Worm

by John Mccrae Wildbow

  Tattletale, I thought. She’d passed on the info she’d gleaned.

  Scapegoat was out of the van and shouting. Weld was among the capes that came to his assistance. He held a female clone in his iron grip, with one hand over her mouth.

  Tecton and Wanton moved to help, and Scapegoat looked up at me, gesturing.

  Pointing at the ground.

  Would have been easier if he’d just said it. I found a clear spot on a rooftop and landed.

  The second I was settled, Scapegoat laid his hands on the clone Weld had caught.

  As before, the sensations hit me. Phantom sensations of every possible texture and experience rippling across my entire body.

  This was why he’d told me to land. He’d been worried I might lose control of my power, maybe losing control over Atlas and fall.

  I just had to endure. I could control my bugs to some extent, though flight wasn’t so possible. One of the clones had broken away from the fighting, and my bugs were both attacking her and pointing the pursuing capes in the right directions. She split off into four copies. The heroes killed three of the four, only for the survivor to split off into a quartet once again.

  If I’d been thinking about containment, I might have set triplines at each of the major intersections, cutting them if and when heroes passed through. As it was, I couldn’t stop her retreat, and could only try to blind her, choke her and distract while they closed the distance with my direction.

  But she was fragile, like most of her fellow clones. Mandibles tore her paper-thin skin, and more bugs found her jugular.

  Just like that, she died with blood spouting from her throat. She created duplicates of herself, but they were created with the same injury.

  The capes caught up to her. One murmured, “Kudzu.”

  “…s not her, Jouster,” another said.

  Elsewhere, Regent was dispatching other clones. He deftly tripped up the more mobile ones and closed the distance, then executed them with a quick stab of a knife.

  The sensations kept hitting me. It was a deeper sensation now. Tastes, vision, hearing… everything under the sun, fragments of a million different sensations. Picking through the noise was nearly impossible. I had to find refuge in my swarm’s senses, disassociate from my body…

  If I hadn’t been trying so hard, I might have missed it. It was more subtle than the first time I’d heard it. A keening noise that my own ears couldn’t hear. Even many of the insects were unaware.

  Using my swarm, every bug in the four block range, I buzzed out the alert.

  “Shatterbird!“

  Some capes reacted fast enough. Helmets with visors were torn free, intact armbands and cell phones discarded. Some erected forcefield barriers. I was tearing off my mask, bundling it in the fabric that hung around my legs.

  There were others too caught up in the fighting, yet others dependent on hardware with silicon chips that they couldn’t shirk so quickly.

  It wasn’t as strong as her last big attack; there was less glass in the city to carry the effects. Still, I could hear the resounding crash of everything glass in this half of the city breaking. A tidal wave of destruction rolled past us, leaving countless injured in its wake. The attack was weaker, but not necessarily weak.

  Tecton had been left immobile, components of his suit destroyed. The clone and Scapegoat were down, struck by the glass from the van’s windshield. Chevalier had been caught by something, a fragment of glass that had penetrated a slit in his visor, and he was struggling to fight three clones and avoid hitting his teammates, all while partially blind.

  I checked myself. I could breathe, I wasn’t blind. All despite Scapegoat’s disabled state.

  Had he transferred the conditions to the clone? Was I in the clear?

  I wasn’t sure, and I wasn’t sure I could afford to take the risk and stray beyond that one-hundred and fifty foot range of his.

  The direction the attack had come from… Shatterbird had stayed behind, used her power from the base. I’d assumed it was because Echidna had eaten her, but it was all too possible that they’d found another route. Inducing temporary unconsciousness? Or perhaps Echidna had eaten her and then spat her out right away, to induce enough weakness that Regent couldn’t use her. I’d have to ask Regent for details, and that wasn’t an option.

  No, there were bigger worries. Battle lines had broken, and simply by virtue of being more numerous than we were, many clones were still standing. It made only a small difference, but it was still an advantage for their side: the clones weren’t wearing or carrying anything glass. An advantage of being naked.

