Worm

by John Mccrae Wildbow

  “Biting people is more satisfying,” Rachel responded.

  “No, look… uh… Tecton. You gotta give me something really smart and scientific sounding. Like, say what Taylor said, but in smart-guy words.”

  “Critical mistake here: you’re implying Tecton is smart,” Romp said.

  Tecton sat up straighter. “Hey. Just because I’m not your team leader anymore-”

  “-You’re totally not the one who gets to order me around,” Romp replied. “Deal with it.”

  “Run a lap,” Grace said, her voice quiet.

  Romp turned around, eyebrows raised.

  “A lap?”

  “Two laps,” Grace said, her voice quiet, cold and dangerous. “For not moving the second I gave the order.”

  “What am I supposed to fucking run around?”

  “Three laps for swearing, four because you’re still here. We can do five if you don’t move now. Start running, and if you don’t pick a big enough area to run around, I can give you another few laps.”

  “This is balls,” Romp said, hopping down from the bin’s lid.

  “Five laps, then,” Grace said.

  “I know I’m getting more laps by talking, but I needed to state the truth for the record.” She kept talking, speaking with each footfall. “Balls, balls, balls.”

  The moment she was out of earshot, Grace and the others broke into laughter. Foil was the only member of the Undersiders who seemed to get it, her shoulders shaking in silent laughter.

  “I can’t believe she actually went,” Cuff said.

  “Don’t let her exhaust herself,” Tecton said.

  Grace shook her head, still smiling. “I’ll stop her after she finishes the first lap.”

  “Okay, I need something to write on,” Imp said. “Anyone?”

  “Here,” I said, getting a notepad from my belt. I handed it to her. “Why?”

  She handed the notepad to Tecton. “So Tecton can write something down. And I hold it up, like a cue card, and Rachel recites it, sounding like a genius, and we blow dr. baby-talk’s mind. And if he turns around, I use my power, so he’s never the wiser.”

  Tecton nodded, “I can do that.”

  I winced. “There’s a flaw in that.”

  “It’s brilliant,” Imp said. She looked around, turning to Parian and Foil.

  Parian only extended a hand towards Rachel.

  “What?” Imp asked.

  Parian gestured again, pointing.

  “I don’t get it… Rachel… oh.”

  “I don’t read much,” Rachel said, blunt.

  “Annnd now I feel like a dick,” Imp said.

  “I don’t care,” Rachel said.

  She probably doesn’t.

  “That doesn’t make me any less of a dick. How often do I get reminders about the reading thing?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Rachel said. She looked annoyed. “This is why I don’t talk to people. Why are we still talking about this?”

  She was more irritated at the fact that Imp wasn’t dropping it than the fact that her illiteracy had been brought up.

  “Maybe if I come with?” Tecton offered. “I’ll distract whoever Dr. baby-talk is, and you can talk to Miss Militia about dosing your dogs.”

  “Or you can tell me what you were going to write down and I memorize it,” Rachel said.

  A few people in the group exchanged glances.

  “Really simple solution,” Rachel said. Except now she was talking to us like we were the idiots.

  “I’m not sure I could memorize it,” Tecton confessed.

  “The kid that’s running the lap said you weren’t that smart,” Rachel answered. “Try me.”

  “Okay, uh. ‘I see three possible outcomes’…”

  Rachel repeated what he’d said.

  They continued, Imp leaning forward and kicking her legs where they dangled from the edge of the bin.

  Grace interrupted my observations. “You’re wearing black.”

  I felt a bit of guilt welling. No, guilt wasn’t the right word. I was at peace with my decision.

  I just felt a little ashamed that I hadn’t been more upfront about it, with the people I’d spent years working with.

  “Yeah.”

  “I suppose you’re not going to get around to having that meeting with the PRT guys, getting yourself moved up from the Wards to the Protectorate? Unless I’m reading too much into the costume choice.”

  “You’re not,” I said. “No, I suppose I’m not going to have that meeting.”

