Worm

by John Mccrae Wildbow

  The crack, in turn, summarily severed Golem’s outstretched hand of granite.

  The woman pulled her suit jacket off and held it out, sweeping it through the air to catch the thickest collection of my swarm within. She folded it closed, simultaneously breaking into stride, heading right for Wanton. Grace and Cuff were just behind him, with Tecton directly behind them, and Golem and I off to one side. Annex was still pulling his spacial-distortion body together into something more useful.

  “Stand down, Wards!” I called out, before Wanton could make contact with her. I was still pulling myself up off the ground.

  The woman slowed her pace, coming to a stop. Wanton materialized a few feet in front of her, swiftly backing away. I dismissed the bugs that were closing in to attack.

  “This goes any further, she’s going to stop going easy on us and she’ll murder someone, maybe murder all of us,” I said, not taking my eyes off her. “Because it’s the only way she’d be able to stop the bugs from surrounding her, the only way to really stop Wanton once he closes the distance.”

  She didn’t speak.

  “What the hell are you?” I asked. “What’s your power?”

  She gave me a look, up and down, and then settled her eyes on mine. Throughout the entire fight, she’d looked unconcerned. She wasn’t even breathing hard. Except for a fleck of foam from the extinguisher here and there on the bottom of her pants leg and at the very end of her shirtsleeve, she wasn’t even particularly dirty.

  She spoke, “I win.”

  “I gathered that much,” I said.

  “What I mean is that I can see the paths to victory. I can carry them out without fail.”

  I felt my heart skip a beat at that. She’d volunteered an actual answer?

  “The fuck?” Grace asked.

  “She’s lying,” Wanton said. “That’s ridiculous. It’s not even close to fair.”

  Powers aren’t necessarily fair, I thought.

  “It doesn’t matter,” the woman said. “What matters is that there are other enemies you should be fighting.”

  “Enemies, plural?” I asked.

  “We’re approaching an endgame. The end of the world, the sundering of the Protectorate. Most of the major players know this, and the truce has effectively dissolved in every respect but the official one. Those in positions of power are making plays. Now. Today.”

  “And Alexandria showing up, that’s a part of that?” I asked. “Someone’s ploy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Cauldron’s or someone else’s?”

  “Yes,” she said. A noncommittal answer.

  “And you’re telling us this why?” I asked.

  “That should be obvious.”

  “Okay,” I said. I wasn’t sure it was that obvious. “Just two questions, then. Those people you just took-”

  “Are gone,” she said.

  Gone. And there wasn’t a thing I could do to change that. I was almost certain I couldn’t beat her, and I couldn’t utilize whatever it was that was managing the portals to get access to them. At most, I could survive long enough to report this to someone who could.

  “Gone temporarily or gone permanently?” Tecton asked.

  “I don’t expect anyone on this Earth will see them again, barring an exceptional success on our end.”

  “You can’t use your power to get those successes automatically, huh?” I asked.

  She didn’t venture an answer.

  “Right, that wasn’t my second question. What I want to know is why the hell you haven’t used a power like yours to figure out how to beat the Endbringers.”

  “My power is a form of precognition,” she said. “Unlike most such powers, other precognitive abilities do not confuse it. That said, there are certain individuals it does not work against, the Endbringers included.”

  “Why?” Tecton asked.

  “No way to know for sure,” she said, “But we have theories. The first is that they have a built-in immunity, something their origins granted them.”

  “And the other theories?” Golem ventured. “What’s the next one?”

  The woman didn’t respond.

  I suspected I knew what the answer was, but declined to speak of it. It would do more harm than good.

  “So you’re blind here, useless,” Grace said, a touch bitter.

  The woman shook her head. “No. I can consider a hypothetical scenario, and my power will provide the actions needed to resolve it.”

  “And?”

  “And we are doing just that,” she said. “Doorway, please.”

