Worm

by John Mccrae Wildbow

  Legend nodded. A small smile touched his lips.

  The Doctor turned to Eidolon, ”You want another booster shot?”

  “Probably another Endbringer attack coming up, it’s best if I’m in top form.”

  “A month or two, either Simurgh or Behemoth if they stick to pattern,” Alexandria said. She watched as Legend strode out of the room. Eidolon paused, then gave the hand signal. No bugs, and Legend wasn’t listening in.

  The Doctor already had the booster shot ready. Eidolon extended one arm, clutching his bicep to help make the vein more pronounced. The doctor injected.

  “The boosters aren’t cutting it anymore,” Eidolon said. ”I’m getting weaker. Powers are taking longer to reach their peak, and their maximum strength isn’t what it used to be. If this keeps up, then I won’t be able to offer anything during this end-of-the-world scenario.”

  “We’ll find a solution,” the Doctor said.

  “You were too calm,” Eidolon spoke. ”I was worried you’d miss my warning.”

  “Very clever, burning the words into the paper in front of me. Thank you. Was I convincing?”

  “You managed to feign skepticism over this apocalypse scenario,” Alexandria spoke.

  “Well, that’s the most important thing,” the Doctor spoke.

  “He’s suspicious. He knows or suspects we’ve been lying to him,” Alexandria said.

  “Unfortunate. Will he expose us?”

  Alexandria shook her head. ”No. I don’t think he will. But he may distance himself from us to lower the number of opportunities we have to see his doubt for what it is.”

  “We’ll manage,” the Doctor replied. ”In the worst case scenario, we’ll explain the circumstances, explain our plan.”

  “He won’t like it,” Eidolon spoke.

  “But he’ll understand,” the Doctor said. ”If the Terminus project is a success, the end of the world isn’t a concern. And I believe we will succeed.”

  “Provided we come up with a solution to the bigger, more basic problems we’re facing,” Eidolon said. ”Or we’ll simply find ourselves in the same circumstances after we’ve gone to all this trouble.”

  Alexandria nodded. ”The Protectorate is proving to be a failure on that front. Recent events haven’t given me much hope in that regard.”

  “So that leaves only my end of things,” the Doctor said.

  “Coil,” Eidolon said. ”And if he fails?”

  “Ever the pessimist,” Alexandria said.

  “This revelation about the possible end of the world has decimated our projected timeline. We don’t have time to prepare or pursue anything further,” the Doctor said.

  “If we assist him-”

  “No,” the Doctor spoke. ”If we assist him, there’s no point.”

  “In short?” Alexandria leaned forward, resting her elbows on the table. ”He doesn’t even know it, but everything rests on his shoulders.”

  15.08

  The benefit of using my swarm-clone to communicate with Parian was that I had relative privacy to talk to Coil. He picked up on the fourth ring. Not quite so prompt as Tattletale tended to be.

  “Skitter.”

  “I know you wanted me to use Ms. Cranston instead of calling you, but this is sort of important.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “I’ve talked with Parian, and we’ve come to a tentative agreement. She’ll need to talk to other people before making a decision, but I think she’d join our alliance.”

  “I see.”

  There was a long pause. I was getting ready to speak and ask if he was still there when he spoke once again.

  “What are her terms?”

  “She holds territory, she’ll defend it against all comers, but she’s not going to do jobs or do anything criminal. As far as anyone else is concerned, she’s not a part of our takeover.”

  “The implication being that we’re too weak to deal with her.”

  “That wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.”

  “It’s the conclusion others will come to.”

  I felt a swell of frustration and anger, powerful enough that I might have snapped at him if I could have come up with what to say any faster. I had to remind myself that I was anxious over the hit Coil had put on my head, and I felt betrayed. I recognized that it was stupid to feel betrayed by Coil when I was actively planning to fight him if he didn’t cooperate on the Dinah front, but I also knew I didn’t tend to handle it well when someone I’d trusted stabbed me in the back.

  Not that I’d ever trusted Coil but…

  Okay, I wasn’t sure what I was thinking on that front.

  I forced myself to calm down before saying, “I’m sure there’s a compromise. Will you talk to her?”

  “I will not risk revealing my identity, no,” Coil said.

  Damn him.

  “But,” he continued, “I will speak to her through a liason.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Though this could have been done more smoothly, I do appreciate your hard work.”

  This from my would-be murderer.

  “It’s not a problem. Ballistic might be upset if he realizes I went behind his back on this, so maybe if anyone asks, she got spooked and came to you?”

  “Perhaps. I’ll be discreet, in any event. It wouldn’t do to have friction between your two groups.”

  “Right.”

  “Speaking of inter-group relations, I believe Trickster is preparing to leave for the mission this evening. You’ll want to contact him to arrange something.”

  I’d been hoping to put this off. It still felt like yesterday that I was watching my back every moment, waiting for an attack from any corner. I wasn’t eager to return to that state.

  “Okay,” I said.

  He hung up without another word.

  Parian first.

  “I’ve raised the subject with others. They’ll be in touch. You should talk to Flechette and decide where you stand before then.”

  “A lot of pressure.”

