Worm

by John Mccrae Wildbow

  Crucible caught him. A forcefield bubble surrounded the figure, pale blue, then flared a brilliant orange-white.

  Mannequin would be fireproof, though. Even an extreme heat like Crucible could create wouldn’t have an effect. Still, it meant one was contained.

  Yet as soon as we captured one, another slipped the net. The Murder Rat Clockblocker had frozen animated again, slipping through the railing, only to find herself hanging by her throat, a silk cord binding her. My bugs could sense blood trickling, but the movement suggested her neck hadn’t snapped.

  Two ways she’d escape. The first was obvious, cutting the cord.

  The second?

  “Vista, Crucible!” I hollered their names.

  They whipped around to face me, saw me holding my knife, ready to drive it forward.

  The smoke on Vista’s face flared, blossoming like a smoke grenade that had just gone off, and Murder Rat materialized, one claw already poised with the points facing upward, ready to drive upward into Vista’s unprotected jawline.

  I’d seen her gesture as she hung on the rope, in preparation for her materialization. I had to lunge forward, striking the stairs with the boniest parts of my shins to catch the villain’s wrist with my free hand, pulling her off-balance.

  She rolled with it, almost doing a backflip as she threw one leg back to drive a point towards Imp’s scalp. Grue caught Murder Rat’s leg, and between us, we held her. I punched the blade into her throat.

  Grue heaved her over the railing. He covered our retreat with darkness, then lunged ahead of the group. Murder Rat’s powers, it seemed.

  Reckless, not like him, but he joined the front lines, where Bastard was giving two Mannequins a hard time.

  Clockblocker threw out lines of silk, then froze them. The dog lunged, and the Mannequins were sandwiched between the dog and the silk.

  Blood spurted at the dog’s shoulder where the lines had made contact. One Mannequin lost an arm, but they both managed to contort and angle themselves so they could slip over, under or between the threads.

  Of course it wouldn’t be easy. Fuck.

  “Back!” Rachel called out, before the dog decided to charge through the cables Clockblocker had used. The dog retreated a pace. Grue only hopped up, grabbing the railing, managed a grip, and then descended on them. He grabbed one and flung it towards the wires.

  It only contorted, arching its back like a high jumper to slip through a gap. It got halfway before Bastard closed his jaws on his upper body.

  Shit. My bugs were so useless here. I couldn’t go after the Breeds until I knew which of the people in the building were them. The original Breed had died when someone had hit a building with an incendiary missile, and the bugs had stopped appearing. He wasn’t altered in appearance. For all respects, he was just an ordinary man.

  Besides the whole ‘I create horrifying space bugs’ thing.

  The Mannequin that crawled with Breed’s creations leaped down, only to get caught in more strands. He started to cut his way free, but Vista opened fire. Her shots glanced off his outer shell.

  The creatures, though, fell through the gaps. More than a handful landed in our midst.

  “I thought you said they don’t go after people!”

  “They don’t!” I said. “So long as there’s other food sources available.” I kicked at one as it advanced on my right foot.

  “There are dozens of bodies here!”

  Already infected, I realized. These parasites were seeking fresh hosts, ones not already occupied by anything.

  I caught the ones I could with my own bugs, used thread to haul them free, but there were twenty, and their dozens of legs were sharp, capable of punching through flesh and clothing to maintain a grip. Difficult to dislodge.

  One had landed on my shoulder. I tried to pull it free and failed, stabbed at the legs with my knife, only for it to fold them into its carapace. It lashed at the lens of my mask with its spike-tipped tail. It didn’t penetrate, and rolled off my shoulder before I could get a hold on it.

  Its legs extended, and it found a grip on my flight pack. In an instant, it was racing up towards my head again. It stopped twice, pausing for one second as it transitioned from my flight pack to my costume, then stopping again as it reached the area where the mask and body of my costume overlapped at my neck. The needle points of its legs were pricking through the fabric of my costume, no doubt as it tried to find a way under. I got a grip on its tail, but failed to dislodge it. Too slick.

