Worm

by John Mccrae Wildbow

  I felt a pang of envy.

  She’d been just as lost as me. Maybe more lost, maybe not. I’d had friends, but that didn’t necessarily mean I’d had a rudder. But she’d found herself. She’d found a path and she’d found something she could do. She had a role in this.

  I looked away.

  My bugs were stirring throughout the area, as I gathered my forces and replenished my supply. I could sense people outside. Tattletale was among them, laptop tucked under one arm. She reached the door and paused, glancing up at the sky.

  For an instant, I thought it was because Scion was here. He was due.

  But she pulled the door open and walked inside.

  Panacea looked up. I could see her eyes narrow a bit. “You weren’t invited, Tattletale.”

  “Business,” Tattletale said, waltzing in anyways. “Someone camera me.”

  There was a clatter as Tattletale unceremoniously dropped the laptop down on a table.

  Imp was the first to get the camera off her mask and throw it to Tattletale. Tattletale set about extracting a chip. “So. Harbinger zero.”

  The Number Man made a pained face. “You couldn’t call me Harbinger Ten? Or even Number Man?”

  “I could. I hope you’ve got some good, juicy tidbits for us to work with, H-zero.”

  “Very little that’s concrete. This is all very much guesswork.”

  “Then let’s talk hypotheses,” she said. “Educated guesses.”

  “Scion’s upset,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Tattletale said. “His buddy died, I gather?”

  “Yeah,” Imp said. “And we threw bits of his dead buddy at him to distract him before dropping a skyscraper on him. But I dunno how much that did.”

  “You accomplish your goal, in the middle of all that?” Tattletale asked.

  “We found out second triggers aren’t a real possibility,” I said. “Formulas either. But if we want to do the second trigger thing, Contessa should be able to point the way. It could mean extra firepower, or buying time.”

  “She wasn’t there?” Tattletale asked.

  “I assumed she was with Khonsu.”

  “According to the attackers, she died,” the Number Man said. “Mantellum’s power was the rock to her scissors.”

  “You failed,” Shadow Stalker said.

  I frowned. She wasn’t entirely wrong. “Our best bet was a special kind of Cauldron formula, and he nuked them. Cauldron let Mantellum slip past their radar, so maybe there’s a chance there’s another Cauldron cape out there who got that special kind of formula, with a game-breaking power. Something that isn’t in Scion’s model.”

  “Unlikely,” the Number Man said. “Mantellum slipped by us because he had a power that countered perception powers. The sort of power we’d need against Scion would be an offensive one, and I doubt we’d let things slip so badly in vetting those powers.”

  “You’re a real downer, you know that?” Imp asked.

  Panacea let go of my stump and walked over to where the Doormaker’s partner was lying. I supposed the essential fixes were done. I checked my stump, and found the burned skin was sloughing off.

  “Don’t touch,” Panacea ordered, looking at me out of the corner of one eye.

  I let my hand drop, then sat up.

  “The biggest thing,” I said, “Was that Scion was wrong. He can see the path to victory, and from the vision we saw, we know that he can make mistakes. He plotted for a future that would be sure to reunite him and his partner… and he got his wish. It was just that his partner was brain-dead, gutted, useless.”

  “Sooo,” Imp said. “We help him reach a future where he eradicates humanity, trick him, he waltzes away.”

  “His goal isn’t to eradicate humanity,” Tattletale said. “It’s to destroy most of it. Remember? Dinah never said he’d destroy all of us.”

  “If you destroy ninety-nine point nine percent of humanity,” the Number Man said, “We’ll die out.”

  “Probably,” Tattletale agreed. “But he’s not going that far. He’s leaving options open. He’s got one singular purpose. To continue his species’ life cycle. To do that, he needs a partner.”

  “Can we give him one?” I asked.

  Tattletale smirked. “Kind of hard to pull off. A lot of bases to cover, and a lot of areas where we don’t have enough info.”

  “But I’m asking if we can give him one. Can we fake him out, give him what he wants and buy ourselves some breathing room?”

