Worm

by John Mccrae Wildbow

  “We should exfiltrate,” Golem said. “Lose the costumes, wear other ones, blend into the crowd.”

  “Except you need your costume,” I said. “Cuff’s far stronger with hers. Imp, Rachel and I benefit pretty heavily from ours.”

  “It’s just an idea,” Golem said.

  “It’s an idea,” I said. “Very workable, but it doesn’t address our main issue. We need to stop them from going after the Doctor. If we only wanted to escape, then I’d agree with your plan, but for now-”

  “Looks like they have groups formed,” Imp said.

  It was true. I had to tilt my phone so others could see what I was seeing. Gaps had formed between the discrete groups, as everyone figured out who they were sticking with. The main group looked like it had eighty or ninety people.

  “That’s a lot of people to stop,” Golem commented. He gave me a sidelong glance. “You’re wanting to do something here?”

  I nodded. “Have to, don’t we?”

  “Damn it,” he said, but he didn’t argue.

  “Canary?” I asked.

  Her eyes were on the two guys we had on the ground.

  “Canary,” I said, a little louder.

  Nothing.

  One was still choking. I ordered the bugs to make their way out of his airway. They weren’t blocking it, but they were keeping him down. We had the situation here under control.

  Canary didn’t seem to relax any as the bugs flowed out of his mouth and nose. A few crawled forth from beneath his eyelids. He coughed and gagged.

  She got more tense as I let up on ‘softball’. Maybe I should have left him the way he was.

  “Canary,” I repeated myself for the third time, injecting a little more force into my voice.

  She looked at me, disoriented.

  “Can you sing to them?”

  “Just them?”

  “If you don’t have control, then yeah. Just them.”

  “I guess.”

  “It makes them suggestible?” I asked.

  “I don’t really know. I never really experimented with my power.”

  “Not even in the Birdcage?”

  “Not really, no.”

  I nodded.

  “They’ll listen to me. If I really get into it, they’ll do anything I say.”

  “Are they suggestible to you alone, or everyone?”

  Canary shook her head.

  “You don’t know,” I said, in the same instant she said, “I don’t know.”

  “Can you group them all together?” I asked.

  Lung moved fast enough that it caught me off guard, bending down to grab ‘softball’ and the other guy by the throats. He slammed them against the wall, putting them beside the guy I’d taken hostage.

  Golem bound them in place.

  Lung grunted, and I couldn’t read any meaning in the noise. Irritation? Satisfaction?

  He was restless. Ready for a fight. The sound might have been a ‘there, now we can stop talking and do something.’

  “Lung,” I said.

  “Mm?”

  “Go watch the corridor? Your hearing is good enough you can follow along. Plus you might not want to be too close to Canary, here.”

  “Mm,” he said.

  Less verbal, now, because of the transformation?

  Canary crossed the room, and she began singing. Wordless at first, as if sounding out what she wanted to do, then with more character.

  Even though she kept her voice low, it still reached me, and that made me more than a little paranoid.

  I moved to the other end of the cell, leaning against the wall. When I could still hear the sounds, I put a curtain of bugs between myself and her, and made them buzz and drone, fluctuating the sound until I couldn’t make out what she was doing.

  “What are you thinking?” Rachel asked me.

  “Chaos,” I said. “Ideal world, it won’t be chaos with us at the center.”

  Rachel nodded. “No dogs, then?”

  That many parahumans, I suspected the dogs wouldn’t last more than a few minutes. “No. Let’s not put them in too much danger.”

  “Lovely sentiment,” Shadow Stalker said, just a little sarcastically. “So how are you pulling off this chaos thing?”

  “Whatever you’re going to do, do it soon,” Tattletale said.

  I gathered my swarm into a cluster. Then I activated my knife.

  Using thread, I bound the knife handle, then lifted the knife into the air.

  “What are you doing?” Cuff asked. She sounded genuinely curious.

