Worm

by John Mccrae Wildbow

  I focused on one of them, and I got the sensation that this wasn’t a scene I’d seen before.

  I could see what it saw. It was looking forward, but not in distance. Ten thousand pictures at once. Seeing situations where it arrived at its final destination. Earth. The farther forward it looked, the broader the possibilities. It was looking for something. Paring away the branches where the possibilities were few. An Earth in a perpetual winter. An Earth with a population of hundreds. An earth with a population of more than twelve billion, that had stalled culturally, a modern dark age with a singular religion.

  And it communicated with its partner. Signals transmitted not through noise, but wavelengths transmitted across the most fundamental forces of the universe. In the same way, it received information, it worked with its partner to decide the destination.

  It viewed a world, one point in time in the present, and in a heartbeat, it took in trillions of images. Billions of individuals, viewed separately and as a tableau. Innumerable scenes, landscapes, fragments of text, even ideas. In that one heartbeat, I saw people who were somehow familiar. A young man, a teenager, out of place among his peers, men who were burly with muscle. They were drinking. He was tan, with narrow hips, his forehead creased in worry above thick glasses, but his mouth was curled in the smallest of wry smiles over something one of the men was saying. A snapshot, an image of a moment.

  It was my world, my Earth it was looking at.

  Coming to a consensus, it transmitted a decision. Destination.

  The reply was almost immediate. Agreement.

  More signals passed between them, blatant and subtle. A melding of minds, a sharing of ideas, as intimate as anything I’d seen. They continued to communicate, focusing on that one world, on the possible futures that could unfold, committing to none, but explored the possibilities that lay before them.

  They broke apart, the two massive beings that spiralled together, and I gradually lost my glimpse into what they were thinking, what they were communicating. Whatever view they’d had of the future, they were losing it. It was too much to pick through on their own.

  Where have I seen this before? I thought.

  But somewhere in the course of forming and finishing the thought, I’d broken away from whatever it was I’d seen. It was slipping from my mind. The void I was in was not the world of the entities, but Brian’s world. Brian’s power.

  The darkness coiled around me, through me. It was different, slithering past my skin to brush against my heart, tracing the edges of my wounds, the gouge in my skull that Bonesaw had made with her saw, slithering over and through my brain.

  I could feel my power slip just a little out of my reach, my range dropping, my control over the bugs just a touch weaker.

  But I could still see through my bugs. I could still feel what they felt. They’d gathered for the barrier I’d tried to erect between Parian and Bonesaw, and they’d dispersed in the time since, touching everyone present. Burnscar had put out her flame, was cradling her hand to her chest. I could feel Bonesaw and Jack, standing a short distance away. I could feel Trickster, Sundancer, Tattletale, Parian, Ballistic and Imp. I could feel Grue, hanging from the wall of the walk-in freezer.

  I could feel another person, someone who hadn’t been there a moment ago. A man standing in the darkness.

  The man strode forward, uncaring about the darkness. He caught Burnscar around the face with one broad hand, and he brought it down hard against the counter. I was dropped to the ground. Burnscar fell across me, limp and unmoving, and the man flickered out of existence.

  The darkness slipped away, retracing its steps through my body, undoing its passage between my organs and joints, through and inside my blood vessels.

  A clearing formed. An expanse of dim light, lit only by one shaft of light that managed to come in through the corner of a window. Burnscar’s head was pulverized, unrecognizable. She lay limp, unmoving, dead.

  “Interesting,” Jack said, looking down at his fallen teammate.

  “Yes! I’m almost positive I got this on record!” Bonesaw squealed.

  “Which you’ll have to leave behind. We’ll retreat.”

  “I just need the hard drive! I’ve been trying to get data like this for ages, and it’s a new system!”

  Bonesaw started to head for the walk-in fridge where Brian was, but Jack grabbed her by the back of the neck. “No.”

  “It’s ‘kay! Two seconds! I’ll be right back!” She slipped out of his grip, running into the freezer, opening one of the cases that looked Mannequin-made.

  The darkness continued to dissipate around Brian, and I was aware as a masculine figure flickered into existence in the midst of the cloud, in one corner of the walk-in freezer.

  It was Brian, but it wasn’t. It was colored in monochrome, with one eye open, the other half-formed. Markings in white covered his flesh, spiraling out from one pectoral, covering his chest and stomach. His hands were white to the elbow, and he was sexless. A ken doll with only more white patterns between his legs.

  Or maybe he was white and the markings were in black?

  Almost casually, he reached out and seized Bonesaw’s hands, which gripped the drive. He raised her off of the ground, her feet kicking, and she grunted as his grip tightened.

  “The things I put up with,” Jack said, seemingly unconcerned. He whipped out his knife, slashing at the pseudo-Brian. There was no effect. “Hm.”

  Grabbing a meat cleaver from the kitchen counter, he hacked at Bonesaw instead. It took three swings to sever her arms at the wrists. She hit the ground running, her stumps jammed into her armpits. They disappeared over the counter of the dining hall, Jack helping Bonesaw up.

  Monochrome Brian lunged after them, but the floor of the freezer shattered beneath one foot. He lost his orientation, then flickered out of existence once more.