  “Is it that we failed with the Jack thing?”

  “That’s not the entirety of it,” I said.

  “But it’s part of it, right? Isn’t that unfair? We had, like, a four percent chance of success going in, and we didn’t stop it from coming to pass, so you bail?”

  “I said it’s only part of it,” I repeated myself.

  “I know,” she said. I could see Tecton and Rachel pause, catching something in Grace’s tone.

  When Grace and I remained silent, they resumed. “…the cross species interactions…”

  “…the cross species interactions.”

  “I know,” Grace said, after a pause. “I get that. I get that there’s other reasons. Like the fact that you love those guys and you never loved us. Cool. Makes sense.”

  “I liked you guys.”

  “But you didn’t love us.”

  “No,” I said.

  “I get all that. But Golem’s pulling away too, and I know that’s because that we had only that fucking four percent chance and we failed. So I draw a connection, think maybe you’re more bothered about that than you let on.”

  I looked at Cuff, who was watching me intently. She looked even more intent and focused than Grace did.

  Then again, she was a little more invested in how Golem was doing than most.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Probably.”

  “It’s shitty,” she said. “Both Golem and you, drifting away.”

  “I know, and it feels shitty,” I said.

  “Then that’s consolation enough, for me,” Grace said. She relaxed a little, then glanced at Cuff.

  “I’m not really the type to nurse grudges,” Cuff said. “I just want Golem thinking straight again. He took it hard. So you’ll get my forgiveness if you go talk to him.”

  “I think that’s something I can do,” I answered her.

  She smiled. “He’s at the phone bank, near the station, if you want to find him.”

  Now?

  But Cuff was smiling, looking so intent.

  Weaponized niceness.

  “Right,” I said. I turned to go.

  And I could see people moving, running.

  I felt a pit swell in my stomach.

  “No,” Imp said, following my line of sight. She could see squads getting into formation. In the distance, the aircraft that had been moving refugees were turning around, coming back to us. “No, no. We had such a good joke going, don’t you dare ruin it.”

  Romp returned to us, breaking into a run to close the remainder of the distance. “Someone’s saying he’s hitting Samech. It’s one of the Earths Cauldron was going to watch over. There’s only Dragon, the Guild and some Protectorate guys there.”

  “Let’s move,” I said. “Through the portal. We’ll use the Dragonfly. Faster than waiting for another ship. Rachel, look for doctor baby-talk, if we can grab something from him before we leave, great, but let’s not dawdle.”

  There were nods all around.

  I could see the other heroes. Miss Militia and Glaistig Uaine. Revel and Exalt. Protectorate teams, sub-teams of the Suits, including the non-combat teams of the Hearts and Cups.

  People hurried to organize, pulling on costume pieces they’d left off and checking weapons, clearing out of the open spaces where shadows grew as the aircraft descended.

  One by one, the ships began to take off, flying through the tall, narrow portal.

  Three ships, then four.

 
; But the fifth didn’t take off. I reached out with my swarm, trying to catch what people were talking about, to make sense of the situation, but everyone important was already on a ship.

  King of Hearts was the only person of any meaningful rank who spoke the same language I did and who wasn’t mobilizing to leave. The leader of the Meisters, Vornehm, was giving orders in German. A scary-looking Master class cape with an army of clay men carrying tinker weapons was ordering other people around with the same harsh voice he was commanding his own troops.

  But there was no explanation of why more ships weren’t taking off.

  Had the fight already ended?

  “Keep moving,” I said, ordering the teams forward. Tattletale will know.

  As confusion descended, people started falling back into their previous state, gathering in clusters of familiar people. It almost seemed like we were the only group with direction, pushing against a milling crowd. We weren’t, but the illusion was there.

  And that same effect made it possible to see when the crowd did find direction, a common, mutual interest. Heads turned, chins raised. People found postures where their feet were set apart, as if ready to move at a moment’s notice.

