Worm

by John Mccrae Wildbow

  “You want to copy my power?”

  There was a rumble as Tecton shattered more road beneath Noelle. With the way he’d directed the attack to place it off to one side, I suspected she was trying to climb out of the funnel-shaped depression the explosions had made. Given her speed from before, it was surprising how slowly she was climbing.

  Then it struck me. An antlion pit. The sides of the pit weren’t giving her any traction. Any time she set her weight down, she only pushed the sand to the bottom.

  “Let me test it, see what I can get,” Grue told Grace.

  “Fine.”

  I scouted the area with my bugs, and accidentally ran into Noelle with a handful of houseflies as she slid backwards into the pit. I wasn’t going to agonize over the fact, but I didn’t want to give her any more ammunition. My bugs did find a mess of vomit at the very bottom of the shallow crater.

  “There’s vomit, but no clones,” I said. “She’s trying something.”

  “The two-dimensional Vista. She’s ambushing,” Grue said.

  “Ambushing who?” Tecton asked.

  “I don’t know. Can you see them?” I asked. “When they’re moving on a surface, are they visible?”

  “Why are you asking us?” Grace asked.

  “Tecton,” I said, “As much ground as you can affect, now!”

  He didn’t hesitate, punching the ground and driving both piledrivers into it. There were no fissures, this time. The entire area rumbled, and the ground spiderwebbed with cracks in every direction, not leaving two square feet of ground untouched. Bentley nearly lost his footing, and Bastard growled, until Rachel pulled on his chain.

  The first clone stepped out of a piece of plywood that had been placed across a shattered balcony door. An Über. He pulled the plywood free and disappeared into the apartment, swatting at the bugs that I’d set on him.

  A Circus emerged beneath the flying heroes, cradling a shattered arm. Bugs began drifting toward her, as if a strong wind were pulling them in. The normal Circus packed a pocket dimension she could put things into. This one was only storing air, forming a strong vacuum around herself. Chronicler’s cloud dissipated as it was sucked in, and the heroes with weaker flying abilities were swiftly being dragged her way. Regent hit her with his power, and the effect slowed, but she recovered faster than the fliers did.

  My swarm could see a large blob of shadow, Noelle, taking advantage of the distraction to climb free of Tecton’s antlion pit.

  “Now!” Grue said.

  Grace ran forward, having little trouble moving on the shattered road. She leaped and kicked Noelle, no doubt putting her invincibility in one foot. As the kick was delivered, Grace used Noelle as a foothold and thrust herself away. Grue chased her attack with a stream of darkness, enveloping Grace as she stuck her landing, leaped, and did very much the same thing Grace had, slamming one fist into Noelle.

  Noelle toppled with a rumble my bugs could feel, then slowly slid back into the crater Tecton had made before she could get her feet under her again.

  The Über stepped out onto the balcony with a block of kitchen knives in hand. Though they weren’t weighted for throwing, he had no problem throwing a knife to hit Young Buck as the hero flew by. Young Buck spiralled out of the air, stopping himself only a moment before he hit the ground. When he righted himself, his hands were pressed around the knife that had embedded in his stomach.

  I sent more bugs after the Über, my bugs tearing at his eyes and hands in earnest. He threw another knife blind, hitting Chronicler in the arm before he collapsed and started thrashing to get the bugs off himself.

  The Circus, for her part, had used her pocket-dimension vacuum to draw one of the fliers close enough to get her hands on him. The hero, Intrepid or Strapping Lad, was set aflame from head to toe, his costume ignited in entirety. He kicked out, blind in the midst of the flames that were immolating him, and she ducked out of the way.

  Grace saw the flames of the burning hero as Grue banished his darkness. She made a break for the Circus. Regent knocked the Circus off balance, momentarily interrupting the suction yet again, and Grace punched with enough force to cave in the clone’s chest. The Circus dropped to the ground, dead.

  Grace couldn’t see in Grue’s darkness, so they were limited as far as their partnership went. He backed away slowly, searching for another opportunity or another power he could borrow. Without Grace’s natural agility, the individual pieces of road made for unsteady footing, each tilting and sliding as weight was placed on them.

