Worm

by John Mccrae Wildbow

  The best revenge was supposed to be living well, but maybe there was a petty fragment of my psyche that wanted to rub it in her face. Not that I was living well. The situation was catastrophic, my dad was dead, and I wasn’t sure where I stood.

  I looked down at my gloves. They were dark gray, but they’d been caked in blood, and even a good washing in cold water had failed to get them thoroughly clean.

  “Sophia,” I said.

  “What?” she asked. She leaned back in her chair.

  “They’re opening the Birdcage. Letting some of the scarier criminals out, in the hopes of getting some assistance against Scion. There’s a lot of good firepower in there.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Doesn’t make sense to go that far if we don’t extend the same concept to a smaller scale. Not sure what the numbers are, but there’s a hell of a lot of possible recruits there.”

  “And you’re here because, what, you’re going to recruit me?”

  I ignored her. “Problem with this situation is there’s no good way to keep track of all of this. In the chaos, it’s hard to manage records, and time’s tight enough we’re not going to be able to pull a review panel together. So how do you decide who gets to go free?”

  “What a good question,” Sophia said. She met my gaze with a level stare. Not a glare anymore.

  “Capes interact most with other capes. Smaller pool of people to find, contact and question, versus trying to hunt down civilians who might know so-and-so. It’s not a perfect method. It’s flawed, even. But we’re asking the victims. Teammates who were inconvenienced, enemies of the capes in question, all of that. Is this cape in prison worth letting free? Knowing what’s at stake, are you willing to put the past behind you and give them a second chance?”

  She smirked. “And you’re my victim?”

  “Me and the Brockton Bay Wards,” I said. “The Undersiders were asked, too, but they gave their votes to me, with only a few words of suggestion.”

  She’s fucking useless, Imp had said. And she shot my brother. Bitch isn’t worth having to worry about being shot in the back with a crossbow.

  “Moronic,” she said. “Making it a popularity contest.”

  “Doing what we have to,” I responded.

  “Moronic,” she said, again. I might have missed it, if it weren’t for the repetition of the same word. Slightly different. A hint of emotion? Disdain? Disappointment?

  Maybe she cared more about being freed than she was letting on.

  Maybe, on a level, she grasped that she was reaping the consequences of earlier actions.

  Well, I’d been there.

  “I suppose this is the point where I’m supposed to beg? I give you some satisfaction, you get some…”

  “Closure,” I said. “No. I’m not going to make you do that.”

  “Because I won’t,” she said.

  “I know,” I said.

  It’s not in you, based on what you’ve said here. That personal pride, the security she’d apparently found in knowing what her niche was in the world and how she fit into it, it was her mask, the barrier she erected against the world.

  “You hurt people,” I said. “And the way you reacted to me, on that night where the Undersiders kidnapped you, trying to slash my throat… you’ve killed.”

  “Yes. So have you. You might have a body count higher than mine.”

  “I might,” I said.

  “You hurt people too.”

  “I did,” I agreed.

  “A lot more than I did.”

  “Probably.”

  “And you weren’t even subtle about it. Taking over a city, robbing banks, attacking the fundraiser, attacking the headquarters…”

  “Extorting the mayor,” I added, “Unlawfully imprisoning people, a lot of other stuff.”

  “Yet you’re out there and I’m in here,” she said. Then she smirked. “Funny how that all works out. It all comes down to strength in the end. Power. How useful are you to others? I was useful, strong, even marketable on a niche level, and they pulled strings for me. Pulled your strings, even.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “But I became more trouble than I was worth. They throw me in jail, say it’s because of a probation violation. But why are they really doing it? Because I’m more trouble than I’m worth. I’m not useful, am I, Hebert? Regent got me, I was a liability. Couldn’t be used to fight the bad guys. They sacked Piggy for the same reason.”

  “Even if that was true, they could have moved you to another city. They would have,” I said. “But maybe you burned bridges. Maybe the other teams didn’t want you.”

  She shook her head a little, her smirk turning up a little.

