Worm

by John Mccrae Wildbow

  “But you’re going back?”

  “Call it narcissism. I love ‘Marquis’ too much to say goodbye to him.”

  “The original Narcissus loved himself so much he withered away,” Teacher said. “It can be a kind of personality disorder. A kind of madness.”

  “An odd tangent,” Marquis observed.

  “Isn’t it? I’ve been focused on the big picture for some time, and I found myself in the position as one of the most powerful villains. My plans came to fruition. I have what I want. I’m looking at things on a different level. Where do we stand?”

  “Humanity as a whole, or us, as individuals?”

  “Both?” Teacher asked.

  “You’ve been dwelling on the subject. Tell me your thoughts, first.”

  “You asked if a person could change. I look at us, at the people we interact with, and I see madmen and monsters. Is that just us, the individuals, or is it mankind? I could use my power, set a team on it, find out, but I’m not sure I’d like the answer. I’d like to change, and that’s a heck of a lot easier, because I can lie to myself, whatever the outcome.”

  “Which leads, I presume, to your business deal.”

  “Capes. The theory going around, after the revelations about Scion, involved all powers being parts of a whole. We’ve seen how some powers are devastating in concert. It was, after all, how we won, on a level.”

  “More or less true,” Marquis said.

  “I’ve achieved all I wanted to achieve. I sell powers, I have wealth, I have a small army at my disposal. I have enemies, and in an odd way, that’s something I wanted too, because it keeps life interesting. But I feel a need to strive for something higher. Can we put the whole back together? At least in part?”

  “This is why you wanted me to come,” Ingenue said.

  “Everyone wants something. I think, with the right people, the right combinations, and unity, we can achieve what we desire most. An alliance, not for villainous purposes, but to achieve something greater. Fighting against entropy and all that is wrong in the world. Satyr is on board, but he wants a great deal. I don’t think I need to ask if there’s something you want, Ingenue.”

  “No,” she said, looking momentarily distracted. She looked up, “But I don’t see how this helps.”

  “We habitually seek out money and prestige,” Teacher said. “Why? Because it’s power, in an abstract way, and you need power to change the world. I think we can achieve power in a more direct manner. There’s a trend at work, parahumans taking positions of power. What if we take it a step further? Forget money and position. Everyone in our group gets what they desire most, we enforce a kind of cooperation, a joining or sharing of powers. We put ourselves above even governments and warlords.”

  “Everyone gets what they want most,” Marquis mused. “I can’t think of anything more terrifying. If I back out, will you be plotting to murder me?”

  “No. But I would prefer you didn’t go talking about this.”

  “I’m to remain silent while you build your secret society and start tampering with things that should be left alone?”

  “Call it professional courtesy?”

  “On the topic of courtesy, something tells me you’re after my daughter, for this group of yours.”

  “Your daughter is an adult. Capable of making her own decisions. I was going to bring her up later.”

  “You’re not winning me over, Teacher.”

  “I’ll make you a deal. Let me make the offer to her. She accepts or refuses it herself. If she says no, I leave it be and find someone else. Either way, you respect things with your silence. I won’t take any action against you, but I can’t promise my partners will be so polite.”

  “Mmm. A counteroffer. I make the offer, as you outlined it here, and she decides from that.”

  Teacher nodded.

  “Power and control,” Marquis said. He sighed, then bit into a cookie.

  “You can’t avoid it,” Ingenue asked. “Can you live without charm, intimidation, or some form of influence over others? Without making others do your bidding on some level? You flirt, they react one way or another. Everything is manipulation.”

  “I think there’s such a thing as extremes,” Marquis said. “Case in point…”

  “I think I know who you’re thinking of,” Teacher said.

  “She had it all, and see where it got her,” Marquis said. “A lesson for you, Teacher.”

  It was enough to give Teacher a moment’s pause.