  Noelle screamed with frustration and rage. As far as I could tell, she was still at the bottom of the pit.

  I couldn’t follow what was happening, not without giving her more bugs to work with, but then again, I wasn’t sure that anyone else was having more luck on that front. Not with the pit around her.

  “She’s pulling something!” Tecton shouted. He raised his voice to be heard by the other capes, “Get back!”

  Everyone moved away, excepting Young Buck, who was frozen, hands to his wound. Grace retreated, holding onto the incinerated young hero.

  When Noelle vomited, the slurry came out as one stream, a geyser that extended six or seven hundred feet. Rachel steered Bentley out of the way before it hit, and the others danced off to either side to avoid getting splashed. Grace got clipped, and went sprawling, almost glued to the ground under the weight of the fluid, the cape in her arms falling.

  A dozen bodies began climbing free of the vomit. Ten or so clones had been deposited on the street, along with a real Leet in civilian clothes. One of the clones was a Circus, folding herself into her pocket dimension.

  “She’s walking on the bodies,” Tecton said. “Incoming!”

  The bodies. She vomited bodies into the pit to keep stuff from sliding underfoot.

  Young Buck charged through Noelle, but he wasn’t flying when he finished his maneuver. He tumbled to the ground, rolling after he landed.

  I could hear armbands informing others of the fallen.

  My arm jerked in pain, and I slapped at a hornet. One of Noelle’s.

  Noelle advanced on the burned cape and Grace. Tecton slammed the ground, but the effect was muffled. He’d shattered the ground for blocks around, had maybe killed or eliminated several of the two dimensional clones, but his piledriver gauntlets wouldn’t be as effective on this soft surface.

  Two of the Southern Wards opened fire from above, pelting Noelle with laser fire. I could sense her growing tall, or rearing up on her hind legs, and she vomited a stream into the air. Chronicler and the other cape were splashed, caught by the clotted liquid and a flying body. Chronicler’s power remained, the hologram images sustaining the same fire at the same angle, not adjusting as Noelle moved to one side.

  Eidolon made his move. My bugs could sense the air growing heavy and humid. Vomit dried, and clones staggered and fell.

  The humidity increased to the point that I could feel the moisture flowing through the air in thick clouds, rising from every surface, heavy off the bodies of the clone, off Noelle and the streams of vomit.

  My bugs were dying. The flying insects were first to die, their wings crinkling. The ones closest to me were alive, but they were suffering too.

  Dessication.

  “You’re killing Grace!” Tecton bellowed at the sky. I doubted Eidolon would hear from his vantage point. I had only his word to go by. Grace was in an area my bugs couldn’t reach.

  “Acceptable losses,” Grue said. Tecton whirled around to face him. Grue’s voice was calm, “His plan isn’t working. Tattletale said he wanted to experience enough danger to get a power boost, and I’m not getting the feeling he’s had that. He’s too experienced to panic, but with everything he’s seen, everything he’s done over the past decades of work, maybe he’s thinking he has to do something here, and he’s decided he can’t let there be another Endbringer. Can’t let there be another monster in this world.”

  “She’s on our side! She’s one of the good ones!”


  “If it makes you feel any better,” I said, “Eidolon might be assuming she’s already dead.”

  I’d positioned some bugs so that they could distinguish Noelle’s vague lumbering frame against the background of the dimly lit sky. Her flesh was drying and flaking off in chunks as the moisture was pulled out with force.

  But the ground still rumbled with the vibrations of her steady advance, and for all the dried flesh that was falling free, she wasn’t getting noticeably smaller to my bugs’ senses.

  Eidolon hit her with a gravity slam. More flesh came free. I saw a change, with that, but the edges of the silhouette filled in.

  “She isn’t dying?” I asked, my voice a murmur.

  “She’s regenerating,” Grue said.

  The effects of Eidolon’s dessication were starting to get to me. The air was too dry. I coughed once and briefly held my breath to keep from succumbing to another fit.

