Worm

by John Mccrae Wildbow

  “We can focus on both,” Tecton said.

  “That’s how you get blindsided,” I told him. I hauled on the chain, and the sled moved. Cuff seemed to be doing the lion’s share of the work, standing between the sleds and ushering them forward. Though it screwed up the direction the sleds were facing, making them veer left or right, it gave us enough momentum that we only needed to work on keeping it going.

  We reached a squat building with signs featuring unintelligible writing and cars. Some hurried forward and opened a garage door, and we kept the sleds on course to lead them inside.

  Their ‘hiding place’ was an underground corridor, leading beneath and between two hoists for the cars. Annex had to reshape the sled to fit, and we found ourselves on a general downward incline. People shifted position to the sides of the sled to keep it from getting away from us and running over the people in front.

  I saw the man who’d done the talking glance down at the wounded. His eyes caught the light in a way that reminded me of a dog, or a cat.

  Capes. At least some of these guys are capes, I thought. The ‘cold’ capes, the underworld’s locals.

  It was an ominous realization, as we descended, to know that we were outnumbered by parahumans I knew nothing about, with unknown motives.

  The armband’s crackling was getting steadily worse. “Message from Grue. Rendezvous is fine. On way to your location.“

  “Message received,” I replied.

  “Message from Grue…“

  The voice devolved into crackling.

  Too much ambient electromagnetic radiation, and the amount of ground that was between us and Grue probably didn’t help.

  It was hard to gauge how deep we were getting. We reached a point where a fissure made moving the sleds more difficult, but Annex, Tecton and Golem shored it up in moments.

  We descended deep enough that I wasn’t able to access the surface with my bugs, then deeper still.

  The more isolated we were, the more ominous the uncostumed capes around us seemed to become. My bugs followed us down the corridor, just far enough back that the ‘cold’ parahumans couldn’t see them, close enough to help.

  “This tunnel was made by a cape,” Tecton said.

  Don’t bring it up, I thought, suppressing the urge to react.

  “No,” the man with the eyes said. He didn’t turn our way.

  I reached out and touched Tecton’s arm. He, naturally, didn’t feel the contact through his heavy armor. Tecton continued, “I’m pretty s-”

  My nudge became a shove as I moved his arm enough to get his attention. He looked at me, and I shook my head. Tecton didn’t finish the sentence.

  “Oh so pretty,” Wanton offered.

  “Don’t you start,” Tecton said. “The Undersiders are bad enough.”

  I could see the Wards change in demeanor as we descended well beneath the city. Tecton’s head was turning now, scanning the people around us. Wanton hunched over, as if the surroundings were weighing on him, a pressure from above. Cuff had her arms folded, hugging her body, a defensive wall, however meager, against an attacker from above, and both Annex and Grace had gravitated closer to other team members, as if unconsciously adopting a loose formation.

  Golem, odd as it was, seemed to fall more in line with Tecton and I, watching the surroundings, eyeing the strangers who accompanied us. It wasn’t that he wasn’t afraid; everything else about him suggested he was. It was more that he was wary in a natural, practiced way.

  How had he picked that up? He was supposed to be a rookie.

  I held my tongue and used my bugs to scan the surroundings.

  The area opened up into an underground living space, crowded with weary and scared people. It was dim, with lights alternating between floor and ceiling positions, tight corridors with what seemed to be tiny apartments carved out of the rock. My prison cell had more space than these quarters. At least there was room to stand straight up in the jail. These rooms were stacked on top of one another, two high.

  But it was space nonetheless.

  “Is it stable?” I asked Tecton.

  “I can’t see enough to tell,” he said. “Maybe? Probably?”

  “I don’t know if I can leave people here if it’s a deathtrap,” I said, as I eyed the people emerging from the rooms.

  “Pretty risky up there,” Wanton said.

  Up there there’s a chance. I was counting hundreds or thousands down here. My bugs could sense corridors, and I was left wondering if this was only one area of many.

