Worm

by John Mccrae Wildbow

  Panacea hadn’t given the relay bugs a digestive system, and in my haste to save Atlas from a slow death by starvation, I’d neglected to pay attention to them. It wouldn’t have mattered anyways, probably, because Grue had only had so much time to work with.

  The dragonflies sent my relay bugs out so I could keep in touch with the others as we searched for Grue, Trickster, Sundancer and Ballistic. Bugs were tough, natural survivors. I knew that cockroaches could survive lengthy periods of time without heads, that other bugs could be frozen solid and thawed and be little worse for wear. They subsisted on relatively little food considering their body size, and the relay bugs had held on this long with an inability to eat at all. Their physiology wasn’t quite the mess that Atlas’s was, and they retained some basic hibernation instincts, defaulting to a near-immobile state. It was a struggle to even get them to extend my power’s range for me.

  I found the next dragon suit before I found the others, and I immediately knew it for what it was. It had to be Azazel.

  16.05

  If I was remembering right, the Slaughterhouse Nine had introduced themselves to their prospective members roughly two weeks ago. I couldn’t be sure what had happened, but Piggot had alluded to the idea that Armsmaster had banded together with Dragon.

  Two weeks, and they’d built this.

  The other dragon suits had the general stylings of dragons, with claws, armor plating that resembled scales and heads or faces that resembled a reptile. In the end, though, they were still machines, and the theme was just that. A theme.

  Rather than armor plates, the scales were fine, intricately detailed and arranged with a kind of natural sense to it, with denser scaling in the areas which saw the most movement, creasing and folding and heavier scales around the elbows, talons and face. There were wings, batlike, with openings at the base of each ‘finger’ that the membrane stretched between. The actual body was more like a lizard, but the angle of the forelimbs and shoulders resembled those of a human. When Azazel moved, its scaled exterior rippled with the shifting movements of the mechanisms underneath.

  My bugs found their way inside, and I discovered it was very different from the machine we’d just fought. It wasn’t sturdily built, nor was it solid. The wires and internal mechanisms weren’t heavy-duty, reinforced or covered in chain mesh. They were so numerous and dense that I couldn’t hope to make any headway with every bug in the city committed to the task.

  It was, just going by what I could tell from my swarm-sense, a machine as intricate and multilayered as a living, organic being.

  But how? It didn’t make sense in terms of the timeframe. It would have taken time to make each individual, unique part with their condensed and intricate design, but he’d only had two weeks.

  A thought dawned on me. It was a half-formed thought up until the moment I devoted some attention to it. Then it clicked. Tinkers had a knack, a specialty, be it a particular field of work or something they could do with their designs that nobody else could, and I knew Dragon’s. She could intuit and appropriate the designs of other tinkers.

  It put everything in perspective. The machines she was using, half of them drew on ideas I’d seen other tinkers put to work. The drone model had used Kid Win’s antigravity generators and Armsmaster’s ambient taser, the wheel-dragon might have used the same theories as the electromagnetic harness Kid Win had been packing when we attacked the PRT headquarters.

  It also served to explain how she could invest the time to make the suits. If her power afforded her the brainpower and raw thinking power to understand and apply the work of other tinkers, then she could put all of her resources towards manufacturing. Armsmaster made the base design, she appropriated it and then turned artificial intelligence or her own power to creating the necessary variations.

  I could imagine how she had worked herself into the Protectorate and the Guild for just this reason. It would get her the funding and raw materials she needed. Being a member of the team would give her access to the work of the various tinker heroes, in the name of oversight and security. Add the confiscated material from criminals like Bakuda, and she had unparalleled access to other tinkers’ work.

  There were realizations that were kind of a ‘eureka’ moment, except not so much an inspiration borne of creativity or creation as being about finding that weak point, finding that way out of a corner. This wasn’t one of those. This was one of the realizations I wish I hadn’t had, because I could feel my own morale plummeting. If I was even close to being right, then Dragon was the incarnation of why tinkers were so dangerous.

  Which didn’t change the fact that we had to find a way to stop her or everything we’d worked for would be for nothing.

  I used the relay bugs to extend my search out further, and ran into a snag. My swarm died in droves, bugs being obliterated or having half their bodies sheared off as they approached too close to what the suit was building.

  It slammed one claw down, and my bugs could sense a thin rod skimming along the surface of the ground, tracing bumps and depressions. The telescoping rod extended several hundred feet, crossing from the corner of one building to the base of a wall on the other side of the street. It stopped, and there was a pause as the suit moved on. Then the rod bloomed.

  There wasn’t a better way to put it. It expanded, unfolded, the rod of metal peeling open like a stick of bamboo, leaves and shoots unfolding over miliseconds. The final stage, what I might call the ‘flowering’ was familiar enough. If I could see it, I’d describe it as a vague blur. Armsmaster had used the effect for the weapon he’d used to hack away at Leviathan, and Mannequin had been in possession of a knife with the same effect. Except these blurs were five or six feet around.

  I watched as the suit scanned the area, its head sweeping right to left to survey the area before it planted two more. One extended for what must have been a tenth of a mile before it met another wall and stopped. Since I’d been watching, four streets had been rendered impassable.

