Worm

by John Mccrae Wildbow

Grue entered, and he was a storm of darkness, to the point that his body wasn’t even visible.

  “Hey, big brother,” Imp said. There was a notable, very deliberate pause. “How’re you doing?”

  “I should have known. Should have put it together,” he growled the words in that voice of his that made Parian’s hair stand on end. He turned to Tattletale, “Did you know about this?”

  “Power’s out of commission,” she said. “Still have a headache. Keep voices down, please.”

  He didn’t reply, turning his attention to the TV.

  “I can’t help but note you didn’t answer the question,” Regent told Tattletale. “Did you know?”

  Grue turned back to look at her.

  “Had an idea.”

  “Yes, then.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?” Grue asked. “Why keep it a secret? Why is she doing this?”

  “I kept it a secret because she asked me to and she’s doing this because she thinks it’s going to fix more things than it breaks,” Tattletale said. She shifted position with care, as though every movement was painful. Even after she stopped, Parian could see her clenching her jaw, as if staving off waves of pain.

  “Remains to be seen,” Grue said. “Why didn’t she discuss this with us?”

  It was Regent who replied, “She thought we’d convince her it was a bad idea.”

  “That’s not a convincing reason,” Grue answered.

  This is the team, Parian thought. Skitter was always at the core of it, a group forged by innumerable challenges, each trusting the others to have their backs as they risked life and limb. And she just betrayed that trust.

  “There’s two major issues we have to deal with,” Tattletale said. “Accord is going to be one. The other is-

  Bitch.

  The girl entered the room, two large dogs flanking her, the wolf cub trailing behind, unmodified by her powers. The young American bulldog, still not fully grown, an older pitbull that bore the scars of old dogfights. The wolf cub was comparatively small. Adorable. Adorable and capable of turning into a murder machine the size of a pony.

  Bitch was imposing in an entirely different way than Grue was. Grue was intimidating, but he was fair. Rational. Bitch wasn’t either of those things. Her blond hair was shaggy, having grown in, combed with little more than fingers, if appearance was any indication. The glimpses of her face that showed in the midst of the hair were a wary glower.

  The girl had her jacket slung over one shoulder, otherwise wearing a simple white sleeveless undershirt with no bra. She was muscular, but she had to be to control the dogs when they were growing, to exert enough strength to get them to turn their heads or change direction. Other parts of her bore similar signs of her day-to-day activities. Her knuckles were scraped and raw, and she had a scratch on one cheekbone, taped shut. The chain that attached to the pitbull’s collar was wound around one arm. She was beaded with sweat, likely due to the exertion of the ride coupled with the heavier pants and boots she wore.

  I hate being short, Parian thought. To look at them, few people would have guessed there was a four-year difference in ages. Or they would have guessed the difference in ages went the other way.

  Primal, unpredictable, dangerous. Bitch was imposing for those reasons, and because she was emotional. She could and would lash out with physical violence if provoked. Even if she imagined that someone was provoking her. If she was really provoked, she wouldn’t move a muscle, which was worse. She’d whistle and set her dogs on anyone that crossed her.

  Parian felt her heart rate pick up as Bitch approached, felt that sense of danger peak as they briefly made eye contact, before the girl moved on.

  As unfriendly as the girl was, Bentley was friendly, the young bulldog nudging Parian’s hand for a scratch before hurrying to catch up to his master.

  Regent turned off the TV. Bitch stood there, turning to look at each of her teammates in turn.

  “What?”

  “Christ,” Grue muttered. “Tattletale. You didn’t tell her?”

  “Tell me what?” Bitch asked. She glanced around. “Where’s Skitter?”

  Nobody volunteered an answer.

  “Is she hurt?” Bitch asked. She didn’t even sound concerned. When nobody spoke up, she expanded her question. “Is she dead?”

  “Fuck it,” Regent said, “I’ll say it. Skitter’s at the PRT headquarters.”

  “So? We break her out.”

  “She went there on purpose,” Regent said, almost offhandedly. Carelessly.