  Marquis stepped away from the back of the kitchen. He watched as Bonesaw dug through Doormaker’s skull cavity. “It could upset him, more than he’s already been upset. Speaking as someone who recently recovered the thing I want most in the world, the only thing scarier than the idea of losing that thing is the reality of what I’d do for revenge.”

  “Upsetting him is good,” Imp said. “Right?”

  “Right,” I said. “He can be affected emotionally. Not by emotion-affecting powers, I don’t think, but he’s influenced by his feelings. That’s good. That’s something we can use.”

  “You want to irritate the world-destroying alien god,” one of Marquis’ men said.

  “I want to get him to a point where he might make a mistake,” I said. My eyes moved to Shadow Stalker. It’s how we captured her in the first place. “It’s a starting point.”

  “Starting points are only that,” Lung said. “I can understand if you would start this with your enemy off-balance, then fight him knowing you can hurt him, but he cannot be truly hurt.”

  “Tea, anyone?” Marquis asked, interjected.

  Lung nodded. I raised my good hand. Panacea nodded as well.

  “Green?” he asked me. “The others drink green.”

  “Black. With milk.”

  He turned his attention to the kettle.

  I looked at Lung, taking a deep breath before speaking. “Not starting this isn’t an option. If we wait until an idea comes up, then we’re going to be too late. We start this, reckless as it may be, and we leave a door open.”

  “For failure as well as success,” Marquis said, on the far end of the room, his attention on emptying the kettle into the individual mugs.

  “What would you suggest, then?” I asked. I might have come across a little hostile in the process.

  “I would counter your question with a question,” Marquis said. “Who do you see on the front lines? Which heroes and villains are still fighting? Which ones keep returning to the battlefield, before any of the others have even found their feet?”

  I’d thought something like this to myself. “The monsters, the ones that are a little crazy, the ones that are a lot crazy.”

  “Not quite the answer I would have given,” Marquis said.

  “Which answer would you have given?” I asked.

  “I would say it’s the people who are most in touch with who they truly are,” Marquis said.

  “Same thing,” I responded. “We’re all fucked up, we’re all damaged, a little crazy, a little monstrous.”

  He frowned a little. “People here might take offense to that. Myself included.”

  “No offense intended.”

  “There’s a strength in knowing who you are. I would suggest that everyone play to that knowledge. Reflection, after all, is the province of the old. It’s in your final days that you sum up your experiences, weigh the good against the bad, think back to the pivotal moments, and decide if you’ve made your mark. Others go through this sooner, the terminally ill. Those that expect to die.”

  “I don’t get it,” Rachel said.

  “Are you happy with who you are?” he asked.

  “Sure.”

  “In a general sense, do you know what you’re doing in the next few hours and days?”

  Rachel looked at me. “Yeah.”

  “Is there something in common between those two things?”

  Bitch made a face, “Kind of?”

  “That’s what I’m talking about.”

  �
��I don’t get it.”

  There was a distant rumble. A roar rose through the air, a series of shouts and warnings all coming in unison, mingling together into a singular noise.

  He’s here.

  It’s unending. The same thing over and over again. Destruction, an enemy we can’t truly beat, always just a little worse than the last time.

  Rachel left, no question. Imp lingered, but followed, sticking to Rachel like glue. I saw Alexandria, Number Man and the Harbingers go, then Marquis and his followers, Lung excepted.

  “Hey, Amelia,” Bonesaw said. “Gift wrap this one for me?”

  Panacea stepped away from the eyeless clairvoyant, touching Doormaker. I watched as the bone at his forehead started to knit together, and was then covered with flesh.

  He jolted a little, and then sat up.

  “You were bleeding into your brainpan,” Bonesaw said. “You’re going to feel crummy.”

  He raised a hand, reaching out, floundering.

  “Wait, did I fuck him up?” Bonesaw asked.

  “No, he was screwed up before,” I said. “He’s looking for his partner.”