  I could see Brian from where I lay, as I struggled to breathe with the one-hundred and whatever pounds that were piled on top of me. He hung there, haggard, glaring at nothing in particular. The man didn’t reappear, but the stream of incongruent events continued; I could see one of Brian’s ribs twitch like the limb of a dying insect.

  With a glacial slowness, his body parts began retracting back into place. The metal frames holding his intestines and organs into place bent, then gave way in the face of the inexorable pull.

  It took a long time. Five minutes, maybe ten. But his skin crept back, tearing where it had been pinned to the wall, joining back together, then healing. Even the scratches that had criss-crossed his chest since he’d fought Cricket began to mend.

  The healing stopped before it was entirely finished. I saw the figure appear again. The monochrome, half-formed Brian. Mercilessly, it tore out the metal studs that had impaled Brian’s limbs to the wall. It caught Brian, then laid him carefully on the ground.

  He couldn’t walk, so he dragged himself towards us.

  He had another trigger event. Two new powers? Three, if I counted the way his power was diminishing my own?

  He touched my hand, held it between his own. I could feel something thrumming through me, willing me to take hold of it.

  It took me a minute to figure out how. The exposed bone of my forehead itched, then sang in an exquisite agony as it mended. My skin was next. My seized up muscles were last. My power was last to mend, and I regained my control, though the diminished effect continued.

  I clenched my fist, struggled into a standing position. Brian hurried to Aisha’s side, grabbing her.

  Four new powers?

  I hadn’t heard about anything like this.

  “Come on,” he said, his voice hoarse, “Don’t have long. I- Damn it!”

  His darkness flowed out from his skin, heavier than I’d ever seen it, slow to expand, but it seemed to generate itself. It slithered through me yet again. Slithered through my bugs.

  It was minutes before the darkness dissipated. When it did, Tattletale was standing. Parian was standing on the other side of t
he room, eyes wide. The three Travellers were huddled together.

  “What the hell was that?” I asked. “Brian, hey-”

  I stopped. He was on all fours, his head hung, his cheeks wet with tears.

  I reached out for him, but a hand seized my wrist. Tattletale. She shook her head at me.

  While I backed off, Tattletale reached for Imp, whispered something in her ear.

  Imp bent down and took off her mask. In a voice far gentler than any I’d heard from her before, she said, “Hey. Big brother? Let’s get out of here.”

  Brian nodded, mute.

  Aisha could approach him, but I couldn’t?

  He stood, refusing Imp’s offer for help in standing. He clutched one elbow with one hand, the arm dangling; it wasn’t an injury, I was pretty sure. He’d healed the worst of it. It was something else, some kind of security in the posture or something like that.

  Darkness boiled out of his skin, a thin layer. It moved slower than it had before, thicker, more like tendrils sliding against one another than smoke. Just like the arm he had across his chest, gripping his elbow for stability, it was a kind of barrier, armor or a wall erected against the world. He walked slowly. Nobody complained, despite the proximity of our enemies and the fact that the darkness he’d spread out had to have alerted Hookwolf’s contingent about our existence.

  I watched Brian as I walked behind him. I’d just been paralyzed, about to receive involuntary brain surgery. Now, in a much different way and for different reasons than before, I was again unable to offer him a hand. I couldn’t even talk to him without being afraid I’d say the wrong thing.

  Even compared to being in Bonesaw’s clutches, I felt more helpless as ever.

  13.10

  I slept, but it was less like parking a car and more like running one into a ditch. I’d fallen asleep not by any choice on my part, but because I’d ceased to function. Over the past few days, I’d hit my limits of endurance, only to push past them over and over.

  We’d made our escape without incident. When we’d gotten Brian settled, I’d planned on staying awake and keeping an eye on him, only to drop off to sleep within a minute of sitting down. I’d tried to push my limits once more and I’d discovered them.

  When I woke up again, it was dusk. I was curled up in a chair with my head on the armrest. My eyes were sore and itchy, and I wasn’t sure why.

  We’d settled at Brian’s headquarters, because it was close, and there had been the unspoken agreement that it would be better for him to be somewhere he’d be comfortable.

  I was still tired, and I kept my head on the chair’s arm, clutching the blanket that someone- I suspected Tattletale- had draped over me. I could see her in the bed in the other corner of the room, lying beside Aisha. When I’d dozed off, it had been Brian and his sister sitting on the bed.

  The blanket’s presence unsettled me, and I couldn’t put my finger on why. It was thoughtful, nice, and the fact that I didn’t know who’d done it or that I’d been unconscious and helpless when they’d done it, it shook me from the twilight of near-sleep.

  Which meant I was now wide awake when I desperately wanted to get back to sleep, to stop thinking for just a few minutes. The second I started worrying about things, my shot at a good rest would be gone. Worrying about things like Dinah, and Cherish’s hints that Coil wasn’t on the up and up about our deal. Worries about what that could mean in the long run. The newest were my anxieties over Grue.

  No, I wouldn’t be getting to sleep any time soon. I turned my attention to checking my surroundings, rousing my swarm to check the surrounding streets and rooftops, count the nearby civilians, and get a sense of who was around.