  She wasn’t speaking to us. Another gate opened behind her, and it wasn’t to that sunny field with the tall grass. There was only a hallway with white walls and white floors, a cool rush of air-conditioned air touching our faces.

  “Doing just what, exactly?” Tecton called out after her.

  She turned back to us, but she didn’t respond. The portal closed, top to bottom.

  “Vehicles,” I said, the instant she was gone. “I can sense some at the end of that path. It’s the fastest way back up that ramp. Go, go!”

  ■

  Things had gotten worse in the thirty minutes we’d been gone. Whole tracts of New Delhi had been leveled, and where the buildings had been tall and mostly intact while we collected the injured and met the ‘cold’ India capes, only half of them stood even a story tall now. The other half? Utterly leveled.

  It was a small grace that the fires had burned intensely enough that they’d exhausted the possible fuel, and the smoke was mostly gone, but that wasn’t saying much. I couldn’t take a deep breath without feeling like I needed to cough. Ozone and smoke were thick in the air, and the residual charge in the air was making my hair stand on end.

  The Endbringer’s path of destruction had continued more or less in one general direction, but beyond that, the damage was indiscriminate, indeterminate. Behemoth’s location, in contrast, was very clear. A pillar of darkness extended from the ground to the sky. Plumes of smoke and streaks of lightning slipped through the darkness on occasion.

  The Chicago Wards rode bikes that were somewhere between a scooter and a motorcycle in design. The vehicles might have been indistinguishable from normal road vehicles, but Tecton had quickly discovered that they had some other features. There were gyros that allowed them to tilt without allowing them to fall, and the engines were electric, with only the option of a generated sound, to appear normal.

  Near-silent, the Wards zipped down the streets, zig-zagging past piles of rubble and fissures. I flew above the group.

  “Armband,” I said, touching the button. “Status update.”

  The ensuing reply was too distorted to make out.

  Grue had gone ahead, though he’d no doubt had information on our whereabouts. Bitch’s dogs probably could have sniffed us out. He’d gone ahead. Why?

  “Armband,” I said, still holding the button, “Repeat.”

  I thought there might have been an improvement, as we got closer, but it was miniscule enough that I might have been imagining it.

  I dropped down, settling on the back of Wanton’s bike. The wings were already tucked away, to minimize damage from the electromagnetic radiation, but I didn’t want to push my luck further.

  We passed a cluster of dead capes, alongside a series of massive gun turrets that had been mounted on hills and rooftops. The heroes had made a stand here, or it had been one defensive line of many. A number had died.

  Had it been foolish to descend to the cold cape’s undercity? Should I have told them to take the wounded beneath, damn the consequences, so we could have helped more?

  I hadn’t thought it would take as long as it had, hadn’t anticipated a fight with the woman in the suit.

  I hoped I wouldn’t regret this, that the absence hadn’t cost our side something. We weren’t the most powerful capes in the world, but maybe we could have made a small difference here or there.

  I’d learned things, but did that count for an
ything in the now, with tens, hundreds or thousands of individuals dying where they might have lived if we’d stayed? Another lightning rod? Something to slow him down and give them a precious extra second to form a defensive line?

  The second defensive line, another collection of the dead. Whatever method they’d tried here, there was no trace left now.

  We were getting closer.

  The third perimeter. A giant robot, in ruins. As many dead here as there had been at the last two points, all put together.

  And just beyond this point, Behemoth, in the flesh. He glowed white, marking the radioactive glow, and Grue’s darkness wreathed him, containing it. The ground beneath Behemoth was tinted gold, vaguely reflective, and geometric shapes were floating in the air, exploding violently when he came in contact with them.

  With all of the obstacles he’d faced to this point, he looked less hurt than his younger brother had for his one-on-one fight with Armsmaster. He didn’t limp, or slouch, his limbs were intact, his capabilities undiminished. The tears and rents in his flesh and the gaping wounds here and there didn’t seem to have slowed him down in the slightest.