  What did the Undersiders and the Slaughterhouse Nine have in common? Besides our general intimidating natures and disturbing powers, we were both elusive, favoring hit and run tactics with a degree of shock and awe to keep our enemies off-balance.

  Dragon and Armsmaster had decided on this as their means of attack. They would seal off our movements by erecting barriers that were the high-tech equivalent of barbed wire. Barbed wire that would turn steel into vapor.

  That wouldn’t stop Siberian though. What technologies had I seen that they might use against her? Or was it a technology I hadn’t seen before? There were some ugly possibilities there. Something long ranged that could take him out before he could get to cover? A microscopic form of attack that could fill the air and debilitate him if he wasn’t in an airtight container?

  “What’s wrong?” Bitch asked.

  “Found it. Trying to find the others but I’m running into a bit of a snag. The suit’s setting up barriers.”

  “The forcefield thing they sent against Sundancer?” Regent asked.

  I shook my head. ”I think it’s the Azazel suit the Director mentioned. It’s using that blurry stuff that cuts through anything, I told you about it.”

  “I don’t remember that,” Imp said.

  “Just don’t touch it,” I told her. ”Not even in a joking way. You’re likely to lose your finger or your hand before you realize something’s wrong.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “I thought these things were supposed to be packing nonlethal hardware,” Regent said. ”Blue fire and now this?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. ”The Director said these suits were supposed to go up against the Nine. You want to be as lethal as you can get. I- I’m pretty sure they’re holding back, though. They could have hit us a few times and didn’t. We might be able to use that, but that’s testing our luck.”

  “What? You’re thinking about a kamikaze attack?” Regent asked.

  “Probably not. We don’t know everything that suit
could be packing in terms of devices or hardware. Especially with Armsmaster helping out. It’s definitely going to have something they think can counteract Siberian, so let’s rule out a brute force attack. The hedge maze it’s building would hold off Hookwolf or Bonesaw’s creations, and the sturdiness of the design would protect it against Jack. In terms of other tactics the Slaughterhouse Nine might use… hostages. I’d bet it’s packing containment foam.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “It’s still a machine, a well made machine, but it’s a machine. We can break it, given an opportunity. But our number one goal is going to be keeping it from catching us out of position and walling us in.”

  “We could move up to the rooftops,” Regent said.

  “I have a bit of a policy against doing that,” I replied. ”It leaves you with a shortage of escape routes.”

  “Doesn’t sound like we’ll have many anyways.”

  “No. But we’ll worry about that when it comes up. Worst case scenario, we climb for the rooftops when it happens. The dogs are mobile, and I assume Shatterbird can lift one or two people at a time?” I asked. Regent nodded confirmation. I continued, “For now, we’ll take the long way, keep our distance from it, see if we can’t find the others.”

  I looked around, saw some nods. I glanced at Bitch. Would she see it as cowardly?

  “Okay,” Bitch said.

  “Good. Let’s leave your people behind? No use bringing them into a fight.”

  She nodded. I looked over my shoulder at the vet trainee and the guy, and they took that as their cue to climb down.

  The remainder of us rode. Me on Bentley, Bitch on the wolf cub’s back, Barker and Biter riding in tandem on one door just behind Regent and Imp on the other.

  The machine was gradually taking over an area near Ballistic’s territory with the disintegration ‘hedges’. Going counter-clockwise around Azazel would have meant running face first into the crater Leviathan had made. Traveling the edge threatened to put us dangerously close to the suit, and with the water on one side we’d have denied ourselves one of the cardinal directions as far as escape routes went. That meant we were left with only one viable route to travel if we wanted to head further into the downtown areas; turning left and giving the suit as wide a berth as possible.

  I kept one metaphorical eye on the suit as we traveled, while sweeping out with my swarm to scan for the others. Azazel was laying down more of the ‘hedges’, not connecting them but placing one and then winging past intersections and streets to place another two or three blocks away. I couldn’t be sure what the point was. Our teammates were nowhere nearby, as far as I could tell, and the openings were wide enough that the barriers wouldn’t really hamper us even if we were running straight through the area. Maybe a bit if my power wasn’t informing me of where we needed to go, but even Bitch would be able to get by without too much trouble.

  I couldn’t shake the notion that I was missing something. Was there something about those rods that I wasn’t aware of? None of the rods were any thicker around than my pinky fingers, so they didn’t leave room for any real traps to be hidden inside, Armsmaster’s special talent or no.

  It had been too long since I rode one of the dogs. They weren’t well suited for riding, and that was doubly the case with Bentley, with his broad shoulders and barrel-like chest. It forced my legs apart, and that made for an uncomfortable ride when coupled with the bouncing motion as he ran and the lingering soreness of my shoulder from the battlefield surgery Brooks had provided.

  I thought about calling for a break when I noticed movement. Not Azazel. It was coming from the other direction. My heart sank.

  The drone-dragon.

  “Incoming!” I called out, using my bad arm to point in the general direction of the approaching suit. It was approaching at a right angle, accurately enough that I feared it had a way of tracking us.

