Worm

by John Mccrae Wildbow

  He nodded. “I already checked most. But I can use a power from the back of the sled without blinding anyone. It works.”

  “There’s a joke there,” Regent said, “But-”

  “Don’t,” Imp said.

  “I wasn’t going to. It’s crass, totally inappropriate, and I’m better than that.”

  “You’re going to,” Imp said, stabbing a finger at Regent’s chest. “You were going to say something about Grue going to the back of the bus, and you can’t let it go. It’d be lame and really tasteless and too far, and it’ll start the sort of fight that isn’t fun or funny. I’m calling it: you’ll hold it in until you can’t help but say it.”

  “Well I’m definitely not going to say it now that you’ve spoiled it,” Regent said. “No shock value, no people feeling bad because they inadvertently laughed at something fucked up.”

  “You two go squabble somewhere else,” Grue said. He glanced at me. “There’s more bodies to collect?”

  “Too many bodies,” I said, my voice sober, “Not many injured left who haven’t already been carried away by friends, family and neighbors, or who aren’t in such bad shape that they can’t move. Maybe six more we could load up, if we’re going to get out of here in time.”

  “Go,” Grue said. “She’ll show you the way.”

  “Run,” I said. They didn’t have to run, but it got rid of them sooner.

  “Children,” Grue muttered under his breath.

  “Wards,” I said. “If you aren’t making the sled, go get the rest. I’ll help.”

  My team left Annex and Cuff behind while we collected the wounded.

  The one I was helping was a child, burned. She wasn’t any older than ten.

  She said something incomprehensible. Another language.

  “English?” I asked.

  She only stared at me, unable to understand me any more than I understood her. Her eyes were a little glazed over, but the pain in her expression and the fear suggested that the benefits of being in shock were receding.

  A part of me felt like I should have helped her sooner, but it wasn’t a logical part of me. There was so little I could do, and it didn’t matter if I did it before or now. And maybe a small part of me was putting it off because it wasn’t going to be pretty.

  “I’m not that scary,” I said, “Okay?”

  I pulled off my mask. “See? Ordinary person.”

  Her expression didn’t change.

  “I’m going to have to move you,” I said, and the words were for me as much as they were for her. I kept my voice gentle, “It’s going to hurt, but it’ll mean we can get you help.”

  She didn’t react. I studied her. Blisters stood out on her arms and neck, and on the upper part of her chest.

  I could maybe understand a little of Rachel’s anger at the loss of her dogs, seeing this. Behemoth probably hadn’t even given a coherent thought to the pain he’d inflicted on this girl, on countless others, just like Leviathan had mindlessly torn through Rachel’s dogs.

  Why?

  Why did the Endbringers do this? Were they part of the passenger’s grand plan? Cauldron’s monsters, taken to an extreme? Tattletale had said they were never human, but she’d been wrong before.

  Or maybe I hoped they had been human because it was an answer, because the alternative meant I didn’t have enough data points to explain it.

  With as much gentleness as I could manage, I moved bugs over the girl’s body. She reacted with alarm rather than pain, and I shushed her. The bugs were spreading possible infection, no doubt, but I suspected infection was inevitable, given circumstance. Using the bugs let me know where the blisters were, where the skin was mottled with burns.

  I took off my flight pack and flipped it over.

  Like ripping off a bandaid, I thought, only it’s at someone else’s expense.

  I lifted her, and she shrieked at the physical contact, at the movement of burned flesh against clothing and the ground. I set her down on the flight pack, placing a hand on her unburned stomach to stabilize her. I activated the left and right panels, gently, so it had a general lift without any particular direction, and I led her to the sled in progress.

  Golem had already returned, and the three of them were combining powers to make the sled. Cuff was feeding the chain Rachel had provided into loops at the front.

  With Grue’s help, I eased the girl down from the flight pack, setting her with the other wounded.

  “We’re going to hurt him,” I said, retrieving the flight pack.

  “Behemoth?” Cuff asked me.

