Worm

by John Mccrae Wildbow

  “A bit outside the front doors,” I said.

  “What she said,” Tattletale told her mercenary. “If we’re gone, just hold position. If we’re still gone after twenty four hours, assume we’re dead. Get my data and the backups of my notes to someone who matters, then consider the job done, collect your payment, go on your merry way.”

  “I’ll make sure everyone’s informed.”

  “Do,” she said. Then, as if to offset the curt command, she added, “Thanks, Tug.”

  He gave us a sloppy salute as he broke away, turning down a different corridor.

  I had my phone out before I was outside. My bugs let me navigate the stairs without taking my eyes from the screen, as I input commands. It was cold out, almost cold enough it would impair my bugs, and a heavy fog hung in the open clearing. The stout military building stood in an open, overgrown grassland, encircled by evergreen trees.

  No reception. Not a surprise, but inconvenient. I watched as we got closer to the portal Doormaker had left open.

  Tattletale, for her part, turned around, walking backwards as we reached the bottom of the steps. With the phone still dark, I took a moment to look in the same direction. I was treated to the intimidating image of the Simurgh passing over the building. She moved as if she were as light as a feather, but I knew that wasn’t true. She was heavier than she looked, by a considerable margin. Had she set her full weight on the roof, she would plunge through.

  Like someone playing hopscotch on the moon, the Simurgh set one foot down on the roof, hopping forward, set another foot on the very edge and pushed herself off. She floated down to the space beside the portal, then unfolded her wings, drawing the halo out to its full breadth. The movements sent swirls of dust and fog rippling across the edges of the clearing, stopping only as they crashed into the line of trees.

  “She changed the guns?” I observed.

  “She did,” Tattletale observed, “Cosmetic changes.”

  Each of the Simurgh’s guns had been streamlined, the outer casings, barrels and handles reworked into wings. Three concentric circles of interconnected guns, all redesigned to appear like an extension of her own wings, behind her.

  “Why cosmetic?”

  “Way I understand it, she needs to have a tinker in her sphere of influence to borrow their schematics, or a specific device, if she wants to copy it. Thinkers, too, I think she borrows their perception powers as long as she’s tapped into them. Might be why she’s attached to me. Either way, she didn’t have schematics or anything she’d need to modify the guns.”

  “Or she can modify them, and it’s a card she’s been keeping up her sleeve for the last while. I mean, it was only three years ago or whatever that she really showed off her ability to copy a tinker’s work wholesale.”

  Tattletale nodded. She frowned. “I don’t like being in the dark. But that’s the gist of it. She made cosmetic changes because she couldn’t make concrete ones.”

  “Well, it’s unnerving to think about, but anything about the Simurgh is,” I commented. “When I asked about the aesthetics, though, I wasn’t asking about the why so much as the…”

  “So much as the why?” Tattletale asked, emphasizing the word.

  “Yeah,” I said, lamely. “Why does she care?”

  “Why does she have feathers and wings? For all intents and purposes, she could be a crystal that floats here and there. The end result is pretty much the same. A few less weapons. Behemoth? I mean, you saw what he was, when we reduced him to a bare skeleton. All the extra flesh, it’s decorative. He doesn’t really need any particular parts, except legs to move around.”

  “It’s there to dress them up so they make better terror weapons,” I said.

  “Basically,” Tattletale said.

  “That’s not a good omen,” I said. “Because Scion doesn’t feel fear. I’m pretty sure.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t, and this is a little embellishment for our sake, for when she turns on us,” Tattletale said.

  “Can you not spell that out when she’s standing twenty feet away?” I asked. My pulse picked up a little at the idea, my heart kicking a little in my chest as it switched to a different gear.

  “She knows we’re thinking it,” Tattletale said. “And she knows there’s another explanation we could make. Maybe it’s a clue. A hint.”

  “About what?” I asked. “About Scion?”

  “About Scion,” she said.