  I don’t think you understand real pressure, I thought. But I didn’t say it out loud.

  “Yeah,” my swarm said. The drones and buzzes that made up the syllables helped mask the lack of real sympathy. I began working to use silk strands and flying bugs to lift a cell phone into the air. I thumbed through the keypad and sent a text to Ms. Cranston to inform her about what I was doing. ”I’m flying a phone to you, it’ll be in your hands before you’re out of my territory. Someone will use it to call you before the end of the day.”

  “This is you subtly telling me to leave?”

  “I’m in the middle of something, yes. Thank you for hearing me out.”

  “It was the least I could do, after the help you’ve offered my friends and family.”

  “Whatever you decide, take care of yourself, Parian.”

  “You too.”

  I scattered the swarm, then paused to think.

  The painkiller was starting to wear off, and I could feel the steady ache in my shoulder. I still had a dart sticking through the bone. Brooks had only removed the points on either end. I could only hope the pain kept me sharp.

  I’d hoped to take a break and formulate some strategy, some plan. I had a few small ideas, but they weren’t broad enough to cover every base. And there were a lot of bases to cover when someone as well equipped as Coil was after me.

  Fuck.

  I couldn’t do up all of the armor I’d removed with the one hand, so I enlisted Atlas’ help in putting the armor on my injured shoulder, using his forelimbs to hold things steady.

  I took a deep breath. It wasn’t confirmed one-hundred percent, but I had my suspicions that Parian was on board. I didn’t want to die, exactly, I was prepared to fight tooth and nail to avoid it, but at the same time I was ready to die, now.

  I didn’t really have friends, outside the team. My teammates would miss me, but they’d recover in time. Death was a reality in our business.

  My dad ha
dn’t heard from me in some time. If I died, well, perhaps not as great a shock as it might otherwise be. I knew it would hit him as hard as my mom’s death had, that he’d be devastated… but again, he’d recover. Maybe it would be easier, because at least here he’d have someone to blame, the city, the thugs, whoever Lisa told him was at fault for my murder. I was pretty sure she wouldn’t reveal my identity to him when a simpler, to-the-point explanation would do.

  And my people? My territory?

  I felt Parian receive the cell phone, a few blocks away, pulling it to her hand with telekinesis. From the bugs that lingered on it, I could feel it vibrate pretty violently as it moved the short distance through the air.

  If I died, Parian could take over my territory. I had the feeling I could trust her to care about my people the same way I did, more than I could trust even my friends. The transition wouldn’t be too difficult.

  I took in another deep breath, then sighed. For Dinah. In any other circumstance, I’d back down, leave Coil’s employ. But I was willing to brave this if it meant keeping her and her freedom in my reach.

  I dialed Trickster.

  ■

  Atlas carried me into the nice part of town, southwest of the Towers. The Christian private school wasn’t far from here. Immaculata. New Wave was also based here. I kind of hoped I didn’t cross paths with them. If they shared any of Flechette’s opinions about me being at least partially to blame for whatever had happened with Panacea and Glory Girl, well, they’d be even less inclined to hold back.

  I needed to find out the story there. Had to ask Tattletale, when I had a free moment.

  The area was riddled with hills and glades, with ridiculously large houses gathered in small neighborhoods. Brockton Bay tended to zig-zag pretty drastically between the poverty-stricken areas and the wealthy. The contrast seemed even greater here where things were largely untouched by Leviathan’s attack, compared to the rest of the city where streets sat under inches of water.

  I didn’t join Trickster and Genesis. Instead, I set Atlas down in one of the wooded glades close to my destination, glanced at my phone to ensure I’d followed directions to the right spot, and then got my laptop out to prepare. I was a little early, which meant I could afford to take the time to prepare.

  The range would be lower with the trees and any buildings between me and my destination, but I was still better off using my swarm-clone as a body double. I double checked my equipment and weapons while I waited for my ‘clones’ to gather together.

  Centipedes and bugs chained end-to-end for the hair. Larger bugs formed the bulk of the legs, torso, and the core of the head. Smaller bugs filled the gaps, while flying insects clustering together to form the arms and the parts too unwieldy to be supported by the rest, like the face. Once the basic form was there, it was just a question of refining it so the general silhouette was right, and positioning the miniature camera and microphones so they had eyes and ears I could use.

  Once they were ready, I gathered one swarm on top of Atlas and flew it to Trickster and Genesis. I walked with my swarms at my side, my laptop open and held with my good arm so I could see the video feed. As I gathered more bugs on top of my costume and in my hair to make myself resemble the clones, I used stray bugs to form similar laptops for the other clones. They didn’t have glowing screens, but the generally rectangular shapes would serve for anyone looking at a distance.

  If ‘I’ was in immediate danger, my clone on Atlas’ back would take the hit. If my enemy or enemies saw through the ruse and came looking for me, they’d have to pick me apart from my clones. That meant they would have to take the time to find a telltale clue, they’d have to guess with only a one-in-four chance of hitting the real me or they’d have to spread their attacks out among each of my clones. I had the additional security of bugs filling the area, sweeping over surfaces and ledges to spot anyone who might be in place to stalk or snipe me, and my costume served as a final line of defense.