  E.x (Interlude: End)

  The train jerked into motion, and the men and women in the aisle stumbled. There was a crowd at the front, where an old woman had taken a while to handle her fare. Even now, she made her way down the aisle with excruciating slowness. The people behind her looked irritated enough to snap.

  “Hey. Miss?”

  The old woman stopped, glancing down. The seat was occupied by an older teenager, bundled up in an overcoat and scarf, with a wool cap pulled down over close-cropped light brown hair.

  “Take a seat?”

  “Oh, that’s alright. I prefer window seats. I think there’s one open at the back there.”

  “Take my seat.”

  “I couldn’t do that. I-”

  But the teenager was out of the chair, swiftly vacating the spot. With a peculiar awkward slowness, the teenager picked up the backpack and moved out into the aisle, leaving the way clear.

  “If you insist. Thank you,” the old woman said. She took a few seconds to get settled.

  With the woman out of the way, the people in the aisle were clear to move on. The teenager ignored the grateful looks and glances from the ones who’d been stuck behind her.

  “You aren’t warm in that jacket?” the woman asked.

  “I was cold when I got on. By the time I warmed up, I was close enough to my stop that I figured it would be silly to take it off and then put it back on.”

  “I see. Fair enough. Are you traveling for business or pleasure?” the old woman asked.

  The teenager struggled to move the heavy backpack to the floor. It slid from one knee, and the old woman reached out to help catch it.

  They worked together to lower it to the floor.

  “Is that alright?” the older woman asked.

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  “A heavy burden, that.”

  “It’s not too bad.”

  The woman frowned, peering, “You’re breathing a little hard. Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. No worries.”

  The last of the passengers settled in the train. The teenager and old woman both watched out of the window as the landscape passed by. Rural areas, farms, fields dusted in snow that didn’t quite cover the grass, the occasional horse or cow searching for something to eat.

  The train reached a bridge. The landscape zipped by and was replaced by water. Snowfall obscured vision beyond a few hundred feet away.

  “If I was bothering you with the questions, let me know,” the old woman said.

  “You’re not bothering me.”

  “You didn’t answer my question earlier. Business or pleasure?”

  “Everything’s pleasure, I think.”

  “Well that‘s good. When you find what you really enjoy doing, I think you find that business becomes pleasure.”

  “That’s very true. You? Business or pleasure?”

  “Bittersweet pleasure. I’m visiting an old friend. We went our separate ways,” the old woman confided. “I admit, it was probably my fault. I wasn’t considerate.”

  “No?”

  “Maybe it’s better to say I was prejudiced. She confided in me and I betrayed that trust. A different era, but that’s a poor excuse. As a friend, she deserved more than a knee-jerk reaction and disgust on my part. I’ve been graced with a chance to redeem myself, and I’m going to go to dinner with her and her partner and we’re going to have a merry time of it.”

  “That’s excellent. Can I ask? Is she gay?”

  “She’s
white, he’s black. I know, I know, it sounds bad, but I consider it a kind of penance, freely admitting I was a smaller person back then. I let others dictate how I should feel, instead of considering her as a friend and looking at things objectively.”

  “It’s big of you to admit that.”

  “When you reach the end of your life, you have a chance to take stock. You sum it up, and you decide if you want to spend your remaining years, months or days in regret or satisfaction. My late husband told me that.”

  “Was he a psychology professor?”

  “Sociology.”

  “That’s from Erikson’s work, the last of the psychosocial stages,” the teenager said.

  “A college man. I’m impressed.” The old woman’s voice was quiet, oddly respectful of other passengers, in comparison to her dawdling earlier.

  The teenager smiled. “I read up on stuff.”

  “It took me a while to wise up. It was only after my husband passed that I looked back and started taking stock. If there’s any point to what I’m saying, it’s that there were a lot of ugly feelings about skin color, back in the day. But we get better. There are similar feelings about the gays, but we’re getting better about that. Less wars than there were in the past, whatever the news would tell you. People are happier as a whole.”

