Worm

by John McCrae

  “You’d just find some loophole and bring me a plastic star or kill an Endbringer in a video game, which would only give you an excuse to harass me further.”

  “Then think of something else. Anything.”

  Battery sipped on her coffee. “Anything? Armsmaster was looking for volunteers for some unpaid work at one of the primary schools. I already said I’d do it.”

  “You do all of that crap,” Assault rolled his eyes. “It’d be admirable if you weren’t trying so ridiculously hard at it. It’s like you’re trying to make up for some wrong you think you’ve committed.”

  Battery frowned a little.

  The grin dropped from Assault’s face. “Hey, seriously?”

  She shook her head. “No. No wrong committed, real or imagined.”

  “But the way you looked just now-”

  She interrupted him. “If you come on this errand with me and do part of the speech for the kids, I’ll maybe consider possibly going out with you for lunch someday.”

  “Excellent!” Assault grinned.

  He strode off, looking like he’d just won the lottery.

  She smiled. If he only knew this was her shot at some clean, innocent payback. The squealing, screaming grade schoolers, all fighting and pulling on your costume and demanding demonstrations of powers and constantly asking questions.

  And he’d have to put up with it.

  She would relish this.

  ■

  “…And caught out little suck-a-thumb.

  Snip! Snap! Snip! The scissors go;

  And Conrad cries out – Oh! Oh! Oh!…”

  Assault read from the book of poems, and every one of the ninety kids that sat around him were leaning forward, eyes wide.

  “He’s so good with kids,” the librarian murmured.

  “Of course he is,” Battery said. Maybe there was a hint of bitterness in her voice, because the librarian gave her a funny look.

  She plastered a fake smile on her face to assuage the woman’s doubts.

  “…both his thumbs are off at last!” Assault finished.

  The kids squealed in delighted horror.

  Pain in the ass, she thought. If I were reading that one they’d all be crying.

  Battery’s phone vibrated. She excused herself from the librarian’s company and checked the display.

  Customer wants product hand delivered by known parahuman. Package waiting in your apartment. Second task. -c

  Cauldron had sent it to the phone the Protectorate gave her? To a number that only the Protectorate had? Did that mean something?

  She deleted the message. It would be easy enough to handle. If the recipient wound up being a villain at a future date, she’d stop them, put them away. This would just be a delivery.

  Assault caught her eye and a slow smile spread across his face, as the little girl in his lap read some of the next poem. The look was smug, sly. He knew exactly how much this was irritating her.

  “Jackass,” she muttered.

  But she couldn’t stop a smile of her own from spreading across her face.

  ■

  The glass in the little window of her front door was shattered. It fell on her feet as she pushed the door open.

  “Ethan!” Battery called out.

  “You’re okay,” Ethan said, as he came down the stairs. He was still in costume. Only a single cut marked his cheek.

  “I didn’t know where to find you, and since the cell phones don’t work anymore, and you weren’t at headquarters, I thought I’d come here.”

  “I know. I thought much the same thing, but I came here first.”

  “You’re okay?”

  “I’m okay, puppy.”

  She punched him lightly in the arm. She didn’t resist as he swept her up in a painfully tight hug.

  “We should go on patrol,” he said. “This is going to be bad. They’re kicking us while we’re down.”

  “Right. Patrol together or apart?”

  “Together at first, assess the situation.”

  “Okay.”

  “A courier dropped this off for you,” he pointed at a small envelope on the hall table.

  She saw the undercase ‘c’ on the front and felt her heart sink.

  “Puppy?”

  She picked up the envelope and checked the contents. A slip of paper, blank on both sides.

  A joke? A reminder? The last one had been two years ago.

  “Let’s go,” she said, crumpling it in her fist. She charged up and ran, and Assault crossed a similar amount of distance with his long and powerful leaps.

  She covered more distance with the start-stop motion of charging and running than she did just running, but it made for a halting progress where Assault simply continued forward. He made some headway on her. She knew he’d stop at some vantage point to wait for her.

