Worm

by John Mccrae Wildbow

  A heartbeat later, every single orb that Eidolon had cast out flashed with visible arcs of electricity, striking her. The energy ripped through her, stripping flesh from around the bone of her arm, her ribs, her spine, and the larger bones of her lower body. The electricity surged to the ground and out the top of her head, stabbing toward the sky in a visible lightning strike.

  Noelle staggered, touched one hand to her face, where her flesh had been distorted by the strike, separated from bone so it hung down, large patches of hair at the crown of her head burned away. The ends of her fingers where she’d touched the orb were blasted away, revealing bone.

  She could feel it growing back, flesh knitting together.

  Even this wasn’t enough to kill her.

  She touched another, and it was worse, drawing on the residual energy from the first contact.

  The third was worse still.

  She’d complained of the sheer heat of this body before, but this… it was heat and pain on an inhuman level. Transcendant. Were she regular Noelle, Noelle without the powers, without the monstrous lower half and warped brain, even a tenth of this would knock her out, stop her heart from the sheer intensity of it.

  On contact with the fourth orb, her frontmost legs collapsed under her, with everything within a half-foot of the major bones being rendered to little more than ash. There was nothing to connect flesh to bone, and she toppled.

  She roared, and for perhaps the second time in the past hour, both she and her monstrous half were in agreement. With her other legs, she pushed herself forward, and extended one of her long tongues for the orb closest to Trickster. To Krouse. She screamed in pain and fury as it ripped through her, and another bolt stabbed toward the sky.

  Too much damage, too fast. She wasn’t healing fast enough.

  A series of lightning strikes nearby marked the deaths of some of her clones.

  Eidolon was there, too, at the end of the street. The glow beneath his hood and sleeves was almost blue in the reflected luminescence of the twenty or thirty orbs that hovered around him. A further twenty or thirty orbs were spread out over their immediate surroundings.

  The others… the tinker had created short walls of stone to shield himself and the girl in white. The rest of the battlefield consisted of bodies and other fallen.

  Eidolon spoke into his wrist. Noelle realized that there were other capes nearby when they each came to a stop, resting on rooftops and behind cover a few blocks away.

  Short of Eidolon, there was nobody for Trickster to swap himself with. And given that Eidolon had so many orbs in his immediate vicinity… no, Trickster swapping himself for Eidolon wasn’t an option.

  Her other half hated him, and she was realizing just how much her monstrous body had been influencing her without her knowledge, now that her emotions were all pointed at this one individual, this one target. It left her feelings towards everyone else at an almost normal level. Her feelings for Krouse, her hatred of the Undersiders, her anger at Coil, each had been twisted, magnified, warped.

  “If he does another gravity attack, I’m kind of dead,” Trickster said.

  “He won’t,” Noelle rasped, “He’d knock those orbs out of the air, and he’s counting on them to destroy me. They probably will.”

  As some of her tendons and ligaments knit together, she got two legs under her and positioned herself as close to Trickster as she could without touching him, shielding him from the orbs that were approaching at a crawling pace.

  “I’m sorry,” Trickster said.

  Noelle couldn’t bring herself to reply. She wanted to say she was sorry too, that his apology was unnecessary, but a kind of indignant rage was rising deep within her, threatening to overwhelm her. All of it was directed at Eidolon.

  And in the midst of that rage, she felt a killing instinct she hadn’t experienced before. Even coming this far, she’d never wanted to kill. She’d wanted the Undersiders dead, yes, she’d tried to kill people, but a part of her had always held back from wanting to kill, from wishing to carry out the act of murder herself.

  To execute this man who sought to end her existence.

  It wasn’t her desire, not really. It was her body’s.

  “You want to kill?” she asked. “You really think you can fight your way through this?”

  “What?” Trickster asked. “What are you talking about?”

  Not talking to you, she thought. “I have two conditions. Don’t harm Trickster, and make it a nice memory this time.”

  Then she let her defenses down. Her other self took over, and it wasn’t her memory that she experienced.

  ■

  Some of the others departed early. Others were readied to depart soon after arrival. Still others, this one included, were to wait.

  They were one, they were all. A collective, a single entity, a trillion times a trillion entities. Each with a function in the whole, each with a role in the cycles, each with an individual identity.

  As one, they traveled. The distance was immeasurable, the passage of time impossible to convey. There was no standard, for there were realms they had traveled where time and space operated on different levels.

  For all, their own kind was the only standard, the only thing that remained relatively static through the cycles. When they met their own kind they shared with each other. When a new cycle was carried out, everything of the parent was borne by their spawn.

  And the collective moved toward their destination. They operated as a whole to decipher it, to pick apart the permutations, see the futures and the possibilities.

  But for this one entity, which existed as part of the whole, there was a target within that destination. When it came time for this one to depart, it would seek out a particular individual, and it would bond with that individual. This one would fragment itself if others met the criteria; if there was time and opportunity enough then it would move to better candidates, younger or more able ones with a greater ability to affect the cycle. This one would wait until the time was right, and then it would activate, come into the identity and role that had been ingrained into its being.

  All to serve this cycle.