  The bugs stopped working to carry the knife, and I very carefully grabbed it by the handle, before withdrawing my hand from the mass.

  “Had a thought, but it doesn’t work. It’s too conspicuous, the swarm.”

  “Floating death knife?” Shadow Stalker asked.

  “That was the basic idea. But I’ll need to do something else,” I said. I turned off the effect around it, watched as it dissolved into smoke. “Custodian.”

  I felt out with my bugs. She reached directly into the swarm, letting me feel the slow movement of her hand.

  “Generally speaking, you think you could handle most of the ones out there?”

  She slowly floated through my swarm. The movement of her head… was she shaking it?

  I felt a familiar kind of disappointment. We had the tools. Canary’s song, Lung, the knife, the dogs, the Custodian, my swarm… but in execution, it didn’t fit together.

  The crowd was stomping now, a rhythmic stomping, the crowd working in unison.

  If anyone wasn’t game, if anyone wasn’t keen on the lynching of the armless man, they had to be powerless in the face of this much fury. How could they speak against it? Defend the man?

  It was scary to think about.

  “Riling them up to go trash the place,” Tattletale said.

  There was a crash. I turned to my cell phone. A cloud of dust, the crowd was agitated. Someone had trashed a cell, or a group of cells.

  “…If they keep doing that, they’re going to hit these cells awfully soon,” Tattletale added.

  I shut my eyes.

  “We’ll have to give it a shot,” I said. “Shadow Stalker? Leave.”

  “Leave?” Shadow Stalker asked.

  “Find a vantage point, away from the crowd. Be ready. Your targets are the special case fifty-threes. When I give you the signal, take out as many as you can. As many as you safely can.”

  “Your concern for my well being is touching, Hebert,” she said.

  “I’d be annoyed if you got killed,” I said. “I’d have that nagging doubt in the back of my mind, wondering if I sent you off into a suicidal situation because of our history. And because we can’t afford to lose anyone. Because you’re a human, and I don’t want people on our side to die needlessly.”

  “So it’s about pride,” she said. “Petty, stupid pride, that you think the outcome of this shit is up to you. And maybe fear? That you’ll lose too many good soldiers?”

  “Whatever,” I said. “However you want to interpret it.”

  “I’m assuming you’ll insist on tranquilizer bolts,” she said. “Because you don’t want anyone dying needlessly?”

  “No,” I said. I thought of Newter, of the unique physiology of the case fifty-threes. “Lethal shots.”

  She made a funny little laugh as she looked down at her crossbow. She began loading it with expert, practiced movements. “Funny how it all turns out. This, for one thing. That I can’t anticipate you anymore. And… that it’s just you. There’s nobody to mourn me when I’m gone. Family doesn’t really care. No friends left. No teammates, even. I’m left to console myself with the idea that, if I die, I’ll at least annoy the depressing, creepy little geek from high school.”

  “I’d say something reassuring,” I said. “I want to tell you that you matter more to me than that. Or that I’m sure you matter to someone out there… but I don’t think you’d buy it.”

  “I wouldn’t,”
she said. She wasn’t maintaining eye contact. “Whatever. I’m going as far up the stairs as I can, put myself half out the wall, snipe from there. I’ll be a minute.”

  Then she was gone, stepping through the wall, heading towards the stairwell closest to us.

  “You meant that shit, Skitter?“ Imp asked. “Wanting to care? Wanting to reassure her?”

  “Pretty much,” I said. “At this juncture, there’s no reason to lie.”

  “You’re too forgiving,” she said.

  The lights flickered as another impact shook the complex.

  “They’re going.”

  “So are we,” I said. “Just as soon as Canary’s ready.”

  Imp spoke, “Always ticked Alec off, you know. That you weren’t any good at holding grudges. Too focused on the present, when it came to picking your enemies and your allies. I wound up defending you, even.“

  I was barely listening, trying to focus on the swarm, picking out the places they could operate and the places they couldn’t, tracking the various prisoners as they started moving.