  As she stopped to charge, she felt a tingle from her hand.

  The note?

  She spent the energy of a charge, but she didn’t run. Again, that tingle. She used her ability to manipulate electromagnetic energy and focused it on the note as she smoothed it out.

  A pattern emerged: simple black lettering. A second after they’d appeared, the paper started to smoke.

  She had only a few seconds to read and process the message before the paper ignited.

  Siberian and Shatterbird are to escape the city, and our business with you will be done. Thank you. – c.

  The burning scraps drifted to the road around her, but she only felt cold.

  Every action had its consequence.

  Arc 13: Snare

  13.01

  Brian was waiting for me as I passed through the door and into Coil’s underground base. He held a paper out to me.

  Sirs and Madams,

  The terms of engagement are as follows:

  1. Three days to each member of the Slaughterhouse Nine so we can conduct our tests. Tests will be performed one after the other, with eight rounds in total.

  2. A successful test or the removal of a candidate who has failed a test will earn the tester bonus time. 3-12 hours for a successful test depending on the number of candidates remaining and 24 hours for an execution.

  3. Should a tester suffer a sound defeat at the hands of any individual during their allotted time, they will be penalized one day of allotted time.

  4. Each tester operates independently, with no hands-on assistance from other members of the Slaughterhouse Nine. Assistance may be bought, bartered or otherwise rendered in a hands-off manner, possibly including medical assistance, information, provided equipment and suggestions.

  5. Candidates may receive assistance, hands-on or otherwise, from Brockton Bay residents only. We are fully aware that Legend and his teammates are in Brockton Bay. Should they interfere with a tester, all candidates will lose the protection of any rules, all terms offered here will cease and the threat implied in point eight will be carried out. This only applies to confrontations with the active tester.

  6. The Slaughterhouse Nine will handle the punishment of any members of their own team, in the event of failures, the inability of the tester to perform at least a partial round of testing or killing a candidate without notification.

  7. Should the defending parties have two or more candidates remaining when the eighth round of testing concludes, the Slaughterhouse Nine will depart Brockton Bay without incident and refrain from returning for three years at a minimum.

  8. If and when the Slaughterhouse Nine do eliminate five of the six candidates, or if any candidates leave the city, the Slaughterhouse Nine are prepared to penalize the city for their failure.

  Mannequin is the first to carry out his round of testing. He has two days remaining.

  We will be in touch.

  “Where is everyone?” I asked, handing the paper back to him.

  He pointed down the hall.

  “Christ,” Brian said, shaking his head as he walked, rereading the terms. He opened the door for me.

  Coil was
inside, at the end of a long table. The Undersiders sat at one side of the table, with Circus sitting at the farthest edge, beside Coil. The Travellers, minus Noelle, sat along the other side. I took note of the blond teenager who wasn’t even wearing part of a costume. Oliver. Coil was the opposite, as fully covered as ever. Everyone else was costumed but they had their masks and helmets off.

  I got my first good look at Lisa since I’d left her bleeding in Ballistic’s headquarters. The scar ran from the corner of her mouth to the corner of her jaw, and dark stitches ran down the length of it. The slang term for this kind of injury was a Glasgow smile or a Chelsea smile, but the term seemed ill-fitting. Where Lisa often had a grin on her face, the cut pulled the corner of her mouth down into a perpetual lopsided-frown rather than a smile.

  Bitch gave me a dark look as I entered, but many of the others were smiling.

  “The people in my territory are singing your praises, Skitter,” Ballistic said.

  “My territory too,” Alec added.

  “I didn’t do anything that special. My power did the work.”

  “And you kicked Mannequin’s ass,” Trickster said. He leaned back in his chair, balancing on two of the legs, his feet on the table. ”You had a busy night.”

  “Honestly, I didn’t kick his ass. He got some of my people, he thrashed me, I got a piece of him.”