  Parian couldn’t help but notice the way Bitch clenched her hands, one gripping the metal chain until her knuckles went white.

  “Regent,” Grue said.

  “What? You don’t want to deliver the news, you don’t get a say in how it’s presented,” Regent retorted.

  Bentley and the wolf cub both planted their feet further apart, while the pitbull was looking around, all of a sudden.

  There. Bentley’s shoulders were bulging slightly. Bitch was using her powers.

  “So?” Bitch asked.

  “So… that’s it. That’s why we’re here,” Regent said. “We’re here to talk about this, to plan.”

  “She’ll be back,” Bitch said.

  Will she? Parian couldn’t help but wonder.

  “I’m not so sure,” Grue said, echoing Parian’s thoughts.

  “She makes plans,” Bitch said. “She’s smart like that. I’m not. I don’t try to understand what she’s doing.”

  “She paid me a visit,” Grue said. “I didn’t realize it until I got the call from Tattletale. She was saying goodbye. Not out loud, but… checking I was okay, making sure I’d be able to manage… after she was gone.”

  Bentley was still growing. His flesh split at the shoulder, and he brought one back leg up, kicking at the air as if he had an itch he wanted to reach but couldn’t.

  The pitbull and wolf puppy were growing too. The pitbull looked a lot less comfortable with the process than the other animals, more alarmed. Bitch tugged the chain absently to keep him in line.

  “She visited us too,” Regent said. “Imp and me.”

  “Me too,” Tattletale spoke from her perch on the stairs, quiet.

  Not me, Parian thought. Unless I count that meeting with Miss Militia and Lily.

  That served the same purposes, didn’t it? Getting things settled? Making sure things would be okay in the future. Ensuring the heroes could help out with my territory?

  Parian felt a sinking feeling in her gut. Skitter hadn’t been leaving for the short-term.

  And that sinking feeling couldn’t even compare to what the others were feeling, here.

  Tattletale, nearly incapacitated. Grue, with his darkness a virtual storm around him. Regent and Imp, standing back, together. And Bitch. Stock still, radiating something more than tension. Restrained aggression, even.

  “Doesn’t mean anything,” Bitch said.

  “It’s telling,” Grue said. “She was saying goodbye.”

  “It doesn’t mean anything,” Bitch said, and her voice was harder. “It’s a plan.”

  Why am I even here? The thought struck Parian, out of place, out of time, a non-sequitur, yet somehow profound. As if this point, in the middle of the discussion, was when she realized how out of place she was in the dynamic.

  “Of course it’s a plan,” Regent was saying. “It might not be a good plan-”

  Bitch cut him off. “She goes there, she defeats them, and then she comes back.”

  “Um,” Imp said. “Why wouldn’t she tell us?”

  “She’ll have a reason,” Bitch said.

  Loyalty, Parian thought. Misguided loyalty, blinding Bitch to the truth, but loyalty nonetheless.

  “Look, it’s not important,” Tattletale said.

  “It’s important,” Bitch growled. “You’re supposed to be her friends, and you’re talking about her like she’s gone.”

  The pitbull seemed to take her cue, and began growling steadily
. He was still growing, his body straining against the chain harness he wore.

  “She’s not gone for sure,” Tattletale said. “We don’t know how this is going to play out, not exactly.”

  Bitch didn’t seem the least bit satisfied with that, but the pitbull stopped growling. Had she stopped using her power?

  “What do we know?” Regent asked.

  “That she wanted to keep us in the dark,” Tattletale said. “That she wanted to go…”

  “And she planned to be gone long time,” Grue said. “She was asking me about leadership, about whether I was ready to take the reins. I said no, but she did it anyways.”

  “She thought this was important,” Tattletale said. “Enough to put you out of your depth, as much as you don’t want it, as much as she didn’t want it for you.”

  I don’t even figure into this, Parian thought. I’m not even sure I’m an official member of the group.

  “So I’m leader in the interim,” Grue said. There was a note of something in his voice, behind that haunting echo that his power laced it with. Not as severe as despair, bigger than unhappiness. Defeat?