  Redundancies. It didn’t feel like enough.

  Trickster and Genesis were waiting as Atlas descended. They were crouched with their backs to a stone wall that bordered one property at the edge of a hill. Trickster was holding binoculars, gazing down at the neighborhood below us. Genesis was in the form of a ghostly woman wreathed with chains. Her white hair was smoky, wispy, and covered her face, and her fingers were talons. She had no lower body extending from the tattered poncho-style cloak she wore, and simply floated as though she were as light as air. How had she done that? Some basic flight mechanism? A gas balloon in her stomach?

  So powerful.

  “Welcome. Have a look,” Trickster said. He extended one hand with the binoculars. Binoculars I couldn’t use with my camera.

  “Don’t need them. Which property?”

  He pointed. It took me a second to relate the direction his arm was pointing with the camera angle and relate that to my own position relative to my clone. I could have figured it out in an instant if I’d put a bug on his hand, but I didn’t want to clue him in if I didn’t have to.

  The grounds of the building he was pointing to was nearly as large as the city block where I’d grown up and lived until a couple of months ago. There was a fence, but it seemed to be directed at keeping the family’s dogs in rather than keeping intruders out. Chain link, no barbed wire. I knew he had dogs from the flies that were clustered on the feces in the back yard that hadn’t been picked up, and the larval young that festooned each clump.

  Not too many bugs inside the house. There were some in the walls, but the home seemed relatively new, and the insulation was packed tightly enough that nothing was really living in the walls.

  It took me a minute, but I did manage to start a headcount.

  “There’s guards?”

  “There’s a police presence in this area. I think they’re expecting trouble,” Trickster said. ”Anyways, the reason we’re here at this time and place is that the mayor always eats dinner with his family. Tattletale says he’s only missed three meals in twenty years, and that was only because he was out of town for work. His planned trip to Washington is going to be his fourth time away from home, so this is the one place we can be absolutely sure we’ll cross paths with him.”

  I found the dining room and started counting the number of shoes under the table. ”Four adults. I think two male, two female, judging by the footwear. Two younger girls. Going by their size, I’d guess between eight and twelve.”

  “He has a son and two twin daughters,” Trickster said.

  I arranged bugs on the ground by Trickster to sketch out a rough floor plan of the house and show the pair where the family was relative to us.

  “How do you want to do this?” Genesis asked.

  “We scare the wits out of them, then we’ll introduce ourselves to the mayor,” Trickster said. ”You guys start us off. I’ll keep an eye out for trouble and handle things if any cops show up or if anyone flees.”

  “We’re attacking with their family there?” I asked.

  “Sure. Bigger impact if we threaten them too.”

  “Not sure I like that.”

  “When I was talking to Coil about what Tattletale said about the schedule, he suggested it. Unless you want to go against him?”

  He was talking to Coil. I made a mental note of that. Did I need to watch out for an attack from Trickster? It would be as simple as swapping the positions of an active grenade with a stone near me.

  It was possible. He was ruthless, he didn’t seem to have many compunctions about killing and he was in the best position to do it. I couldn’t sense any people who might be Coil’s soldiers.

  There was the possibility that I was walking into a trap, that everyone in the house we were about to attack was a threat. I could handle that much.

  Too many potential avenues of attack. Too many potential threats. And with the possibility of long-range weapons, Trickster or even a surprise attack by Genesis, it could come at any instant.

  “Skitter?�
� Genesis asked.

  “Hm? Right. Um. I suppose not. We just scare them, right? We don’t do any physical harm?”

  “Right,” Trickster said.

  Well, I could do that. It wasn’t so different from what I’d done in my first job with the Undersiders. I’d terrorized hostages then for a greater purpose, and I could do the same with a family for the same reason.

  “Just give me a second,” I said.

  “I’m going, then,” Genesis said, floating over the edge of the hill.

  “Not the first time you’ve needed time to get ready,” Trickster commented to me.

  “Hm?”

  “Just seems like a drawback.”

  Is he threatening me? Letting me know he’s on to one of my weaknesses?

  “I’m a general, and it takes time to mobilize my army. Better to hit hard with all my forces at once.”

  “Not always. You could have built up to a crescendo there.”

  “And give them a chance to scatter? I’d have to divide the swarm to cut each group of people off, which would mean less bugs for each, smaller effect overall.”

  He shook his head.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You seem just a little more hostile than before,” I said.

  “Do I?”

  My bugs had gathered around the handful of entry points I’d been able to find. Windows were open, but each window had been set up with either plywood or screens to compensate for the glass Shatterbird had destroyed. There was a fan system for the bathrooms that was structured to discourage bugs from crawling through in reverse, with flaps that would presumably only open when the fan was active, and that was easy to bypass with some cooperation of the arthropodic collective.

  “Yeah. Any reason for it?”

  “Not a huge fan of you stepping on Ballistic’s toes. He’s sort of a friend.”

  Not the way he tells it. “I didn’t intend any offense.”

  More bugs were entering through one of the doors at the side of the house, which was ajar. I presumed it was to let the warm late-spring/early-summer air flow through the house. The challenge there was keeping the bugs from being spotted before I was ready.