  “I think your view is a little narrow,” I said. “It’s about more than usefulness. There are other factors.”

  “Like what? Likability? Substance? Respect? Trust?”

  “Along those lines,” I said.

  “Bullshit,” she said. Her eyes narrowed. “You think you’re more likable than I am? Fuck that, and I’m not just joking around like we did back at school. You and I? We’re the same. We’re tough where we need to be, we hit hard so our enemies aren’t in any shape to hit back. We’re good at what we do. Difference is you were a little luckier, bet on the right horse.”

  “No, Sophia,” I said.

  “No? You run, right? It was on TV.”

  “I run, yes.”

  “And you don’t think you were trying to emulate me? Subconsciously? I was on the track team, and there you are, a bit of a loser, looking for a way to improve yourself, and you start running?”

  “Not even remotely close to the mark,” I said, feeling a note of irritation. “Not on that count. The other stuff? Maybe we are similar in respects. Maybe being a cape in this fucked up world means you have to go that route, just a little.”

  “Being a person,” she said. “Dealing with reality.”

  “Maybe,” I said “But if I was like you, I was better at it than you were, went further, tested the limits more.”

  I could see her eyes narrow further.

  “And I think it’s a pretty shitty way to exist,” I finished.

  “Ouch,” she said. “You wounded me.”

  I couldn’t hear anything in her voice, nor could I see anything in her expression… but her shoulders were tenser, her hands had stopped fidgeting and were still.

  I stood from my chair, collecting the phone. I glanced at it.

  NZ gutted. Timeline for counterattack set for 1.5 hr from now. Testing efficacy of some abilities at range. Legend, Pretender, Eidolon on board to help. Weaver has been requested for assistance and field administration.

  “You’re going, then,” Sophia said.

  “Yeah. You said you wouldn’t help, you’d rather scurry away like a cockroach.”

  “I’m not saying I’d rather. I’m saying it’s what we should all do.”

  “Either way. You’re free to convince me.”

  “To beg, we’re back to that.”

  “To convince me.”

  She shook her head a little. “Fuck it. Let the world burn. We’ll all be better off. No pretension, no fakery, none of the tradition and ‘this is the way things are and always will be’. Hit the reset button, whoever’s left will pick things up later.”

  “That sounds remarkably similar to how Jack sounded.”

  “Fuck you, Hebert.”

  “Fine. I’m walking away from this with a clear conscience. Sit there in your cell and worry every minute that Scion’s going to come tearing through here and wipe you off the face of the planet.”

  She smirked, but I could see that tension in her neck and shoulders, still. I felt like Rachel, looking at someone and trying to piece together their natural responses, figure them out.

  Or was it the opposite? Was I like Rachel in how she looked at a dog, understanding them on a level most people couldn’t?

  “You’re afraid,” I said.

  “Fuck you, Hebert,”
she spat the words.

  “You’re afraid and you’re hiding it behind a very good mask.”

  “Fuck that. I hate that fakery, that false-faced bullshit.”

  “You said we’re alike. You’re right. We’re both very good at putting on a front.”

  She snarled the words. “There’s a difference between acting and being. I’m not faking anything.”

  “Yet you refuse to do anything to deviate from your path. That’s why you’re so big on sticking to your place. If you never budge, you never have to risk seeing if the mask comes off.”

  “Oh fuck the hell off, Hebert. You sanctimonious, know-it-all, orphan bitch!”

  She’d picked the ‘orphan’ bit to hurt, to get a rise out of me. Yet I felt okay. Hurt? Yes. I felt something deep and important missing, and I wasn’t quite ready to let myself feel that emotion in its entirety. To hear the words in full or see the body and know my dad was gone.

  I needed to do that, and maybe to do it soon, if only to pay respect to my dad.

  So yeah. I hurt. I felt the sting of her words. I still felt off kilter. But I was calm.

  No act. No mask. Me, and I was okay.

