Worm

by John Mccrae Wildbow

  “Perfect sense,” she responded.

  “That means I’m not connecting the dots as well as I should. Instead of wasting your time, I’ll be blunt and say that I’m not following. That’s the rudeness I was mentioning. Can you elaborate? A living prop…”

  “I can’t elaborate. They watch and listen for mention of doors, so they can take us from one stage to the next, and they’re listening to every word we utter. If I continued, it would upset everyone in question.”

  “I see.” So there’s something more. Something the Doctor is keeping up her sleeve.

  I wasn’t surprised.

  “I should prepare for battle soon,” Glaistig Uaine said. “Unless there’s something else you’d like to discuss, Administrator?”

  “There is. I’m sorry. My role. What’s my role in things?”

  “In this act or in the greater plan?”

  “Either. Both.”

  She reached up, placing a hand on the side of my face. It was warm from the fire. Her thumb brushed along my cheekbone, the long nail coming dangerously close to my eye.

  She could kill me right here. Pull my passenger away from me and claim it.

  “I already told you,” she said. “I don’t like to repeat myself. Now come, bend down.”

  I bent down.

  She gave me a kiss on one cheek, then the other, then stepped back. “I look forward to collecting you, Administrator, or to meeting you at the end, if you outlive me. We can have long discussions.”

  “They can talk?” I asked, looking down at Phoenixfeather.

  “No. But we can discuss. You’ll understand, sooner or later.”

  I nodded slowly.

  “I’m sorry for your loss, Administrator,” she said. “Things become a great deal easier once you realize how temporary it all is.”

  My loss?

  She knows?

  She stepped away, raising one hand. Like an explosion occurring in reverse, Phoenixfeather condensed into a point in her hand as she closed it into a fist.

  She opened her hands, and two figures flanked her. Again, the blending of costume and flesh. The blurring of identity. Both were women, but one had perhaps been mutilated in death, or she had been a case fifty-three. She was four-legged, her two arms different lengths.

  They worked together to fashion Glaistig Uaine’s costume, discorporating the modified prison uniform she’d fashioned into a shroud and reforming it into a proper cloak and robe, with a texture that scintillated green and black, as though it were made up of thousands of scales the size of grains of sand.

  I took that as my cue to leave.

  “Door. Chicago Protectorate Headquarters.”

  The portal opened.

  I stepped through onto the roof of the headquarters.

  There was a strong wind, and the heavy clouds of moisture and dust were soaring across the sky. I looked down, and saw an empty city. No people in the streets, no moving cars. During the morning runs, even, or the dead of night, Chicago had been full of life.

  I could sense some life, though. I reached out to the bugs that populated the empty city and drew them to me.

  I knew why they had placed me on the roof. Moving the bugs through the building, I could feel the cracks in the structure, the broken concrete, the fallen boards of plaster from the ceiling of the office level. Something had shaken the building and it was at risk of collapse.

  The opening on the roof for flying heroes was ajar. I sent my bugs inside, all too aware of echo to the event that had led to the ironic case of my joining the Wards.

  They collected fabric, collected materials and fit themselves into the channels of my spare flight pack. Then they made their way up to me, everything on hand.

  The swarm circled around me, and they deposited every item, straightening the things out, spacing it evenly around me, a kaleidoscopic pattern.. Spare costumes, costume concepts, weapons, gear.

  I’d wondered what form my body would take if Glaistig Uaine were to seize me. The core costume was the same, but the details, the features… clawed fingertips of Skitter or the extra armor of Weaver’s, with a spare coil of silk hidden beneath an armor panel at the back of the hand?

  Black? White? Gray? Red? I had silk bodysuits in every color, from when I’d tested dyes and worn the bodysuits to see how the color held up when the suit was stretched over my body.

  What color lenses?

  What weapons?

  Scion was a different sort of opponent. Behemoth could be misled by swarm-decoys, one could hide from him. His attacks were lethal, but most wouldn’t tear through cover as though it wasn’t there.