  But that last sentence caught me off guard. “You defended me?”

  “For him, it’s his raisin de enter.“

  “Raison d’etre,” Tattletale clarified.

  “Yeah. That. His daddy fucked him up, so it sort of gave him an inner fire where he didn’t have much more than coal inside, y’know what I mean? Forward momentum, itch to go out and get shit done? Become a villain with the idea that maybe someday he’d get to pull one over on the old man, become a warlord. So for him, it was the only reason he really got up in the morning, besides maybe the basic pleasures of life. My parents fucked me over too, but it was different. No grudge here, just a whole lot of sad.”

  “Yeah,” I said. I wasn’t sure what to add to that.

  “So it was a fight. Closest to a fight as I ever got with that asshole. Well, if Skitter’s being nice, so will I. Good deed of the day, since I’m dicking around now, nothing to report… You listening in, Shady?”

  “Shady?”

  Man, it was eerie to recognize Sophia’s voice over the earbud.

  “I’ll take that as a yes. Regent told me about his stunt. Controlling you.“

  Canary passed through my swarm. She was silent, and the glances to the side when Imp was speaking suggested she didn’t want to interrupt.

  “He took you home. Gave you a hard time, messing with your mom. The whole thing with you nearly committing suicide afterwards.“

  I was very still. The lights flickered, the ground rumbled, and I didn’t so much as flinch.

  “Well, I’m not going to ‘prattle’, as Lung would put it. He was there, obviously. He told me about it, after the fact. Just, like, a heart to heart, between two of us who don’t have much heart to go around, you get me? Neither of us’s the type to get embarrassed, so nothing to hide. Can share all the stories. Share each other, just by talking?”

  She made it sound like a question. Like she wasn’t even sure, and she wanted validation from someone.

  I remembered how Regent had controlled her. Seized her with his power. Sharing each other indeed.

  “Not a guy that’s in touch with his emotions. Way I always saw it, they’re there, he’s just oblivious to it all. Had to be. So it’s only after he’s through with you that he realizes maybe he was a little hard on you, maybe he twisted the knife harder than he usually would, because it bugged him. There you are with a family, and he can feel your emotions, and he totally knows you don’t even realize it in the slightest. He’s blind to his own emotions and you’re blind to the emotions of others.”

  “Is this going somewhere?“ Shadow Stalker’s voice. “You’re prattling.“

  “Take it from me, as I tell you what the lazy jerk who body-controlled you told me. Your mommy loves you lots, Shady.“

  There was a pause. “Okay.“

  “That’s all you’re going to give me? I totally dish all this, and I get an ‘okay’?“ Imp asked. She was oblivious to the pause before Shadow Stalker had spoken, to the fact that she’d affected Shadow Stalker on some level.

  That, or Imp’s wording had taken a second to figure out.

  “No arguments,” I said, cutting in before something could start between two of our more volatile members. “Canary?”

  “They’re ready.”

  “Good. Rachel, Golem, Cuff. If and when we move, I need you to run interference. When we move, I need you to distract, protect the core group, protect us as we run. Rachel, keep the dogs large enough they can maybe take a hit or two, but not so big they can’t make their way into the stairwell. Lung?”

  There was no reply. I could sense him out in the corridor, just at the corner where it looked out into the main hallway with the prisoners and other cells. He turned in response. He might have been able to hear me through the comm system, but he could have heard me anyways.

  “I don’t think he knows how to use the comm system,” Tattletale said. “Or he does, but he’s changed enough it’s hard to do.”

  “Lung,” I said. “The other three are giving us cover. You have enough experience I’m not going to tell you what to do. You’ve been at this cape thing for a decade and a bit. So go all-in. Or do what the other three are doing. Your call.”

  There was no reply. Maybe he didn’t understand the comm system.

  “You’re so calm,” Canary said. “Most of you. Lung seemed nervous.”

  Lung, out in the corridor, clenched his fist.

