Worm

by John Mccrae Wildbow

  The image whirled as Greenhorn spun around. He had been moved outside of the portal.

  The man Tattletale had pointed out raised a device over his head, then hit a button.

  The portal disappeared.

  I watched as Labyrinth and Scrub stepped forward to try to knock open another portal. They succeeded, but their efforts apparently didn’t allow access back into the same world.

  It was Teacher. One of the cell block leaders of the Birdcage. He had the ability to make others into thinkers and tinkers, but it left them extremely suggestible. He’d surrounded himself with these mooks, then, what, he’d shut himself into another world and barricaded the door?

  The cape Tattletale had pointed out would be Trickster, ex-leader of the Travelers, apparently one of Teacher’s brainwashed minions.

  The volume had been turned almost all the way down, but it hadn’t been muted. I could hear the faint cries of the crowd, see Greenhorn moving to stop them from rioting. The looks of desperation, the fear, the panic, at realizing their way out had just been denied them.

  The camera moved to Faultline. She was talking, giving orders.

  Labyrinth changed the ‘channel’ on the portal, setting it to a different world. The people began moving through again, a little faster, more forcefully.

  “He betrayed us?” I asked.

  “No idea. Maybe he wanted a safe place to work on a trump card with zero distractions. Going by his modus operandi, though, yeah, I think he betrayed us. Not a big betrayal, but that’s one world where we moved a hell of a lot of supplies in”

  I nodded, pursing my lips.

  “Saint’s upset, to put it mildly. We ran the data. Apparently he crossed paths with Teacher at some point a few months before Teacher’s incarceration. There have been almost no cases where Teacher’s power lasted more than a few days without a refresher, and the brainwashing wears off over a few weeks or months, so yeah. It’s not that.”

  “Saint wants something from Teacher? A power?”

  “Probably. Anyways, Teacher had a few of those devices made. Four portals in all that particular interest groups claimed and locked down, using these switches, wanting worlds all to themselves. No major players in the bunch, no sign of any greater conspiracy. Defiant was all too happy to bring Saint into custody, and we’re kind of hoping to get a response out of the man. That’s problem number one.”

  Number one, I thought. I felt a sick feeling settling in my gut.

  “Number two.”

  The video played. Not a camera anyone wore, but a steady image that panned left and then right. A surveillance camera. The scene was of a settled area.

  Silent image, but the detonations were so vivid, so violent, I could imagine the noise of it, that crashing sound that would be followed with dead silence after the shockwave blew out eardrums. Ten or twelve explosions at different points across the camera’s field of view. Coordinated strikes.

  “Yàngbǎn,” Tattletale said. “Refused to let Faultline or Cauldron open up any portals in the C.U.I. territories, and then the moment things got ugly, they invaded the portals others made instead. Striking American settlements. Including ours, potentially. Part of the reason for Bitch’s patrolling right now. Wouldn’t mind you doing a double-check of the area with your bugs, when you’re up for it.”

  I nodded slowly.

  “Number three. No video, so you’ll have to take my word for it. Cauldron.”

  “You said they tried something,” I said.

  “You overheard. Yes, but that’s not what this is about. It’s the Irregulars. They’re actively fighting Cauldron, despite Cauldron’s extensive resources, and they haven’t been wiped out or assassinated. Arguably the strongest precog out there, arguably the strongest clairvoyant, countless other resources, and they’re actually stressing Doctor Mother out.”

  “How?” I asked.

  “Hard to say. Could be that Cauldron made a mistake, let a case fifty-three with a powerful Stranger ability slip through the cracks, and Weld recruited him or her. Could be a disgruntled customer.”

  “Disgruntled?” Aisha asked. “Fun word, makes me gruntled, but I don’t follow your meaning. Superpowers for cash instead of powers for trauma… how is anyone not cool with that?”

  “Maybe Canary could shed light on this?” Tattletale suggested.

  Canary’s eyes opened wide.

  “You bought Cauldron powers?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Pretty rare for a natural cape to get powers with physical changes,” Tattletale said. “Cauldron capes? Yeah. You definitely see stuff like feathers.”

