Worm

by John Mccrae Wildbow

  “So we have to help you for you to help us.”

  “Exactly, Trickster. As for your other problem, well, that is a more daunting task.“

  Noelle.

  “You said you could help.”

  “I can’t guarantee anything. I can offer all of my resources, which are considerable, and all of the resources I will have, which are even more so.“

  “Sounds pretty wishy-washy.”

  “Perhaps. But when making an argument or making a sale, I find it’s best to lead with the second best offer, move on to the weaker ones, and then close with the best. I am offering you one more thing.“

  “What?”

  The man on the phone told him.

  It was another minute before Krouse hung up.

  Krouse spent fifteen more minutes sitting on the front steps of the house. It was the first time in a year that he’d had a moment to stop and think and he didn’t reach for his cigarettes.

  When he stood, he was in something of a daze.

  He stepped back inside.

  “Krouse,” Luke said, “We need to talk about what we’re doing with Cody.”

  “Later,” Krouse said.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Going to go talk to Noelle.”

  “She’s pissed, Krouse. She’ll flip out on you, and I’m not doing this again. I won’t fucking hunt down deranged mutant clones. Especially not yours.”

  “Not an issue. She’ll like what I have to say.”

  “Krouse-”

  “After, Luke,” Krouse said. He spun around, faced his friend. “I think we’ve got what we’re looking for.”

  “What?”

  “A way home. Maybe even a fix for Noelle.”

  “How? Who?”

  “Some supervillain in Brockton Bay. Wants us to work for him for a little while. There’s more, but…”

  “But?”

  Trickster met Luke’s eyes, “I want to tell her first. Everything that’s happened, I have to.”

  “We deserve to know too, Krouse. We’ve been working at this as long as you have. We’ve had our hopes up and had them dashed too. Too many times.”

  “I know. I know. Just… I’ll tell you after I’ve told her. I think this is it.”

  He caught a glimpse of Luke’s expression as he turned away. A look of deep sadness. Krouse hesitated.

  What was he supposed to say?

  “Just a few minutes,” Krouse said, “I’ll be back, then I’ll explain.”

  He made his way to Noelle’s room, knocked.

  “Go away.”

  “It’s Krouse.”

  There was a long delay.

  “What do you want?”

  “I want to come in,” he said.

  “No you don’t.”

  “I do. Please.”

  There was a long delay. He took that for assent.

  Noelle didn’t meet his eyes as he entered. He noted the mangled bedframe, the splintered wood from the boxspring, and the mattress torn in two. An oak cabinet had been demolished, and both bedside tables were in ruins. There wasn’t a single intact piece of furniture left.

  He turned towards her. ”I-”

  “Don’t look at me,” she said.

  He stopped, then he seated himself on the floor with his back to the remains of the cabinet, his back to her.

  “Come to talk?” she asked. ”Keep me company?”

  “I was planning on doing it a little later. Things are kind of a mess out there, you know. The Cody situation.”

  “Nobody keeps me company any more. Only you.”

  “Yeah. But that’s not why I’m here.”

  “You want to know what happened with Cody.”

  “I know what happened with Cody. He tried to kill you.”

  There was a long silence.

  “I can’t die, Krouse. I’ve tried. Tried to end it. Spare you guys from looking after me. I can’t. Nothing works.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m one of them. Or I’m becoming that way.”

  “Maybe.”

  “An Endbringer.”

  He felt a chill, and it wasn’t the early spring temperature.

  “Maybe. Or maybe you’re more like those monsters that were dumped on the street.”

  “They could die. You told me that you killed one of them.”

  “Probably. But I saw another one die, you’re right.”

  “And my power, if I get stronger, if I get more out of control-”

  “You won’t.”

  “I’ll be just as bad as the Simurgh. In a different way. I touch someone, and then I spit out copies. Uglier, stronger… meaner. I can’t control them. If I got my hands on one of the major heroes? Someone like that Myrddin guy?”