  There was a sound like a firecracker taking flight, and Noelle lurched. Even with my bug’s less than stellar sight, I could see the aftermath. A hundred slightly different angles. Noelle’s true body, the human half perched on top of the monster, arched her back, her chest out, head turning toward the sky. A spray of blood and gore marked a small explosion ripping out the front of her chest.

  And another, a shot from behind, tearing through her cranium.

  My bugs ventured into the dessicated area. They would only last for a minute at best, but they’d serve to scout, to give me eyes. They found Ballistic.

  He hadn’t come alone. Scrub was with him, and Trickster swapped rubble out of the area to move his teammates in. He swapped himself in for Grace, appearing in the middle of the vomit-slurry.

  I opened my mouth to speak, coughed at the dry air instead.

  “You decided to help?” Grue called out.

  “She’s our responsibility,” Genesis said, “We made a promise to each other. To get home, no matter what it took. But there were other parts to it. Things we added on when the whole situation became clear. Fixing Noelle was one of those additions.”

  Getting home?

  “We knew it was fucked up,” Sundancer said. “But we promised ourselves that if it came down to it, we’d step in before it got bad. And this is bad. So we’re acting on it.”

  Her orb burned above her head. Its crackle sounded slightly different in the dry air.

  Noelle’s growl was accented by a noise from one of the larger canine mouths. “Traitors.”

  She’s alive. Shot through the heart and brain, and she’s talking.

  “If you were thinking straight, you’d agree with us,” Genesis said. “You’d agree this is right. That we can’t let people get hurt, just for your revenge.”

  “I didn’t ask for this,” Noelle said.

  “I know,” Trickster spoke. He looked up toward the sky, tilted his head, and then Eidolon disappeared. I could sense Eidolon’s new location, a few blocks away. He tried to fly closer, and Trickster teleported him again, keeping him a distance away. Eidolon had given up his power invulnerability.

  “I… I’ll use my sun, Noelle,” Sundancer said. “We’ll burn you. It’ll be complete, thorough. And this ends. There’ll be no more hurting people. And we put all this behind us, remember you the way you were. It’s better if it’s us.”

  “I don’t want to be a memory,” Noelle said.

  “You already are,” Ballistic said, from behind her.

  She turned, and a low growl sounded from one of her lower mouths, deep enough I could feel the rumble of it.

  Ballistic shook his head. “The old Noelle’s long gone. Do you think she would have survived getting shot like that?”

  Noelle didn’t answer.

  “You have her memories, nothing more,” Trickster said.

  “Krouse,” Noelle said. “You turn on me like this?”

  “I don’t know what else to do.” He teleported Eidolon away again. This time Eidolon stayed put. Choosing a new power?

  “You did this to me. This? The old Noelle disappearing? It’s your fault. You know it. You created me.”

  He’d created her?

  He’d dosed her.

  “Yeah,” Trickster said. He lit a cigarette, put it in the mouth-hole of his mask.

  “And I listened to you. I bought your promises. Your hollow assurances. I listened and cooperated when you said I should be locked up. I listened when they shut me in that vault, in the dark, alone, with that fucking beeping that wouldn’t let me sleep. I waited all this time because you said I could get better.”

  “I know. It eats away at me. But I don’t know what else to do.”

  “I spent the past two years listening to you. Doing what you wanted. Just do what I want here, and I’ll let it all end. I’ll let her burn me, and then you guys can find your own way home.”

  “I know what you want,” he said, “But the consequences-”

  “-Don’t matter,” she said. “It’s not our world. It’s… it’s as screwed up as the things I make. They’re just dark twisted copies of people in this dark, twisted, fucked up world.”

  “No’-” He started.

  “You owe me this.”

  Trickster sighed, spat out the barely-touched cigarette. Even though I couldn’t identify tone, I felt a cold feeling in the pit of my stomach.

  “Shit,” I said. “Grue-”

  Trickster was already turning. Grue was only beginning to raise a cloud of darkness around us when he disappeared, Trickster standing in his place.