  And with that, he managed to fight his way forward, out of Grue’s darkness, striking out with bolts of lightning. Forcefields went up to protect the defensive line, but only half of them withstood the intensity of the strikes.

  “Armband,” I said, and there was a note of horrified awe to my voice, “Status update.”

  The A.I.’s voice crackled, but Grue’s darkness might have been suppressing the electrical charge, because it was intelligible. “Chevalier is out of action, Rime is present commanding cape for field duty. Legend is out of commission. Capes are to assist defensive lines and fall back when call is given. Earliest possible Scion intervention is twenty-two point eight minutes from the present time, estimated Scion intervention is sixty-five minutes from present time, plus or minus eighteen minutes.“

  I clenched my jaw. I’d committed to doing something, but I had no idea what that could be.

  I felt a sick feeling in my gut.

  “Armband, status of Tattletale?”

  “Out of commission.“

  By all rights, I should have reacted, cried out, declared something. I only felt numb. This was falling apart too quickly.

  “Status of the other Undersiders?”

  “Two injured. Parian and Grue.”

  Which would be why Grue wasn’t replenishing his darkness. I closed my eyes for a second, trying to find my center, feeling so numb I wasn’t sure it was possible.

  Citrine’s effect seemed to be maximizing the effects of Alexandria’s attacks, because Behemoth wasn’t able to channel them into the ground.

  He swung his head in my general direction, and I could see the steel of Flechette’s arrows in the ball of his eye, clustered. Holes marked the point where the bolts had simply penetrated.

  Other capes had managed varying degrees of damage. The Yàngbǎn had formed a defensive squadron, using lasers to cut deep into Behemoth’s wounds, and other capes clustered close to them, adding to the focused assault.

  And yet he advanced. Inevitable.

  A blast of flame caught the defending capes off guard. Their forcefields and walls of stone blocked the flame from reaching the capes, but did nothing to stop it from spreading as it set fire to nearby buildings, grass and the stumps of trees that had been freshly cut, if the sawdust was any indication.

  As if alive, the fires reached forward, extended to nearby flammable surfaces, and cut off a formation. They started to clear the way for retreat, and Behemoth punished them with a series of lightning strikes.

  Golem was already acting, bringing stone hands up to block Behemoth’s legs, two hands at a time. Tecton moved forward, striking the earth with his piledrivers. Fissures raced across the road, breaks to keep any impacts from reaching too far.

  “Antlion pit!” I shouted.

  “Right!” Tecton reported.

  And my team was engaging, finding the roles they needed to play. Grace, Cuff and I couldn’t do much, but there were more wounded needing help getting out of the area. Annex began reshaping the ground and walls to provide better cover. Wanton cleared away debris from footpaths.

  This particular front hinged on one cape, a foreign cape who was creating the exploding, airborne polygons. I could see, now, how each explosion was serving to slow time in the area around the blast. Had he actually been the inspiration for that particular bomb Bakuda had made?

  Eidolon had added his own abilities to the fray. He had adopted something similar to Alexandria’s powerset, fighting in melee, ducking in only long enough to deliver a blow, then backing away before Behemoth’s kill aura could roast him from the inside. Eidolon was using another power as well, one I’d seen him deploy against Echidna. A slowing bubble.

  Cumulative effects. Cumulative slowing. Each explosion added to the effect, and Eidolon’s slowing bubble was a general factor to help them along. What did it really do if you tried to walk forward, and the upper half of your leg moved faster in time than the bottom half? How much strain did that create? Was there a point where the leg would simply sever?

  If there was, Behemoth hadn’t quite reached that point. Either way, it seemed to be a factor in how slow Behemoth was moving. He was getting bogged down. Bogged down further as one foot dipped into Tecton’s antlion pit.

  Until the Endbringer struck out, targeting one group of capes with a series of lightning strikes so intense that I was momentarily left breathless.

  And the explosive polygons disappeared.

