Worm

by John Mccrae Wildbow

  Facing off against that, I’d had them build something roughly the size of a house. There was a gun build into the construction, but it was snub nosed, stocky and unimpressive.

  I gave Defiant the honor of pulling the switch.

  The machine whirred to life.

  Through the Clairvoyant, through Labyrinth and Doormaker, I could sense the machine reaching through every available world.

  The energy was focused on a single space, but it filled that same space in each of the worlds. A pressure of sorts started to form.

  It would take a minute.

  I sent Moord Nag in with the other heavy hitters, relieving the force that Scion was fighting.

  Sifara moved the ball, moving Moord Nag a distance forward. Her pet shadow Scavenger loomed, as large as it had ever been.

  And Moord Nag promptly had a stroke. I watched as Scavenger dissipated into smoke.

  Wha- what? Why?

  I reached out to Moord Nag, and I could feel the damage being done. I moved her back just as I’d moved her forward, shifting more capes onto the battlefield to deliver some ranged fire.

  Why? I was stunned, and putting my thoughts together in regards to this was like trying to swim in molasses.

  Had to act, instead of thinking. Investigate.

  I used my ability to read the physical states of the creatures I controlled, reading my swarm much as I’d check a spider’s level of hunger, its health, fertility or the amount of venom available.

  Almost across my entire swarm, people were threatening to lose their minds. Literally.

  It was stress, a factor I hadn’t taken into account. I controlled their bodies, but I didn’t control their minds. They were bystanders, watching this all unfold, and even though I regulated their heartbeats, kept their breathing level, the mental stress accumulated.

  There were exceptions in every category, but I could assess my gathered army with broad strokes of the brush. The thinkers were coping best, the tinkers nearly as well. The masters struggled the most, followed by the shakers and breakers. The rest fell in some middle ground. Moord Nag… my control over her had apparently tapped into some kind of trauma or phobia she had, so she’d been the first to reach some kind of fever pitch in terms of the buildup of stress-induced chemicals and reactions.

  I was killing my own minions.

  I moved quickly, scrambling to get measures in place before I lost any more.

  An open portal and a telekinetic let me move Moord Nag to the only available, capable healer I had available.

  I sent her to Panacea, still in the company of Tattletale and the Undersiders. Panacea bent down to help her.

  I brought Canary to me, and she began singing, a high, sweet song, almost like a lullaby, her voice carrying through the same portals that connected me to my underlings.

  I was halfway to my next step, managing the tinkers, when Panacea reacted, backing away from the dying woman, shaking her head.

  You still- you still don’t use your p-power on brains? I thought.

  She’d had a setback, creating me. Now the old fear was back in full, at the most inconvenient time.

  Tattletale was speaking. Her voice was gentle, soft.

  It was awfully nice to listen to. Reassuring, even if I didn’t understand the words.

  Then, breaking me from the spell, Scion moved his hands, readying for a clap, and I shifted everyone out of the way.

  Scion flew instead, flying into one world, just as easily as a plane might fly left, forward or down.

  I could track his movements with the clairvoyant. As multidimensional as it was, I could trace a trajectory.

  He’d used his ‘automatic victory’ power again, and he’d targeted me.

  If he’d used it to find me, there was no escape. If he’d used it to find and kill me, it was all over.

  Was he that complex? Did he think forward to that degree?

  I ran anyways, turning my attention to the tinker’s machine.

  The gibberish text on the screen had turned red. Failure. The combined strength of all of the tinkers who remained, Bonesaw excepted, and it had failed. There was no way to get to the space Scion had sealed off, no way to his ‘well’, where he drew all of his resources from.

  My heart sank.

  That was my best guess, I thought. The mental stutter wasn’t there, but the stutter only tended to hit me when I thought about nice things, about peace and familiar people and all the rest of that stuff.

  The best means of attack was to go for the weak point. To cut the jugular, to stab the heart, to go for the eyes, damn it. Scion’s well was the closest thing to a weak point that I could imagine, but he’d secured it.

  I’d told myself I’d know the strategy when I saw it. Targeting the well hadn’t been that strategy, but it had been a piece of it.

  I moved capes away, stepping through the portal Labyrinth had made, then having her change the channel, masking our ‘scent’, so to speak. I moved Case fifty-threes into the area to mess with Scion’s ability to sense things.

  He still pursued. I couldn’t move fast enough, even as each limping step moved me to another universe. Something about the way the portals opened, even if I closed them, it was like I was breaking ground for him to travel.

  This- this is the trouble with being on top.

  You’re all alo- alone when it counts.

  I put capes in his way. He swatted them aside, flew out of the way, and closed the distance.

  I felt sick. The shaking was as bad as it had ever been, and there was a coldness inside of me that made me wonder if I was in shock. My thoughts were barely coherent.

  I had Glaistig Uaine, I had her Eidolon shadow-puppet. They worked as a pair to hit Scion with the heaviest attacks I could find at a moment’s notice.

  For all it mattered, they might as well have been a kids on the schoolyard, sticking their legs out to trip someone. Scion found his momentum again.

  Panacea was healing Moord Nag.

  I reached for the warlord, bringing her to me.

