Worm

by John Mccrae Wildbow

  She shook her head.

  “Talk to me.”

  Carol sighed.

  He sat down on the corner of her desk, reached over and turned off the scanner. “Talk.”

  “When I agreed to join New Wave, Sarah and I both agreed that I’d keep my job, and I’d strike a balance between work and life in costume.”

  He nodded.

  “I felt like I had to keep coming, even after Leviathan destroyed the city. Keep that promise to myself, keep myself sane. This filing helps, too. It’s almost meditative.”

  “I can’t imagine what it would have been like to stay in the city, with everything that’s gone on. I heard things in the news, but it really didn’t hit home until I came back.”

  Carol smiled a little, “Oh, it hasn’t been pretty. Addicts and thugs thinking they can band together to take over the city. The Slaughterhouse Nine-”

  Alan shook his head in amazement.

  “My husband was gravely injured in the attack, you might have heard.”

  “Richard mentioned it.”

  “Head injury. Could barely feed himself, could barely walk or speak.”

  “Amy’s a healer, isn’t she?”

  “Amy has always insisted she couldn’t heal brain injuries.”

  Alan winced. “I see. The worst sort of luck.”

  Carol smiled, but it wasn’t a happy expression. “So imagine my surprise when, after weeks of taking care of my husband, wiping food from his face, giving him baths, supporting him as he walked from the bedroom to the bathroom, Amy decides she’ll heal him after all.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Neither do I. But we can’t ask Amy, because she ran away from home while Mark called to let me know he was okay.”

  “Something else happened?”

  “Oh, quite a bit happened. But if I got into the details of the Slaughterhouse Nine visiting my home, the ensuing fight destroying the ground floor, Bonesaw forcing Amy to kill one of her Frankenstein mutants and inviting her to join the Nine, I think that would derail the conversation.”

  Alan opened his mouth to ask a question, then shut it.

  “This is strictly confidential, yes?” Carol stated. “Between friends?”

  “Always,” he replied automatically. After a moment’s consideration, he said, “Amy must have been terrified.”

  “Oh, I imagine she was. Victoria went looking for her after she ran away, returned home empty-handed. I think she was even more upset than I was, with Amy taking so long to heal Mark. She was almost inarticulate, she was so angry.”

  “Your daughters are close. The sense of betrayal would be that much stronger.”

  Carol nodded, then sighed.

  “Quite a lot to deal with. I can understand why you’d need some quiet and routine to distract yourself.”

  Carol fidgeted. “Oh, that wasn’t even the worst of it. Victoria’s been flirting with the notion of joining the Wards, and she went out to fight the Nine just a few days ago. Apparently she was critically injured. She was carried off for medical care and nobody’s seen her since.”

  “Carried off by who? Or whom?”

  “The Undersiders. Who have dropped off the face of the map, in large part. I’ve tried finding them on my patrols, but all reports suggest they’ve spread over the city in an attempt to seize large tracts of territory. It’s a big city with a lot of stones to overturn and dark corners to investigate.”

  “So Victoria’s missing, now?”

  “Or dead,” Carol said. She blinked a few times in rapid succession, fighting the need to cry. “I don’t know. I was patrolling, searching, and I felt my composure start to slip. I feel like shit for doing it, but I came here, I thought maybe if I took fifteen minutes or half an hour to center myself, I could be ready to start searching again.”

  “I wouldn’t beat yourself up over it.”

  “She’s my daughter, Alan. Something’s happened to her, and I don’t know what.”

  “I’m sorry. Is there anything I can do?”

  She shook her head.

  “I could call some people, if we organized a search party-”

  “Too dangerous when you’re talking supervillains and the numbers of armed thugs on the streets. Even civilians are likely to attack first and ask questions later, if confronted. Besides…” she picked up her cell phone from the corner of her desk. She showed him the screen, “Cell towers are down. No service.”

  He frowned. “I- I don’t know what to say.”

  “Welcome back to Brockton Bay, Mr. Barnes.”