  Some of the residents stepped forward to help, hands on weapons or simply watching us, undecided on whether we were threats or not.

  The leader, who I was mentally labeling ‘Cat’s Eyes’, said something, and they relaxed a fraction. He said something else, and they started helping the wounded. None used or displayed any overt powers.

  “Done,” Cat’s Eyes said. “You go. Fight.”

  Defiant had said we needed their assistance. “We need your help. You and any of the others with powers.”

  He narrowed his eyes. Except that wasn’t the sum total of the change in his expression. His face hardened, drew tighter, high cheekbones somehow more prominent in the dim, lips pressed together. “No.”

  “No?”

  “Not our duty. Yours.”

  “It’s everyone’s duty.”

  “We handle enemy you don’t see, you costumes help enemies above ground. Scare Prathama away.”

  Like it’s that easy. “We need your help. Everyone’s help.”

  “No. We show ourselves, and all ends badly. We fight subtle war. Better to lose today and fight subtle war tomorrow.”

  Better to let Behemoth win than to show themselves and lose whatever edge they hold against their current enemies?

  “You see me, I am done. Finished. You see all of us, they are done. No.”

  Maybe India had its own share of capes, on the same scale as the Slaughterhouse Nine. Cleverer capes who worked in the background.

  Or maybe they were just deluded, too set in their ways, afraid to fight and searching for excuses.

  “Go. Defeat him,” he told me.

  Grue was waiting. Or Grue was coming down here, maybe, with Rachel and the others. If they saw him, an intruder without invitation, would they act?

  “Okay,” I said. “We need a vehicle if, um…”

  I trailed off as I mentally registered what my bugs were sensing.

  A rush of cool, air-conditioned air in a space that had no right to have any, off to one side, the appearance of a person where there shouldn’t be any.

  “Weaver?”

  I’d stopped talking, my attention caught by this visitor. She was close. All of the details matched the person I’d sensed inside the Kulshedra. The clothes, the hair, the dimensions, even the way she moved.

  Purposeful, unhurried.

  “It’s her. The one who took Pretender.”

  Everyone, myself included, tensed as she approached. The foreign capes did it because she was an unknown variable. The Wards and I did it because she was a known threat.

  She was older, but not old. Maybe my dad’s age, maybe a little younger. Pretty, in a very natural way. She didn’t wear any obvious makeup, and her black hair was somewhere between wavy and curly, a little longer than shoulder length. Her features French or Italian, if I had to guess. She wore only a simple black suit that had been tailored to fit her body, with a narrow black tie and a white dress shirt. What got me were the eyes. There was no kindness in them.

  She spoke, but she spoke in a foreign language, and it wasn’t to me.

  Cat’s Eyes hesitated, then gave her a reply.

  “Who the hell are you?” I asked the woman.

  She glanced at me, and her gaze went right through me, as if I were barely there. She turned her attention back to Cat’s Eyes, said something else.

  His eyes widened.

  “You work for Cauldron,” I said.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t taunt the
bogeyman,” Wanton chimed in.

  “Bogeyman?” Cuff asked.

  “She’s a hitman,” I said. “Takes out anyone asking too many questions about Cauldron. Or she was. Apparently she’s gone after a lot of powerful capes, walked away without a hitch.”

  My bugs gathered. I could see the underground capes reacting, preparing for a fight.

  “No,” Tecton said, “The truce.”

  “I don’t think she gives a damn about the truce,” I answered.

  “Until she breaks it, we don’t break it.”

  I didn’t take my eyes off her as I murmured, “Fun fact about life or death fights between capes. You start letting your enemies make the first move, your mortality rate triples.”

  “I gave the go-ahead for you to be acting leader,” Tecton said. “Cool. Lightning rod was fantastic. But if we start a fight here and shit goes down, my ass is on the line too.”

  “You’re vetoing my order?”

  “You haven’t given an order yet, and no. You’ve fought her, I haven’t. But I’m advising you here. Back off. She hasn’t done anything aggressive.”

