Worm

by John Mccrae Wildbow

  Rune was kneeling, bleeding from shallow cuts across her face, chest, ribs, stomach and thighs. She was using her power on a scarf to bind the wounds tight.

  Othala was standing off to one side, hurt as well. Victor was bound.

  None of them were meeting our gaze. We’d won to the extent that it was embarrassing to them.

  “You’re in our territory,” Tattletale told them. “Get out.”

  “You’ve taken this whole fucking city as your territory,” Rune retorted, scowling.

  “Your point being?” Regent asked.

  “Where are we supposed to go?”

  “Leave the city, retard.” Imp said.

  “You can’t just take the whole city.”

  I didn’t feel like Imp and Regent were giving the impression of strength. I spoke before they could. “We already have. We fought the Nine and played a pretty big part in taking out more than half of them.” I pointed at Shatterbird, “Case in point. You took advantage of that to try to claim some territory for yourselves. Not only is that awfully pathetic, but you proved yourselves hypocrites, doing exactly what Hookwolf accused us of doing.”

  “We staked out our claim. It’s our right.”

  “Your right? On what grounds? Strength? We have you beat there. Did you earn it? No. I think my team has you beat on both points.”

  “Now,” Tattletale stepped forward, “Here’s the thing. We can’t let you get away with this unscathed. So we’re taxing you.”

  “Tax?” Othala asked.

  “Tax. Imp and I are going to step into the basement of that building over there,” Tattletale pointed, “And relieve you of every valuable we can carry.”

  “You assholes!” Rune growled. She started to stand, then fell to the ground, hard. Imp had pushed her. I tried to hide my own surprise at the girl’s sudden appearance. The others looked somewhat intimidated as well.

  “But that’s not enough, is it? So there’s another tax. We’re borrowing one of your teammates.”

  The Chosen weren’t the only ones who looked shocked at the declaration. I snapped my head around to look at Regent. There was no surprise there.

  Fuck them. They’d planned this, and they hadn’t told me.

  15.03

  “To use a cliché, you can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Tattletale said, a light smile on her face.

  “Fuck you,” Othala snarled.

  Tattletale hadn’t told me. I could understand if Regent didn’t inform me that they were hoping to enslave someone else, but I counted Tattletale among my few real friends. I had something of a sore spot when it came to being betrayed by friends.

  They’d planned to do this at some point today, and I hadn’t been filled in. Was that accidental? We’d exchanged so many calls, I could almost believe that I’d been forgotten, or that everyone had assumed someone else would be the one to fill me in.

  But I couldn’t shake the other possibility. They could have left me in the dark because they knew I’d object. And now that I was filled in on this plan, I couldn’t object without making the group look weak. Tattletale wouldknow that. She would know I wouldn’t screw us over, even with my objections, and this next part of the plan would go ahead whether or not I agreed or not.

  Biting my tongue, I walked around until I stood at the very back of the scene, where I could see Night as well as everyone else that was present.

  “Victor,” Tattletale said. ”You’re the tax payment, so to speak. Your call.”

  Victor’s eyes narrowed.

  “Consider it an opportunity. You’re bound to pick up something you can use, talent-wise.”

  “I won’t betray my team.”

  Regent chuckled, not raising his eyes from Night. ”Not really getting a choice.”

  “The PRT trains its squads in resisting and reacting to master-category attacks. I’ve picked up some things,” Victor’s chin raised a fraction.

  Victor had a kind of easy arrogance to him. It wasn’t just the arrogance of someone who thought they were better than everyone around them. It was the arrogance of someone who’d been born and raised thinking they were better, only to have that confidence reinforced and enhanced over the course of their lives.

