Worm

by John Mccrae Wildbow

  I took my time folding up the notes, tucking them into my belt.

  “I guess this next bit must be important, if she was willing to do this to me after everything I did for her. Maybe it’s for the greater good. Maybe it gives me the greatest chance at surviving what comes next.”

  I tensed as the groundskeeper with the flashlight appeared again. The flashlight turned my way, but he didn’t seem to notice me.

  “She says she’s sorry, and it’s like… I’m not mad at her. I don’t blame her, because she’s just one piece of a bigger picture, and she’s a pawn in it all, just like me. It’s everything that’s fucked up, isn’t it? The whole dynamic where wrongs get rewarded and right gets punished, some of the good guys turning out to be worse than the worst of the bad, the sheer lack of cooperation, when there’s not just one apocalypse coming, but two. The Endbringers and this thing with Jack Slash.”

  I sighed.

  “I’ve spent far too much time looking at these notes, wondering why she wrote them, interpreting them, and considering the worst case scenarios. I’ve thought about it until I started thinking in circles. I keep coming back to different facets of the same idea.”

  I could imagine her there. My mom, standing in front of me, a physical presence. All of her gentleness and warmth. Her silent, quiet disapproval. Her brilliance, which she couldn’t share with me right now.

  I felt a sort of relief. Being able to talk it out, it helped clarify my thoughts where I’d felt so lost, before. I was feeling more direction, now. I could see a goal, something to aim for. I didn’t like it, but I’d known from the moment I read Dinah’s notes that I wouldn’t like the outcome.

  “I’ve got to be heartless, I think,” I said, and my voice was barely above a whisper. I was aware of the groundskeeper approaching, but I didn’t move. ”I know you and dad won’t approve of this, but Dinah seems to think I have a bigger role to play in what comes next, and maybe I won’t be in the right position, in the right place at the right time, if I don’t do it.”

  Radley stirred, reacting to the noise of the groundskeeper’s footsteps. I held his collar to keep him from attacking.

  I moved Radley, stood and faced the groundskeeper. I could see the whites of his eyes in the gloom, even through the glare of the flashlight. He was older, round-faced, with a potbelly, his hair a bit too long.

  His look was wary. The girl in a black body suit complete with gray body armor, in the company of a small dog, sitting by a grave.

  “I’m sorry to intrude,” I said. ”I’ll leave.”

  He peered at me, then glanced at my mom’s headstone. ”You’re visiting?”

  “My mother.”

  “Not causing any trouble?”

  I shook my head.

  “I won’t begrudge you that, so long as you don’t cause any trouble or leave any mess. You clean up after that dog.”

  I nodded again, silent. I didn’t have bags, but I had bugs.

  His expression softened a touch. ”You need anything? I’ll be making some tea before I get another walk in later tonight, but I could brew a spot of coffee if you think you’ll be sitting out here for a bit.”

  I felt tears in the corners of my eyes. Odd, that they hadn’t appeared earlier.

  “Tea would be…” I struggled to find the word. I almost said lovely, but it sounded wrong. ”Tea, please, if it’s no trouble.”

  “I’ll bring out a cup.”

  “And paper?” I blurted out the words.

  “I only have printer paper, I think.”

  “That’s fine.”

  “How many pages?”

  I opened my mouth to say, but I had no idea.

  Again, a gentle expression that I didn’t deserve crossed his face. ”I’ll bring you a good amount. You bring the leftover back to my office when you return the teacup.”

  “Thank you,” I told him.

  It was a little while before he arrived with the tea, the paper and a pen. I didn’t speak to my mother’s headstone in the meantime, and even after the groundskeeper stopped by, I couldn’t find anything to say.

  I wrote; twelve pages, front and back. It wasn’t a fast process. Two hours passed before the groundskeeper did another patrol of the grounds. I wasn’t sure if it was his job or a thing he did because he had nothing else to do, but he finished up and retired in a little house a little ways up the hill, turning in for the night.