  ■

  “Carol, wake up.”

  Carol stirred. She was sleeping so much of the time now.

  There was a man in the doorway. Her heart leapt in her chest.

  Then he moved the lantern. A stranger.

  “Time’s up,” he spoke, his voice heavily accented.

  “Don’t understand,” Sarah spoke, her voice thin.

  “Where’s… where’s the other man?” Carol asked. She felt almost ashamed she didn’t have a better name for him.

  “Quiet,” the man snapped. He moved the hand that wasn’t burdened with the lantern, and Carol could see a knife. She gasped, or maybe moaned. It was hard to tell what it was supposed to be, because it was involuntary and her voice caught, making the sound come out more like a yelp or a reedy shriek. She shrank back.

  “No, no, no,” Sarah squeaked, shaking her head.

  Time’s up. Sarah had to know what he meant, now.

  They’d spent so long in the darkness, in their own filth. They’d eaten so little, grown so weak, and now they’d die. And the thing that upset Carol most was that they would never understand why.

  “No!” Sarah shrieked, her voice raw.

  The light was so bright it momentarily blinded Carol. She covered her face with her arms. When she looked up again, the man was on his hands and knees. And her sister… Sarah was standing.

  Except standing was the wrong word. Sarah was upright, and her legs were moving, but her toes were barely touching the ground. She wasn’t supporting her own weight. She advanced on the man, raising one hand.

  Again, that blinding light. It didn’t burn the man, nor did it cut him. He reacted like he’d been punched instead, stumbling backward through the doorway. She hit him again, over and over, wordless cries accompanying each attack. Carol saw only glimpses of the man’s bloodied body in the split-seconds the light hung in the air. He was being beaten, pulverized.

  She couldn’t bring herself to protest. For the first time in long weeks or months, she felt a flicker of hope.

  Darkness reigned over them for a few seconds as Sarah stopped to catch her breath.

  Carol tried to stand and found her legs were like spaghetti noodles.

  She was so busy trying to maintain her balance that she almost didn’t see.

  The man who’d brought them the food. He stepped into the doorway and raised one hand. A gun.

  The report of the handgun was deafening after such a long time in the quiet room.

  But they weren’t hurt. Sarah had raised her hands, and a glowing, see-through wall stood between them and the man.

  He’d tried to attack them? Carol couldn’t understand it. He was the one who’d taken care of them. When he’d appeared, she’d been happy. And now it felt like that had been ruined, spoiled.

  She felt betrayed and she couldn’t understand why.

  Again, the gun fired. She flinched, and not because of the noise. It was like she’d been slapped.

  Then silence.

  Silence, no hunger, no pain, no sense of betrayal. Even Sarah and the wall of light she’d put together were gone.

  A flat plain stretched out around her, but she had no body. She could see in every direction.

  A crack split the ground. Once the dust had settled, nothing happened for a long time.

  More cracks.

  It’s an egg, she realized, just in time to see it hatch.

  The egg’s occu
pant tore free from the crack, unfolding from a condensed point to grow larger with every moment and movement.

  Others were hatching from the same egg, spreading out like sparks from the shell of a firework. Each unfolding into something vast and incomprehensible within seconds of its birth.

  But her attention was on the first. She felt it reach out and connect with another that shared a similar trajectory. Still more were doing the same, pairing off. Forming into trios, in some cases, but most chose to form pairs.

  A mate? A partner?

  Each settled into a position around the ruined egg, embracing their chosen companions, rubbing against, into and through one another as they continued to grow.

  The egg vibrated. Or did it? No, it was an illusion. There were multiple copies of the egg, multiple versions, and they each stirred, deviating from one another until subtle double images appeared.

  Then, one by one, they crumpled into a single point. The egg at the center of the formation of these creatures was the last, and for the briefest of moments, it roiled with the pressure and energy of all of the others.

  Then it detonated, and the creatures came alive, soaring out into the vastness of the void, trails of dust following in their wake, each with a partner, a companion, traveling in a different direction.