  Even bound by the spider silk, he managed to carry the demeanor of a prince from one of the monarchies of old, transported to the modern era. He had the look, too: a cleft chin, close-cropped hair that had been bleached to a platinum blond and a stare that managed to look simultaneously condescending and angry. He would be angry, obviously, but I’d seen him in situations where he wasn’t trussed up and lying on the ground, and he’d looked the same then. His costume reinforced the image of someone between eras, with a simple black-painted breastplate with a sharp stylized ‘v’ around the neck, a blood-red shirt and black slacks.

  The color scheme extended to Othala, who wore something decidedly more traditional as superhero costumes went. Her bodysuit was skintight and tomato red, with a single icon in the center. Like the swastika, it featured a circle with a black border and white center, and a rune in black. It wasn’t a swastika, though, but a diamond with two legs extending from the bottom point, each turning up at the bottom. She’d taken to wearing an eyepatch with the same icon on it in white. Her hair covered enough of that side of her face that it wasn’t obvious.

  She couldn’t heal herself, of course. She granted powers to others. There would be no other reason for her to be kneeling in the water, bleeding from a hundred papercut-thin lacerations.

  Rune, for her part, wasn’t much older than Imp. Her long blond hair streamed out of a pointed hood, and runes lined the edges of a long, dark blue cloak.

  “I’m kind of hoping you’re right,” Regent shrugged, “Nobody’s ever resisted before. I could learn a lot.”

  Tattletale asked, “Seriously, are you going to cooperate?”

  “No,” Victor replied. He rolled onto his back and set his head down so he was staring up at the sky.

  “Fine. Imp?”

  I turned and saw Tattletale pointing toward Othala.

  Imp was there, behind the villainess. Imp planted one foot between Othala’s shoulders and kicked the girl face first into the street

  “Hey!” Victor shouted. ”Don’t touch her!”

  “Anything we do to you or Rune, you’ll always know in the back of your mind that Othala could heal it,” Tattletale said. ”But anything we do to her…”

  Imp took that as a cue, kicking Othala in the gut.

  “Your issue is with me!”

  Tattletale was as calm as he was angry. ”You’re surprisingly upset. You’d think you’d be used to seeing your teammate taking some lumps in the course of your supervillain careers. You two are involved, aren’t you? Makes sense, given how closely you’ve worked together.”

  “You don’t know the littlest thing about where we come from,” Victor snarled.

  “I’m figuring it out. Give me a second. Judging by what you’re saying, there’s a loss in there somewhere. Group like yours, bound to be pretty insular. Making friends with similar beliefs, dating people with similar beliefs. Did your daddy give you some strong encouragement to date this little lady?”

  Victor looked away, his lips twisting into an expression I couldn’t interpret. He shook his head.

  “Not quite, huh? It wasn’t your dad. You were on your own, a lost soul recruited by a big, proud family. Proved yourself, and you were told you’d earn a proper place in Kaiser’s Empire if you married in, so to speak. Not an arranged marriage in the strictest sense, but the idea was that you’d date one of the lieutenant’s girls and marry eventually. Except it wasn’t her you were supposed to date. Her sister?”

  “Cousin,” Victor spat the word, “I’m getting tired of hearing you fumble your way to answers. It was her cousin.”

  “There we go. Something happened to the cousin. So you two got paired together instead. And you two work so well together, it’s a kind of kismet. Only there’s a little heartbreak on both
sides.”

  “This is your plan?” Victor sneered. ”Hate to break it to you, but we’ve talked this shit out. It’s called communication. You won’t be revealing any big secrets to break us up.”

  “No. You two are totally honest with each other. Kudos. Thing is, you’re just not very honest with yourselves. You know why you’re getting so angry at Othala getting hurt? You’re really quite insecure in your attachment to her.”

  “Oh god, this is lame.” The water rippled as Victor let his head drop down to rest on the flooded street.

  “You’re playing up your own anger because you’re afraid that if you don’t make yourself care, you won’t care at all.”

  “Okay, sure.”

  “You tell yourself you’re growing to love her, but you’re a very good liar, Victor, and you’re very good at lying to yourself. You know that, so you’ve found yourself wondering if maybe the feelings you have for Othala are just the head games you’ve been playing with yourself.”