  My hand was cramping and I had a stitch in my neck by the time I’d decided I was finished. Too many hours spent writing with the paper pressed against the armor on my leg, considering how to phrase things, knowing that there was no perfect way to say it.

  I penned the final words:

  I love you, dad. I’m sorry

  -Taylor

  I removed the flower from the vase, and laid it at the foot of the headstone. I rolled up the paper and slid it into the vase, then placed it upside-down so the rain wouldn’t filter inside. My dad would be the only one to see it. If someone like the groundskeeper investigated, I didn’t particularly mind.

  I stood, stretching. Radley wagged his tail at me, excited to be moving again. He was a happy, easygoing little guy. Had Rachel sent him with me with his personality in mind?

  I thought about saying something more to my mom, but the illusion had been shattered. I’d made a decision, and it wasn’t one I’d been prepared to make when I’d left the PRT headquarters. Talking had helped to clarify my thoughts. I didn’t feel as lost as I had, nor as frustrated. I’d been able to pen out an explanation for my dad. Not as long or as in-depth as he deserved, perhaps, but an explanation.

  “Thanks for hearing me out,” I said, acutely aware that she wasn’t there, that she wasn’t listening. ”I’m going to be busy, so it’ll probably be a while before I drop by again. Sorry.”

  I walked away with a lump in my throat, my head held high, and a direction in mind.

  21.03

  Regent’s base was in the midst of renovations. The exterior was tame, unassuming, but the interior was becoming something else entirely. The floor and walls were being covered in stone tile, suits of armor stood on either side of the doorway, and I could see ornate chandeliers at one side of the room, each individual segment separated from the others by extensive bubble wrap.

  There was a dais at the far end of the room, almost a stage, with a throne laying on its side on top. Four people were working in the room. Workers Tattletale had hired, who would get enough steady employment and money to reward their silence. Two were working on the walls, one worked on the floor, and the fourth was preparing the dais so the throne could be bolted into place.

  “Found it,” Regent said. He raised his scepter, tossed it into the air and let it spin twice before catching the handle.

  I winced. “Careful. You really don’t want to catch the wrong end and electrocute yourself.”

  He only chuckled.

  “It’s daylight. It’s fucked up that we’re doing this in the middle of the day,” Imp groused, as we ventured outside. Atlas was waiting, and started half-crawling, half-flying alongside us.

  “What does it matter to you?” I asked her. “It’s not like it makes any difference with your power.”

  “It’s the principle of it,” Regent said. He was walking briskly to keep up with Imp, Atlas, and me. Despite everything we’d been through, he wasn’t one to exercise or take care of his body, and he huffed just a little to keep his breath. “This is the sort of maneuver you pull in the dead of night.”

  I shook my head. “Circumstances are ideal right now. You don’t handicap yourself by trying to conform to any preconceived notions. Keep a goal in mind, look at everything through the lens of that goal, and look for paths to get what you want. If they’re prepared for you, you strike from an unexpected direction. If everyone else is expecting a maneuver from an oblique angle, you take a direct route.”

  “See, that sounds like a whole lot of work,” Regent said, “Constantly thinking about that stuff. When do you
sit back and chill out?”

  “Either you make that kind of thinking a part of yourself, you lose a little sleep to achieve that ‘me’ time, or you don’t get to relax,” I said.

  “Doesn’t sound fun at all,” Regent said.

  “If it was easy to take over a city, more people would have managed it,” I said. “This is work. There’s always more to be done, whether you’re dealing with your enemies, dealing with your subordinates or coordinating with your allies. If you find you have free time, you’re probably fucking up.”

  “Or!” he said, raising a finger, “I could delegate.”

  “That’s a recipe for failure,” I told him.

  “My dad managed it.”