  “I wasn’t disgruntled,” Canary said. “I freaked, and I couldn’t exactly charge back on my credit card or sue them. But I adjusted. I got what I really wanted in the end. By the time I realized I’d gotten too much of what I wanted, I was already in jail.”

  “Shit sucks,” Aisha said. “Scammed hard, grow yellow feathers on top of a shitty fashion sense, get what you want and then boom, it’s all over. Off to jail.”

  “I dress colorfully so people don’t connect me to the Simurgh so easily,” Canary said. “Keeps me from getting cussed out or beaten by someone who lost a friend or family member.”

  “Getting back to the question, with all of the issues you’ve faced, you could see where someone else would be less cool about it, yeah?” Tattletale asked.

  Canary nodded. “Um, definitely. The stuff they give you isn’t always reliable. You’re always gambling, whether it’s on the amount of raw power, the nature of the power, all of that crap.

  “And if someone like Weld showed up, saying he has contacts in the Protectorate and the Wards, good friends, who told him they’ve got a way to break into another universe if they can find a spot where a portal was opened, and they just need you to tell them where Cauldron opened one?”

  “They stepped through into my dad’s house once, so I could talk to a therapist before I took anything. Yeah. If things had gone differently, I could have pointed them to the right place.”

  “Another possibility for how the Irregulars are managing,” Tattletale said, sounding satisfied. “With Contessa and Cauldron’s other hit squads being too busy with more important matters to retaliate.”

  I nodded. It wasn’t sound, but there was enough there for me to acknowledge it was very possible.

  “Issue number four.”

  “Wait,” I said.

  Tattletale paused.

  “This is a thing? There’s a pattern here?”

  “Isn’t it obvious? I mean, you can connect the dots.”

  I could.

  “You said it before,” Canary told me. “Remember? There are reasons for people to fight, reasons to keep going when all is lost. Pride, revenge, stubbornness.”

  “Fuck me,” I said. I stepped back, leaning against the wall. The blunt ends of tacks poked me in the back and shoulders where I leaned against a bulletin board. “Fuck! They’re all fighting, and they’re not fucking capable of turning this aggression towards Scion? What the fuck?”

  Tattletale shook her head. “Scion trounced some of our strongest capes and as far as we can tell, we didn’t even slow him down. We only gave him the bright idea of attacking other Earths, buying our world a few days at most, but we screw over a trillion other people in the process. Might be they want to do something that isn’t futile, before humanity gets wiped out.”

  I hung my head, and my hair fell forward. I clenched my fists, and I could still feel the alien sensation in my hand. I rubbed my fingers against the palm.

  “I’m going to keep going, just so you know what’s up,” Tattletale said. “Issue four. Elites, Vegas Dark, less pleasant members of the Thanda. We’ve got the businessmen and bastards of Vegas’s underworld, guys who were already gaming the system, only now they’re moving into refugee locations on the far sides of the portals and trying to elbow their way in while things are just starting up. Hoping to make themselves a fixture like we made ourselves fixt
ures, so everything grows up around them, dependent on them.”

  I nodded, feeling just a touch numb. “I don’t need in depth explanations.”

  “Fine. Five? Sleeper on Zayin. Six? Warlords on Bet, preying on those who decided not to leave. There’s shit sprouting up all over, so maybe I could save issue seven is everything else put together. We could get wiped out under the combined weight of a thousand lesser issues.”

  “Not a problem,” Aisha commented, her tone ironic. “Easy peasy.”

  I stared at the screens.

  Tattletale studied me, then added, “The Simurgh showed up on Bet, but there’s nothing really left for her to destroy,” Tattletale said. “There’s refugees, people who didn’t leave, holed up here and there, but she doesn’t seem to care enough to go after them. She’s… still. A non-threat, at least for now.”

  “It’s too early for her to show up,” I said.

  “They’re attracted to conflict,” Tattletale replied. Answer enough.