  “Easily possible. But there’s two other possibilities. It could be that I’m not lying to myself. Let’s not forget that. Another possibility is that it really is just me lying to myself, but that lie will become truth over time. People all over this city feign confidence, and that becomes something concrete. You can become the mask you wear on a day-to-day basis.”

  Something about that bothered me. I spoke for the first time since Tattletale had declared her intentions. ”Seems kind of hollow.”

  “Because it’s not a fairytale romance? It’s not. But I’ll tell you I enjoy her company, I trust her, I respect her, and I’m even attracted to her. We’ve got a foundation, bug girl. There’s nothing forcing us to stay together anymore. Empire Eighty-Eight is gone. We’re a pair because we want to be. Right, O?”

  “Right,” Othala’s voice was quiet. She’d pulled herself up onto her hands and knees. She glared up at Imp, then looked down.

  Tattletale stepped forward, “Or because your names and faces are known to the public, and instead of being part of your group by choice, you’re part of the group because nobody else will have you?”

  Victor laughed a little. ”Somehow I expected better from you, Tattletale. This is pretty feeble. Attacking our relationship? We’re strong enough, and no matter what you try to pull, you won’t change the fact that we have what it takes.”

  “Sure. But I don’t have to. Your relationship is doomed. You don’t have that same lovesick, infatuated feeling for Othala that you had for her cousin. The chance for that moment has passed. And it’ll eat away at you. You’ll crave that kind of feeling, and feel like you missed out on something by throwing yourself into a relationship out of duty rather than love. You’ll cheat because you’re searching for that and because it’s easy for you to get women. You’re good-looking, and you have access to all the little tricks, how to approach them, how to win them over. And Othala over there, she’s still head over heels for you. It’ll kill her when you betray her.”

  The smile slipped from Victor’s face. ”You’re not saying all this to fuck with me. You’re fucking with her.”

  I glanced at Othala, who was staring down at the ground.

  “Why?” he asked. ”Why do this?”

  “What other options do we have, if we want to pressure you? You’re invincible for at least a little while longer, but even without that, if we beat and tortured you, I think we’d come out behind, just by virtue of how far we’d have to go before we got past whatever interrogation resistance techniques you’ve stolen. Wouldn’t be much different if we beat and tortured Othala. We’d piss you off, but I don’t think we’d break you. So at the very least, this is a more civilized route of attack.”

  “You don’t need my agreement, and I’m not about to give it. Not betraying my teammates.”

  “Your agreement would make all of this a lot easier. Don’t play dumb and say we don’t need it. You and I both know you’re a master of martial arts that you could use if we cut your legs free. Capoeira, I imagine. There’s certainly others you could draw on, and I’d bet you’ve blended all those styles together. You’d kick our faces in, maybe distract us long enough for Night to bounce back.”

  Victor smirked.

  “Regent and Skitter would stop you without a problem, but that’s a lose-lose situation. You and your buddies end up dead or seriously injured, and we don’t get to borrow your talents. But you’d do it, to deny us what we want and because you hate it when someone else comes out on top.”

  “And what makes you think you’re going to change my mind?”

  “The fact that that was just a sampler. I’m just getting started. We’re not in any particular rush, so we can sit here until I’ve completely fucked up your group. I’ll find every little chink and weak link there is and leverage them until you break,” Tattletale shrugged. ”You think on that while we go take our pick of your stuff. There’s bound to be some juicy clues in your living space. Imp, come on.”

  Tattletale and Imp headed off to collect the spoils. I settled down, silently fuming, keeping one eye on Night.

  Silence lingered for a good minute.

  “You can cheat,” Othala said.

  “Not now, O.”

  “We open up the relationship. You do what you need to, just promise that if you don’t find what you’re looking for, you come back.”