  Heartbreaker, I thought. I was put in mind of the images of Heartbreaker that had made the web. The villain, by virtue of his personal, extensive harem, had a whole cadre of women virtually climbing over each other for the chance to fawn over him and worship him. The pictures were a consequence of that, released by his ‘girls’, as Regent had termed them. Each picture depicted a man in his thirties or forties, depending on the time the picture in question had been taken. He had black hair, the scruff of a beard, and was invariably seen sitting or reclining on couches and beds, often shirtless, with women at the periphery of the image. He oozed confidence and raw sexuality, languid, more lanky than athletic.

  I could envision Regent in a very similar picture. Years older, grown to his full height and proportions, surrounded not by women, but by the people he had claimed as his tools. Capes he controlled with his power. Acceptable targets perhaps, people who would be destined for the Birdcage or long sentences in prison, but still people. A different underlying theme than sexuality: Regent would be sitting casually on his throne, pampered in a very different way than I’d seen with his father, having been fed, washed and dressed by a half-dozen pairs of hands working in unison. Regent controlled people so absolutely that he would essentially be pampering himself; it was a charade. Almost the inverse of his father, in some ways, but still narcissistic at its core.

  The idea bothered me more than I wanted to admit, and it bothered me in a way I couldn’t put my finger on. Did I not want him to become that? I did. I wanted him to be powerful, and that was what he’d naturally become, given his personality and powers. I wanted him to customize his lair like he was, because he’d inevitably have people he was controlling in there, and it would be worth a thousand times the amount it cost if it helped him convey a certain image.

  Maybe part of it was the ease with which I could put Imp in that imaginary crowd of people who were waiting on him hand and foot.

  I’d have to talk to Grue about that.

  “You’ve gone quiet,” Regent said.

  “Oh!” Imp closed the distance between us, wrapping both of her arms around one of mine, “Did he win the argument? Tell me he won the argument.”

  “We’re discussing, not debating,” I said.

  “People say that sort of thing when they’re losing,” she said.

  I ignored her. “I was just wondering, Regent… do you really want to follow in your dad’s footsteps?”

  He didn’t respond right away. He looked away from Imp and I both, as if he were idly observing the scenery.

  “You’re a little bit of an asshole, aren’t you?” Regent asked.

  “Only when I have to be,” I said, mildly surprised at the reaction.

  “Fuck it,” Imp said, letting go of my arm. “Us two lesser members of the group need a little victory here and there. Need to win arguments, get more rep.”

  “That’s why we’re here,” I said. “If everything goes well, today should serve several purposes, and one of those was that I wanted to see how you two are operating.”

  “Great,” Regent commented, giving Imp a look. “Mom’s watching over us, making sure we’re doing it right.”

  “For any of our enemies with the sense to realize it, you two are the scariest members of the Undersiders,” I said. “Let’s focus on using that.”

  “I’m already using it,” Imp said.

  “Probably,” I replied.

  “You mean this is about me,” Regent said. “You ask us both to come along to tutor us in how to freak people out, but Imp doesn’t need any help, so this has to be about me.”

  I suppressed a sigh. These two. “Not only you. Imp was doing a terrific job of terrorizing troublemakers in the territory she shared with Grue. She graduated to owning her own territory, and the fact that she’s there has been keeping Valefor and Eligos at bay. That’s good. But it can’t hurt to get an objective opinion and find out how to do it better. I do that, with Grue and Tattletale’s feedback.”

  “I’m versatile,” Regent said. “Give me credit.”

  “I’m not saying you aren’t, I’m saying we can always stand to improve,” I replied.

  Regent tossed his scepter into the air and caught it. It bugged me, the idea that he might accidentally taze himself and collapse, with some bystander catching the thing on video. He knew it bugged me, and it was undoubtedly a very deliberate way to get on my case. I ignored it.

  I thought about what Imp had done in Grue’s territory; Grue had filled me in on the basics and I’d heard more from people who’d been in that area. As standalone individuals, none of the members of our team had fully matured. We were finding our way, figuring out the roles we wanted and needed to take, adjusting our images.