  “It’s funny,” Aisha observed, “In this really sad, demented, ‘everything sucks’ way. ‘Oh hey, here to destroy everything… oh, is everything already destroyed? Shit, fuck. Guess I’ll hang out, dick around over here while humanity winds down like an unwound clock that some golden asshole is stomping into little pieces’.”

  “Your metaphors tend to fall apart,” Tattletale observed.

  Aisha shrugged.

  “People have given up, then,” I said. “We mustered our strength, gathered some of our best, and he took us down. He killed one of our strongest. So now they’re focused on petty things. Even if we could fix it all, we’ve still got the Endbringers and Scion waiting to systematically murder us all.”

  “All of the great things humanity’s done,” Canary said, “Innovation, society, great works of art, the music… I kind of hoped we go out in some noble way.”

  “I don’t think humanity is noble,” I said. “Not in the least. It’s not just or fair on an intrinsic level. It’s not even good. But I kind of hoped we’d go out fighting the other guy. Dinah said Scion would take out just about everyone, leaving anywhere from a few billion to a few hundred still alive. Probably the people who’ve scattered far enough apart it’s not worth hunting them down.”

  “Probably,” Tattletale said.

  “Looking at this stuff, hearing you describe it all, I’m starting to think that maybe we’ll destroy ourselves in the end. Infighting, stupidity, revenge, all of that. Humanity will clean up whatever members of humanity Scion leaves alive, or leave us too screwed up to bounce back.”

  “Ergo, the dog is fucked,” Aisha murmured, barely audible.

  Tattletale snorted a half-laugh, despite herself. That, in turn, made me smirk stupidly.

  Tattletale saw that, and she laughed a little, which started me going.

  Aisha joined in. Not a full belly laugh, but a giggle fit, all the more infectious because of how out of place it was.

  I glanced at Canary, who was looking at us like we were batshit insane, and that only started me going again.

  It took us a minute or two to stop altogether.

  “Where the hell did you learn a word like ergo?” Tattletale asked. I had to bite my tongue to keep myself from laughing any more.

  Aisha shrugged, smiling a little.

  “So. Want to join in on the petty shit? Anyone in particular you want revenge on?” Tattletale asked. “Aisha? Taylor? Canary? Feel free to speak up. No judgement here.”

  “I’ll judge you a teeny bit,” Aisha said.

  “No,” Canary said. “Don’t want any revenge. Like I said, I’m not big on violence or any of that.”

  “I’m not one to put off revenge,” Aisha said.

  “What about the bullies?” Tattletale asked me.

  “I made peace with that some time ago. No petty shit I’m that invested in.”

  Rachel had returned, tying her dogs up outside. I followed her with the bugs that clung to her as she made her way inside and upstairs.

  “Want to go get laid?” Tattletale asked. “Seems like something people tend to do in the movies, when the end is nigh.”

  “Were you just inviting Taylor or-”

  Tattletale swiveled in her chair and kicked Aisha in the shin. “No. I’m not interested in that kind of thing. My power makes it way less fun than it ought to be. Information overload during sex is squick.”

  “Sure,” Aisha said. “Sure.”

  Tattletale kicked at her again. Aisha only cackled.

  “No,” I said. “I’ve enjoyed that sort of thing, but that was more to do with who I was with than anything else.”

  “Ew, ew, ew. TMI. Unless you’re talking about someone else. Tell me you’re talking about someone else.”

  “No.”

  “Ew, ew, ew.”

  Rachel entered the room. Bastard was bigger than an ordinary dog, smaller than a pony. He followed her, the collapsed on a pile of sheets in one corner of the room. He heaved out a sigh.

  “Welcome back,” I said.

  Rachel nodded. She surveyed the room, taking us all in. “You’re all in a good mood.”

  “Just having fun,” Tattletale said. “End of the fucking world, people are stupid beyond belief. It’s at the point where you can either laugh or cry, and I promised myself I wouldn’t cry a long, long time ago.”

  “Mm,” Rachel grunted. “Right.”

  Never been one to keep a conversation going, I thought. Rachel stopped at the end of the desk opposite Aisha.