  Scion struck her aside before Scavenger could swell to his full size.

  Too little, too late.

  If not brawn, then traps and tricks. If he wanted to charge right at me… I’d do what I did against Echidna.

  I stopped and turned around.

  Foil.

  Cuff.

  They stepped out of portals, one to my left, one to my right.

  Cuff to shape a sheet of metal into a giant razor blade, Foil to rig it with her power, setting it in Scion’s way.

  I gathered every precog I had, putting them within my sixteen foot radius. I gestalted them with Zero as they made their way through the doorways, forming a Yàngbǎn contingent of future-seers.

  I wound up with a young teenager right in front of me. Brown haired.

  Dinah. I turned her head to see her face, and she saw me in turn. I could see myself in her eyes.

  I’m sorry.

  You’re different.

  I felt a chill.

  No time. I opened a portal to send her away. She wasn’t any use, and… and I couldn’t even articulate why I couldn’t keep her here, when I’d keep the hunchbacked Case fifty-three from Boston and the crazed villain I’d spirited away from Monaco.

  I banished Foil as well, sending Cuff and Canary after her. They’d keep Tattletale and the others company. I disconnected them from my control network, giving them free will once again.

  S-s-sen- Sentiment? I’d told myself I’d be logical.

  Was I succumbing to emotion and impulse, letting her go? Or was I sticking to my rules, my promise that I wouldn’t leverage her? Logical, emotional, something else altogether, it didn’t matter. I wasn’t exactly balanced.

  I felt very, very off balance, as a matter of fact.

  It was the same as before. The precogs weren’t strong in this circumstance, but if I could get one glimmer, put this thing in the right position, move it, do something to get in Scion’s way…

&nbs
p; He appeared, flying straight for me. The group would have to do without her song calming their emotions. Hopefully nobody else would stroke out.

  With the precog gestalt, I could somehow get a sense of how Scion was going to move.

  It didn’t matter. His hand glowed as he struck the flat side of the razor, and it dissolved into a ruin of glowing fragments.

  I could see him in person for the first time since this fight had started. My own vision wasn’t as clear as some of the other eyes I’d used to look at him, and I had trouble keeping my eyes fixed on a single spot.

  My head turned, and I looked at the others. Tattletale, Imp, Rachel, Panacea, Foil, Canary, Cuff…

  I saw Imp’s lips move. She was saying something. It was probably very clever. Something funny and witty and totally out of place.

  Or maybe she was saying the same thing I’d said when I’d parted ways with the group as a whole.

  Rachel was silent, but she sort of dropped to her knees behind a giant, monsterfied Bastard, who was lying on his side. Her arms wrapped around his neck.

  And Tattletale-

  She put her hand to her mouth, then sort of made a sweeping gesture with her arm.

  It dawned on me that I had no idea what the gesture meant.

  Be-be-because you can’t le- let me have even that, I thought.

  Scion stepped forward, hand still glowing, and he blocked off my view of the group.

  The plan had been simple. Thanks to Teacher’s underling, I’d been able to retain my memory of the trigger event. Scion had censored the most pertinent details, but he’d left one vital weak point in the midst of it.

  He’d analyzed us as a species. He’d seen how we functioned, the strategies we could employ, and he’d set himself on a path.

  But that path, I was almost certain, was predicated on the idea that we couldn’t work together, that we couldn’t bring our full strength to bear. We were too chaotic a species.

  He’d made one mistake I knew of, he had predicted a future where he would meet his partner and then pursued that future, only to meet the brain-dead version that was in Cauldron’s base.

  I’d tried to help the same happen for the other future, running, using the dimension encryption, they were the best thing I could come up with in terms of putting Scion in a world where he saw himself as the only one standing.

  He closed the distance, and I couldn’t get my thoughts in order to convince myself to leave, to figure out what resources to tap to get myself away. Teleporters, but which one?

  Scion put a regular hand around my throat, and the question became irrelevant. It was surprising, just how small his hand was. Larger than average, but… he was still the size of a person, for all his presence.

  He hadn’t killed me outright.

  H-he wan- wants me to show fear.

  His grip tightened, leaving me unable to breathe. I clutched the clairvoyant’s wrist. When that wasn’t enough, I used the meager thread I’d managed to gather together to bind our hands together.

  I wasn’t in the most lucid state to begin with. Reality began to dim around the edges as oxygen deprivation got to me..

  Slipping.

  It hadn’t been enough, in the end. It had been a three point plan. Pushing us towards a point where we were all well and truly united against a cause, doing what I could to trick his future-sight into thinking he’d fulfilled his mission, and finally, targeting his weak point.

  The weak point hadn’t been available to target.

  I might have come up with better, but it had only crystallized after I’d lost the ability to communicate. I operated best when I could alter my strategy on the fly, but that ship ran aground when I was steadily losing my mind.

  Tattletale was saying something, Panacea responding, her hand on Bastard.

  Tattletale snapped something in response.

  As if in a dream, I could see Foil raise her arbalest.

  I moved bugs, forming a barrier between us.

  She hesitated, then lowered the arbalest.

  I relaxed. It woul- wouldn’t work a- anyways. N- no use having them die with me.