  The big heroes were trying to get organized. Myrddin was still keeping Echidna out of the fight, the Triumvirate were exchanging quick words as they tried to figure out whether they should stay for when Echidna popped back into existence or help with the clones. Legend shot as he talked, and Eidolon was casting out blue sparks that flew forth.

  Clones were advancing on Scapegoat and Tecton. Weld was there, but he wasn’t quite enough.

  I stood on Atlas’ back as he descended to the road, shaking my mask to let the glass fall free before carefully pulling it back on. Weld glanced at me and nodded as I appeared at his left, helping to form a defensive line.

  Weld’s hands started to change into long blades, and with the reach they afforded him, he was able to defend more ground.

  I stepped off Atlas and let him stand on his own, his scythelike forelimbs raised. He wouldn’t be that good in a fight, but the clones were fragile, and two more weapons was better than nothing. My knife and baton slid free of their respective slots in my compartment, and I whipped the baton out to its full length. It offered me a little more reach, an excuse to take one more step away from Scapegoat’s body and the frozen Tecton. In this fashion, Weld, Atlas and I formed something of a triangle.

  Being on the ground, it added a kind of reality to the situation. On a technical level, I was more aware of the bodies when I used my powers, more aware of the enemy numbers. Here, though, I could see only the crowd. Hero and clone were fighting, the ground was littered with the dying, the maimed and the dead. There were countless people who needed help, people who I couldn’t personally reach.

  My bugs could reach them. I did what I could, trying to blind the right people, to injure and maim clones where I could ferret out vulnerabilities. Most of the vulnerable clones were already out of the fight, leaving us with only the more troublesome ones. The duplicators, the durable and the mobile.

  I was fighting a duplicator. Another Kudzu, like the one I’d killed earlier, unless there was another Asian duplicator with a Japanese-sounding name. She was vulnerable, but she knew how to fight. Better than I did. My advantage was my weapons and my armor. Hers was her relentlessness.

  My baton crushed one skull like an overripe pumpkin, my knife caught another in the chest, pushing past bone like it was a willowy tree branch rather than anything more solid. I kicked her in the chest to help pull my knife free, and suffered a painful kick to the side of my knee before I was able to retaliate. I fell, tried to strike the offending Kudzu with my knife, but she caught my wrist. A swing of my baton was caught as well. I got my feet under her and thrust my head into hers as I returned to a standing position Her face was softer than my mask was.

  She fell, and the fourth Kudzu formed three new doubles before I could advance and attack her. One kicked me hard enough that I had to lean against Tecton’s armor to get my balance. My swarm had hurt the one Kudzu who’d stayed back, and the new doubles were feeling the same pain, but they were still fresh, weren’t tired or hurt from previous rounds.

  Weld fought with an invincible man who was smoking, his hands hot enough that they were heating Weld’s flesh. The man grappled him, and Weld’s attempts to strike him were having little effect. The man dug his fingers into Weld’s chest, and white-hot metal dripped to the ground. He was digging for organs.

  I hated to spare bugs when I was fighting the Kudzu-clones, but I sent s
ome Weld’s way. They coated the man, and found some flesh they could damage.

  “His back, Weld!” I shouted. ”His front half is tough, but everything that isn’t facing you is vulnerable!”

  A Kudzu took advantage of my distraction to club me. I retaliated by stabbing her, a nonfatal blow.

  Weld pulled one arm free, reached behind the man, and started sawing into the back of his head. Serrated edges formed on the blade, to allow for a better cut, Weld found something vital, and the man slumped to the ground.

  He turned to help me with the Kudzu.

  A scattering of Legend’s laser bolts tore through our surroundings, though he was blocks away. Three of the Kudzu I was fighting were hit by Legend’s shots, and Weld lunged forward to stab the fourth. The least hurt of them vibrated and split off into a fresh set of quadruplets.

  Clones of clones, I thought. I could only swear in my head. My lungs weren’t suffering like they had been earlier, but I was short on breath nonetheless.