  There was no camouflage against Scion. No cover. A gun could conceivably draw Behemoth’s attention for a crucial moment, with a well-aimed shot. Not so with Scion.

  I’d been in a black costume as Skitter, a gray costume as Weaver. A part of me wanted to go purer, to go white and continue that progression.

  But I picked up the black bodysuit.

  This wasn’t preparing myself for the fight. We wouldn’t be trading blows, and I doubted my costume would be any better or worse than a suit of plate mail or going into the fight naked.

  No, I was preparing myself on a mental level. I gravitated towards the black because it had seen me through the toughest and most personal crises.

  It was home, for lack of a better word. I didn’t have Brockton Bay anymore, didn’t have my dad’s. The black costume was the closest link I had to the last time and place I’d been at home.

  White armor panels, to balance it out.

  White lenses.

  A handgun. Again, more for the sake of my headspace than for anything else, and because I wasn’t sure I could trust everyone present to be on the same side. Two ammo clips. It reminded me of Coil. My first true kill.

  A taser, for the same reason, and to balance things out once again. I didn’t dislike the added weight of the weapon on my belt.

  I donned the flight pack and fixed my hair where it had been mussed up by the straps.

  Then, as a final token gesture, I picked up a small canister of pepper spray. Symbolic.

  “Door,” I said. “To the battlefield.”

  ■

  The portal brought us to a small drilling platform, in the midst of the ocean. No music, no chatter, only the sound of the ocean crashing around us, from horizon to horizon in every direction. The water was dark, murky, a reflection of the sky above.

  Everyone was wearing spider silk. I recognized the individual components. Spare costumes, and costumes I’d created and sent out to Protectorate and Wards teams.

  A meager contribution, considering our opponent’s firepower.

  Eighty in all, and we hadn’t brought anyone like Rachel or Imp, the people who couldn’t contribute to a fight where the opponent could fly like Scion flew, hit like Scion hit. A dog would never get its jaws on him, and he’d penetrate Imp’s defense in an instant, either by seeing through it or by the sheer amount of collateral damage he did.

  Lab Rat walked among us, a backpack dangling from one hand. He handed us devices. An armband, for communication, earbuds for those of us who didn’t have them, and little plastic cases the size of matchboxes, complete with straps.

  He was already wearing the full outfit, the wristband over the sleeve of his labcoat, the little matchbox similarly positioned, but over his bicep, like a blank white badge.

  He held one out to me, then hesitated. He fished in the backpack, then handed me another.

  “What’s the box?” I asked.

  “My work,” Lab Rat said.

  “That doesn’t answer my question.”

  “You don’t want the answer to your question. Wear it or don’t,” he rasped. “I’m wearing it.”

  He continued on, handing out the packages.

  When he was out of earshot, Clockblocker commented, “I don’t think that’s a good recommendation. That guy is crazy. At one point he made himself into some kind of photosynthetic lardass, so fat he
took up two stories of a house. It’s the only reason they caught him in the end.”

  I looked pointedly at Clockblocker’s arm. The little white box blended in with Clockblocker’s white costume. “You’re wearing the thing.”

  “It’s a shitty recommendation coming from Lab Rat, but as far as I’m concerned, I’d cut off my left arm if it bought me a better chance. I like knowing there’s maybe a chance this would help. An explanation would suck. Give me a little hope.”

  “Maybe that’s all this is,” Vista said. “Hope.”

  I shut my eyes, focusing on the capes who were present, marking them with bugs.

  Here and there, portals opened, and capes stepped onto the platform. String Theory, carrying only a laptop. Galvanate.

  Galvanate reached out and touched a select few capes. Layering invincibility over invincibility for Alexandria, for Gavel, Gentle Giant, and a Birdcage cape I didn’t recognize.

  “Could do with some of that,” Grue said.

  “Borrow his power?” I suggested.

  “Doesn’t work. We did a few test runs before you showed. Some options. We’ll see.”

