Worm

by John Mccrae Wildbow

  “Then you agree? I should tell Saint to bury the information, maybe push events here and there, if it means we could go free?”

  Lung nodded.

  “And your power? If I-”

  “My power will be left alone,” Lung said. “It is enough. If you want a bodyguard for a time after we’ve walked free, you will have it. I will keep your secret about this Saint for now.”

  “Alas,” Teacher said. “But I’ll take the offer. By the time this comes through, I’ll have a small army of parahumans at my disposal. Some will be… under my sway, but I’d rather have your feral instincts to offset my own wit than have you as a slave.”

  “I would kill you for trying,” Lung replied. “You use your power on me, I will see you dead for it.”

  “Very well,” Teacher answered. He smiled. “I’ll have Trickster pass on a message to Saint, then. We’ll scrub Dragon’s records of this conversation, and any cases Amelia has talked of the power-granting entities, and we’ll leave a request, perhaps. I have large sums of money stashed away. That should be enough to convince Saint to perhaps set some events in motion, in the hopes that things sour just enough that they might open the Birdcage’s doors.”

  Lung nodded. “Do what you must. I only care for our deal. I walk free, I will assist you for a time thereafter. The other things do not matter to me.”

  “Very well.” Teacher extended a hand, and Lung shook it.

  Lung turned to leave.

  As with the Yàngbǎn, he would stay with Teacher until he had what he needed: freedom. Then the man would die.

  The woman in the black suit, the Yàngbǎn, Skitter, and now Teacher. People he would have his revenge on, at a later date. People who had looked down on him, who had tried to manipulate him.

  He could feel his power rippling under his skin. Against Leviathan, he’d waited hours before engaging the beast, had fought longer than he ever had. Now that he knew he might leave… this would be a two year buildup.

  The scale of the event Teacher had spoken of? That Amelia had alluded to? Fear and power beyond anything he’d ever experienced, freedom without limits. That very idea gave Lung a taste of that exhiliration he hadn’t experienced for so long.

  Lung returned to Marquis’ cell block. Marquis and Amelia were sitting at one table, drinking green tea and conversing with one another.

  Marquis glanced at Lung, then poured out another mug of green tea without asking. He gestured to the bench opposite, slid the mug in Lung’s direction.

  Acceptance, the idea caught Lung by surprise. He had a place here, odd as it was, as different as he and Marquis were.

  Bakuda had taunted him over how he’d sought a kind of connection to others, how he’d recruited his gang to fill a void. At the same time he found himself thinking of the restrictions he’d faced in school as a youth, the joys of rebellion, the Yàngbǎn and everything they’d threatened to take from him.

  If there was a middle ground between acceptance and conformity, was this it?

  “Marquis,” Lung spoke, carefully.

  “Hm?” Marquis quirked an eyebrow.

  Teacher is working to undermine everything you and your daughter are striving for, Lung thought.

  “The tea is good. Thank you.”

  “Quite welcome,” Marquis replied, absently.

  And Lung fell silent.

  Arc 23: Drone

  23.01

  “Weaver,” the voice had a slight digital twang at the edges, to the point that I thought it was Bakuda for a second, even if the two voices were entirely different.

  I lowered my book. Defiant stood in the doorway to my cell, flanked by two of the prison guards.

  I swung my feet to the ground, simultaneously sitting up. “If you’d asked me a few weeks ago, I’m not sure I would have believed that I’d actually be happy to see you.”

  “You’ll be coming back,” he warned me. “This is a temporary leave.”

  “I know,” I said. I marked the page in my book, placing it in a corner, where it joined twelve others.

  “And yes, I’m not surprised you had hard feelings. We weren’t on good terms then, and even now…”

  He didn’t finish the sentence. Even now, we aren’t friends?

  “A lot of books,” he noted the stack of prison library books. “You’ve read them all?”

  “Yeah.”

  “In seven days?”