  With the help of the collective, this one could see its objective. A single living being. This one encoded that being, the time and place in its very makeup. It would be ready.

  ■

  Noelle’s eyes went wide.

  It wasn’t me.

  Whatever her body was, the intelligence and purpose that lurked inside her other half, whatever these powers were. It had all gone to the wrong person.

  Gone to the wrong person, askew from the beginning, then twisted further by her own psychological issues, messed up by the fact that she’d only taken half a dose.

  The realization and the confusion that came with the vision were compounded as she stared at her surroundings.

  Her minions surrounded her: two copies of Trickster; a skinny girl with long dark hair, covering herself with her arms and a carpeting of rodents, Skitter; a Grue; a Regent; two blondes who would be copies of the girl in white; four of the civilians, and one she didn’t recognize as any of the civilians she’d absorbed. The tinker. Eight of them in all.

  Her flesh was knitting together. Wounds as bad as the ones before, and worse ones. Eidolon had apparently wanted to spare her captives, because the electricity had only affected her, her flesh as it surrounded her bones. He had selected that power with their safety in mind.

  And there he was, in front of her. Eidolon, on his knees, covered in bile and blood.

  “Why?” he asked, in an eerie, distorted voice.

  You want to know why I did this? Where would I start? Why would I even tell you, when you tried to kill me, kill Trickster?

  She was breathing too hard to respond, even with her nearly bottomless stamina.

  “Why isn’t it working?” He asked.

  “I…” she had to stop for breath, “I don’t care. Whatever it is.”

  “I was supposed to get stronger, a
nd there’s nothing. Nothing at all to reach for.”

  She turned, saw Trickster on his hands and knees, covered in the fluids of her vomit.

  You weren’t supposed to hurt him.

  You were supposed to give me a nice vision, for that matter, she thought.

  “Why?” Eidolon asked.

  “I don’t care,” she said, again. She took a deep breath before speaking again, though there was little point, when it was this entire body that was so drained. “I… it’s your choice. We continue this fight, and my creatures run, they do whatever damage they can, and it’s weeks before you find every last one… or you let me go.”

  Eidolon struggled to his feet. “Let you go?”

  “Three Undersiders down. Three to go. Then I give myself up. Deal stands.”

  “What’s to say you keep that promise?”

  “Nothing. But you don’t have another choice, do you?”

  Eidolon didn’t respond.

  “I’ll even let you call in reinforcements,” she offered.

  “Your knight in shining armor took it,” Eidolon spoke. “The wristband I use for communications.”

  Noelle turned to Trickster, and he extended one hand, holding out one of the wristband displays. Noelle took it.

  Her Skitter was watching, looking concerned.

  “Don’t fucking look at me,” Noelle spat the words at her minion.

  Her Skitter turned her eyes to the ground.

  “Trickster said you thrived on this kind of impossible fight. Prove it. Or die horribly. I don’t care.”

  Her Skitter looked up and smiled, lopsided. Half the girl’s face was paralyzed, Noelle realized. She wondered if the real Skitter had spaces between each of her teeth like that, or the gnarled twist of a nose.

  Noelle turned back to Eidolon, waited for his decision.

  “Okay,” he intoned. She gave him a curt nod.

  Tentatively, Eidolon slid the armband into place and pressed a button. “Requesting reinforcements to my location. In bad shape, need to mop up some clones.”

  Her Regent said something she couldn’t make out. He talked as though his tongue was too large for his mouth. He had more muscle than fit on his frame, stretching his skin almost comically tight. It was easy to believe the problem extended to the inside of his mouth.

  “And they let me pass uncontested,” she said.

  He spoke into the armband again. “Do not engage target Echidna.”

  “Understood,” a woman’s voice came from the armband.

  “Echidna?” Noelle asked.

  “One of the PRT members coined it,” Eidolon said. He was eyeing her minions warily. “Said he had a three year old girl called Noelle, didn’t want to associate her with something like you.”

  “What was his last name?”

  Eidolon gave her a wary look. “Meinhardt.”

  “Okay,” Noelle said.

  Then she turned to run, leaving Trickster behind.

  ■

  Her nose led her to the remaining Undersiders.

  Back home, insofar as she had one. The same place where she’d been kept contained for weeks. Coil’s headquarters.

  Surfacing from her dream, she’d temporarily supplanted the killer instinct that was demanding Eidolon’s head. Now that she was closer, her thoughts were afire with thoughts of revenge, and that killer instinct was welling up again. The idea that she’d maybe had the chance to get back to normal, that her friends had maybe been close to going home, and the Undersiders had taken all that away, it made her want to scream. To inflict punishments worse than death on them.

  Her vision from before lingered. The entity. The thing that was taking her over, that had made her a monster, it had an identity, now. She wouldn’t say it had a face, but it was no longer a vague malevolent force, now.

  Part of her felt sympathetic for it, because this thing that shared her body had been wronged by some nebulous circumstance. In that, at least, they were kindred.

  Another part of her was just bewildered. The memory it had shared with her was so vast, it changed everything, had left her feeling like her problems here were so small, so miniscule. Even this, this fight, her revenge, in a way it felt artificial, false.