  He lurched forward, and even a direct hit from Alexandria wasn’t quite enough to stop him. The shockwave dissipated into the air, rather than the ground, and flying capes throughout the skies were driven back.

  The Endbringer broke into a run, insofar as he could run, and nobody was quite in position to bar his way. He ignored capes and struck out across the area behind them, hitting a building with two massive guns on it, a clearing, a rooftop with what looked like a tesla coil. Fire, lightning, and concussive waves tore through the defensive measures before they could be called into effect.

  We don’t have the organization. Our command structure is down. Tattletale is gone, either dead or too hurt to fight.

  He struck one area with lightning, and explosives detonated. A massive forcefield went up a moment after they triggered, and the explosion was contained within, a cumulative effect that soared skyward.

  For a solid twenty, thirty seconds, the sky was on fire, and the Endbringer tore through our defenses, making his way to a building with capes clustered on the roofs. They weren’t, at a glance, our offensive capes. They were our thinkers, our tinkers, the ones our front line was supposed to be covering.

  The woman in the suit had declined to share the other reason her power wouldn’t let her simply solve the Endbringer crisis.

  The answer I’d declined to share with the other Wards was a simple one. She had the ability to see the road to victory. Maybe, when it came to the Endbringers, there was nothing for her to see.

  24.03

  Eidolon and Alexandria had settled into something of a rhythm. Though his powerset was similar to Alexandria’s on the surface, the eerie noises and the dimming of the light around the areas his punches landed suggested he was transmuting the kinetic energy of his punches into something else altogether. Between Eidolon’s strikes and Alexandria’s, Behemoth couldn’t quite adapt to the point where he was redirecting every strike, let alone the barrage of ranged attacks that the other capes in the area were directing his way.

  The Endbringer staggered under the onslaught, but he was slowly adapting. They’d managed to pin him for a minute, even costing him some ground by driving him back once or twice, but each successive minute saw him rolling with the punches more, advancing further when he found a second or two of mild reprieve.

  His target: the command center. Our flying capes weren’t working fast enough to clear the entire rooftop, and every sh
aker we had -every cape capable of putting up a forcefield or creating a portal, raising a barrier- was busy trying to slow down the brute. The Chicago Wards, or most of the Chicago Wards were among them.

  I tensed, but I couldn’t move without exposing myself to one of the lances of electricity that were crashing down around us. The capes on the rooftop were protected by an arrangement of tinker-made forcefields, it seemed, but those wouldn’t hold. Fuck, hanging around on rooftops was dumb. I’d learned my lesson on my first night out on costume, had avoided being put in that position since, excepting the fundraiser, where we’d been on the attack, and the time Defiant and Dragon had dragged me up to one, just a bit ago.

  The guys up there were tinkers and thinkers. They were our communications, supporting roles, strategists and healers. A few of them were long-ranged capes. Not really people who could hop or fly down five stories to the ground and walk away unscathed. Not without help.

  I waited and watched as Behemoth engaged the other capes, tracking what powers he was using and when. He was presently staggering forward when he could, otherwise holding his ground, deflecting and redirecting attacks. When he was free to do so, he reached out with his claws, and lightning lanced out to tear through the assembled capes.

  Golem, to his credit, was going all out. Hands of stone and metal rose from the ground to shield defending capes and balk Behemoth’s progress. I could make out Hoyden, leader or second in command of the Austin Wards. She wasn’t on the front lines, but was defending the mid-line capes. It made sense with how her power worked, as her defensive powers provided more cover from attacks at greater ranges. She threw herself in the way of lightning bolts and stood between Behemoth and the wounded. When lightning struck her, detonations ripped out from the point of impact, seeming almost to short out the currents.

  “Come on, come on,” I muttered.

  I could see Tecton creating fissures in the ground, no doubt intended to reduce the reach and effects of Behemoth’s stomps. Annex was creating bridges so heroes wouldn’t fall into the gaps.