  I spoke up, “Not sure if it’s really true, given who you’re associating with, but don’t you deserve better than that?”

  “Shut your mouth-hole, heeb,” Othala snarled. ”Butt out.”

  I felt my heart skip a beat at the ‘heeb’. She knew my last name?

  No. Heeb was short for Hebrew, not Hebert.

  I’m not Jewish, I thought. How had she come to that conclusion? I could believe someone would make an assumption like that if they’d seen my skin tone and hair, but my costume covered my skin. I’d spent some time wearing a mask that did show some skin, after Bonesaw had cut up my good mask, but Othala hadn’t been there for any of those incidents.

  I had ideas about what that could mean, but I kept my mouth shut.

  “Don’t stress about it,” Victor said. ”She’s trying to get to you.”

  “No shit,” Regent muttered.

  “I’m just thinking if we can find a solution to this, then I can be more confident we’ll find solutions to the other stuff.”

  Victor shook his head. “Just relax. There’s no rush. Any problem Tattletale brings up, every issue, it’s something we can work through. If you get panicked, if she starts making you think that whatever she’s talking about is suddenly a crisis and it has to be addressed right now, you’re playing into her hands. She’ll use that to make you say or do something you’ll regret. So take-”

  “Regent, keep an eye on Night?” I spoke, interrupting.

  “Sure.”

  Victor stared at me as I approached. I held out one hand and let a spider drop from each fingertip, dangling from threads.

  “The hell?” He squirmed in an attempt to get away, but his arms and legs didn’t afford him much room to move. I slowed their descent enough that he could see the spiders clearly. Black, orblike abdomens, stamped with a red hourglass marking. If it wasn’t for my wanting to do this to make it clear what spiders they were, I would have just used the spiders I’d employed to wrap him in silk. I wanted the drama and to make it absolutely clear what I was doing.

  I moved my hand and let the spiders swing a little to the left to make sure they were in place and let them settle on his face.

  “Hush,” I told him. “Now close your eyes. You don’t want to startle them or they’ll bite.”

  One of his eyes fluttered in a reflexive action as the spider touched his eyelash. He growled “You psycho,” scowling, before shutting his eyes.

  I moved more spiders into positions on his lips.

  “Careful,” I said. “I’m focusing on watching Night, so I’m not really bothering to suppress their instincts. Don’t move.”

  I
looked at Rune and Othala, “You two be quiet, too. I can handle you the same way.”

  Othala only stared, while Rune offered a slow nod.

  It took five more minutes for Imp and Tattletale to come back, each loaded down with bags. Given the variety of labels, I guessed the bags contained things looted from stores downtown. Imp put down a spray can, and set to spraying the glass cube Shatterbird had imprisoned Fog in. Filling in the gaps, cementing it together.

  “I’d step back, Skitter,” Tattletale said. “His power works by proximity, among other things. Physical contact, eye contact and active use of a skill lets him leech them off you. The stronger the contact with each transfer point, the more transfer points he’s maintaining, the faster the drain. He could suck away something essential, or make you just a little bit worse at everything you do.”

  I stepped away, silent.

  “So, have you made a decision?” Tattletale asked Victor. “Because I’m all geared up to carry on with the discussion here.”

  Victor didn’t respond. Couldn’t.

  Tattletale turned to look my way, and I met her eyes. I left the bugs in place.

  “Could you please move the spiders?” She asked.

  “Of course.” I dismissed them, but I didn’t break eye contact.

  She was the first to look away, turning her attention to Victor. ”Well, Victor?”

  He looked over at Othala, then stared up at Tattletale. He managed to look confident despite being bound and lying in the floodwater. After a long moment, he said, “I’m undecided.”

  “That’s a step forward,” she said.

  “Maybe you could provide me some incentive?”

  He needs to win on some level if he’s going to make a concession, I thought.

  Regent shrugged. “I could keep you for seventy-two hours, if you don’t cooperate, or thirty-six if you do.”