  Lung grabbed the Clairvoyant, then staggered a little.

  It’s based on touch, I realized.

  I used my bugs to draw a cord out. They wrapped it around one finger and held it straight out to Doormaker. Panacea grabbed it and tugged a little, leading the blind Clairvoyant to his partner.

  They held hands.

  There was a pause.

  Then doors unfolded, throughout my range.

  Most of the others had left. Tattletale was focused on her laptop, participating in the battle in a sense, even if she was still here.

  Bonesaw and Panacea, too. They were cleaning the tables, moving things aside and getting organized, preparing for the battle to come.

  The ones who hadn’t left yet were Shadow Stalker, Lung and I.

  “Am I safe to go?” I asked.

  At my question, as if I’d somehow prodded her, Shadow Stalker left.

  “You can,” Panacea said. “But let me thicken the skin, so your stump doesn’t pop like a water balloon.”

  “Let’s,” I said.

  She touched my stump.

  “I asked to be last for a reason,” I said.

  She looked up, curious.

  “You know, what your dad was saying? I kind of wish he’d finished. I feel like I was on the brink of coming to a conclusion.”

  The sounds outside were getting worse. Doormaker opened a portal beside us. Safety?

  It was something to do. I helped the others lead the patients through. Lung carried two of the wounded Irregulars. We entered a cave with a very flat bottom, open to the elements. A nice day, so different from the chaos and ugliness that was in New Brockton Bay.

  “My dad and I have talked about this a good bit. Why?”

  “I dunno. Finding our role, finding our place? Lung and I are the only ones who haven’t left or started preparing for the fight. Well, us and the wounded. The others know where they’re at. Even Imp, without any power that can really do something, is out there with Rachel, giving guidance. But Lung and I? We’re both pretty proud individuals, and we don’t have a role in this. Like Lung said, he can’t attack Scion until this is over.”

  Lung had brought the last few through. All of us settled out of the way of the portal door, in case a beam came blasting through. “I have a job. I will protect these girls.”

  “I think you know what I mean. You’re pissed, on a level, because you’re not a part of all of this. You’re better than this job you’ve been given.”

  He folded his arms, but he didn’t disagree.

  “There’s a psychiatric term for this,” Bonesaw said. “Projection.”

  “No. Skitter is right,” Lung said, looking irritated. “I am more than a bodyguard.”

  Reinforcements were arriving at the outskirts of the settlement, using Doormaker’s doors.

  “I feel like I’m on the brink of finding where I need to be,” I said. “I sort of have the power to act, I sort of have a role. I can communicate, I can scout, I’m versatile enough to combine my powers with others. I can figure out ways to attack, I can brainstorm. But something’s missing. Like Lung says, I feel like I’m better than this. What Marquis was saying struck a chord.”

  “Think back to the time in your life when you were strongest,” Panacea said.

  I did.

  Not a time when I had the Dragonfly or the flight pack. It was when I was fighting the Slaughterhouse Nine, Alexandria, Defiant and Dragon.

  “Times when you were most scared,” she said.

  The same times.

  “I think those are the times when you’re most like you. And it sucks, I know. It’s horrible to think about it like that, because at least for me, it wasn’t a time when I liked myself. Just the opposite.”

  “But you came to terms with it.”

  “I owned that part of me,” she said. “And I can barely look Carol and Neil in the eyes, because of it. But I’m secure in who I am, and I can do this. Healing people, being a medic for the people fighting on our side.”

  I nodded.

  The image I’d seen on Glenn’s computer screen crossed my mind. Me, unrecognizable even to myself, surrounded by the swarm.

  I’m just a little bit of a monster, I thought. I can’t put the blame on my passenger.

  I exhaled slowly. I could hear the Simurgh’s screaming.

  “Will you help me?” I asked.

  “Help?” Panacea asked.

  “Imp reminded me of a moment. Of something Bonesaw said, when she was carving into my head. A threat. That she was going to mess with Grue’s head, take away his ability to control his power. She was going to do the same to me.”