  “No,” Lisa said, her voice quiet. She couldn’t really move one corner of her mouth when talking, so her words came out slightly slurred.

  I saw her work her tongue in her mouth and then take a sip of water, wincing. Brian had updated me: the cut had probably damaged one or more of her salivary glands, and she’d have dry mouth until it healed. Maybe forever. The really scary part was that she might have suffered some nerve damage as well. How much of that half-frown was because of the direction of the cut and the way the stitches pulled, and how much was because her nerves were damaged enough that her face was drooping?

  She caught me looking and gave me a wink. She took another gulp of water and cleared her throat before speaking again. ”They took one day from Mannequin because they thought he lost.”

  “If the enemy thinks they lost,” Brian said, “That’s a good enough reason to think you’ve won.”

  I privately disagreed, but I didn’t say anything. I pulled up a chair and sat at the corner of the table furthest from Coil, wincing at the pain in my ribs as I bent down.

  “So,” Brian said, “You intend for something like this to happen when you made your suggestion, Tattletale?”

  Lisa shrugged, “Sorta. Thought he’d take the bait, didn’t know how far.”

  “It’s not all advantageous,” I said, thinking aloud. ”Yes, we’re now in a position where we could win, with some planning or luck, and the plan we were hashing out at our last meeting might be easier, now. But we’re also facing pretty heavy consequences if we fail… heavier consequences. And there’s a lot of places where this could go wrong. We don’t even know who all the candidates are.”

  “Me, Bitch, Armsmaster, Noelle, probably Hookwolf and someone in Faultline’s crew?” Alec said.

  “No. Jack said they picked two heroes. Hookwolf, yes. But their last pick is a hero, not one of Faultline’s,” Lisa said.

  “And we can’t say for sure who this person is or what actions they plan to take,” I said. ”Too much hinges on everyone else’s willingness to cooperate and play by the rules, and the stuff that happened at the last meeting of the city’s villains makes me skeptical.”

  Brian nodded. ”It’s important that we find this person, make sure they play along, so we don’t wind up losing before this game of theirs even starts.”

  “There’s other problems here,” I said, “We can’t forget what Dinah said about Jack. If he leaves town, it could mean disaster. If we win, we could all lose in the long run, because it’d mean he left town and Dinah’s prophecy would come true. Hell, a lot hinges on whether the Protectorate is on the same page as us. If they arrest him and take him out of town…”

  “It could mean the end of the world.”

  “Right,” I said.

  “Hookwolf has proposed an all-out attack,” Coil spoke for the first time since my arrival. ”He wants to gather the more powerful members of his alliance together into an army and attempt to overwhelm the Nine and kill Jack Slash in the chaos.”

  “That won’t work.” Brian shook his head. ”These guys specialize in dealing with crowds, and they’re experienced when it comes to that sort of thing.”

  “Hookwolf believes our local capes are collectively strong enough to do what other groups couldn’t.”

  “Maybe they are, but I wouldn’t bet on it. We should be focused on what we can do,” Brian said.

  “You guys are better set up for information gathering and escapes,” Trickster said. ”We could take them on, depending on who it is and how small the group is, but I don’t know how well we’d do in those circumstances.”

  “We should mix up our teams, then,” Brian said. ”Just between us, we’ve got three candidates. Noelle, Regent and Bitch. Three targets.”

  “Crawler couldn’t reach Noelle where we’ve got her stashed,” Trickster said, “I’m not sure what the others could do.”

  “What about when Siberian comes after Noelle?” I asked. ”Will the same measures stop her?”

  “Probably not,” Trickster replied.

  “This would be a lot easier if you’d tell us more about her,” I pointed out. ”Unless you think she can hold her own against the Nine, we’re going to be helping protect her.”

  Trickster frowned. ”There’s not much to say. She’s in containment, and if she doesn’t stay where she is, things would get worse, fast.”