  “We’re going to find a way,” I said, and that was all. I met the little girl’s eyes.

  Cuff followed my gaze. “I guess I”m on board with that.”

  “Why did you come?” I asked. “I mean, I get why we all came, on a level, but… no offense, you’re in a totally different headspace.”

  “For my mom and dad,” she said.

  I glanced at her, but she didn’t elaborate.

  It took another minute to get the sled prepped and people mounted. Rachel enhanced the size of her dogs so they’d have the strength to pull not only the wounded, but the two teams as well. It meant they were slower, but it also meant moving nearly forty people with four dogs. I took off, flying, leading the way and giving directions with bugs as they followed.

  A crash heavier than any we’d had yet made the dogs stumble, falling. It very nearly overturned the sleds. Bitch had fallen from where she sat on Bentley’s back. I stopped at her side to make sure she was alright, gave her a hand in getting back to her feet. She accepted it without complaint or incident, but when she met my eyes, her glower cut right through me.

  Was that her resentment at work or my guilt, that made me feel that way under her gaze?

  Once I’d verified that no damage had been done, I rose just high enough to peer over the top of a building.

  The lightning rod had tilted, leaning against an adjacent building, the supports Golem had raised had crumbled. Behemoth, too, had fallen.

  Eidolon and Legend hovered in the sky, flanked by four dragon-craft.

  Another figure was there as well, hovering where Behemoth had been standing an instant ago. The Endbringer had been toppled with one massive blow.

  I touched the button on my armband, lowering my head beneath cover.

  “Send this message to Defiant,” I said. “You said she was dead. You said you verified.”

  The reply crackled so badly it was almost inaudible. “Reply from Defiant. I saw the body myself, we checked her DNA, her … readings, we matched against the mountings for her prosthetic eye … carbon dated it to verify.“

  He didn’t even need to ask who I meant.

  I pressed the button, “Ask Defiant who the hell that’s supposed to be, if it’s not Alexandria.”

  24.02

  If I’d had any doubt it was Alexandria, it was banished when she followed up the attack. Behemoth started to rise to his feet, and Alexandria struck. It wasn’t a punch with a great deal of wind-up, and she only crossed fifty or sixty feet before driving it home, but the impact was undeniable.

  Behemoth absorbed the blow, and redirected it into the ground. He didn’t move, as though the blow had never struck home, but the ground around him shattered like the surface of a mirror. Fragments of rock and clouds of dust flew up around him, and a three-story building on its last legs tumbled over. The damage to the ground made him sink a fraction.

  I could see the change in the Endbringer’s demeanor. Before, he’d been wading forward, as if Legend, Eidolon and the metal suits were little more than a strong headwind. He was moving with purpose now, with an opponent that was veering in and out of easy reach, one he could hit, without Legend’s speed or Eidolon’s personal shield.

  She had told me that they knew how to fight each other, and I could see that at play, here. Part of the change in Behemoth’s approach might have been that interaction at play.

  It was a fight involving four indi
viduals who couldn’t hope to do substantial damage to their opponents. The dragon suits and other capes were a peripheral thing. Alexandria circled, just beyond the perimeter of Behemoth’s kill range, her teammates and their supporting cast bombarding him in the meantime. They destroying the ground beneath his feet, trying to get him when his focus was elsewhere and his ability to redirect the energies of a given attack was reduced.

  He couldn’t keep her in mind at all times. She waited until he focused on a different combatant, heaving out lightning or creating flame to attack the ones in the air, and then she struck. Nine times, he simply deflected the strike into the ground, as a rumble and a series of spiderwebbing cracks in the streets, or into the air as a shockwave. Again and again, he came within a heartbeat of getting his hands on her in retaliation, not even flinching as she struck him, reacting with an unnatural quickness as he reached out, to try to pin her using his claws, to strike her into the ground or to time the collapses of buildings to briefly bury her, so he could close the distance.