  “You won’t. Listen to me, Noelle. I was just talking to someone. We may have an answer.”

  He heard her shift position, flinched despite himself.

  “You’ve said that before,” she said.

  “This sounds like it. He’s not saying he might be able to make something that can get us home. He’s saying he already knows someone who has a way. Someone who goes back and forth. And he knows people. Scholars, scientists, this one girl with powers he didn’t explain, who knows stuff. Like Accord does.”

  “The guy you saw today?”

  “Yeah, the one I told you about,” Krouse was getting excited, despite himself. ”The way this guy described it, there’s a solution out there, and he can get it.”

  “Krouse, it’s- it’s not that easy.”

  “I know. I know it’s not easy, but there was a third offer on the table. A third thing he was giving us. He said we should consider it a bonus.”

  “What?”

  “Hope, Noelle.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “He just got someone working for him, and this person can see the future. And she says there is a way to help you. Definitely. Chances are low, but he says he’s confident he can maximize them.”

  “He could be lying.”

  “No, listen. The Simurgh? This guy said she has a weakness. Two ways where she can’t see the future. Two ways to break free of her cause and effect.”

  Noelle didn’t say anything.

  “The first way, you’ve got to be basically immune to powers. Scion is. He’s immune to precognition, throws everything out the window when he shows up. I saw it when he fought the Simurgh. She couldn’t automatically dodge his stuff, because she either couldn’t read his mind or she couldn’t see the attacks before they happened. So he hit her, a bunch of times. I saw it.”

  There still wasn’t a response.

  Krouse was getting more excited, had to press his hand flat against the floor to stop it from shaking. ”And the other way? There’s thinker powers that mess with her ability to influence events. If another precog gets a hand in events, the Simurgh automatically shuts them down and vice-versa. The way this guy said it, the precogs get overloaded with the second-guessing the other precog, on top of having to figure out all the quantum possibilities and split paths. And this guy? He has a power that messes with precogs some, and the precog working for him has a power that will help circumvent the Simurgh’s power. Get it? So long as we work for him, we’re free of it. No more cause and effect. No more feeling like we’re doomed no matter what choice we make. We go from that kind of safety to home. To our world.“

  Krouse turned around, and despite himself, he was smiling. He had to blink rapidly to clear the tears that were collecting in his eyes, threatening to run down his face.

  Noelle was perched on the ruined bed. Her fingers were clutching a sweatshirt, with no shirt beneath. Still the Noelle he’d always known.

  From the waist up.

  Around where her pelvis should have been, she’d changed. The mass of tissue left her tall enough that she had to hunch over to avoid hitting her head on the ceiling, and she was lying down. Half of it was angry, red, wrinkled or blistered. The other half was smooth tissue, dark greens, da
rk brown and pale grays. The head of an animal, half-bovine and half-canine, extended from the front, large as a horse from the back of its skull to the tip of its flaring nostrils. Another head was in progress, emerging just to the left. Two forelegs extended to either side of the heads, rippling with powerful muscle, ending in something that fell between claw and hoof, massive and easily capable of tearing through steel.

  There were the fingers and thumb of a hand, extending from her right hindquarters, each digit thicker around than Krouse was, with another, smaller limb extending from the palm. Her rear left hindquarters featured only a mess of tentacles, some bearing partial exoskeleton, some long enough that they had to encircle the massive head and numerous limbs, or wind in a wreath around her as she lay down, lest their coiled mass fill the master bedroom of the house and leave Krouse nowhere to sit. Despite the apparent lack of bones, the tentacles were capable of supporting her weight.

  She didn’t expel waste. She only grew, or she reinforced what had already grown.

  She’d tried to starve herself, to die of thirst. It had turned out badly. She’d gone berserk and killed forty people in one autumn night. Their tissues had played a large part in building the massive fingers and thumb that extended behind her.