  Overall, our side was winning, but we weren’t winning fast. Nearly a third of us had fallen when Shatterbird hit, and more were losing in this chaos that followed.

  Which made this the moment, fittingly, when Echidna popped back into existence.

  Eidolon and Legend had been doing what they could from range, and now they were forced to deal with Echidna, leaving the rest of us to deal with the remaining clones.

  Legend started using a massive laser to tear into the piles of clones that spilled forth from her mouths.

  One Kudzu-clone shouted. ”Cover me! I got this!”

  Roughly a quarter of the remaining clones broke away from their individual engagements, including the Kudzu I was fighting.

  Fuck me, they’re cooperating.

  Our side did what they could to stop them, but these clones were still in the fight because they were hard to kill. My bugs attacked the Kudzu, and I gave chase to stab one, then another in the back, before my hurt knee gave out and I fell to a kneeling position. Bitch and her dogs threw themselves into the ranks of the clones, tearing and rending, but it wasn’t enough.

  Chevalier wasn’t far from me. His cannonblade detonated, painfully loud in my ear, and four or five clones died with each shot. Legend’s lasers tore into their ranks, and Eidolon threw down a slowing field to stall for time.

  It was too little, too late. They were making a beeline for Echidna, for Legend, Alexandria, Eidolon and Myrddin.

  The Kudzu who’d shouted got close to Echidna, and a tongue circled her throat. She was reeled in, and stopped herself at Echidna’s mouth, bracing herself in position.

  Chevalier took aim and shot. A miss.

  Miss Militia’s rifle shot was on target, punching through the front of the Kudzu’s throat.

  But the Kudzu’s death wasn’t instantaneous, and she had time for one last gesture. Echidna vibrated, and then split off into four copies.

  Four copies of Noelle.

  My breath caught in my throat in the moment I processed the reality of what had just happened. I managed to huff out a small shuddering breath.

  They were withering and dying like Kudzu’s obsolete clones were, slowly but surely, right off the bat, but there were still four of them.

  This was Echidna’s greatest weapon. Ballistic had talked about her sense for tactics, but that was Noelle, really. This was Echidna, and she was too gone for much of that.

  No, the variations that naturally occurred in powers laid out a range of capes. Virtually every power was offensive, just about every power had some use. That was the norm, the standard.

  But exceptions existed. They were the Bonesaws, the Crawlers, the Echidnas, the Legends, Alexandrias, Eidolons and Dragons of the world. By sheer fortune, they’d stumbled onto powers that set them head and shoulders above everyone else. Having the right variant, being in the right situation to use that power.

  If one in a hundred capes met that kind of standard where they were just that much more versatile or powerful, then Echidna could make a hundred capes, and chances were good that one of those would be exceptional in that way.

  An Echidna-double turned and charged straight for us, stampeding through the clones to get to the troops on the ground. Forcefields went up, Chevalier unloaded cannon blasts to stall her advance, and we all did our best to retreat. I took to the air with Atlas.

  The other two Echidnas, including the original, started fighting the big name heroes. Tongues lashed out, and Legend severed them with cutting lasers. The clones vomited geysers, spitting out no clones with the fluid, and Alexandria bore the brunt of the blow.

  Eidolon was creating blue sparks that floated around him, but when Alexandria began to lose in her struggles to keep the vomit from reaching her comrades, he switched to using a slowing field instead. He cast it down around two of the Echidnas. The one he didn’t catch vomited, and he threw up a small forcefield to ward off the attack.

  A narrow tongue was hidden in the midst of the vomit, a concealed attack. Prehensile, it snaked out and caught him by one arm.

  Eidolon was pulled in, and clipped the forcefield he’d raised with enough force that he was momentarily stunned. The forcefield and slowing fields disappeared, and Alexandria was caught off guard by the sudden increase in her opponent’s speed.

  Caught against its back, she started to tear herself free with the help of one of Legend’s cutting lasers. A spray of vomit forced Legend to abandon his efforts to save his teammates and retreat for his own safety. He cleaned up the clones that the original Echidna was still producing.