  “I wonder sometimes.”

  “It gets better,” the old woman said. “Really truly. We have our low points, I won’t deny that, but it gets better.”

  “I don’t want to sound negative, but, um, I guess I’m going to sound negative. There are people in third world countries who might disagree, and victims of Gold Morning.”

  “Even there, on the whole, things are steadily getting better. I promise. Don’t get me wrong, bad things have happened. People die, and a lot died horribly. My sympathies are with everyone who was or is touched by any of that. But on the whole, it looks worse than it is, with the worst of it constantly on the telly. It’s easy to get too focused on our individual problems and lose sight of the big picture. The big picture is promising, I think.”

  “Huh.”

  “But it’s worth saying that it’s up to people to make it better,” the woman said. “I trust that people will improve, as a group, but we can help it along by striving to be better people on an individual basis.”

  “That makes a lot of sense. I’m not sure I totally believe it, but it makes sense.”

  The old woman leaned in close, conspiratorially. “With all of that said, in the interest of being better individuals, I’m going to have to ask you a question.”

  “A question?”

  The old woman she didn’t maintain eye contact, and she wasn’t smiling. “This is me, being brave and trying to be better like that. And if I’m wrong, well, I’m hoping you’ll continue to be the gentleman you’ve proven to be and not fuss over an old idiot’s ramblings.”

  “I’ll try,” her seatmate said, smiling a little.

  “I just need to know… is that backpack of yours holding something dangerous?”

  “Dangerous?” The smile disappeared.

  “A bomb?” the old lady whispered the question.

  The response was a stunned series of blinks. The teenager had to bend over to get at the straps and clips before opening the bag. Clothing had been rolled up and piled inside. The clothing was moved to reveal more contents from inside the bag. A bag with the end of a toothbrush sticking out, a laptop.

  “If it is, it’s a pretty awful one.”

  The old woman had the grace to look embarrassed. “You must think I’m crazy.”

  “Something seemed off, you asked. No, I don’t think you’re crazy.”

  A ding sounded, before the announcement sounded throughout the train. “The train will be arriving in Philadelphia in five minutes. Please gather your belongings and collect your litter from your seating area.”

  “That’s you?” the old woman asked.

  “My stop, yeah.”

  “You have a good day ahead of you, I hope?”

  “I hope. A meeting.”

  “You’re doing the same thing as me, then. A reunion.”

  “Of sorts,” The teenager said, slinging the backpack over one shoulder. “Thank you for the talk.”

  ■

  Tattletale allowed herself one last check of her computer screens. There were brief, coded messages from various minions and soldiers, from spies and informants. The tail end of those windows had responses from Imp and Parian.

  Video footage showed a replay of Lung’s fighting retreat from an area in downtown New York B. There was footage of the PRT base, Valkyrie standing off to the side, trying to look far less interested than she was as a young man tried on a white bodysuit. One window showed the various Endbringers, all of them motionless, but for the Simurgh, who was airborne. The last of the original three.

  One of the windows updated. A text message from Imp.

  Imp:I’ve been waiting for five minutes.

  Tattletale hit a few keys. Nobody waiting was outside. She typed out a response on her phone.

  Tattletale:

  waiting?

  “Seriously,” Imp said, from right next to her, her chin resting on Tattletale’s shoulder. Tattletale jumped a little, despite herself. “Five minutes, and you don’t look at porn once?”

  “One of these days, you’re going to give someone a heart attack.”

  Imp put away her phone. “I’ve killed before. He was a clone, but I still offed him.”

  “Let’s not make murder a rite of passage. Too many new bodies in our ranks, we have a tone to set,” Tattletale said. She hit a key combination and locked the system. Another key turned off the monitors. The three-by-two arrangement of screens went black, the outermost one first.

  “New bodies? Beyond our individual teams? My Heartbroken, The Sons of Bitch, the Needlepoints?”