  Sundancer was out cold in the bunk beds in another room, and Bitch was sleeping in another bunk, in a heap with Sirius, Bastard and Bentley occupying the open spaces. Trickster and Ballistic were walking outside, maybe keeping an eye out for trouble. Genesis was off-site. She had to be awake for a while to recharge her power, so she’d told us she was going to report to Coil and check on Noelle. If my bugs were any indication, she wasn’t back yet.

  Parian had gone her separate way. She’d had stuff to deal with; her family was dead or surgically altered, their faces changed to make them near identical to some of the most hated individuals in the western hemisphere. I felt bad about leaving her with the aftermath of that scene, but we’d been prioritizing Brian.

  Seems Brian’s commentary to me on the morning we’d found out about Dinah, the morning Leviathan came, was ultimately on target. When the cards were down, we protected and helped the people we care about, and we ignored the greater suffering of the world beyond that.

  I shifted restlessly.

  My bugs ran into a wall of Brian’s darkness in the living room, on the couch. I could feel it seep through them, tracing their internal organs. I didn’t move them further. I didn’t want to wake him if he was sleeping.

  He wasn’t. A hand settled over my bug and covered it. I felt him scoop up the cockroach and lift it into the air, holding it on the flat of his palm. The darkness dissipated, and the cockroach heard the bass rumble of his voice.

  I made myself rise from the bed. My ribs didn’t hurt anymore, and my burns were gone, but my muscles had kinked up from my sleeping in the fetal position on a piece of furniture meant for sitting. I stretched as I made my way to the living room. He was sitting on the couch with his feet firmly on the ground.

  “You say something?” I asked.

  “I said you can check on me in person, if you want.” The words were kind, but the look in his eyes wasn’t.

  His stare reminded me of Bitch.

  “Okay,” I replied, feeling dumb. I’d come to do that anyways, hadn’t I?

  And now I didn’t know what to do with myself. I hadn’t mentally prepared or planned for this conversation. I stood there, feeling an impending panic as I tried to think of what to say.

  I couldn’t ask if he was alright. That might be the last reminder he wanted, in much the same way that I’d been trying to avoid dwelling on my own anxieties and worries. Could I approach closer, or would that bother him? If I left, would I be abandoning him?

  “Keep me company?” he asked.

  Gratefully, I approached the couch and sat. I could see him tense as I jostled the couch.

  “Are you hurt?” I asked, stupidly.

  He shook his head, but he didn’t offer another explanation.

  “Can I ask about the new power, or-”

  “Yeah,” he interrupted.

  There was a pause. I saw him raise his hand and create a slithering mass of darkness around it.

  “Feels different,” he said, “And I can tell where it is, more. Slower to create, spreads faster.”

  “But the other powers? I counted at least four.”

  “One new ability.”

  I nodded. Didn’t want to argue, so I waited.

  From the other end of the couch, he raised one hand and pointed it towards my head. I stayed utterly still as a tendril of darkness snaked through the air, taking its time as it approached.

  I stood up, abruptly, and he jumped to his feet in alarm. I could see his hands clenched, lines standing out in his neck.

  An awkward, tense silence reigned, as we stood facing each other.

  I waited until he’d relaxed before I spoke. ”Had a bad time with someone else trying to get into my head, not so long ago. Um. Can we- can we just skip the demonstration? Or make it more blunt?”

  “Right.” It was like a shadow had passed over his face. He stared hard at the shuttered window at the end of the room.

  I sat down, pulling my knees up in front of me so I could wrap my arms around my legs, and I waited for him to rejoin me. He’d healed himself, but he hadn’t exactly bounced back. It wouldn’t be right to expect him to. Was this the kind of interaction Tattletale had wanted to avoid, when she’d urged Aisha to go to Brian, instead of me?

  “I’ve talked to Tattletale about this. My power’s al
ways had some effect on capes like Shadow Stalker. Her powers didn’t work as effectively in my darkness.”

  “Velocity struggled, too. He was slower, but I wasn’t sure if it was because of the increased air resistance or something else.”

  “Yeah. So we think I always had some effect in that department. That’s stronger now. Affects more powers, according to Tattletale. She’s making an educated guess that this aspect of my power is going to be more effective on capes with a physical power.”

  “Right.”

  “And when it works, I feel… a circuit? It’s like the darkness comes alive, a cord or wire between me and the people in my darkness, and I can actually see it. If I focus on it, it gets bright and hot, and I have access to whatever my power’s sapping from them. A fraction of a power, one power at a time.”

  “So the healing?”

  “Othala. I was so worried she’d escape my darkness before I finished giving you guys regeneration. I couldn’t just use her power on each of you, because it was only lasting a few seconds after I touched you.”

  “And the regeneration was… Crawler?”

  He nodded. I could see that dark look pass over his face.

  “And then the duplicate you created would have been Genesis.”

  He shook his head. ”No.”

  “No?”

  “She wasn’t in my darkness, I’m almost positive. And my power’s weaker than whatever I’m stealing. It doesn’t make sense that I was able to form myself as fast as I did. It wasn’t like she’s described it, either. Remember, I worked with her when we were dismantling the ABB.”