  The times her strikes did get past his defenses, her tiny form in the distance with the black cape trailing behind her lunging into his kill range to deliver a blow or a series of blows, Behemoth stumbled, caught briefly at the mercy of physics.

  In a fashion, she was doing the same thing the lightning rod had been, buying all of the rest of us a small reprieve. There was no guarantee, and there wouldn’t be any until he was driven off or we moved a hundred miles away, but she was making the rest of this just a little easier, reducing the destruction just a fraction unless he specifically took the time to work around her.

  Was she being more cautious than she needed to be? I saw her pass up on a handful of opportunities I might have taken in her shoes, when his back was turned, his attention sufficiently occupied. Was she aware of something I wasn’t? Was she a convincing fake? Or was she just a little more afraid, after what my bugs had done to her?

  However effective the distractions, he was still Behemoth, still implacable, a living tank that could roll over any obstacle and virtually any individual, unleashing an endless barrage of artillery at range. He reached the lightning rod and shoved it to the ground.

  I was reminded of my teammates, descended to the ground, where they were still getting sorted. The chains that led from the dogs to the harness had tangled.

  “What the hell was that?” Tecton asked.

  “Alexandria,” I said.

  “You murdered Alexandria,” Regent commented. “Remember? You’re a horrible person, doing things like that.”

  “You leave her alone!” Imp said, uncharacteristically. “She feels so bad she’s seeing things.”

  “Can we try to stay serious?”

  “Don’t be too hard on them,” Tecton said. “Some people use humor to deal with bad situations.”

  “It’s true,” Regent said, affecting a knowing tone.

  “No,” Grue responded. “They’re just idiots. You two keep your mouths shut. The adults are talking.”

  Imp raised her middle fingers at him.

  He turned to me, “It’s Alexandria? You’re sure?”

  “Can you ever be sure of anything? Clones, alternate realities, healing abilities… there’s any number of possibilities.”

  In the distance, a glowing orange sphere flew into the sky. It reached a peak, then descended, crashing into the distant skyline.

  I reoriented myself and flew up to the edge of the roof to peek at the battle. Behemoth had melted down part of the metal arm and fashioned the melted metal into a superheated lump. A second lump, cooler and not yet fabricated into an aerodynamic shape, was sitting beside him. Alexandria tried to strike it away, but he caught it with one claw. He superheated it, shielding it from Legend and Eidolon’s fire with his body, then heaved it into the air. The projectile flared intensely as it left his kill range, following nearly the same path as before.

  Lasers from capes in the distance sliced the second sphere into shreds before it could strike its intended target.

  Grue tugged the chain. He looked at Rachel, who only nodded.

  And we were moving again.

  I returned to my recon position, scouting to ensure the way was clear, keeping an eye on the fight and ensuring that there weren’t any attacks coming our way.

  Behemoth was glowing, his gray skin tending more towards white, a stark contrast to his obsidian horns and claws. The heroes were backing off a measure, and Behemoth was taking advantage of the situation to stampede forward, tearing past buildings and barricades.

  “Grue!” I shouted. The noise in the distance was getting worse. If Behemoth was continuing the path I’d seen him traveling, he was wading through a series of buildings. Grue didn’t hear me. I raised my voice, waited until the noise died down, “Radiation! Use darkness!”

  He did, and we were cloaked in it. I continued navigating, using my bugs this time. Only a small handful ventured forward at a time, checking for fires. I was flying blind, scouting without the ability to see.

  It delayed me when a fire did present itself, and I was delayed even further when I faced the issue of trying to communicate it to the team.

  “Fire!” I shouted. I knew he could hear me through the darkness, but he couldn’t hear me over the sounds of toppled buildings. I was no doubt drowned out by the sound of the sled scraping against the road, the crashes in the background and the rushing of the wind.

  I changed direction, aiming for the sleds, and flew forward. A little off target. Didn’t want to knock someone off the sled. I made a slight adjustment with the antigrav, and landed on the front edge of the sled, between Grue and Rachel. Grue very nearly let go in his surprise, and I caught the back of his neck to keep him from falling off the sled.