  A hint that he can feel fear? It didn’t ring true, but I preferred it to the alternative.

  “Let’s go through and…” I said. I couldn’t bring myself to say I hoped. “…Maybe the Simurgh can make her way through the portal, and maybe we’ll find out.”

  “Yep,” Tattletale said, smiling a little. She probably knew the reasoning behind my word choice.

  For that matter, it was very possible the Simurgh did too.

  Which left me with the question of why I’d even bothered.

  Going through, I thought. Hopefully there’s people on the other side that can’t read me like a book.

  My phone lit up as a connection was established to a satellite.

  A moment later, the connection was secured.

  The clock changed, followed by a time zone and a symbol. Four forty-six, Eastern standard time, Earth Bet.

  I stared at the world that stretched out before us, and it was wrong. Perspective was skewed. Lines bent where they should have been straight, and the expanse to our left was somehow more extensive than the space to our right.

  The horizon should have been straight, or at least a gentle curve to accomodate the planet’s natural curvature, but it was almost a wavy line.

  “The fuck?” I muttered.

  “Vista,” Tattletale said, very matter-of-factly.

  The Simurgh reached the portal. I was reminded of Leviathan breaking into the shelter beneath the library as I saw her put one hand on each side of the portal. She wasn’t quite as large as he was, until you added up the wings and wingspan. Put all the wings together, and her mass was probably equivalent to her older brother’s.

  She passed through with little effort, dropping almost to her knees to get her head through. The wings followed, each wing stretched all the way behind her. The feathers rasped against the boundaries of the portal as she floated forward.

  The outer edges wavered a fraction, as if the stress threatened to bring the portal down entirely.

  Then she was through. She flexed her wings, then folded them around herself. The halo came through in pieces.

  “That answers that,” Tattletale said. She added a very unenthusiastic, “Yay.”

  The Dragonfly made its way to us, stopping no less than four times. With each stop, it descended to the ground and refused all incoming commands. A minute would pass, and then it would take off again.

  It took me a bit to realize why.

  Vista. The autopilot didn’t seem to like her power.

  “Just how much area is she manipulating?” I asked.

  “She was only ever held back by the Manton effect,” Tattletale said. “Number of people in the area.”

  “And there’s not many people left in Bet,” I spoke my thoughts aloud, as I made the connection.

  “Consider it a bonus,” Tattletale said, raising her head as the Dragonfly came into view, “In a sad, not-really-a-bonus sort of way. Empty earth makes for a convenient battleground. If we’re able to fight here, that is.”

  The Dragonfly set down, the ramp opening before it was even on terra firma.

  It took a minute to plot out the route the Dragonfly should take, looking at what the cameras had tracked, seeing where the distortions were.

  “Something’s really wrong,” Tattletale said.

  “With the distortions?”

  “The distortions are a band-aid. Vista’s trying to fix something that’s gotten fucked up,” she said. “How do you plot the course?”

  I mapped out a course to take us to the Gimel portal.

 
Tattletale changed the course, adjusting it to match the distortions we’d mapped and some we hadn’t.

  It took several minutes, all in all, but the resulting trip was fast. The Dragonfly’s onboard system kept trying to calculating the remaining time for the trip based on our location, only to get tripped up by the folded and pinched space.

  Then we hit Silkroad’s power, and accelerated to nearly three times the speed. Tattletale was caught off guard, standing beside my chair, and fell, dropping her laptop onto the hard floor.

  Both the distortion and Silkroad’s power stopped when we were a distance from the portal. The effect was disorienting.

  Corridors of folded space with the dim pink corridors of Silkroad’s power stretched out in every direction. Connecting points.

  Towers surrounded Brockton Bay, set on mountaintops and high ground within the city itself. It necessitated a careful approach. As we passed between two, I saw that they were communication towers, crafted to put satellite dishes at high points rather than provide shelter.