  “She will,” I said.

  “Maybe,” he said. “It’s your call.”

  I didn’t give an order. I watched instead.

  She was speaking to Cat’s Eyes in a low voice. He was nodding unconsciously as she spoke.

  Then she met my eyes.

  “Who the hell are you?” I asked.

  “Doesn’t matter,” she said. “Go, Weaver. Take your team. We have no business with you anymore.”

  “Anymore?”

  She only stared at me in response.

  Damn, being on the receiving end of that stare was like being opposite Alexandria or Faultline in a bad mood. I was starting to settle on the idea of her being a thinker.

  She looked at Cat’s Eye, “It’s time. Tell them not to be afraid, and this will go smoothly. Tell them to pass on the message so everyone hears.”

  He nodded, then called something out in another language. Others took up the call.

  “Hold on,” I said, raising my voice.

  They didn’t listen. Why would they? I barely had any clout. The bugs around me were minor, all things considered.

  I brought them closer, so they gathered at my feet. She didn’t even flinch.

  One by one, portals appeared, rectangular doorways that were so bright they were painful to look at. The smell of flowers, fresh air and nature flooded into the underground. Every pathway and every available surface soon had one. Nearly a dozen in my field of view alone. My bugs could sense two dozen more in my range.

  “No!” I called out, once I realized what was happening. I thought of what the Eidolon clone had said, about them experimenting on people, kidnapping people from alternate worlds. “You can’t trust her!”

  But the people here were scared. Once the first few people tentatively made their way through, they ran for safety, running out into the open field, disappearing behind tall wild grass.

  Cat’s Eye turned to leave.

  I reached for him, to grab his wrist before he could disappear.

  The woman in the suit deftly deflected my hand, batting it aside.

  “What the hell is Cauldron doing? Do you want to start a war?”

  She shook her head. “No war. But we need soldiers.”

  That was all the confirmation I needed.

  “Wards!” I called out. My bugs and my Wards converged on her.

  It mattered surprisingly little. She stepped away from me, which I took as an excuse to close the distance. If she wanted to get away, I’d get closer. I worked to close the distance, using both the flight pack and my own two feet to draw in. She stepped back out of the way, just out of reach of my strikes.

  She swept her hands by the sides of her belt, and she was suddenly armed, if I counted a stiletto knife no longer than my finger and a handkerchief as weapons.

  In the moment my swarm drew close, she stabbed the knife into a wall-mounted fire extinguisher. The pressurized contents spewed out in a plume, collecting on my bugs and blocking their path. It disabled the largest ones and killed the smallest, eliminating a good ninety percent of the bugs I had in reach in an instant. I was forced to back off, so I didn’t get the spray across my lenses or the fabric at my mouth.

  She’d managed to avoid getting dirty, even. I watched her from the other side of the spraying canister. The direction of the plume and the hand with the handkerchief left her virtually untouched as Tecton drew close. She danced back out of reach of his attack as he plowed past the spray. Wanton had transitioned to the form of a localized telekinetic storm, and Annex had slipped into the ground, closing the distance to her.

  If she was a thinker, someone relying on craftiness to win a fight, then I’d turn it into the kind of fight she didn’t want to participate in. Tecton had power armor, Grace had super strength and Cuff had her metallokinesis.

  I cranked up the flight suit and charged. It was reckless, and it was hopefully the last thing she’d expect. The goal was simple. Close to melee, keep her occupied long enough for someone to trap her. With that done, we’d call each of the people she’d just contacted and bring them back to safety.

  Assuming she was someone along the lines of Victor or Über, a combat-oriented thinker, she’d try to do something like a Judo throw, redirecting my forward momentum to toss me to the ground. I countered that particular maneuver by bringing myself to an almost complete stop before she could grab me, slipping to one side as Tecton closed the distance.

  He punched, and she stepped back. He extended the piledriver, a second punch without an instant of warning, and she evaded to one side.