  But Scion had seen. I saw his expression change. Contempt, tight-lipped anger. It looked wrong, his face so unused to showing emotion, his emotion as intense and unfiltered as it was.

  He was aware of his surroundings in a way that wasn’t entirely human. Still gripping my throat, he turned, raising his glowing hand in their direction.

  No.

  I still had access to my network.

  But I couldn’t think.

  C-

  Clo-

  Close the portal.

  The doorway slammed shut.

  Scion took one step, bringing me with him as he advanced between worlds. The movement made darkness sweep over my consciousness. I very nearly lost my grip on the clairvoyant’s wrist.

  He now stood opposite the Undersiders.

  Foil started to raise her weapon, slowly.

  Scion blasted it to smithereens. Foil clutched one ruined hand, dropping to her knees.

  I have tools. I have… what tools?

  Tattletale spoke, her voice low and casual, almost flippant. She was talking to someone else, I was pretty sure.

  Panacea responded, again. A shake of the head. She had tears in her eyes.

  Moord Nag? No. I’d moved her to try and stop Scion.

  Dinah?

  Dinah watched from a corner, her arms around her knees in a position very similar to one of the first times I’d met her.

  He pointed at Rachel. His first target.

  In that instant, it stopped being about stopping him. I just needed to interrupt, to buy even two seconds.

  For the third time, I tapped into every ranged cape I was controlling, and I opened portals around us to give them windows to shoot through.

  Number Man to calculate, to aim the shot… They fired, every cape that could shoot shot.

  All with the objective of getting Scion to step out of the way, to do another sidestep with that future sight of his. Even if it was followed by yet another devastating counterattack. I just wanted him to miss.

  It didn’t work out that way.

  It struck home. Every shot I’d lined up with the Number Man hit Scion. Multiple directions, even some from above, they hit his flesh with enough force that I was thrown to one side.

  Priorities. Rachel-

  Untouched.

  The others were fine.

  The clairvoyant… our fingers were only barely touching. The thread I’d wound around our hands had snagged on my armor, caught on the skin of his thumb and nearly tore the skin off.

  It hurt like a motherfucker, but he wasn’t in a state to complain. Still in my control, still in contact with me.

  For my part, I was coughing violently. I was maybe at more risk of blacking out than I’d been with Scion’s hand around my throat.

  I fixed my grip on the clairvoyant, then picked us up. The ground was scarred where shots had grazed Scion and touched earth. It formed a loose circle, with two spaces where the shots hadn’t touched. One space for me, and another for the Undersiders.

  Why had this barrage worked when the others didn’t?

  Had to buy time, make space. I opened doorways, siccing capes on Scion, driving him out of the building.

  What was different? I hadn’t added anything to the group.

  I had taken something away.

  I looked at Foil.

  I took control of her, had her bend down to grip a rock. I channeled it with her power.

  A moment later, I brought Ballistic through.

  He used his power on the rock.

  I was already moving the group to safety when Scion evaded the incoming projectile.

  His future sight power wasn’t like Contessa’s. Narrower, lacking imagination, but he’d set up contingencies. If X happened, then the power would automatically kick in.

  Apparently the cost of being hit by Foil’s power was worse than whatever it cost
him to use that power.

  Not a magic bullet, but it was a good fucking thing to know. Could I break it? Abuse it?

  We retreated to an empty city in Earth Bet. The group kept a safe distance from me as we half-ran, half-jogged through. A bubble of empty space surrounding me. My portals flickered open and shut around me as I moved, keeping everything essential in my range.

  He was beating the capes I was throwing at him, and I wasn’t entirely sure what I could do if and when he killed the last of them. Bonesaw had finished reviving the people who’d been stopped, and was working on the wounded, but that wouldn’t give me much more in terms of a frontline.

  Conversely, if I pulled them back, I was leaving Scion free to do as he wished, and his previous patterns suggested he’d revert back to his last priority target. Me.

  Need- need- need- need-

  The thought stuttered over and over again, a refrain. It was like trying to move a leg, only to find it cuffed to the other. Except it was my brain.

  Need- need-

  I shook my head like I was a dog drying itself. Think- think straight.

  Tattletale asked Panacea something. Panacea made a side-to-side movement with her head.

  Imp made a wry comment.

  The sense of distance that I felt was enough to rock me.

  As before, it was in the quiet moments that I realized how much I’d lost during the action. I’d been slipping, my vision getting narrower. I should have been able to take it all in, but the worlds were blending in together. The clairvoyant was like a drug, and I was building up a tolerance of sorts. Colors bled together like watercolor, images started to merge, and I wasn’t able to focus on more than a handful of things at a time. The only crutch I had was that I could see what my swarm saw.

  But the Clairvoyant was only giving me the ability to function, at this rate. I could turn my attention anywhere, still set down portals in different worlds, but it was getting slower and slower. Barely a consolation.

  I was losing it. I was almost out of time.

  The certainty I felt in that was enough to kick me into action.

  I didn’t even look to my teammates as I stepped away, opening a door to step onto the upper end of the beach. Water crashed around my feet.

  I organized the tinkers. Changing their job. A weapon, instead.