  Scion. Here. Floating above the bay like he’d floated above the ocean in his first appearance.

  He’s targeting us, I realized. Two of our organized settlements in as many minutes?

  His hands hung at his sides. The golden light that radiated from him cleaned his clothes and hair, but there was enough blood on his costume that the light wasn’t rendering it as pristine as it should. His eye sockets were dark, with the way his forehead blocked the sun’s light. That same sunlight made the edges of his hair and body glow with the light that wasn’t completely blocked.

  He didn’t even raise his hand before he fired. Lights no bigger than basketballs streaked forward, leaving trails glittering behind them.

  Two of Dragon’s ships detonated violently. Occupants dead or grievously injured, people in the area of the craft wounded by the fallout.

  By the time I’d turned my head to see his follow-up, Scion had closed the distance, moving right into our midst.

  Capes with reflexes better than mine were already reacting, throwing a multitude of effects in his way. He plunged through the defenses like they weren’t even there.

  Something got in his way, but he flew around it without a second thought. He stopped right in front of a cape. Quite possibly the cape that had stalled him momentarily. A dark-skinned man in gray.

  A swirling gray effect swelled between him and the target. He struck it with a glowing hand, and the effect distorted, growing thin. Another strike, and the effect dissipated.

  Other capes were hurling effects at him. Most glanced off.

  He caught his target around the throat. Didn’t squeeze.

  But the golden light began to eat into the target’s body and costume. Scion let the man drop.

  Not a scream. Only twitching, frantic thrashing as the golden light continued to consume.

  Foil raised her arbalest. I could see our entire group tense as she raised it, Parian’s hands going to her mouth.

  A moment later, Parian’s cloth was unfurling from behind her back. Rachel was making her dogs grow, while Cuff was manipulating a shotput into a blade like the one from a circular saw.

  For my part, I began drawing the bugs into decoys, sending them into the air.

  Oblivious to it all, Foil took aim, then ran her hand along the bolt she’d loaded in place.

  I could see her draw in a breath. I’d taken marksmanship classes. Squeeze the trigger as you exhale.

  The shot flew through the air.

  Scion wheeled around and caught it.

  It wasn’t just his costume, I could see. All the lines of his body, his hands, lines that made it so he didn’t look wholly artificial, they were filled with the detritus of smoke and blood and other grit, and the golden light had only washed the surface clean. The deepest cracks held the remainder. It made fine lines look more like crags.

  I was almost glad that it took away from his human appearance.

  He let the arbalest’s bolt drop to the ground.

  His eyes were on Foil.

  A golden light swelled in his hand.

  We spread out, but Foil didn’t even flinch. Even as Cuff backed away, Foil reached out to touch the sawblade, imbuing it with power.

  Scion reached out, and Parian used her power, encircling Foil with the end of a length of cloth. Not an animal, only an arm.

  In the instant Scion loosed the bolt of light, Parian flung Foil away. Not a simple throw, but a reckless, inhumanly strong one.

  Foil was removed from the battle. Sent beyond what would have been the outskirts of the city, if we were in Bet, cast out in the direction of the Bay itself, until she was only a speck.

  The bolt hit ground, fifty or sixty feet behind us. Other people died instead. People I didn’t know.

  No longer interested in Foil, Scion turned to the nearest cape, lunging.

  Cuff threw her circular blade. Without even looking, Scion batted it aside, striking an unaffected part towards the middle. His attention was on a cape, and he swiped a glowing hand through the cape’s abdomen.

  What didn’t burn spilled forth. His screams were joined by that of a friend, another cape who screamed in horror over what had happened to him. Scion very deliberately walked past this other cape to attack someone else.

  Picking us off, choosing targets.

  Maximizing pain and suffering over raw destruction.

  Experimenting.

  And there was precious little we could do about it.

  Precious little I could do about it. My bugs formed into more decoys. Other bugs searched for the key players. Where was the man Rachel had described? The one with the serums? Where was Miss Milita?