  Who would Imp be, a couple of years down the line? It was maybe bizarre to think about the future, with the way Tattletale had outlined the possible ends of the world, but it was defeatist to let things slide because things might end prematurely. I’d seen Imp change from someone on the periphery of the group, struggling to find a position, to a lesser terror. She’d cut down superpowered clones with ease, and she was fearless and reckless in a way that could only ease her journey down a bloodier path.

  Would Imp become an assassin? At age eighteen or twenty, would she be an unholy terror, coldly and remorselessly executing enemies who couldn’t even be aware enough to guard against her? If Tattletale erased all records of Imp, if we employed measures to restrict people from tracking her on video cameras and the like, what might Imp become?

  Both Regent as a successor to Heartbreaker and Imp as a murderer with a body count were possible. Even likely.

  I wasn’t entirely sure what to do about that. With Imp, maybe I could have words with Grue, but Regent…

  I was still thinking on the subject of Regent, searching for an angle I could use to convince him, when I was distracted. My swarm noted a number of soft movements, like a flurry of leaves in the wind.

  Autumn was months away, there weren’t many trees around, and there wasn’t wind.

  “Found them,” I said.

  “Which?” Regent asked.

  “Haven. The Fallen will be nearby. We’ve got Rosary in a combat mode, and Halo’s not in the air, as far as I can see, so they’re obviously geared up for a fight. In your territory,” I said, eyeing Regent.

  “I could’ve done something if Tattletale called me first.”

  I drew myself against a building, increasing the number of bugs I was using to scout for trouble. “What would you have done?”

  “Waited until they were done fighting each other, go after the stragglers.”

  “There’s a lot of flaws with that idea,” I said.

  He shrugged. “I’m flexible. I could figure something out.”

  The more I thought on it, the less sure I was that there was any way it’d really work. It was an easy way out.

  I had a growing suspicion that Regent was interested in being in charge for more for the sake of being in charge than anything else. It made his position tenuous because he wasn’t doing much to hold it. If this was his modus operandi, then he risked being seen as more of a hyena that preyed on the weak than someone powerful.

  “So… if Haven won, they’d arrest Valefor or Eligos, cart the pair off to jail and then leave. What w
ould you do?”

  “Don’t know. Would have to see the situation for myself.”

  “Or if Valefor won, what would you even do? The members of Haven would be too dangerous to get near.”

  “Again, I don’t know,” he said. He glanced at Imp. “Today’s going to be a fun day.”

  I frowned.

  Rosary wasn’t close, but her presence was unmistakable. Bugs I’d settled on a car were scattered into the air, carried aloft on paper-thin slices of stainless steel and glass. I had them take flight, returning in the general direction of the car, measured the progress of her power as more of the debris filled the air, surrounding her. I knew of her from some internet browsing and a few videos, but this was concrete information. They were details I could use in the event that I had to fight her.

  Three or four seconds in all, for her power to erase the car, scattering it into the air as a storm of incredibly light, thin flakes of matter. Those same flakes flew around her like a tornado.

  She raised one hand, covered in a fingerless glove with hard, metallic feathers or scales at the edges. The storm of petals altered in direction and intensity, the flakes flying forward. A small few of my bugs died where the flakes struck them at the right angle and speed. A storm of tiny, fragile blades. A lot of the petals were actually bouncing off of my wasps, bumblebees and cockroaches, leaving me suspicious that it would take a good while to kill someone with her power.

  Up until the point where the petals converged together, reforming into a car tire, ten feet in the air. A man hurried to leap out of the way before it struck him. I realized it was Eligos. He wasn’t wearing the Endbringer costume. Something similar, but without the same theme. He hurried out of the way as more tires appeared above him.

  “We’re going on the offensive,” I said. “We don’t come out looking like the top dogs if either of the two groups win.”

  “We sucker punch them,” Regent said.

  “Better to forewarn them just enough that it doesn’t feel like a sucker punch,” I told him.

  “Don’t you get it?” Imp said. She feigned a condescending tone, “It doesn’t count if we don’t do it the hardest way possible.”