  Bonesaw and Panacea were both absent, I noted. Somehow ominous.

  “Three minutes.”

  Another portal opened. Glaistig Uaine, twice as tall as she had been, moving as though she were walking, but with no legs beneath swirling tatters of green-black cloth. Three spirits flanked her, walking on the platform. Not individuals I recognized.

  The wind turned, and I raised my head to let it blow through my hair. I’d always liked the sensation.

  “Why put us out in the middle of the ocean?” Vista asked. “It’s crazy.”

  “Symbolic,” a voice said, from high above us. I looked up to see Legend looking down. “Our planet’s mostly water. We’re mostly water. It’s something you don’t really get, being stuck down there on land.”

  “Rub it in,” Clockblocker said.

  “Sorry,” Legend said.

  He was a changed man, looking ten years older than he once had. How much of that was emotional? The toll of dealing with Endbringers, with being a pariah? He was respected by the common people, but anyone who knew anything about capes had picked up on Legend’s lack of status in the community.

  “I never liked locations like this,” I commented. “Rooftops. Can’t get down safely.”

  “It’s isolated, to minimize chances he can track us somehow,” Chevalier said. “And we have a good escape route. Not to mention it’s the furthest point from Scion.”

  When he spoke again, he raised his voice to be sure that everyone on the platform was able to hear. “It’s time! This is our staging ground. We’re not going to get close. We can’t, because of the danger it poses, and because the Cauldron capes can’t create portals within a certain range of Scion.”

  “Can’t or won’t?” someone asked.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Chevalier responded. “This is a test run. Trying one trick, it won’t work. We’ll get obliterated. So we hit him with things in a series, from multiple directions, and we see what sticks.”

  “I’ll be with you every step of the way,” Tattletale’s voice sounded over the earbud. “Defiant’s here too.”

  Defiant spoke over the comms. “Take our cues, don’t hesitate.”

  Chevalier said something, but I didn’t hear it, because Tattletale said something else. By the reaction of the others, it was something for me and me alone. “And because we’re limited in what we can do, I asked to have you in the field, as my liason.”

  “Right,” I muttered. I put on Lab Rat’s matchbox and then the armband. A display flashed, and then a request for ID.

  “Taylor,” I said.

  My name appeared. I confirmed.

  The display showed what appeared to be a distorted clock, with a square in the center. The clock had fourteen numbers and only one hand.

  “Fourteen points of attack. We’re alternating strong and weak, clockwise around the dial.“

  One number for each attack.

  “One sec. Switching String around to keep us on schedule. Chevalier likes his speeches an awful lot for someone who doesn’t like speeches.”

  “-Doors!” Chevalier finished.

  As if corresponding to the fourteen clock faces, the portals opened up in a circle around the platform.

  “Ingenue!” he called out.

  Chevalier and Ingenue passed through the door just to the right of the northernmost portal.

  He’d taken the lead, the first attack. He knew there would be too much risk of someone backing off if he put someone else in that crucial first slot.

  “Four miles north of Scion. Hitting him unawares.”

  The portal door was left open, and my bugs gave me a sense of what he was doing.

  Ingenue’s power was to muck with other people’s powers. More power, at a loss of control, more control, at a loss of range. Her choice.

  If I had to guess, it mucked with people’s heads. Maybe something to do with their passengers. Her partners tended to go loopy at some point. Homicidal loopy.

  Chevalier’s cannonblade grew to three times the size in heartbeats. Not the gradual growth of before. It was a wild, reckless growth. Unfettered by restrictions he’d been held by before.

  Ten, twenty times the size. I’d seen it be as long as Leviathan was tall, and this dwarfed that by a factor of two.

  The weapon was too heavy for him to lift. He let it fall, the serrated blade biting into the earth on the other side of the portal.

  He fired, and the combination of the detonation and the recoil wiped out my bugs.

  “Second Group!” I called out, an instant before Defiant barked out, “Two!” over the comms.

  Clockblocker, a Chuckles clone, Gentle Giant and a group of others.