  The others didn’t know quite how bad things had gone, then. He’d managed to shield them from the news reports, the total body count, had kept them moving from city to city until the story died away. They knew people had died, they didn’t know it was forty.

  It was bad. A bad situation overall, one that had Krouse retreating from the house in the dead of night, just to find the most remote location he could reach, to weep, to scream his frustration, rage, shame and guilt and not worry about the others hearing it.

  But with all of that, with her sheer intimidating presence, he was nonetheless able to look up and meet Noelle’s eyes. Hers were welling with tears, too.

  “I believed what he was saying,” Krouse said. ”I think this might be it. Our best chance.”

  “You think so? We can hope?”

  “We can hope,” he repeated, whispering the words, as much to himself as to her.

  ■

  A wave crashed against the beach.

  He hurt all over. His body wasn’t listening as he told it to move. His hand slipped on the pavement as he tried to push himself up off the ground. There was sand filling the cracks in the pavement, denying him traction.

  He flipped himself over onto his back, instead, then sat up. He wobbled as he stood.

  The first thing he saw was Jess. Jess in her wheelchair, at the edge of the grass, where it dropped down to the beach. She was staring at the ocean.

  “J-” he started to shout, had to force more air into his lungs before he could.

  “Jess!” he hollered.

  She didn’t move.

  Sundancer was lying beside him. He raised her mask and checked that she was breathing. She was just unconscious.

  His eyes roved over the empty lot. No people. No soldiers. No other parahumans.

  His eyes settled on a dense cluster of seagulls.

  Krouse nearly fell as he made his way towards them. He didn’t miss the tracks Jess’s wheelchair had made. She’d been here. She’d seen.

  The seagulls scattered as he approached. He saw a white feather that had been left behind, ground it under his toe as he might one of his cigarettes.

  The birds had been gathering around a mark. A stain. There wasn’t a better word to sum it up.

  It was blood. Enough blood that whoever it had belonged to wasn’t alive anymore. Drag marks extended off towards one side of the lot. The soldiers had taken the body, and the seagulls had taken much of the remaining gore. All that was left were bits of skull, and little fatty blobs that might have been brain. The bullet would have passed through and shattered the cranium, by the looks of it.

  He had no doubt as to who had died here. Could remember the scene as it had been just before he’d been knocked unconscious, could remember where people had been standing.

  Another wave crashed against the beach. He heard the seagulls cawing angrily, wanting the morsels that littered the ground in front of him.

  Krouse spent a very long time staring at the stain.

  Arc 18: Queen

  18.01

  The empty vault loomed before us, dark and fetid.

  “It’s that bad?” I asked. ”Do we need to contact the PRT and Protectorate? Get the heroes on board?”

  “No,” Dinah said, quiet. ”Not immediately.”

  The others looked at her. I couldn’t see her, but I had a pretty distinct mental picture. A pre-adolescent girl, thin, with straight brown hair. Cursory inspection with my swarm suggested her hair was tied into a braid, but many strands were coming loose. Unless a lot had changed since I’d last seen her, Dinah would be pale. My mental picture of her was of a girl that was almost ghostly. It said something that she was still able to command our attention with a few quiet words.

  “One point seven percent chance she does any serious damage before dawn. We have time.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “Useful to know,” Tattletale said, “But this is bad enough that we may have to go running to the heroes, eat crow and ask for their assistance, get it sooner than later.”

  Regent had followed Grue, Dinah and I down the stairs. He peered into the darkness, then said, “I don’t think we’ll have much pull with the white hats. Among other things, we’ve conquered the city, gave their heroes a series of spankings, gave the world-reknowned tinker a very expensive spanking, kidnapped one of their Directors and if I just heard you right, you just offed the replacement director.”

  He stepped back, moved his mask and whistled. I had to step back to see Rachel on her way from the entrance, her dogs following behind.

  I couldn’t help but cough at the rancid smell from the vault, which made me cough more.

  “Hospital,” Grue said, for the umpteenth time.

  “Soon,” I said.