  It’s not my world, she thought. It’s almost like a game. Killing characters in some false, barbaric setting.

  If she felt like she was more in sync with it, now, did that mean she’d lost ground in her perpetual war with the entity, her other half? So much ground lost, so fast, in the heat of this battle?

  She shook her head. Focus.

  The tunnels that Coil had used to move his trucks in and out of the base had been collapsed, and it had been recent. She could smell the smoke from the explosives. She spat out a Vista, then another, and another, until she had one that could give her a way in, shrinking the rubble and expanding the corridor.

  In her restlessness, unable to shake the idea that her sanity was slipping away moment by moment, she pushed her way through the last length of the rubble, absorbing it into herself and spitting it out behind her, moving through it as though she were a thick fluid; even her bones dissolved when needed. The only thing that slowed her down were the capes she’d stored within herself. Each of the three Undersiders, the tinker, and the girl in white. She used her strength to wedge gaps sufficient to squeeze the individual organs through.

  She brute-forced her way through the last few feet of the barrier, and paced her way into the interior, the ground shaking with her footfalls. The vault door was still open, crumpled, and the entire interior was lit only by red emergency lights.

  Tattletale was on the metal walkway, hands gripping the railing. Bitch was on the ground, with no less than seven dogs around her, each of varying size.

  Noelle could smell the Protectorate and Wards members moving towards her location. She was put in mind of the memory her entity had granted her only a little while ago, of the night her team had passed the qualifiers for nationals. She’d passed the point of no return, and now the enemy forces were collapsing in on her.

  She smiled a little. She would almost thank Tattletale for this, if she wasn’t so eager to rend the girl limb from limb, to wipe the smile from her face and hear her screams. All that aside, Noelle hadn’t felt more like herself in a long time, and she had these circumstances to thank.

  The difference between this scenario and that one, really, was that the reinforcements were minutes away. This fight wouldn’t last that long.

  “Well then,” Tattletale grinned. Her tightening grip on the railing betrayed the emotion she was trying to hide. “Come on. Do your worst.”

  Arc 19: Scourge

  19.01

  The school’s bell tolled, oddly deep, with an echo that continued, unending. I couldn’t see it through the cloudy haze that consumed my vision, but I felt as though the lockers were straining against their hinges in keeping with the rhythm. The same went for the floor tiles, and the hundreds of footfalls of the students milling around me. A pounding rhythm.

  I couldn’t keep my footing. I was blind, still, but that wasn’t the source of the problem. It seemed vaguely familiar, the way every impact seemed designed to hit me where it hurt, to knock me off-balance and leave me in a state where I was spending too much time reeling and staggering to push back or find safety.

  Someone tall shoved past me, and his bag caught on my nose. It tore at the skin between the nostrils, and I could feel warm blood fountaining from the wound. I staggered, bending over with my hands to my face, and someone walked straight into me, as though they didn’t know I was there. My head hit a locker and I fell. Someone stepped on my hand as their vague shape walked by, and I could hear something break, could feel it break. The pain dashed all rational thought from my mind.

  I screamed, brought my hand to my chest, cradling it. I was tougher than that, wasn’t I? I wasn’t made of glass, to have bone fracture or-

  “You’re so pathetic, Taylor,” Emma intoned.

  No. Not now. Not
like this.

  I could hear Madison tittering. Sophia was silent, and her presence was all the more ominous for it. I’d done something reprehensible to her. I couldn’t recall what it was, but I knew she was here for retaliation.

  They struck me, and I fell. Emma and Madison took turns kicking me, and every effort I made to defend myself fell short. It wasn’t just that I didn’t know how to fight, or that I was blind. It was somehow worse, as though every effort I made were being actively punished.

  I’d reach out with my good hand to grab one of them and pull them off their feet, and my elbow would get stepped on, forcing it to bend the wrong way. I tried to push myself to a standing position, only for someone to kick me in the back, slamming my chest and face into the tile, hard.

  I tried to speak and a kick caught me in the throat.

  And all around me, there was the steady rhythm of footsteps and the bell’s echo.

  The point was clear. I was supposed to give up. I really should have given up.

  If I wasn’t able to do something on my own, maybe a weapon? Some tool? My thoughts were confused and disordered, but I searched through them, as if I could remember if I’d stashed some tool or weapon on my person.

  No, something else, I was supposed to have another weapon, though my instinct told me it wasn’t anywhere I could reach, and that was normal. I searched for it-

  ■

  The scene was visible through a thousand times a thousand eyes, the colors strangely muted in favor of texture, the images blurring except where they moved, when they became oddly sharp.

  Tattletale managed to leap back from the metal walkway as Noelle lunged and caught on the fixture. As Noelle fell, her claws scraping gouges into the concrete walls, the walkway was pulled free. Tattletale had put herself in one of the rooms that extended off the walkway. Coil’s room. There was a doorway to nowhere between herself and Noelle, surrounded by concrete walls that were two or three feet thick at their narrowest point.

  Most of the construction of this place had taken place after Coil had found out about Noelle. He’d known there was the possibility that she would go rogue.