  A spread of powers, with mobility and one of the few people who could maybe stand up to Scion’s blasts, enhanced by Galvanate’s attacks.

  They’d be getting dangerously close, using Chuckles’ mobility.

  I waited. Waited… twenty seconds passed.

  The world on the other side of the portals rumbled. Even with portals miles apart, the rumble was felt in roughly equal measure across each of them.

  “Third group,” Tattletale said. “Big guns. Watch for collateral damage. The others may still be there.”

  Pretender, Eidolon and Legend took off, and were soon followed by Glaistig Uaine.

  “He’s running,” Eidolon reported.

  “Tattletale,” I said. “Do me a favor?”

  “Anything for you, sweetie.“

  She was being even more offhanded than usual. Nervous?

  “Pass on a message to Legend and Eidolon. Pretender too, might as well. They should watch their backs around the Faerie Queen. I talked to her, and she never quite denied she’d help Scion if it came down to it.”

  “On it.”

  I concentrated my focus on the world beyond the portals. I could feel the bugs on the landscape, the high hills with sharp cliffs, the tall grass that could drown a man, eerily bright beneath a dark sky, with the way the light filtered down.

  I closed my eyes, and focused on the senses of my bugs. I couldn’t see detail, but I could make out bright and dark colors. Scion was bright, and so were his lasers.

  An enemy that hit too hard to defend against, too tough to hurt. Eidolon teleported rather than try to stand up to his lasers, Alexandria took a glancing blow and plunged to the ground. Legend peppered Scion, paused, then hit him with a bigger laser.

  When that failed, Legend doubled down again.

  “Fourth group.”

  The others had already gathered at the respective portals. This group was Grue, with a select few others. Shuffle was among them.

  Grue looked over his shoulder at me, then saluted.

  I felt a lump in my throat. I wanted to be Taylor, here, but there was a limit to how far I could go with that.

  I saluted him back.

  As much as I co
uld see the distorted contrasting shapes, I could make out the block of Grue’s darkness that Shuffle had teleported into the air above Scion. It sank down, subsuming the golden man.

  Grue fired off a laser, spearing into the midst of the cloud of darkness.

  No, not Scion’s laser. Legend’s.

  If he could use Scion’s laser, I imagined he would have. Legend’s lasers weren’t doing anything substantial, if they were doing anything at all. Scion didn’t falter, and he didn’t act like he was blind. Alexandria had gotten back up and was fighting at close range.

  Scion lashed out with another laser, and some portals winked out before the laser could intersect them and pour golden death onto the platform.

  “Grue, return,” I said. “Different tack.”

  Chevalier was just returning, carrying a burned Ingenue. He’d left his Cannonblade behind. Destroyed?

  “Fifth group in,” Tattletale said. “Everyone else, clear out!“

  Fifth group. One individual. String Theory.

  “Open one of those portals,” she said. “My lab. Right in front of the G-driver. Point the other end at the target.”

  “Clear out,” Tattletale repeated herself.

  Capes at the periphery of the fight were returning. The Chuckles returned, carrying two wounded capes. Not even a third of the size of Clockblocker’s original group. Vista hurried to Clockblocker’s side.

  “He wasn’t even aiming in our general direction, and he took out most of us,” Clockblocker murmured. “Fuck!”

  Grue’s group returned. Shuffle glanced at me and shook his head.

  One more power eliminated as a possibility, I thought.

  I had to do something here. “Clock, you leave anyone behind?”

  “No.”

  “Grue?”

  Grue shook his head.

  “Nobody left on the other side,” I reported. “String?”

  “Idiot!” String Theory snarled, “That’s not the opening! Put a portal on the other side of the machine!”

  There was a pause.

  “Better. Twenty two seconds. Use it to give me coordinates.”

  “Patching you into the Number Man,” Tattletale said.

  There was a pause.

  The portals all closed, like shutters sliding down, with an ever-narrowing rectangle of light at the base.