  “…Unless there’s any objections,” he said.

  Hopeful?

  Nobody voiced any.

  “Then we run damage control,” Grue said. “Her territory?”

  “We can fold it into adjacent territories,” Tattletale said. “Parian, Grue, me. Maybe the others take over some of our territories to give us an easier job of it. She made other arrangements, with her residents. I can contact them so we can discuss it, put it all into action.”

  “Her people aren’t a big priority,” Grue said. “If they’re not going to riot, let’s put them on the backburner. I’m more worried about anything that could go up in flames in the next hour.”

  “Literally,” Regent said.

  “…Possibly literally,” Grue said. “Accord?”

  “I called him just after Regent and Imp showed,” Tattletale said. “He’ll be here at nine thirty, on the dot. Would have mentioned sooner, but we got caught up in talking.”

  Grue nodded, glancing back towards the TV. Parian did the same. A number blinked on the box beneath the screen: nine twenty-six. “That doesn’t give us much time to organize.”

  “The longer we wait, the more upset he’ll be,” Tattletale said. “And he’s a planner. If we give him time, he’ll work out some scheme to retaliate against us. We’re stronger against him if he’s on his toes.”

  “Granted,” Grue said. He sighed, “God, I’m not up to this. Damn her to hell.”

  There was no reply from the group.

  How many members of this group were voicing silent agreement? Parian shifted her weight nervously. How many people here had taken a life? All of them? Most?

  Parian couldn’t help but feel out of her depth. The terminology had never felt so apt, feeling like she was in the water, at that one point where she realized she couldn’t reach safety, the water around her face…

  She felt like that now, here.

  Taylor had been undercover once, hadn’t she? She’d immersed herself in this. It was impossible to imagine.

  “Accord,” Tattletale said.

  Parian thought at first that Tattletale was returning the group to the topic of conversation, but Tattletale was taking off her glasses, grimacing.

  “Undersiders,” Accord said.

  “You’re early,” Tattletale said.

  “Rest assured, I’m on time.”

  “The clock-”

  “Is slow,” Accord said. “I arrived when I said I did, and I’ll ask you once to please stop suggesting otherwise.”

  If Bitch was an ‘I’ll punch your face in for no reason’ kind of intimidating, and Grue was an ‘I’ll explain carefully just why I’m about to punch your face in’ intimidating, Accord was something else entirely.

  It was really easy to imagine him nonchalantly standing above her while she stood in a pit he’d had dug out, a cement truck slowly filling in the space around her. Or very politely eating someone’s severed leg with a knife and fork held in the proper manner.

  He was the kind of scary guy they made movies about, only he was real.

  And that made her think about the Slaughterhouse Nine.

  She hated him. She understood everything about why the Undersiders were working with him, understood that they’d be at the mercy of others like the Slaughterhouse Nine if they didn’t have muscle like his on their side, but she hated him.

  He was her height, dressed in a white business suit and tie, his intricate wood-and-silver mask moving to replicate the expressions beneath.

  He was joined by his Ambassadors. Each wore a finished mask, a suit for the men and a dress for the ladies: Citrine in yellow, with gemstones; Othello in alabaster white and jet black, all stark contrasts; Ligeia in a deep blue-green that contrasted her dark skin, with a conch-shell mask that swept back over the corner of her forehead, with an ‘up’ hairstyle to match; Jacklight, with a deep royal purple dress shirt and pocket square, his mask a grinning visage that would be fitting for a child’s jack-in-the-box; and Lizardtail, bigger than the others, with a green dress shirt and pocket square, an ornate mask that looked more like a Celtic knot than anything lizardlike. Maybe the segments or spiral of it were supposed to represent a cut tail?

  He’d arrived with firepower, in short. Parian didn’t consider herself very combat-savvy, but she was aware of that much.

  “I… rather dislike surprises,” Accord said.

  “You and me both, pal,” Tattletale replied.

  It wasn’t… it didn’t seem like a smart way to talk to the perfectionist supervillain. Accord was dangerous, so why was Tattletale provoking him?