  And she was back in the dark room, staring at the man.

  The betrayer.

  The memory was already fading, but she instinctively knew that whatever had happened to Sarah had just happened to her.

  His gun was spent, which was good, because Sarah had fallen to the ground in the same instant Carol had, and the wall of light was gone.

  Carol advanced on him, her emotions so wild and varied and contradictory that she’d seemed to settle into a kind of neutrality, a middle ground where there was only that confused sense of betrayal.

  A weapon appeared in her hands, forged of light and energy and electricity. Crude, unrefined, it amounted to little more than a baseball bat.

  When she struck him in the leg, the weapon sheared through without resistance. That’s good, her thoughts were strangely disconnected from everything else, because I can’t hit very hard right now.

  He screamed as he fell to the ground, his leg severed.

  She hit him again, then again, much like Sarah had with the other man. Except this wasn’t simply beating him to a pulp. It was more final than that.

  When she was done, the weapon disappeared. Sarah hugged her, and she hugged her sister back.

  When she cried, it wasn’t the crying of a thirteen year old girl. It was more basic, more raw: the uncontrolled, unrestrained wail one might expect of a baby.

  ■

  There was a knock on the door. She looked up.

  It was Lady Photon. Sarah. “What are you doing here? I’ve been looking all over.”

  “I needed a few minutes to myself to think. Get grounded.”

  Lady Photon gave her a sympathetic look. She hated that look.

  “Why did you want me?”

  “We found Tattletale. In a fashion. We made contact with her and struck a deal.”

  Carol didn’t like the sound of that, but she wouldn’t say that out loud. It would bother her sister, start something. “What was she asking and what was she offering?”

  “She wanted a two-week ceasefire. The Undersiders won’t give any heroes or civilians any trouble, and we ignore them in exchange.”

  “That gives them time to consolidate, get a firmer hold on the city.”

  “Maybe. I talked to Miss Militia about it, and she doesn’t think they’ll accomplish anything meaningful in that span of time. The Undersiders have their hands full with white supremacists and some leftover Merchants, the Protectorate and Wards aren’t part of the ceasefire and they’ll be putting pressure on the Undersiders as well.”

  “I’m not so optimistic,” Carol commented. She sighed again. “I would have liked to be part of that negotiation.”

  “We didn’t know where you were. But let’s not fight again. The important thing is that Tattletale pointed us in the right direction. We think we know where your daughters are.”

  Daughters? Plural?

  Carol couldn’t put a name to the feeling that had just sucker-punched her.

  “Give me thirty seconds to change,” she said, standing from her chair.

  ■

  “Stand down,” Brandish ordered.

  “Now why would I want to do that?” Marquis asked. “I’ve won every time your team has challenged me, this situation isn’t so different.”

  “You have nowhere to run. We’ve got you where you live,” Manpower spoke.

  “I have plenty of places to run,” Marquis replied, shrugging. “It’s just a house, I won’t lose any sleep over leaving it behind. It’s an expensive house, I’ll admit, but that little detail loses much of its meaning when you’re as ridiculously wealthy as I am.”

  The Brockton Bay Brigade closed in on the man who stood by his leather armchair, wearing a black silk bathrobe. He held his ground.

  “If you’ll allow me to finish my wine-” he started, bending down to reach for the wine glass that sat beside the armchair.

  Manpower and Brandish charged. They didn’t get two steps before Marquis turned himself into a sea urchin, bone spears no thicker than a needle extending out of every pore, some extending twelve or fifteen feet.

  Brandish planted her heel on the ground to arrest her forward movement and activated her power. In an instant, her body was condensed into a point, surrounded by a layered, spherical force field. It meant she didn’t fall on her rear end, and she could pick a more appropriate posture as she snapped back into her human shape.

  Manpower wasn’t so adroit. He managed to stop himself, slamming one foot through the mahogany floor to give himself something to brace against, but it was too late to keep him from running into the spears of bone. Shards snapped against his skin and went flying.