  “I think I know what you’re thinking,” Bonesaw said. “Even if I did anything there, it’d probably fuck up your head.”

  “I haven’t done anything in that department, but I’ve gotten enough glimpses to guess you wouldn’t come back from it,” Panacea said. “No fixes, no patching it up. It’d be like trying to plug a leak with water gushing out full force.”

  “Second triggers are about knocking down walls,” I said. My eyes fell on Bonesaw. “Removing restrictions the entity put in place. If this part of the brain is a part that the entity shaped to help regulate powers on our end, then I need you to de-regulate.”

  “If it was that easy, I would’ve done it for all the other members of the Slaughterhouse Nine.”

  “I’m not thinking it’s easy,” I said, my voice quiet.

  Some capes came through. They brought two wounded through the portal, laying them out on the flat rock floor beside us. Panacea and Bonesaw bent down, getting to work.

  “Give me a minute and I’ll try,” Bonesaw said. She was patching up a cape that had been disemboweled. She looked over her shoulder at Tattletale, who had set up in a far corner. “But I gotta say, I’m giving you a ninety-nine percent chance of coming out of this with regrets. Maybe you should run it by Tattletale, there?”

  I looked back at Tattletale.

  “You’re going to lose your mind. Maybe a little, maybe a lot. Maybe all at once, maybe in pieces. Depends on how it all reconnects in the end,” Bonesaw said.

  “Tattletale would stop me,” I said. “She’d…”

  See it as something self-destructive, suicidal.

  I shook my head a little. “…No. Keep her in the dark, for the time being. Let her focus on what she’s doing.”

  “Okay,” Bonesaw said. “She’s going to figure it out pretty fast, though.”

  I saw Panacea fidget. She was kneeling by Canary.

  “Riley,” Panacea said.

  Bonesaw looked at her… whatever Panacea was to her.

  “I’ll handle it.”

  “You don’t do brains.”

  “I’m inexperienced, yeah,” Panacea said. “But even inexperienced, I think I can do a cleaner job than you. And Tattletale’s less likely to catc
h on if you aren’t sawing Taylor’s skull open.”

  “I wasn’t talking about experience,” Bonesaw replied.

  Panacea stared down at her hands, covered in tattoos, with a rich, vibrant red in the gaps.

  “This isn’t a solution,” she said, without looking up. “You said a second trigger wouldn’t work. This is… it’s so crude you couldn’t even call it a hack job.”

  The Simurgh’s screaming continued.

  Dinah had left me two notes.

  The Simurgh had reminded me of the second.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  It wasn’t an apology for the consequences of the first note. No, Dinah hadn’t approached me since. She hadn’t decided I’d fulfilled the terms and deemed it okay to finally contact me again.

  Two words, telling me that something ugly was going to happen. Directed at me.

  There was a chance that it meant I’d lose someone, or I’d lose something precious. Maybe it referred to my friends. Maybe it referred to my mission, my direction. My dad, perhaps, which might have already happened.

  But there was a possibility that it referred to me. That it was tied to our ability to come out ahead at the end of all this. To some slim chance.

  Maybe there was a sacrifice involved.

  I shook my head, unable to articulate any of the arguments, to come up with something profound to say. I only said, “Do it.”

  Panacea laid her hand across my forehead.

  And it all went wrong.

  29.x (Interlude; Fortuna)

  Two parts to a whole.

  This, as everything does, builds towards the ultimate objective, a propagation of the species.

  To rise above a competition among one’s own species is a kind of transcendence. Cooperation, a goal that extends beyond one’s lifespan, one’s community. This entity can recall the moment of transcendence, the unification and reinvention of their species.

  Everything extends to an end goal. A complete and total mastery of all things. In time, just as they spread and consumed their entire world, they will fill every space in all accessible universes that can be occupied. In time, they will reach a stasis and they will fall from their transcendent state. They will descend into competition once more, and they will devour each other alive once again.