  “Lots of time to myself. I don’t have classes, but I have homework and self-study, and that cuts into reading time, or I’d have read more. But it’s kind of nice, if you ignore… pretty much everything else. I’ve had time to think for the first time in months.”

  “I know what you mean,” Defiant said. “I remember worrying every day if that would be the day innocents were caught in a crossfire between Coil and Kaiser, or the day a member of Empire Eighty-Eight was initiated into the group, with the requisite assault of an ‘acceptable target’.”

  I grimaced at that. He extended an arm, indicating I was free to leave the cell.

  He continued as we walked, flanked by the guards. “…And then there was the team, handling the internal politics, Assault’s harassment of Battery, the Wards and their individual issues. The countless requests for appearances, for photo shoots, interviews, and demonstrations, figuring out which have to be accepted, which can be turned down, knowing that too many refusals in a row could mean a negative article. And then there were the threats, of course, dealing with powered criminals. Every team member becomes a resource, and those resources have to be allocated judiciously.”

  “And in the midst of all that, you’re still trying to find time for you,” I said.

  “Free time is the easiest thing to sacrifice,” Defiant said. “It costs you, to give it up, but there’s little guilt. Time to yourself is best spent preparing. Developing new technology, strategizing, adjusting equipment-”

  “Weaving costumes, pre-preparing lines of silk,” I said.

  Defiant nodded.

  “I may have inadvertently screwed Miss Militia over,” I said.

  Defiant shook his head. “She’s a natural leader. I wasn’t.”

  “That might make it easier to handle,” I said, “But she’ll still be in a position where she has to worry, has to prioritize and make sacrifices, and I don’t know if she asked for it.”

  “She’ll manage,” Defiant said, as if that was that. I couldn’t tell if it was trust in his teammate or if he wasn’t particularly empathetic on that front. Miss Militia was the one who’d supplanted him as team leader. Were there still hard feelings?

  We stopped at the end of the hallway, and the guards stopped to check in at the control station that managed which doors opened and when. There were procedures for seeing a prisoner out, and it took some time.

  I could see into cells near the gate. Prisoners glared at me. I was a villain to everyone who had a grudge against supervillains, a hero to everyone who had a grudge against ‘cops’. A traitor. A murderer. The person who’d killed one of the strongest heroes in the world. Who’d killed someone who had fought for decades to save the world, again and again, and who may have doomed us all.

  The other prisoners were still trying to assess me, I was pretty sure. Nobody spoke to me or approached me when we filed off to get our meals or when I visited the library. The words printed on my uniform were probably daunting for the unpowered.

  The judge had seen fit to assign me to a close security prison, a wing in a medium security facility. It was somewhat backwards, as rulings went, everything taken into consideration. I’d been charged as an adult, for one thing, so juvenile detention was out. Too many crimes under my belt. I was apparently too dangerous for a minimum security institution, but the PRT had asked for leniency, and this was the compromise they’d come to.

  As far as I could figure it out, it was everything I might have expected from a medium security prison, complete with a station that controlled the opening and closing of cell doors, constant supervision,
and escorts wherever we went. The only difference was the emphasis on programs. We were here to be rehabilitated, to find work, get an education and get therapy. All mandated.

  I’d already started studying. Now, with Defiant here, I’d get okayed to start other projects. I hoped.

  The warden was waiting for us in the ‘hub’, the room with benches where we’d waited to be assigned to our cells. She wasn’t what I’d expected from a person in charge of a prison. She made me think of a stern teacher, instead. She was old, pushing sixty if not well past it, and ramrod straight, and thin. Her graying hair was tied back into a short braid that didn’t quite reach the bottom of her neck. She was tough in a gnarled, craggy sort of way, like the veteran actors of cowboy movies, but female.

  “Taylor Hebert,” she said.

  “Ma’am.”