  “Grue!” I screamed. He was where Trickster had been, half a city block away from Noelle.

  Noelle lunged. Trickster could have moved out of the way fast enough. Grue wasn’t so lucky. The shattered ground under her feet shifted, and she slammed into him, her lower body catching Grue, adhering to him.

  He was giving her us.

  Trickster was already gone from the midst of our group. There was gunfire and incoherent shouting as people tried to identify his location. Ballistic was gone, replaced by a piece of rubble. He was taking the most immediate threats out of the picture. Eidolon, Ballistic, Grue…

  Who came next on that hierarchy?

  Me.

  I found myself only five paces away from Noelle, plucked from the midst of my cloud of bugs. There were too few to hide me from Trickster’s sight, with the way the dessication had thinned their ranks.

  She caught me with the back of one claw. There was a sound like a gunshot going off, my ribs feeling like my bones had turned to white-hot brands, and I stuck. She set her claw down on the ground, and my back exploded with pain as I struggled to contort my body, get in a position where I wasn’t being folded in half under the weight of an eight ton monstrosity.

  I was spared being snapped in two not by my own struggles, but by the pull of her flesh as it folded around me. It simultaneously consumed me and pulled on me, as if by a hundred hands. The process was smooth and inevitable, flesh flowing around me like hot candlewax, even as I was drawn upward and inward.

  I could sense Regent appearing nearby. Noelle turned to face him. He didn’t fight, didn’t try to run. He said something, but I couldn’t make out the words, couldn’t hear them with the dark, hot, rancid-smelling flesh that had enveloped me.

  The last of the flesh closed behind me, my power stopped working, and I was left with only absolute darkness and the pounding flow of Noelle’s blood in my ears.

  18.z (Donation Interlude #4; Faultline)

  Dr. Jeremy Foster was woken by the sound of a distant gunshot. He sat straight up in bed.

  Another gunshot.

  He reached over to his bedside table and found the remote. A press of a button illuminated his bedroom. He opened the drawer to grab the handheld radio and pressed the button. “Report.”

  Silence.

  “Captain Adams, report.”

  It wasn’t Captain Adams who responded. It was a woman. “Stay put, doctor. We’ll be with you in a moment.“

  He was out of
bed in a flash. Remote in hand, he turned off the light and opened his bedroom door.

  There were two figures in the hallway, cloaked in shadow, one large and broad, the other narrow. The smaller one saw him and broke into a run.

  He slammed the bedroom door and locked it in the same motion. There was a crash as the figure threw himself against the door. If the door were the usual wood chip and cheap cardboard, it might have broken, but Jeremy valued quality, even with the things one normally didn’t see. His doors were solid wood.

  The doorknob rattled as the doctor crossed his bedroom. He reached for the underside of one shelf on his bookcase, pulled a pin, and then pulled the bookcase away from the wall.

  The remote fit into a depression on the stainless steel door that sat behind the bookcase. He made sure it was positioned correctly, then hit a button. There was a click, and the door popped open a crack. He had to use both hands to slide the door open.

  The doorknob rattled again, then there was a heavier collision. The bigger man had gotten close.

  Safely inside, Jeremy pulled the bookcase tight against the wall, felt it click into place, and then shut the metal door of his panic room.

  Monitors flickered on, showing his estate in shades of black and green. At any given time, he had seven armed men patrolling the grounds and an eighth keeping an eye on the security cameras. He could count seven fallen, including the man in the security office. They lay prone on the ground, or slumped over the nearest surface. One struggled weakly.

  He picked up the phone. There wasn’t a dial tone.

  The cell phone, then. He opened a drawer and picked up the cell. No service. There was only static. They had something to block it.

  There was no such thing as ‘security’. However much one invested in safes, in armed guards, in panic rooms and high stone walls, it only served to escalate a perpetual contest with the people who would try to circumvent those measures. Raising the stakes.

  Helpless, Jeremy watched the invaders making their way through his house. He was already mentally calculating the potential losses. Pieces of artwork worth tens of thousands, valuables not secured in the safes…