  A precog?

  I wasn’t even finished the thought when she stepped around to Tecton’s side. He tried to body-check her, but she had a hand up to rest on his side, using the contact to brace herself, to push against him and leverage herself away. She crossed one leg over the other to maintain an upright position, then brought herself into arm’s reach of me.

  Bugs exploded from the interior of my costume. Spiders, hornets, wasps and beetles. The only parts of her that weren’t covered by the suit were her head and hands. The hands were clasped behind her back before the swarm reached her. A sharp toss of her hair swept them out of her way as she invaded my personal space.

  Her hands, protected from my bugs by the simple obstacle of her torso, reached out, avoiding the worst of my swarm. One caught the concealed flap of my mask, where it overlapped the neck of my costume, and pulled it down. The other pressed the tip of the stiletto knife to my jugular.

  My team, just a moment behind me and Tecton in their intent to engage her, froze.

  Fuck me, I had ten thousand bugs here, easy. How had I not found an opportunity to even bite or sting her?

  “Wards, back off,” she said. “Grace, Cuff, I want you out of sight, or Weaver bleeds.”

  The two girls looked at me, and I nodded. They backed away and stepped around the corners.

  “Send your bugs away,” she ordered me.

  I started to open my mouth to protest, but she cut me off. “No tricks. You have two seconds.”

  Something about the fact that she was a known killer and her no-nonsense tone suggested she really was going to follow through. I banished the bugs.

  “The hell is she?” Wanton muttered.

  “She’s a precog,” I said, “Something in that vein.”

  The woman didn’t respond. The knife shifted locations, no longer touching my bare throat.

  Was she distracted? I controlled the insect-like limbs on my flight pack. They were simple, weak, but they were also weapons. The end of the claw stabbed for her face, for the general region of her right eye.

  She turned her head, and it grazed harmlessly against her temple. The blade of her knife turned around, and she caught it in the hinge of one mechanical arm.

  I pulled away, but the knife being wedged in the gap of the joint gave her a measure of leverage over
the mechanical arm. She twisted it as though she were wrenching my arm behind my back. The arm didn’t give any, and I was forced to bend over a fraction.

  Golem reached out from one wall, trying to seize her hair or neck, but she used me as a body shield, blocking the reaching hand. Annex struck from below, attempting to ensnare her feet, but she threw me down into the reaching tendrils. In the process, she got ahold of my wrist, twisting it much as she had the mechanical arm.

  “Coordinate!” I said, my voice tight. I activated the thrusters on my flight pack in an attempt to tear way, but she wrenched me to one side, tilting my upper body while using one leg to block my lower body from following suit. The end result was that the thruster only pushed me into the wall. I managed to avoid slamming my head against the surface, but I was now pinned against a solid surface. She still had my wrist behind my back.

  Dodge this, I thought. I commanded my bugs to attack from every direction.

  The Wards were taking my order seriously, attacking simultaneously. Annex was looming, a spectre in the ground, raising up to try to engulf her, Golem was beside a wall, already reaching into it, and Tecton was kneeling, pressing his gauntlets against the ground. Cuff and Grace had heard my order, and were stepping into view, advancing from behind the others.

  The woman laid her free hand over the hand she was twisting behind my back. Then she pressed my own fingers down into my palm, hard.

  The control mechanism, I thought. Too late. My bug was already moving towards the off switch when the thruster kicked in. She swept my feet out from under me, and the thruster drove me into the ground. The bug touched the off switch, but the impact had locked up the controls.

  I hit Annex on my way down, buying the woman time to step back out of his reach. The bug managed to turn off the thruster, but I was already sliding across the floor, right through the lower half of Wanton’s telekinetic storm body and straight into Tecton’s gauntlets.

  The piledrivers fired into the ground a fraction of a second after I bumped into the gloves. He’d likely aimed to place an effect directly beneath her, but my collision with the gloves had knocked his aim off by a fraction. It was directed into a wall, creating a crack ten feet high.