  “Thank you, Sophia,” I said. “I feel a hell of a lot better than I did before this meeting. I don’t know if-”

  “Loser.”

  She’d gotten the guard’s attention with her outburst. The woman was approaching.

  “-if you were right about us being similar or not. But I don’t want to be the sort of person you could compare yourself to. I’m going to be Taylor again, so thank you, for helping me come to peace with that.”

  I can be Taylor without being weak. Keep the best parts of Skitter and Weaver.

  I turned to leave.

  “Fuck you!”

  Her maneuver was a practiced one, no doubt something she’d trained herself with in her cell or in the moments she was cuffed and unobserved. A way to buy herself a fraction of a second to use her power, where her wrists wouldn’t come in contact with the cuffs, as she let them drop from a point further up her arms to her hands. I could sense the motion with my bugs.

  Her leg hooked under her chair as she made it as shadowy as she was, and she kicked out, sending the chair flying through the bulletproof glass. It rematerialized as it crashed into mine, and the two chairs in turn hit me.

  I stumbled. My shin stung where the little folding chairs had hit me.

  Sophia, in turn, was being held down by the guard, the handcuffs pulled taut against her wrists.

  “Is this the real you, then?” I asked.

  “Oh my god, you pre… pre-”

  “Pretentious.”

  “Cunt!“ Sophia snarled the words between her grunts of struggle. “I’m going to break you!”

  “Take a minute or two to calm down,” I said. “Breathe. If you can relax, if you can look me in the eye and promise you won’t hurt me or anyone else, I’m going to give the go-ahead for you to leave.”

  There was a pause, shock stopping both the guard and Sophia.

  “You’re joking,” the guard said.

  Sophia just lay there, her head pressed against the little ledge, panting. Her hair covered her face.

  “Offer’s open just a bit longer, Sophia,” I said. “I want to take some time to get ready, and if you’re coming, you’ll need the same.”

  She didn’t budge. The guard took her weight off Sophia, and only held the chain of the cuffs, twisting so Sophia’s arms were held taut above her. It must have been uncomfortable with the way her body was forced to one side, her head forced down.

  Afraid.

  “I’m not asking you to fight Scion. Just doing search and rescue would be fine. It’s not safe, but-”

  “Will you shut up?” Sophia’s voice was muffled, not in a position to let her voice pass through the perforated space in the glass. “Fuck, I’ll do it if you stop prattling at me.”

  “Look me in the eye and promise you won’t fuck with me.”

  The guard let Sophia straighten.

  She met my eyes, glaring as if a look alone could express a hundred different kinds of violence. “I promise.”

  I shrugged. The guard looked at me, and I nodded.

  “Your funeral,” she said. “I’ll go take her to the back and get her ready.”

  “No need,” I said. I looked towards the ceiling. Let’s try this. “Two doors, one for me, one for her, to where the others are on Earth Bet.”

  The doors opened, rectangular windows. Unlike the portals I’d seen before, these ones were dark, one on each side of the bulletproof glass.

  Sophia, still cuffed, shot me an ugly sidelong glance, watching as I made my way through the portal. The door was already closing as I saw her turn and step through the other.

  I didn’t want to let her loose without any observation. I’d bring her along for just a short while, then find a place to stick her.

  I felt okay with this decision. Comfortable. It wasn’t a mask I was wearing, so strong it might as well have been real. No. It was something simpler.

  I’m not scared of her anymore.

  ■

  There were other, bigger things to be scared of.

  The sky was overcast, but it wasn’t wholly clouds. Dust choked everything, thick and heavy. The sun was rising, and it felt like it had been rising for some time. The issues of teleporting across time zones.

  Red. The sky was a surprising red color, filtering between clouds that were almost black. It cast the tall mountains in similar shades, with deep shadows and vivid color.

  My breath fogged in the air. I’d been dressed for summer. This… it was cold. The landscape around us looked like coals resting in a fire, cast in ash white, charcoal blacks and reds, but it was cold. The cold leeched warmth from my feet, even. We were on a mountainside, a broad, flat ledge that could have held three helicopters. Instead, it held one Azazel suit and a crowd of perhaps sixty.