  He left the darkness to either side of us intact and created a corridor.

  “Fire!” I said, the instant I was able. “Just over that hill! Go left!”

  He cleared more darkness, and we turned sharply enough that the sleds swung out wide. I held on to the lip of the sled, but I let myself slide back, using the antigrav pack to keep myself from falling to the road.

  The sudden movement had shifted the occupants. The design of the sled made it difficult for anyone to fall out, but they’d slumped against one side, and one man was hanging halfway out. With only one usable arm, he wasn’t able to maintain a grip.

  The sled went over a series of bumps, and I reached him just in time to give him the support he needed, one hand and both feet on the lip of the sled, the other hand holding him.

  Once they were on course, I helped ease him down to a better position.

  He said something that I couldn’t understand, his words breathless.

  I took off.

  A shockwave ripped past us, harsher, briefer and more intense than a strong wind, not quite the organ-pulverizing impact it might be if Behemoth were closer, or if there were less buildings in the way. I ventured up to a rooftop where I might be able to see beyond the darkness.

  The shockwave had parted the clouds of smoke, but they began to close together once again. I could make out a form, maybe one of the Indian capes, swiftly growing. Ethereal, translucent, his features vague, the light he emitted only barely cutting through the smoke cover. He slammed hands into Behemoth’s face and chest.

  Behemoth parted his hands, then swung them together. I didn’t wait for them to make contact. I ducked behind cover before the shockwave could hit me directly. All around me, the smoke was dashed out of the sky by the impact’s reach. With the front of my body hugging the building, I could feel not only the shockwave, but the vibrations that followed it, as buildings fell and debris settled in new locations.

  He delivered shockwave after shockwave, and I was forced to abandon the cover of the building for something a little more distant.

  He wasn’t irradiated any more. Or, at least, the glow wasn’t there. He’d been buying himself a reprieve from the assault of the heroes, a chance to cover more ground. Now they had resumed t
he counter-offensive. The noises of the fight followed me as I got ahead of the Undersiders.

  Another obstacle. A crowd, this time.

  I landed on the sled once more and ordered a stop. It took a second for the dogs to slow down enough.

  Locals stood in our way. Some had guns. They ranged the gamut from people a step above homelessness to businessmen.

  “Leader?” one asked, his voice badly accented. He was younger, very working class, which surprised me. I’d anticipated that someone older and more respectable would be taking charge.

  “Me,” I said, using a small boost from the flight pack to get ahead of the group.

  “Stealing?” he asked me, his voice hard.

  “No. Injured.”

  He gestured towards the sled, taking a half-step forward. I nodded.

  I didn’t like wasting time, but I was hoping he’d give the a-okay and the group would get out of our way. I watched as he studied the people lying in the sled.

  “We take,” he said. “We have doctor, hiding place. You go fight, help. Is your duty.”

  I could sense a group approaching from Behemoth’s general direction. Two women in evening gowns, a girl in a frock, another girl in costume.

  No time to dwell on decisions. I asked the man, “You sure?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Cuff, Annex, kill the chains. Leave sleds behind. Wards, stay with me. Grue, I’ll direct you guys to the Ambassadors. Take the dogs. Leave us some darkness for cover so we’re safe from any more radiation.”

  It took only a few seconds to get organized. By the time the Undersiders had departed, we had a team of people pulling the sleds.

  “Message from Defiant,” my armband declared. “Alexandria confirmed gone from PRT custody.“

  “Fuck,” I muttered.

  “Message from Defiant. Stay out of her way until we know more. Behemoth’s approaching the first perimeter. I will keep you posted.“

  “Tell him thank you.”

  “It’s a good thing,” Grace said. “Maybe not in the long run, but for now-”

  “For now it’s an unknown factor,” I said. “And there’s one really big known factor that’s tearing through this city, and we should be devoting all our attention to it. To Behemoth”