  “Every rule in my prison applies while you’re outside. You know this.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I know you capes are magnets for trouble. If a fight happened to erupt while you were en route and it came down to you fighting back or getting stabbed, I expect you to get stabbed and then graciously thank your attacker, you understand?”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “That said, best if you don’t get hurt. Running would be preferrable, so long as you don’t run. Trying to escape would be the worst thing you could do, and it wouldn’t succeed.”

  “You want me to stay out of trouble. I understand, ma’am.”

  “It’s a cushy deal you have here, but one word from me, and that changes.”

  “I get that, ma’am. Really, I do. I get that I did some sketchy things. I get that this is a kind of penance, probably not as harsh as I deserve, and I welcome it. I think, given a choice between walking away free right this second and continuing my sentence, I’d choose the latter.”

  She studied me for long seconds.

  “We have a no-tolerance policy on powers, Ms. Hebert.”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “What appeared to be an emerging case of body lice in the main prison seems to have abruptly corrected itself, according to our physicians. The roach traps in the kitchen aren’t catching anything, either.”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “There’s a part of me that would like to think you’re doing us a service, cleaning things up. Which would still be a violation of the zero-tolerance rules, but somewhat forgivable given the intent. Another part of me has to be concerned that you’re hoarding these in the same manner another prisoner might hoard makeshift weapons.”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Which is it?”

  “I sort of hoped to talk about it with my therapist, on our first meeting, and figure out the best way to approach it before talking to you.”

  She made a ‘continue’ gesture with her hand, arms still folded, her gaze hard.

  “My power is always on. It takes a conscious effort to block them out and let them act normally. I feel what they feel, sense what they sense, sort of. It’s… not fun with lice, crawling around in prisoner’s pubic hair, you know? Being aware of that, across eighteen, nineteen prisoners, twenty-four-seven?”

  “My concern, Ms. Hebert, is what you’re doing with those bugs.”

  “Nothing,” I said. “I- moved them away from the prisoners. I’ve mostly left them where they were, let them starve. I can’t leave them stationary like that where there are rodents, or they’ll only feed the rodent population and you’ll have a bigger problem. I could kill the rodents, but then you’d have dead rats in your walls, and-”

  “This isn’t acceptable. You understand why this isn’t acceptable?”

  “You have to protect other prisoners,” I said.

  Even if it means letting them have lice? I didn’t say that last part.

  “If bugs are your weapon of choice, I can’t let you have access to them.”

  “What about a bucket?” I asked.

  “Hm?”

  “Set up a bucket in some back room, fill it with something caustic enough to kill them on contact. I’ll drown every bug I can reach in the bucket, and you’ll be able to see for yourself, by the volume of bugs that are in there.”

  “Let’s postpone measures like that,” Defiant cut in. “Go change.”

  I nodded, happy for the escape route. I made my way to the combination shower-and-change room area, pausing to collect my civilian clothes from the guard in the bulletproof glass enclosure that overlooked the hub.

  I would have liked to shower in relative privacy, but I didn’t think anyone outside was planning on waiting. I stripped out of the prison uniform, a lightweight, gray one-size-fits-all cotton tunic and pants that felt more like pyjamas than real clothes. Mine weren’t as threadbare as the clothes the other prisoners wore. For one thing, I was a ‘small’. Sort of. It was a choice between either wearing a medium-sized tunic and have it hang around me like a tent, or wear a small and have it barely reach my beltline. I’d chosen the latter.

  The other reason I got a uniform that hadn’t been worn a hundred times by a hundred other prisoners, was that I wore a special prison uniform with ‘Sp. Inmate’ printed across the shoulders and sleeve, informing everyone who saw me that I had powers.

  After folding the garments, I donned my ‘Weaver’ costume. I’d have to update it. It wasn’t real, wasn’t fit for fighting. The underlying bodysuit was something generic they kept on hand, no doubt similar to what made up Clockblocker’s costume. Much in the same way his costume had been elaborated on with armor panels, mine had armor that Dragon had 3D-printed prior to arriving at the PRT headquarters.