  The cold wasn’t just the altitude. The levels of dust in the atmosphere would be having an effect as well.

  My bugs were having a tough time here. I clustered them against my body, more so they could benefit from my warmth than the opposite.

  With the bugs so close to me, crawling on my skin, in the cradle of my folded arms, and beneath my clothes, my sense of others was limited. Even so, I could sense Rachel’s approach. I didn’t react as she set her coat over my shoulders, except to glance at her and nod my thanks.

  A crowd had gathered. Everyone from the meeting, minus Saint, was present. There were also innumerable others who hadn’t been at the meeting. Some I recognized, many I didn’t. Here and there, portals opened and people stepped through, joining the crowd.

  “Long time,” I heard someone say. Boston accent.

  I turned around. It was Weld, with his partner, the tendril-girl that wound around his body. He hadn’t been talking to me.

  No, his focus was on Sophia.

  “Hey chief,” she said.

  He gripped the two loops of her cuffs, and absorbed them into his hands. She rolled her shoulders, then rubbed at her wrists.

  “Don’t cause trouble,” Weld said. “Too many people on edge here.”

  “Yeah,” Sophia said.

  Then Weld left, returning to his group.

  Sophia was left standing there alone, cold in her prison sweats.

  Time passed. I’d hardly arrived in the nick of time, for the main event. I walked around the edge of the ridge, navigating around clusters of people, then approached the Azazel.

  Tattletale was within, her attention on the computer screens. Defiant was leaning over her, giving instructions.

  I left them alone, joining Rachel and Imp, where they sat with their backs to Bastard’s side, feet inches from a precipitous drop. Grue was keeping more of a distance, simultaneously watching and keeping as far away from Bonesaw as he could manage.

  “No more malls,” Imp was saying. “No more going shopping, no more reality TV, no more stupid boy bands to make fu
n of…”

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Talking about everything I’m going to miss,” Imp said. “I’m trying to start from the outer edges and work my way in towards the biggest stuff. Work up my courage to say, you know…”

  “You’ll miss us?” I asked.

  “Aw, you’re so full of yourself!” Imp said. “It’s so sweet! I was going to say, um, those creepy little kids who look way too much like their big brother? I’ll miss them way more than I should. I’d miss them more than I’d miss you.”

  I reached over and pushed her head a little, trying to mess up her hair and failing to do so before she’d pulled away. I found a seat beside Rachel.

  Bastard’s chest rose and fell. It was one element of an uncomfortable seat. Warm, but not quite cozy enough for me to nod off. It was too cold, for one thing, and I felt my rear end going numb from the cold before I’d been sitting for a minute. Even more alarming was the general sensation that someone was gently pushing me towards the ledge, then easing up, pushing me, easing up.

  If he lurched to his feet for any reason, I wasn’t entirely sure I would be able to stop myself from being shoved over the precipice. I should have worn my flight pack.

  “I don’t have a lot,” Rachel said, breaking the silence. “Haven’t ever had much more than I could take with me if I left home. Had money, but it was just a number I couldn’t really follow on a computer I didn’t have.”

  “You have something now,” I said.

  She bobbed her head in a motion that was almost too slow to be a nod. “Yep.”

  I didn’t elaborate. We watched the crimson sunrise.

  “Don’t want to lose it,” Rachel said. “Any of it.”

  I-

  I couldn’t even complete a thought, hearing that. Damn it, Rachel, don’t say that, don’t remind me.

  I thought of my dad.

  Of my mom, though that was a wound I’d thought I’d healed.

  I thought of my hometown, which wasn’t quite home anymore.

  I thought of my pride, my mission, neither of which I quite had anymore.

  I lowered my head, bringing my knees up to support my arm as I nestled my face into the crook of my elbow, burying it into the fabric of Rachel’s jacket. This was too public. The wolf’s overlong body provided a barrier between us and everyone else, but… too public.