  Lady Photon opened her mouth to shout a warning, but it was too late. Flashbang fell to one knee as a shard bounced off the ground near him, reshaping into a form that could slash across the top of his foot. Brandish caught only a glimpse of the wound, primarily blood. She didn’t see anything resembling bone, but Marquis apparently did.

  There was a sound like firecrackers going off, and Flashbang screamed.

  The needles retracted. Marquis rolled his shoulders, as if loosening his muscles. “Broke your foot? How clumsy.”

  Lightstar was the next to go down, as one splinter that had embedded in a bookshelf branched out to pierce his shoulder. Fleur caught him before he could land on top of more of the bone needles.

  Brandish shifted her footing, and the slivers of bone that scattered the ground around her shifted, some reshaping into starbursts of ultrafine needle points, waiting for her to step on them. She knew from experience that they would penetrate the soles of her boots.

  Lady Photon fired a spray of laser blasts in Marquis’ general direction, tearing into bookshelves, antique furniture and the rack of wine bottles. Marquis created a shield of bone to protect himself, expanding its dimensions until it was taller and wider than he was.

  He’s going to burrow, Brandish thought. He’d done it often enough in the past, disappearing underground the second he’d dropped out of sight, then attacking through the ground, floor or rooftop.

  “Careful!” she shouted.

  Lady Photon spent the rest of the energy she’d gathered in her hands, spraying another spray of lasers at Marquis’ shield. Then, as they’d practiced, she prepared to use her forcefield to shield Flashbang, Fleur and Lightstar. Brandish and Manpower could defend themselves.

  A barrier of bone plates erupted around one corner of the room, rising just in time to keep some of Lady Photon’s salvo from striking a closet door. Marquis emerged from the floor a short distance away, driving a spike of bone up through the ground and then deconstructing it to reveal himself.

  “What are you protecting?” Lady Photon a
sked.

  “I’d tell you, but you wouldn’t believe me.” He glanced around, “I don’t suppose we could change venues? I’ll be good if you are.”

  “Seems like we should take every advantage we can,” Manpower said.

  “If you’re talking purely about increasing your odds of victory, yes. But should you? No, you really shouldn’t.”

  This isn’t his usual behavior, Brandish thought. His power let him manipulate bone. If it was his own, he could make it grow or shrink, reshape it and multiply it. It made him, in many respects, a competent shapeshifter. His abilities with the bones of others were limited to a simple reshaping, and there was a nuance in that the longer his own bone was separated from his body, the less able he was to manipulate it. Every second he was wasting talking was a second that the bone splinters he’d spread over the area would be less useful to him. He was putting himself at a disadvantage.

  Well, only in a sense. They still hadn’t touched him, and two of their members were out of commission. Three, if she counted Fleur being occupied with a wounded Lightstar in her arms.

  But the fact remained that Marquis wasn’t pushing his advantage. The way his power worked and his very personality meant he was exceptional when it came to turning one advantage into another. Or turning one advantage into three. It was in his very nature to trounce his enemies, to grind them into the ground without an iota of mercy or fair play.

  Was he distracted?

  If he was, it was barely slowing him down. She felt something clutch her from behind, covering her eyes. When she tried to tear it free, she found it hard, unyielding.

  She dropped into her ball form and then back into her human form, taking only a second to break free of the binding. She caught the offending article in one hand before it could hit the ground.

  It was a blindfold of solid bone, but it had been a skull of some sort beforehand. Probably something that had sat on a bookshelf behind her. Stupid to overlook it.

  In the seconds it had taken her to deal with the blindfold, Marquis had trapped Lady Photon, binding her in a column of dense bone that had likely sprung around her from the floor or ceiling. From the glow that was emanating through the barrier, she was apparently trying to use lasers to cut her way out. She was strong enough to do it in one shot, but she couldn’t do that without risking shooting a teammate if the shot continued through.