  This was one of those moments where I had to make a clutch decision as leader, but it seemed like a choice of a half-dozen equally awful options. Splitting up, moving closer to Azazel, trying to confront the drone deployer, hiding and risking getting cornered?

  Damn.

  I wondered if I was maybe better at improvising than I was at spur-of-the-moment strategy. There was a distinction there.

  “This way!” I shouted.

  Running straight down the road left us dangerously exposed. I led the group down a diagonal route, zig-zagging between alleyways and the main streets. Away from the drone-deployer and slightly towards Azazel.

  When Azazel shifted positions and took flight, heading straight for us, I was left to wonder if that had been their plan all along.

  “We’re being herded!” I called out. ”Reverse directions!”

  I hauled hard on Bentley’s chain, getting him to turn, then goading him to start running the way we’d come. Regent, Imp, Barker and Biter had a harder time. The ‘sleds’ were too dependent on momentum, and they didn’t have built-in traction. Bitch and I pulled ahead on our respective mounts while the others tried to get turned around and build up speed again. We couldn’t afford to stop and wait for them.

  The drone suit flanked us on our right, drones spilling out of its ports to trail behind it like my bugs trailed behind me. Other drones were moving to cut us off in front. Azazel was behind us and to our left. The herding was still underway – the sole route left to us, if we didn’t want to run straight into a mess of drones or one of the suits, would be going left.

  Left took us into the area Azazel had employed the rods and the ‘hedges’. Fuck that. I could see what Azazel wanted to do, now. The moment we were in there, it would take flight, setting down rods to close the gaps and trapping us inside.

  My swarm and my eyes scanned the area. In a matter of seconds this decision would be made for us.

  I saw what I was looking for. A third option. If I was eyeballing this wrong, or if Bentley didn’t have a hard enough head… well, one of us would get hurt.

  “Go!” I urged the mutant bulldog on, steering him for the nearest building. He pulled away, and I steered him back on course, ducking low so I was hugging his neck as I drove him forward into the already ruined display window of a minimall. I could feel the top of the display window scraping against the armor on my back as we passed through.

  We stampeded past a store that had already been looted, headed for the glass window that faced the mall interior. If I could find a shortcut through here, exit on the far side of the drone-dragon, we would be able to make a break for it. Shatterbird could drag the two sleds faster than the dogs could run. She wasn’t that fast: I could remember how she’d fallen behind the rest of the Nine in the fight where we’d taken her captive. Still, they could fend for themselves for just a little while, while Bitch and I got some breathing room to prepare a counterattack.

  The drone-deployer could see what I was doing. Drones were moving down to cut me off. Cut us off, as Bitch had followed. Bentley and I crashed through the store entryway and into the mall proper. It wasn’t a big place, and the interior was riddled with tents where some people had holed up. Store owners wanting to protect their goods? The area was empty now. Had Azazel evacuated it?

  I could sense two drones orienting themselves to bar our way, and steered Bentley between them. Twenty or twenty-five feet of distance would be enough, if there wasn’t anything to conduct the ambient electric charge.

  There was. Bentley and I were rocked as both drones fired off at once. The dog took it harder than I did, and we sprawled.

  Bitch slowed as she approached. She started to head my way, maybe to rescue me, maybe to help Bentley, but I could sense a drone moving straight for me.

  “Go!” I shouted.

  She turned and ran, the third drone turning to pursue her. It was too slow. She, at least, would get away.

  I couldn’t say why the electricity had reached me. I’d thought I’d figured out their basic range when I’d first fought them, but maybe the simultaneous effect had exte
nded the charge between them? Or there was something nearby that had helped carry the charge, something in the tents or the mall’s design?

  Through the plexiglass that framed the mall entrance, I caught a glimpse of Azazel. The scales that covered it were small and dark, glossy, and the spaces between them glowed like hot coals, red and orange. Its head paused as it glanced through the window, and a red eye fixed on me. It stamped one claw down on the ground, in a movement my swarm had felt too many times.

  No.

  The rod extended beneath me before I could climb to my feet. In one second, smaller branches had extended under, over and around me. One more second passed, and they bloomed into the blurry effect. Bright red, orange and purple, as if to signify the danger it posed in the most basic, primal sense, like the yellow of hornets or the bright red of poisonous berries.

  I froze, afraid to even breathe. I was still in one piece.

  Tentatively, I commanded some of the bugs out from beneath my costume. The insulation had protected some, luck and sheer durability had saved a scant few others. They died the second they moved more than an inch away from my body, vaporized.

  My heart was pounding from the recent exertion, adrenaline still flowing through my veins. As I realized the situation I was in, my body was shifting into fight or flight mode, but humans weren’t engineered to go into the same ‘deer in the headlights’ state like conventional prey animals. And that was what I needed to do. I needed to freeze, not to fight, struggle or run.

  My lungs screamed for oxygen, and I let out a small breath. It came out as a half-whimper. I watched as one lock of hair shifted from where it was draped over my shoulderpad, slipped down to touch the blurry growth that surrounded me. It turned to dust, and I held my breath yet again, afraid I’d inhale the vaporized hair and cough.