  A second later, one of the Echidna-doubles leaped on top of the other, sandwiching Alexandria between her and the other Echidna-double.

  The real Echidna closed her mouths, and the vomiting stopped. She stepped on the tongue that had a hold on Eidolon, then stepped on the caught Eidolon.

  Legend did what he could, but even with the three Echidna-doubles looking more like the walking dead than anything else, he couldn’t do enough lasting damage to any of the brutes. Miss Militia and Chevalier contributed some ranged fire, as did the heroes on my side of the battlefield, but the Echidna-doubles used their bodies to block the worst of the incoming fire.

  Echidna bit deep into her double, tore at flesh until she found the morsel caught between their bodies. Alexandria. I could see the muscles in her throat working as she swallowed.

  Each of her doubles made a final reckless charge before falling to pieces.

  A hush of sorts descended on everyone present.

  Two of our best, caught.

  Echidna reared back a little, then spat, as though she were coughing out a morsel of food she’d been choking on.

  An Alexandria. Had to be, with that long black hair. The woman stood, and I could see how she was missing an eye. She brushed her hair to one side, so it covered half her face, and I could hear a murmur.

  “Director Costa-Brown,” someone in the crowd murmured.

  The Head of the PRT and Alexandria were one and the same.

  I couldn’t bring myself to care. I wasn’t sure if it was just that I was in shock, that I was more focused on the fight that was looking a hell of a lot less winnable, or a simple lack of surprise that the PRT would have been so corrupt and imbalanced as to have a major balancing factor missing from their ranks.

  Miss Militia took aim with her rifle and shot. The bullet sparked as it clipped Alexandria’s forehead.

  Alexandria shook her head.

  Another cough, another spit.

  Eidolon. I couldn’t tell if he was unattractive by nature or if it was just mild deformations. He looked so small, so below average.

  He found his feet. Miss Militia shot him twice, and he fell back against Echidna’s leg.

  He flickered, and the wound was smaller, another flicker, and the wound almost disappeared. Each flicker was stronger than the last in how it reversed the damage. He staggered to his feet again.

  “Go!” Chevalier screamed, breaking the frozen silence. ”Before he
’s at full strength!”

  We charged. There was no other choice. If we didn’t win now, everyone lost.

  19.06

  The Eidolon-clone apparently wasn’t worried about the mass of armed heroes that were mobilized against him. No, his concern was being naked.

  He touched Alexandria, and she flickered. When the flickering died out, she was dressed in a costume; a long white cape, a white bodysuit with high boots and elbow length gloves and a stylized helmet that let her long black hair flow free. The tower on her chest was a tumbled ruin. The ruined lighthouse. A mockery of her other self, the colors reversed.

  I really wasn’t liking the implications for that flickering power. Healing, the costume…

  Legend shot the Eidolon-clone before he could do anything more. A laser tore into the Eidolon’s chest cavity, slashed out to carve into Echidna’s foremost leg, causing it to buckle mid-step.

  The Alexandria-clone floated up, interjecting herself between Legend and his targets. He adjusted the beam’s orientation, and she moved to block it. He divided it in two shots that she couldn’t block, and she charged him. Legend broke off to flee.

  I could see the Eidolon flickering to heal himself as Echidna charged the rest of us.

  Our battle lines did what they could to slow her down, which didn’t amount to much. She was massive, now, to the point that cars were trampled beneath her or sent rolling on impact.

  Chevalier put himself directly in harm’s way. He held his cannonblade out to one side, and I could see it swelling in size.

  There were a hundred feet between them, seventy-five, fifty-

  The sword was growing with every moment, as well.

  He brought the blade down to the ground, a razor’s edge biting deep into pavement, the blade’s point directed at Echidna. Then he pulled the trigger. The fact that it was impaled in the ground kept the recoil manageable, and the fact that it was as large as it was meant that the effect was that much more impressive.