  The others weren’t faring a lot better. Crucible shouted something incoherent as he used both hands to stop a softball sized creature from advancing on his mouth. Its millipede-like limbs left bloody tracks in his skin as it made excruciating progress towards the orifice.

  It was a critical distraction as we were dealing with highly mobile foes. A Murder Rat leaped up to find a grip on the underside of the stairs we were standing on, then vaulted herself to one side and up, slipping between the bars and into our midst.

  Rachel whistled, hard, and the dog from downstairs came barreling through our group. We were knocked aside, pushed to the ground by the dog’s mass as it charged Murder Rat. She leaped up, stepping on the dog’s back, then jumped back down to the lower end of the flight of stairs.

  The dog growled and turned around, preparing to charge through us again.

  “Hold,” Rachel said. She had to pull off her jacket to access the trilobite-parasite bastard thing that was crawling on the small of her back, heading south. Toggle struck it with her baton, and lights flared.

  Imp stepped up just in front of Crucible, impaling the bug on his face with her own knife.

  Progress, but we were still in the midst of a lot of dangerous enemies. Elusive ones. Of the six here, we’d only achieved two kills.

  “Tattletale here.”

  “In an ugly spot,” I said.

  “Help’s on the way.“

  “Help?”

  “Eidolon. We tried to keep things quiet, keep everything off the radar, but he caught on. Legend’s at the other site with Pretender.“

  “Turn them away!” I hissed the words.

  “Um, not about to turn away help,” Imp said. She was benefiting as Crucible created his superheated forcefield dome to burn away the Breed-parasites too dumb to walk around.

  “Turn them away,” I repeated myself. “All three.”

  More of Breed’s bugs were starting to make their way to us, from above and below. One Murder Rat, one Mannequin, and the guy upstairs we still hadn’t even interacted with.

  With his fucked up coffin.

  “I can’t get in touch with them. Not like their number is in the phone book.”

  “Contact Cauldron?” I used my swarm to attack the Breed-bugs, but it was slow going. Twenty bugs with strong mandibles could kill one, but it took a minute, maybe two, before they reached something resembling soft tissue.

  “No go.”

  I could sense him, now, approaching the building cautiously. He used a laser to pierce the roof. Ice blossomed out to fill the gap, a glacier in summer.

  I began drawing from the bugs outside, forming a swarm-clone. Eidolon ignored it, firing again. Multiple blasts, multiple creations of ice. He swore under his breath.

  Rachel’s dog leaped over us to attack the Murder Rat. She slipped to one side, and a wound at Toggle’s shoulder began blossoming with smoke.

  The Murder Rat appeared in our midst. Clockblocker was quick enough to tag her this time.

  It wasn’t the most ideal maneuver. Grue’s stolen power disappeared in that same instant. Bad timing – he was in the midst of fighting the Mannequins. One had been taken out by Bastard, but another had joined the fray as it brought the bugs down.

  Grue reached out for another power. Mannequin’s power wasn’t useful, but the other-.

  I felt my power fading, just as the swarm-decoy was gaining enough bulk.

  I wasn’t the only one. Crucible’s forcefield shorted out. Clockblocker had been
in the midst of reaching for Breed-bugs to lock down, and found himself only giving them easier access in climbing up his arms.

  The Mannequin staggered back, tripping on the stairs. Just a little less coordinated.

  Still, it wasn’t useful. One dog was entirely disabled, crawling with countless Breed-parasites. Only the fact that it clenched its jaw kept them from getting in its mouth, but its nose-

  “Cancel it, Grue!” I shouted.

  He didn’t. Instead, he reached down to grab Mannequin by the throat. He ascended the stairs three at a time, dragging two struggling Mannequins with him.

  A bad situation was turning into a nightmare. My radius shrank to a mere hundred feet, then fifty.

  Twenty.

  The bugs were crawling on us, Crucible wasn’t the only one struggling to keep them from worming beneath his hands and into his mouth.