  You annoyed him, saying that.

  “I’m shaking,” Canary said, and her strange, melodic voice gave evidence to her fear. “You can’t tell with these gauntlets I’m wearing, but I’m shaking.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Don’t worry.”

  “I’m-” she laughed a little, and the laugh hitched with emotion. “I’m- pretty worried.”

  “We’ve been through worse. Everyone here has been through worse.”

  “That doesn’t make me feel better. It makes me feel like maybe I had the right idea, back in the beginning when I decided not to do this cape thing. I’m going to fuck up, and the stakes are so fucking high…”

  “Relax,” I said. “Or… if that’s not possible, just, um. Tell yourself we’ve got your back. None of us are about to let the newbie die.”

  “That’s not that reassuring,” she said.

  “It’ll have to do,” I said. The ground was shaking, and someone was manually tearing apart a cell block just a distance away. I could feel Mantellum retreating, the blind spot shifting.

  I was just a little impatient. We were running out of time, and I didn’t even have everything in place.

  I parted my swarm, giving myself a view of the three captives.

  “You three,” I said.

  They raised their heads.

  “Brutto tik,” the largest one growled.

  “Be quiet,” I ordered, as authoritative as I could manage.

  He clenched his teeth, lips pressed together.

  Does he even realize he’s obeying?

  “I’m not your enemy. Stop treating me like an enemy and listen,” I said.

  I could see the tension slowly seep out of them.

  “Nod your heads,” I said, experimentally.

  They each nodded, out of sync.

  “Golem? Release them,” I said.

  Golem created more hands, manually tearing the old ones apart.

  The three stood still, looking just a little unfocused.

  I turned to the largest one. “What are your powers?”

  He looked confused.

  “Tell me your powers.”

  “I’m dense,” he said.

  Ah.

  I extended my disintegration knife in his direction, saw the delayed reaction, the genuine fear and concern.

  I turned it around, offering him the handle.

  He stared at it, still looking afraid.

  “Calm down,” I said.

  He relaxed, very slowly, very visibly.

/>   It works on involuntary reactions?

  He settled into a state that still looked ill-at-ease, but not nearly as afraid as before.

  Or does it work on the voluntary, visible signs of the involuntary reactions?

  “Take it,” I said.

  He took the knife.

  “Hide it.”

  He hid it.

  “Now don’t move. Don’t be afraid.”

  He went stock still.

  “Um,” Canary said. “A thing…”

  “A thing?” I asked.

  “He’s not as influenced as my ex-boyfriend was, but… they’re very literal, about what you say. Even like this.”

  I looked at the dense man. “Okay. Then-”

  “You’re allowed to move to breathe,” Canary cut me off.

  The man exhaled audibly.

  “Now don’t react,” I told him.

  Then I sent my flying bugs to him, collecting them beneath the generic uniform he wore. They carried silk cord and wound it loosely around his legs and arms.

  True to form, he didn’t react.

  I thought about it a bit more, and then gave him an excess of silk. Hundreds of feet of it.

  “This cell was empty, there’s nothing inside except people looking for some privacy. Make your way to an isolated spot where nobody can really see you, wait until the lights flicker out, and then use the safety on the knife.”

  He looked at me as though he hadn’t taken in any of it.

  “My ex was like that, before went and obeyed me, without my knowledge,” Canary said. “I think this guy will listen.”

  “Then you’re free. Forget this.”

  He left. I looked at the remaining two.

  “You two, shirts off.”

  “Yes. I like the way you think.”

  “Be quiet, Imp,” I said. “We’re moving, be ready.”

  “And moving starts with sexy times. Not complaining.“

  For someone who hates being ignored, she seems to demand it from others, I thought. “Sit in the corridor, near where the spiky, scaled guy is now. Tell him to come here. If anyone comes, kiss. Convince them they’re interrupting something private, get angry.”

  “I’m not comfortable with this bit,” Cuff said. “It’s creepy.”