  “So she’s dangerous, and she’s not entirely in control of her power?”

  He tilted his chair forward until it was flat on the ground and set his elbows on the table, hands clasped in front of his mouth. He glanced down the table at his teammates. I wasn’t sure, but I thought maybe he glanced briefly at Coil.

  With a resigned tone, he told us, “She’s dangerous enough that if Siberian got to her, I think she’d make it out okay. The rest of us wouldn’t.”

  The table was silent for a moment. I could see something in the faces of the Travelers. Pain? It wasn’t physical, so perhaps it was emotional? It could be fear, guilt, regret, or any number of other things.

  Trickster’s words reminded me of what Sundancer had said back when she and I had fought Lung. Sundancer had held back in using her power because she was frightened about hurting bystanders or killing the people she attacked. Her power was too hard to use without hurting someone. Ballistic was the same. Was Noelle another case of the same thing? That same too-powerful ability, only on a greater scale?

  Brian sighed. ”We’ll deal with Noelle’s situation when it comes up. We have three targets they’re going to be coming after, with a fourth if we consider that Mannequin’ll be after Skitter. If we split into two groups, then we can maintain enough offensive power to defend ourselves against the ones like Mannequin, Burnscar, Jack or Shatterbird.”

  Sundancer cut in, “Which makes me wonder… Sorry if this is a crummy idea, but what if we waited for Jack’s turn, and then tried to kill him?”

  “No guarantees there,” Brian answered her. ”I think we’ll have to be proactive in going after him. Maybe we can use Hookwolf’s distraction, maybe he’ll get cocky and make a mistake.”

  “Doubt it,” Tattletale said, “He’s lasted years doing what he does.”

  I couldn’t help but nod in agreement.

  “Besides, he goes last,” Tattletale finished.

  “To get back to what you were saying, you were proposing dividing the teams?” Coil spoke.

  “Yeah,” Brian said. ”Bitch has offensive power of her own. Skitter does too. If there’s no complaints, we could play this largely geographically. Maybe me, Imp, Bitch and Skitter? If you guys can put your differences aside?”

  “
No problem,” I said.

  “Whatever,” Bitch answered, noncommital.

  It was only when Brian mentioned Imp that I realized Aisha was present. I’d almost missed her. I wanted to believe that it was because she was sitting at the end of the table and there were four of my teammates between us, but I couldn’t be sure. It would be damn nice if there was some sort of gradual immunity to her power.

  “And maybe someone else who isn’t raw offense? Circus?” Brian suggested.

  Coil spoke before Circus could reply. ”No. I pulled her off of a task as a precautionary measure, as I had one aspect of my long-term plans derailed last night with Trainwreck’s demise at the Nine’s hands. I would rather she did not fall to an unfortunate coincidence of the same nature.”

  “What happened?” Sundancer asked.

  “They’ve eliminated the Merchants,” Coil said.

  I wasn’t sure how to feel about that. The Merchants were scum of the worst sort. It wasn’t just that they polluted everything they touched and did some reprehensible things. They reveled in it. They wanted to be the lowest of the low. On the other hand, it was a point for their side. Seven or eight parahumans we no longer had to fight the Nine with.

  “Also, I would prefer her involvement in my operation stay under wraps. She can defend Noelle and myself for the time being.”

  “Then Trickster? Or Genesis?” Brian asked.

  “I would rather stay close to Noelle,” Trickster said. ”If Genesis is willing, that would be fine.”

  “And that leaves Ballistic, Sundancer, Trickster, Noelle, Regent and Tattletale for the second group. We stay together, we keep an eye on our territories to watch for trouble from Hookwolf’s contingent, and we keep an eye out for opportunity. Tattletale? You’re good watching the downtown areas?”

  Lisa nodded.

  “And Skitter has the sensory abilities to check areas of the Docks where the Undersiders have territory.”

  “I’ll need to visit each area in turn. Unless we have some people to pass on messages, and a means of communication.”