  Then he was gone, the radius of his power nullification too small. If the Hatchet Face upstairs was a hybrid, Grue’s copy of his power was a fraction of a half of a power.

  Still, he seemed to have Hatchet Face’s strength and durability.

  Our powers began to return, and with the threats of the other capes dealt with, we were free to focus on stopping them.

  Clockblocker paused the most dangerous ones, closest to mouths, anuses and private parts, to ears and nostrils. We backed away as he freed us of the worst of them, and Crucible barred the path with his superheated forcefield.

  “I’m not… I’m not useful,” Toggle said.

  “Different threats, you would be,” Crucible said. “Fuck, this stings.”

  “Medical treatment after,” Clockblocker said. “One more to take down.”

  We hurried up the stairs. Two flights to the penthouse floor.

  “Eidolon,” my swarm-clone spoke.

  “Weaver.” He had created a kind of portal and was widening it. It seemed slow, inefficient.

  “Go home, Eidolon. You aren’t a help here.“

  “I’m to take orders from the one who murdered Alexandria?”

  “Yes. Leave. You’re more danger than help.“

  “I can end this.”

  “So can I. I will end this. Your choice as to how. Do I handle this situation myself, or do I have to kill you, then handle this myself?“

  There was only silence from him. He stared at my swarm-clone.

  “You dare make that threat, after killing my comrade-in-arms?”

  “I do. If there’s a trace of doubt in your mind that I could do it-“

  “Your bugs couldn’t touch me.”

  Inside the building, we were approaching the penthouse floor.

  “Your power is dying. It’s obvious enough that people are speculating on it online, in the media. How Eidolon isn’t as strong as he was in the early days. Why aren’t you inside already? Are you so sure that your power would stop me?“

  “I’m here to help. That’s all. Attacking me now would be like the violation of the Endbringer Truce.”

  “You’re one of the biggest dangers, Eidolon. Jack’s supposed to be the catalyst for an event, a great catastrophe. Are you honestly telling me that there’s no danger here? That you’re absolutely certain that you don’t have a weakness he could capitalize on?“

  Eidolon didn’t speak.

  “Don’t tell me you don’t. That you aren’t potentially powerful enough to end the world if it came down to it. If he somehow opened that floodgate-“

  “It won’t come to that. I control my powers.”

  “Or played a head-game with you? Are you telling me your mind is a fortress? That you don’t have that capacity for great evil inside you?“

  “I’m not evil.”

  “You participated in business that people felt was so horrifying that they seceded from the Protectorate. How many thousands died or suffered gruesome transformations because of the atrocities Cauldron committed?“

  Inside the building, we opened the door. Grue was staring down the last member of this particular group of Nine. Tall, muscular in the way that suggested he was in his physical prime, with a wild mop of dark hair. He was masculine in a way that exaggerated the qualities to a fault, with an overly square jaw, massive hands, an almost Neanderthal brow. It made him look like a bad guy from an old animated film about princesses. As if echoing that sentiment, a word was tattooed across his chest.

  Tyrant.

  I recognized the other half of the pair. Hatchet Face and King together.

  Untouchable. King’s power took any physical harm he suffered and transferred it among his pawns. People he’d touched within the last twenty-four hours. Hatchet Face’s power meant we couldn’t even use abilities to circumvent it. Tyrant here had the enhanced strength each of the two had possessed, the enhanced durability.

  “Are you saying you’re blameless, little murderer?” Eidolon asked, just above us. “That you don’t have a potential for evil?”

  “No,” I answered. The hybrid crossed the room, and I could feel my powers fading. Grue’s darkness dissipated around the building, and light streamed in through the red windows, casting a tint over everything.

  I shifted my bugs outside the building.

  “No, I know I have some ugliness inside me,” I spoke through my swarm. My swarm was dissipating, my focus and control over my bugs failing. I had to maintain the formation.

  “Then what qualifies you to be here when I can’t?”