  I took a step to my left, and I sort of bumped my arm against her arm, smiling a little. She bumped me back. She didn’t smile, but she put an arm up around my shoulders and set her hand on my head, mussing with my hair, like she had earlier.

  “We were talking about what we’d do,” Tattletale said. “You got any boy toys, Bitch? Any way to scratch that particular itch?”

  Rachel shook her head.

  “Where’s Grue?” I asked, all of a sudden.

  “Ew, gross. Can you not make those obvious leaps in logic?”

  “He’s gone,” Tattletale said. “He was here while Panacea put you back together. When, um, she was working on you, he borrowed her power and took over for a bit. I don’t know if you’re going to see that as weird or gross or a weirdly sweet goodbye gift or deeply invasive or whatever, but yeah. Maybe he just needed to help. Needed to know that he could save you or help you or fix you after you’d fulfilled one of his old fears and gone and got yourself murdered in a fit of recklessness.”

  “And then he left?”

  “Retired, quit. Maybe losing the fight, verifying he couldn’t do anything constructive, it took something out of him. Seeing you like that, it took something else. And then he ran into Bonesaw.”

  “She didn’t work on me?”

  “No. We didn’t let her. She’s paired up with Panacea for now, because Panacea is really the only way we can double check her work. Anyways, yeah. Grue confirmed you were on your way, he was leaving, she was walking in. They crossed paths. I think it was the straw that broke the camel’s back. He left without a word. Cozen came by, asking if we had a spot they could head off to. I sent them to a cabin we put a bit out of the way. Generator, toilets, books, movies, insulation. Pretty sure it’s just the two of them, taking care of each other until the world ends.”

  I drew in a deep breath, then exhaled.

  I couldn’t bring myself to feel envious, jealous or upset.

  “Okay,” I said. “Good.”

  Tattletale nodded.

  I thought about the others. “Parian, Foil? Are they keeping each other company too?”

  “Of course,” Aisha said.

  “Says our resident voyeur, a touch too knowingly,” Tattletale said.

  “That was the one time! Which wasn’t even fun voyeurism, because it was my brother. And I didn’t say it knowingly at all.”

  “The lady doth protests too much,” Tattletale said.

  “I’m protesting exactly enough and f
uck you! Like you’re not privy to the sordid details of other people’s lives.”

  “Privy? Sordid? So soon after ergo? Have you been reading, Aisha Laborn?”

  Rachel nudged me. “They were helping with the patrols, watching for the gem-faced motherfuckers who’re probably going to cause trouble.”

  Oh, she was answering my question about Parian and Foil.

  “Gem-faced motherfuckers? The Yàngbǎn?”

  “Them. So the other two are around. They’re here for work but they don’t really hang out. They’re better at dealing with people than I am, so they do that. Investigate shit. I’m the one that drags the assholes back here.”

  “Sheriff of New Brockton Bay,” I said, speaking just a little louder to be heard over the others.

  “…fucking words because of you. Talking funny, trying to sound smart…”

  “You said something like that,” Rachel told me. “Before you left.”

  I nodded.

  “Sorry about that,” I said. “Leaving.”

  “Okay.”

  No forgiveness, but then again, I probably didn’t deserve it so easily.

  “I’ll be back,” I said. “Have to go.”

  Rachel nodded.

  I made my way to the bathroom to relieve myself, then took a minute to wash my hair and try to comb my hair into a semblance of order. Try being the operative word.

  Two days, at least, I’d been out, probably three, if I judged by the state of my hair. Rachel rubbing my head hadn’t helped.

  I took a deep breath, then exhaled.

  I made my way back to the others. Tattletale and Imp had stopped bickering.

  We settled into an easy silence. It was a sort of quiet state I’d found with Rachel, but it was rare to have with any of the others. Rarer still with Imp.

  As memories went, for bringing everything to a close, it was alright.

  It was the outsider who broke the silence.

  “This is us?” Canary asked. “We’re whiling away the time until the world ends? Giving up like everyone else?”

  “What?” Tattletale asked. She gave Canary a funny look. “No. Fuck no.”