  It seemed to take Accord a second to compose himself and get his thoughts in order. “It would be polite to stand, when a guest arrives.”

  “Feeling a bit under the weather,” Tattletale said. “Forgive my bad manners. I take it you caught the essentials on TV?”

  “On the radio, while we drove,” Accord said. “Did you know of this scheme?”

  “Of course,” Tattletale said. “Do you think we’re crazy? Everything’s golden.”

  “Golden,” Accord said.

  “Copacetic, peachy keen.”

  “I wasn’t informed of any plans.”

  “You don’t have to be,” Tattletale said.

  “We’re allies.”

  “You’re subordinate to us,” Tattletale said. “If you have an issue with that, I urge you to submit a written complaint and formally declare war. Twenty four hours notice, if you please. I know you like rules and regulations.”

  “You’re mocking me.”

  “Yes. And you’re letting me mock you for some reason. You’re making a lot of concessions in our bargain here. You have a reason to be doing that,” Tattletale said. “I’m comfortable leveraging that.”

  “I made concessions because I was led to believe that Skitter was going to be the one in charge of matters here. I investigated her, I met her in person, and I decided she fit the necessary qualifications. Now I’m finding that things are definitely not what they appeared to be. She’s not in charge, for one thing, there’s the reckless attack against the Teeth that saw one of my very expensive recruits killed…”

  “You don’t really care about that,” Tattletale said. “You wanted to wean out the ones who couldn’t cut it. Codex couldn’t cut it. Good at administration, fantastic cook, skilled when it came to managing people, and could even spar, sure, but she didn’t have the wits about her in a combat situation. Couldn’t switch gears.”

  He closed his eyes, and metal shutters flicked into place as the mask mimicked the movement. “Please don’t interrupt me.”

  “I don’t think you’re getting my point. I don’t bend to your rules, Accord. If you want to talk about your dead underling, let’s talk.”

  “She was shot in the throat from behind.”

  “Are you saying I’m wrong?” Tattletale asked
. “About her being poorly equipped for cape life?”

  “No. The analysis is right. I won’t disagree. But I have other concerns. This business with how you murdered Butcher. The girl at the bottom of the Boat Graveyard… Cherish… it was a risky decision.”

  “Not so risky when you’ve done a read on the situation. I had all the notes on Butcher Fourteen. She couldn’t teleport free, not into open water. She still can’t, and I had a crew use a remote control device to lash a cable to Butcher Fifteen’s pod. They’ve dropped her into a deeper area of the ocean, and the only thing she’ll be likely to kill are fish. If we’re lucky, maybe Leviathan will float that way and off himself.”

  “It was risky nonetheless. There was no assurance the plan would work.”

  “And we shouldered that risk. Bitch and Skitter, specifically. If it didn’t work out, it was their lives on the line.”

  “And now we have Skitter taking another risk. This seems to be a pattern.”

  “She’s taking the risk on our behalf,” Tattletale said. “But that’s not your concern.”

  “It’s very concerning to me.”

  “But it’s not your concern,” Tattletale said. There was a strain in her voice, and her fingernails were digging into her costume-covered thighs. “We aren’t partners, Accord. Let’s get that straight. Do we work together? Yes. Have we arranged a division of labor? Yes. But this is our city, and you’re renting a space.”

  “Tenants have rights when interacting with their landlords,” Accord said.

  “Rights, yes. But we’re supervillains. Don’t forget that,” Tattletale relied. “It’s our prerogative to be assholes. And right now? I’m going to be an asshole. The contract stands. Your provisions stand.”

  “There’s an escape clause.”

  “And you’re free to use it,” Tattletale said. “Take the clause, leave, abandon the investments you’ve already made in this city…”

  “Or attack,” Accord said, “And seize everything you have.”

  “Or attack,” Tattletale said. She sounded more tired than upset. “You could do that. Or you can take my offer.”

  “Which is?”

  “Skitter provided your notes on managing crime in Brockton Bay. I don’t think either of us can agree to implement it, without knowing the exact outcome of Skitter’s expedition…”