a lot of people in the hospital, and a lot of equipment, monitors and displays, lots of windows. Everyone who could got under their beds, and people put mattresses against the windows in rooms where there were people who couldn’t move.”

  “But they were okay?”

  “Most?” Sierra frowned. “I couldn’t really tell. It was chaotic, lots of people running around, equipment failing. Battery tried to grab me to ask me how I knew what was happening, and I used the chaos to slip away, spent the rest of the night in my parent’s room, hoping she wouldn’t spot me.”

  “And they’re okay? Your parents?”

  “They’re okay.”

  I smiled a little. ”Well, that’s good.”

  She smiled back. ”You know, you’re not what I expected.”

  “I’m not what I expected, frankly,” I said. I turned my attention back to the cabinet, found the dustpan and stood up.

  “That reminds me-” She paused. ”Nevermind.”

  “Say it.”

  “It wasn’t last night, but I overheard something at the hospital. Something involving you and Armsmaster?”

  I sighed, suddenly reminded of how weary I felt. I saw her expression fall. She said, “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  “No. It’s fine. What did you hear?”

  “That you betrayed your team, and that you’d wanted to be a hero but, um,” she paused, “Couldn’t?”

  She’d changed her mind about how she was going to finish speaking. What had she left out, and had she stopped herself from saying it for my sake or for her own self-preservation, not wanting to piss off the villain? I wanted to be a hero and I failed?

  Given recent events, I wasn’t sure I could blame her for thinking along those lines.

  “No, that’s not exactly right,” I responded. ”Long story short, once upon a time, I wanted to be one of the good guys.”

  “What happened?”

  “Took me a while, but I decided I’d rather have the likes of Tattletale and Grue at my back instead of siding with the sort of people who follow Armsmaster.”

  “Really, Armsmaster? Is he that bad?”

  “Bad enough that Mannequin wants him to be the ninth member of their group.”

  Sierra’s eyes widened.

  I figured I wouldn’t mention that two of my teammates, including the one I’d sent Charlotte to meet, had also been nominated. Regent had only been nominated out of spite, and Bitch… I wasn’t sure what the story was there. ”I’m going to be upstairs, cleaning up the balcony and the other rooms. Give me a shout when the rice is done, or if you find anything breakfast-is
h that’s edible.”

  “Okay.”

  I headed up to my bathroom and began to sweep up. I deployed bugs to help me find the shards that the broom wasn’t catching.

  I occupied myself with my other bugs as well. I went out of my way to avoid using the spiders I’d employed to fight Mannequin, drawing from bugs in the streets and surrounding area instead. I sent the weakest, smallest and most useless of the bugs to my spiders for a morning meal, then fed the non-spiders who were a little less reliant on protein. With the other nearby bugs, I started collecting the smallest pieces of glass throughout the house.

  The uncertainties of the day, the worries about Lisa and Dad, having my routine disrupted and the spoiling of my breakfast and morning shower had put me in a bad mood. It would have been nice to say that it made me feel better, getting things in order again, and it did, but it wasn’t a cure-all nor was it a perfect distraction. There was no way I could relax with the things I had hanging over my head.

  Doing this felt like I wasn’t doing something to help Dinah.

  Once I finished the bathroom, I tidied my room and opened the shutters on the windows. Glass that had fallen against the shutter sloughed off to the second floor balcony, with stray shards falling onto the hardwood. My bugs obligingly fetched them up for me.

  Reams of glass shards fell as I opened the heavy shutters that stood just behind the pedestals with the mannequins I was using to design the costumes. I stepped out onto the balcony and set about sweeping up the glass and dumping it into the trash can, using my bugs to collect what the dustpan wasn’t catching. I wasn’t in costume, and I was in plain sight on the balcony, but I doubted the concentration of bugs was enough to draw attention.

  Ten minutes passed before I heard from Sierra. I assumed it would be about the food, but it wasn’t.

  “Skitter! You’ve got company!”

  Every bug I had in the cabinets and corners of the room streamed forth to check the intruder, my thoughts immediately shifting into a combat mode. What escape routes did I have? Could I help Sierra if there was trouble? What tools and weapons did I have on hand?