  The craft settled down, and we climbed out. They’d finished the ramp leading up to the portal, and it was easy enough to make our way up. I opted to walk beside Tattletale instead of use up my jetpack’s fuel.

  Twelve percent capacity remaining. An hour or two of flight.

  Vista stood at the top of the platform, on our side of the portal. A Chinese woman in an elaborate Sari-style dress stood beside her, as did a man I recognized as the Knave of Hearts from the Suits. Others were nearby, but seemed less like part of the group and more like bystanders. Kid Win was sitting at the edge of the platform, tools and a gun in his lap, abandoned as he stared at the Simurgh.

  The Knave of Hearts muttered something in what I was guessing was Dutch. Louder, he commented, “They weren’t joking.”

  “What happened?” I asked, the second we had their attention.

  “Cauldron’s running with their tail between their legs,” Vista said. “Big promises, excuses about having all the power and being the only ones who can really put the screws to Scion, and then they run at the last minute.”

  “Let us not be hasty,” the Knave of Hearts said. “It is possible Scion hit their headquarters. We won’t know until we have more information.”

  “We can’t get information,” Vista said. “Because they never gave us a better way of getting in contact, and they never told us where their headquarters are.”

  “Yes,” Knave said. He looked at me. “We have no portals but the ones that were left open. We cannot communicate by opening a door and talking to the other person. Vista, Silk Road and I are attempting to patch together an answer.”

  “A workaround,” Vista said.

  “Fast transportation between key areas,” Tattletale observed. “Your power and Silk Road’s to make the corridors…”

  “I am handling communication and pinpointing the other portal locations,” Knave said. “The Hearts of the Suits have good relations with other teams and places.”

  “I can give you the coordinates,” Tattletale said.

  “We have the coordinates,” Knave said, sounding annoyed. “All but the concealed portals.”

  “I think I know where those are,” Tattletale said.

  Knave looked even more annoyed at that, but he nodded. “Step through, talk to the guys at the station, they’ll get you set up. We’ll handle the ones we know about while we wait.”

  The station was on the other side of the portal. A way to keep the civilians from trying to go back to Bet to loot and getting themselves killed or stranded, and a place where they could organize things.

  Tattletale and I both gave up our phones. The technicians on the other end changed settings to bring them on board with the hodgepodge arrays they’d put up on both Bet and Gimel.

  Tattletale reclaimed her phone, then paged through the contents, checking settings. When she was satisfied, she looked at me. “I don’t expect you to hang around while I’m doing the geek thing and pointing those guys to the right places.”

  I nodded. “I’ll see how the others are doing and get back to you.”

  Getting the Endbringers on board had marked the point we’d stopped reeling and started preparing again. I could see the results. The Gimel settlement was swiftly transforming from a sprawling refugee camp to a standing ground. Refugees were being escorted or transported to other locations, packing up tents and possessions and climbing into trucks and helicopters. It made room for the capes that were here.

  Miss Militia was at the center of it, giving orders, managing the capes and the civilians in charge.

  Squads were organized, many from the Protectorate, not in rank and file, but clustering according to their respective teams or organization. Here and there, they’d gathered in more specialized groups.

  I could see Rachel, Imp, Foil and Parian with the Chicago Wards, sitting or lying on the closed bins that held supplies for the settlement. Only Golem was absent.

  I felt a moment’s trepidation. I had doubts, regrets, even a kind of shame, when it came to the Chicago teams.

  I’d said it out loud, but I’d never really faced the decision I’d made: giving up on being a hero.

  Still, I found myself walking up to them.

  “Here she is,” Grace said. “Make your way here okay, Weaver?”

  “Doormaker left a door open for us,” I said.

  “He left doors open for everyone,” Tecton said. “But navigation’s a little tricky. Can’t always make it from point A to point B.”

  “We did okay,” I said. “Vista was saying this is a cut and run on Cauldron’s part, but I can’t imagine this as something malicious or cowardly. They wouldn’t have left the portals here if it was.”