  “The heroes don’t know we offed Calvert,” Tattletale said.

  “Yet,” Regent added.

  “My question stands. Do we need to contact them?” I said.

  “Maybe. I don’t know,” Tattletale shook her head a little.

  “What do you know?” I asked. ”Because as far as the rest of us are aware, there’s a teenage girl that’s capable of tearing through two vault doors like they’re nothing, and she’s free, and she’s pissed at us. Quite possibly at me, depending on how much she heard.”

  “Coil sent the Travelers to me for help. She’s had some physical changes,” Tattletale said. She traced one of the creases in the crumpled vault door with her gloved fingers. ”They wanted to get a better idea of what was going on, so they could maybe change her back.”

  “And when I asked about her before, you brushed me off.”

  “Don’t like admitting I don’t know something,” she said. ”And I don’t know the full story. They were working on the assumption that she’s turning into an Endbringer.”

  That gave us all a moment’s pause. Rachel had just descended from the walkway in time to catch the last part. She grabbed Bastard’s chain to keep him from venturing into the vault, but her attention was on Tattletale.

  “Seriously?” Regent asked.

  “No. Well, it’s what they were thinking. It’s not what I think.”

  “Elaborate,” Grue said.

  “When I saw Leviathan, I got the distinct impression that the Endbringers aren’t human and never were. Noelle? She’s human. So I’ve got two running theories. Theory one is that she is turning into an Endbringer, with her body serving as the host to a growth that’s eventually going to shed off the Noelle bits and go full-monster.”

  “And theory two?” Grue asked.

  “Someone’s doing their level best to make their own Endbringer.”

  “Who?” I asked.

  Tattletale shrugged, “No clue. Could be any of the major players. To figu
re out which one, I’m going to need time with the database on capes we downloaded from the PRT. Even then, I’m not sure it covers the high-clearance stuff we need.”

  “Off the top of your head?” I asked.

  “Who could it be? The Protectorate might have been aiming to make an Endbringer with the idea that it could fight the other Endbringers, only for things to go sour. There’s the group that made people like Gregor the Snail and Newter,” Tattletale looked at me, “You remember that paperwork we found when we infiltrated the Merchant’s party.”

  “Cauldron.”

  “Yes. There’s also any number of megalomaniac tinkers out there who might have tried something. Bonesaw, Rattenfänger, Jamestowner, Blasto, Mosaic, Monstrum, some non-tinkers like Chrysalis and Nilbog, bunch of others.”

  “Too many,” Grue said.

  “But their powers don’t fit this scenario that well, so it would have to be some alliance between two of them, or one would need to get ahold of the tools and blueprints from one of the others and reverse engineer it, or one had a second trigger event and their powers expanded.”

  “A lot of ‘ors’,” Grue said.

  “Too many possibilities,” Tattletale said. ”We could be on the complete wrong tack, where I’m overthinking it, or I’m overlooking the most obvious possiblity, that she’s just unlucky.”

  “What if we ask the kid?” Regent asked. He turned his attention to Dinah.

  “Only if she’s up to it,” I said.

  “Head hurts, still fixing things, putting all the worlds in the right places,” Dinah said. She was clutching my wrist as though I were a life preserver and she was going to drown if she let go, but she stared at the ground as she spoke. ”But I’ll help now. I fear I won’t be useful for much longer.”

  I fear? Who talked like that?

  “Why not?” Regent asked.

  “I’ll get sick without the candy. Soon.”

  “Withdrawal,” Grue said.

  Dinah nodded.

  “Fuck,” I said. ”We need to get her to a hospital so they can see her through it.”

  “I can see it,” she said, and her voice was smaller. There wasn’t any inflection when she spoke; the only indication that she had any emotion at all was the changing volume of her voice, more volume as she got more confident, less as she drew into herself. ”I see myself getting sick, and it’s so clear a picture, so many pictures it’s almost as bad as being sick right here and right now.”