  The Simurgh was passing through the portal, and people who’d been trying to flee to Earth Bet were now scattering, trying to flee both the Endbringer and Scion at the same time.

  Horribly timed, as entrances went. Our best hope was that he’d keep toying with us, that enough time would pass that capes stationed at the other major portals could use the fast-travel routes to get to us.

  Something like an Endbringer was all too likely to change his mind.

  It’s the beginning of the end.

  29.02

  Oh, how small we were, in the grand scheme of it all.

  Our planet was but a speck in the midst of the milky way galaxy, which was a speck in the midst of the known universe. We were fighting to save it, and yet it could disappear without anyone in the nearest solar system even noticing.

  Small, insignificant. Little more than ants before a giant.

  A pencil-thin beam lanced out from his fingertips. A sweep of his hand, waist-level, and it cut through the crowd. Cut through thighs, knees, calves, feet.

  Swept towards us.

  No time to act, to save anyone. Only to get out of the way. I jumped, activating the flight pack. I looked to my teammates, my breath trapped in my throat as I waited to see who was hit.

  Parian still had the ‘stuffed’ arm connected to a nearby building. A sweep of the arm caught a solid twenty people, catching them in the bend of the cloth and lifting them off the ground as the beam passed by. Rachel, mounted, wasn’t so lucky. The beam caught three of the dog’s legs.

  Rachel fell, tumbling to the ground. The people Parian had tossed aside, Parian included, fell in heaps, landing awkwardly.

  But alive, all but one of them untouched.

  In the chaos that followed, I could see the blood. This wasn’t a beam that seared, like some lasers did, and it didn’t cauterize as it cut. It disintegrated, leaving arteries free to pump blood out onto the grass and dirt.

  A number were laying there in shock, but there were some who were fighting, even as they bled out. Scion was momentarily caught up in a storm of shards that seemed to give him pause.

  The Suits were among the inj
ured, and King of Cups was patching up the damage. Limbs were replaced with pitch black simulacrums that caught the light in odd ways that only highlighted the very edges.

  I saw Lung among the artificial limb recipients. He’d stayed in Brockton Bay in the company of Miss Militia while the rest of us had said goodbyes and made arrangements, so it wasn’t puzzling that he was here. No, the confusing bit was that the fight had only been going for two or so minutes, and he was already transformed halfway to the state he’d been in when the Undersiders had first rescued me on the rooftop. Transforming five or ten times as fast?

  He’d been in the company of Panacea… had she done something?

  Canary had said Lung had avoided picking fights during his stay in the Birdcage, relying only on his reputation. Maybe this was a one-shot deal.

  It didn’t take the capes King of Cups had healed very long to get their bearings, scrambling to get away, or backing away as they used their abilities. A cape with deep black skin and an overly tall white helmet was sliding groups around like a chess player slid a piece into position. Another cape, just beside him, was altering the battlefield, getting obstacles out of the way. The ground swallowed walls, supplies and vehicles like it was suddenly water, rippling as they dropped beneath the surface, then changing, becoming solid once more.

  Cover didn’t work as a concept, I supposed, when his attacks cut through it so easily. Still, I wasn’t sure it was the brightest move. There had to be a more optimal way of rearranging the battlefield. Putting some people on higher ground and some on lower, without limiting their ability to dodge.

  A glance over my shoulder showed the Simurgh standing by the portal, wings folded so the ends were aimed at Scion. She had reconfigured her halo, and every single one of the guns were pointed in the same direction.

  But she didn’t shoot. She waited.

  My swarm-decoys massed in the air around Scion, some dividing into further copies. He continued to ignore them, targeting specific capes. A sphere of light was tossed in Glaistig Uaine’s direction. She didn’t move or fight back. Instead, she was saved by the guy with the tall helmet, shifted out of the way. Bishop, Chessmaster, Curling-guy?

  Unruffled, she called three spirits forth, then took flight, positioning herself high in the sky, entirely out of the fight.