  “I agree,” Tecton said.

  “Who’s looking into it?” I asked.

  “Satyr and the other ex-Vegas capes,” Grace replied.

  “Isn’t that like sending the fucking fox to guard the henhouse?” Romp asked. “Except it’s sending the confusing mind-game head-fuckers to answer the confusing, fucked-up riddle?”

  “Yes,” Imp said. “Totally. God, it’s nice to finally have someone who can explain situations clearly.”

  “More like,” Foil said, “sending a group that’s very well versed in conspiracy and subterfuge to deal with the sort of thing they’re very good at handling.”

  “Now you’re being confusing,” Imp said.

  “Where’s Tattletale?” Rachel asked.

  “Outside. Helping Vista and Silk Road to put together new rapid-travel routes.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  “Do you miss her?” Imp asked, turning around. “Like, actually?”

  “She’s a member of the team.”

  “But you miss her! That’s awesome!”

  “I don’t,” Rachel said. Then, after a moment’s thought, she added, “And that means it isn’t awesome.”

  “I thought you couldn’t stand her.”

  “I can stand her, and it took a long time to get that far. That’s all it is,” Rachel said.

  “But you asked. Like, for the first time ever.”

  “I have a question for her. That’s all.”

  Romp looked at her teammates, turning to Grace, then Tecton. “Am I the only one who hears these guys talk and wonders how the fuck they ever got to be in charge of a city?”

  “Don’t fucking swear,” Grace said, saying the line as if it were reflexive by now. Romp looked annoyed, but Cuff smiled, and I could see Tecton looking away, as if he was forgetting that people couldn’t see his face while he had the helmet on. I, too, smiled. Romp was completely unware about why it was funny that Grace was admonishing her on the swearing.

  I turned to Rachel, “What’s the question? Something I can help with?”

  She shrugged. “This dork with Miss Militia was telling me some tinker was wanting to try something with my power. Give my dog some drug shit a rat made? I didn’t follow, and he kept talking to me like I have brain damage, which I
don’t, so I didn’t listen.”

  “Which made the guy step it up even more,” Imp commented. “Until it sounded like he was talking to a five year old.”

  “I walked away,” Rachel said.

  “Stuff a rat made?” I asked.

  “Lab Rat,” Imp said.

  “Wouldn’t work,” I said. “Her power burns up toxins and chemicals in the dog’s systems.”

  “I said that when they said they wanted to use drugs,” Rachel said.

  “They know that already,” Imp said. “They wanted to try anyways. Have some things left over from the previous fight.

  Dosing mutated dogs with Lab Rat’s leftover transformation serums?

  Would the gains be additive?

  “The drugs they’re talking about are the only reason I’m still here,” I said. “Honestly, I’m seeing only two outcomes. Three, maybe: the effects stack up and Rachel’s dog gets even tougher or more versatile; the dog ceases to be a dog while the serum’s active and Rachel’s power stops working; or it’s made for humans and not dogs, and we get a negative reaction.”

  “Two out of three odds,” Romp said.

  “Actually,” Tecton said, “Nothing’s guaranteeing that the odds of any result are even. Could be a ten percent chance of the first, five percent chance of the second and an eighty-five percent chance of the last one.”

  “And a five percent chance it’s something else entirely,” Imp said, sagely.

  Tecton shook his head. “That doesn’t add up.”

  “Ignore her,” Parian said.

  “The numbers don’t mean anything to me,” Rachel said. She frowned, making eye contact with me. “You think I should?”

  “I do. Anything and everything we can think of to mix things up or combine powers is good. I really like that there are people out there thinking outside the box. It’s exactly what we need right now.”

  “Right,” Rachel said. She hopped down from the lid of the supply container. “Going to go talk to her then. If that guy tries baby-talking to me again, I’m going to make Bastard bite him.”

  “No way. You gotta fuck with his head,” Imp said.