  “Needlepoints?” Tattletale asked, arching an eyebrow.

  “If they’re not naming themselves, I’m gonna name them. Or do you want Parian’s group to wind up with a bullshit name like ‘Faultline’s Crew’?”

  “Noble of you to spare them that,” Tattletale said. She rubbed at her eyes.

  “You’re usually on to me.”

  “I’m usually a little sharper. I only connect dots from whatever info I already have, and when I’m this focused, I don’t have much.”

  “Big bad villainess, staring at a computer screen all day,” Imp said. She sat down in Tattletale’s chair.

  “Too much to keep track of,” Tattletale said. She opened a fridge to grab a fat green bottle and a sixpack of assorted sodas. “I’d plug myself into the internet if I could, take it all in while I go out to see the real world.”

  “Sure, yeah,” Imp said. She fished in the cupboards and found plastic-wrapped chocolate cupcakes. “Fuck yes! I didn’t think they made those anymore.”

  “They don’t. I think those go for sixty-four dollars a package, nowadays.”

  “Mm,” Imp said, through a mouthful of one cupcake, covering her mouth as she spoke. She had her eyes closed in ecstasy. “Tashdy fuggin’ siggy-foh dowwuhs.”

  Tattletale set the bottle and the sixpack down on the table in the center of the meeting room, then collapsed into a leather chair with a high back. She resisted the urge to reach for the nearest laptop, instead draping one arm over her eyes, reclining. “You didn’t have any trouble getting here?”

  “Nuh uh.”

  “I suppose you wouldn’t. Where are the Heartbroken?”

  “I brought four,” Imp said. She licked her thumb, then rubbed at one corner of her mouth. “Downstairs. I ordered your soldiers to look after them and make sure they were being good.”

  “That’s uncharacteristically unkind of you,” Tattletale said, without moving her arm.

  “Oh, sure, I can leave little dolls all over someone’s place, in less and less obvious places, until they snap, I can steal someone’s pants every time they go to the bathroom, I can even, on occasions tha
t warrant something above and beyond, use a knife on someone and leave them wondering what’s happening to them as they bleed. But I ask some soldiers to babysit some orphans, and oh, now I’m little miss evilpants.”

  “Are you going to call them off, or do I need to call the security team and let ‘em know?”

  “I’m trying to set you up for a whole humorous interplay here, like, you look at me all stern and I do the ‘oh, right, that is worse’ thing.”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “I’ll fricking call them, you wet blanket,” Imp said.

  There was a knock at the door.

  “And get the door,” Tattletale added.

  Imp grumbled, but she made her way to the door, her phone in one hand. She was still looking down at her phone as she opened the door, then turned wordlessly to make her way back to the kitchen.

  “A glowing welcome,” Foil commented. “I can’t imagine why it’s been so long since we crossed paths.”

  “Imp is pouting. Ignore her.”

  “Har har,” Imp said. She tossed her phone onto the table. “There. They should be good now.”

  “They? Heartbreaker’s kids?” Parian asked.

  “I call them the brats, but sure. We can go with that, for clarity’s sake.”

  “Cute kids. They were whispering and giggling with each other when we passed by.”

  “Oh mannn,” Imp drew out the word. She paused, hesitating, then groaned. “I’ll be back.”

  Imp skipped out of her seat, then ran to the hallway.

  Foil took a spot on a short couch that sat to one side of the table. Other chairs were arranged around the thing. Parian hopped up, then sat on the back of the couch, leaning forward until her chin was on top of Foil’s head. Her arms draped over Foil’s shoulders, sticking out more than they draped.

  Foil batted at one of Parian’s hands, making it swing back and forth for a second.

  Tattletale dropped her arm from its position over her eyes. “Food went through okay?”

  “Supplies were good and timely. Thanks for the hook up,” Parian said, moving only her head.

  “No prob. Was the data good on Carver and his gang? I was using a new source, so any complaints would make a world of difference.”