  “Maybe arrogant of me to say so,” I said. The swarm was quieter as my fine control swiftly dissolved. “But I’ve recognized that ugliness, and I’ve got it harnessed.“

  I gave the signal, gesturing for emphasis. Tyrant paused. The swarms outside the building shifted in the same moment, uttering the word faintly.

  Now.

  Outside the building, Foil fired, and she used the line I’d drawn out with my bugs for guidance. Not perfect, not ungodly straight, but the thread I’d drawn out helped.

  There was a concentrated explosion of ice at the edge of the penthouse as the shot punctured the wall, passed within a foot of Tyrant.

  He advanced, and I stepped forward to meet him, my eyes on his. My power was almost entirely gone. Dampened to the point that it was just me and the bugs that crawled on me. Every step he took reduced it another fraction. Half a foot, then an inch away from my skin…

  Another bolt, between us, closer to Tyrant than to me.

  And then an explosion that seemed to shake the entire building. Everyone present was thrown to the ground.

  Kid Win had blasted a hole in the side of the penthouse, firing what had to be every single weapon at the same time. Ice was swelling from the open area in fits and starts.

  But it was enough of an opening for Foil to get a clear shot.

  She shot Tyrant, and the bolt pierced his brain.

  He collapsed onto his hands and knees, then staggered, starting to rise.

  Another bolt through the spine.

  A third through the heart.

  He collapsed onto his face.

  Foil’s bolts broke the rules. Apparently his power didn’t work on them.

  I slowly climbed to my feet, then stared up through the closing hole in the building at Eidolon.

  “Go home,” I called out.

  He was still, hovering there. I didn’t break eye contact as he floated closer to me, until he stood only a few feet away.

  “Sit this one out, for all of our sakes.”

  He broke eye contact first. His eyes fell on Foil and Kid Win.

  “Please,” I said.

  He didn’t move, looking across the street at the others.

  Then, as if the courtesy of the please had given him the ability, he spoke. His voice was quiet enough that I was probably the only one who could hear.

  “I live for this,” he said. “It’s what I do.”

  It was an admission of weakness, not a boast.

  “I know,” I answered him. “But it’s not worth it. Even here, that coffin up there that Mannequin made�
� if it’s hiding Jack, keeping people from sensing him until the end of this lunatic game he set up, then he could say something. Do something, and you could become everything you’re trying to stop.”

  No. I’d said something that was off the mark. I saw Eidolon hesitate, as if he was considering going ahead anyways.

  “And you’re all so safe?” Eidolon asked me. “You’re not such a danger, with the right trigger event, the right saying? You couldn’t murder a town full of innocents as readily as you murdered Alexandria?”

  “The difference between you and me,” I said, “Is if I go off the rails, if I somehow become an agent of the apocalypse, I can be stopped. I can be killed.”

  He stared at me, the shadows of his eyes only barely visible behind the blue-green expanse of the concave mask he wore. The shadow cast by his hood didn’t help.

  “There’s a quarantine, Eidolon. Everything we’re bringing to the table here, everyone who’s on the front lines, they’ve talked about this, they’ve agreed. We’re all willing to die if it comes down to it, for the sake of maintaining that quarantine, keeping the end of the world from coming to pass.”

  He looked past me at the Undersiders and Brockton Bay Wards.

  “I’m willing to die if I have to,” he said, in his eerie chorus of a voice. “I’ve proven that enough times… but it doesn’t matter, does it?”

  “There’s no guarantee we could stop you before it was too late.”

  “I see.”

  He cast a glance over our assembled ranks, then took off.

  I waited long moments before turning my attention to the crowd at the far end of the room. They were already moving, running like they could make their way downstairs and escape out the front doors.

  I drew my knife, stepping into their path.

  “Weaver?”

  My bugs flowed past them. I could see, hear, smell, taste.

  The swarm went on the attack. People in the crowd screamed and ran.

  Of the three I’d targeted in their midst, I saw one open his mouth wide. Four small trilobite parasites crawled out, dropping to the ground.

  His nostril bulged, and one crawled from his nasal cavity. One crawled from each of his ears.