  It felt wrong, especially the way the straps fit into it, and I didn’t like knowing how flimsy it was.

  I didn’t wear the mask or the armor panels, merely holding the bundle that contained them. Instead, I pulled on clothes over the bodysuit, rolling up the sleeves until they were midway up my biceps. The same short-sleeved, button-up shirt I’d changed into after we’d met with the judge, and jeans.

  When I emerged, Defiant and the warden were talking. She had enough presence that even Defiant, six feet tall and clad in armor, looked like he wanted to back down.

  She tapped him in the center of his chest to punctuate her words, “…before lockdown. And I want all paperwork, as soon as you get it.”

  “You’ll have it,” he responded.

  “Hand out,” the warden said, turning to me.

  I extended a hand.

  She strapped a device to my wrist, like a pager, but with a coarse black strap attached. “So we know where you are.”

  “Okay.”

  The warden looked to the guard in the bulletproof glass enclosure. She gave him a hand signal, and he opened the front door to the prison.

  We made our exit down a corridor of double-layered fences topped with barbed wire. We entered the parking lot, where a small crowd had gathered around Defiant’s ship, staring.

  They parted to let us board, and then backed away as the jets started to thrum with life.

  “We’re alike in some ways,” Defiant said, from his seat at the controls. I sat behind him, having belted myself in.

  My response was cut short as we started moving, and inertia hit me like a pressure wave against the front of my entire body. I managed only a “Hm?”

  “We’ve both been leaders. We’ve both made our mistakes, and we’ve faced a form of detention for it. You with your prison, me with my retirement.”

  Oh, he was back to that? We’d been interrupted.

  “Guess so,” I managed. “And Dragon?”

  “Not a leader,” Defiant answered me. “Not unless you count the artificial intelligences that operate the other suits. But her prison? It remains worse than any you or I have faced.”

  “Remains?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said, but he didn’t elaborate.

  How could her prison be worse than jail? And how could she still be in it, unless… was she disabled? Cerebral palsy, partial or total paralysis, somethin
g else?

  I wasn’t sure how that factored in with her current inability to communicate. If she relied on a computer to speak for her, maybe something in the program had broken?

  The craft changed direction. Defiant tapped a button, then let go of the controls. Autopilot?

  “Whatever happens,” he said, “You’re a member of the Wards. That’s done, but the nature of your membership is still very much in question, understand?”

  “I’m not sure I do.”

  “Before, I mentioned the tasks of being in charge of a Protectorate team.”

  “Allocating people.”

  “Yes. Today you’re going to meet some people who are going to play a very crucial role in deciding how you are allocated. Best case scenario, we put you on a team in the thick of something. Not the quiet you’ve been enjoying in your cell, but you’d be helping. Everyone benefits.”

  “And the worst case?”

  “The worst case is they say it’s a mistake, and you go to jail for the foreseeable future. I don’t see that happening. The second-to-worst case is more likely, where there are no team leaders willing to take you on board with all of the inherent risks.”

  “You just said I was a member of the Wards.”

  “I did. Miss Militia has your back, but there’s no way you could join the Brockton Bay Wards, under her. Conflict of interests, animosity…”

  “I figured.”

  “Chevalier’s interests are in restoring the PRT and Protectorate programs. We’ve committed to helping in any world-scale crisis events, which means participating in the next Endbringer program. He respects Miss Militia’s opinion, and your appearance before the media means we’ve committed to keeping you. That was partially intentional.”

  “Intentional?”

  “Because it throws a wrench in the plans of anyone who might want to maintain the status quo. But as much as Chevalier is on your side, if the capes directly under him in the command structure deem it necessary, he could easily send you to a place where you couldn’t do any damage and bring you out of hiding for media appearances and Class-S threats.”

  “A place where I couldn’t do any harm? Like?”