Worm

by John McCrae

  “There’s more of these guys. Thought the process would be faster,” Krouse said.

  “Can we get away?”

  “Depends on how much backup they get. The more the better.”

  “Don’t you mean-”

  “Nope,” Krouse said. ”Best case scenario, they’ll have tons of backup.”

  “I… my bare skin’s fizzing.”

  “Fizzing?”

  “I can’t see it, but I feel like there’s bubbles, and they’re so tiny I can’t see them, but they’re flowing down from my skin.”

  “Huh. You can’t control it?”

  “No. Or… sort of? If I concentrate, pull on my skin, it speeds up.”

  Fizzing and pulling on her skin. It wasn’t the most apt description, but Krouse wasn’t sure he’d be able to accurately describe the pressure or the feeling of heft he got when he pressed his power into something.

  “Does it feel different when you touch stuff?”

  “Yeah. Feels like my skin’s fizzing against my clothes, as I’m putting them on, where the cloth touches me.”

  “Touch other stuff. If we can figure out your power, maybe we can use it.”

  There was a pause. Krouse waited while she experimented.

  The door banged. He tensed. This time, at least, he’d be ready.

  “Not much. Less than from my clothes.”

  There was another bang on the door. The chair shifted, and Krouse moved it back.

  “Worry about it later. We’re stuck with just my power until we figure yours out.”

  Noelle entered his field of vision, wearing all of her winter stuff.

  Krouse stepped over to the window. The street was lit only by the minimal moonlight that filtered through the clouds. There were police cars and fire trucks massing inside the quarantine area, as well as black vans with pale purple stripes and the letters P.R.T. on the sides. The people outside the black vans had uniforms like the man he’d just beat up, only they wore helmets.

  There were capes, too. Krouse could see the one with the brown cloak and staff. Myrddin. A half dozen superheroes clustered around him. His team? It was a surprise that so many heroes were still present in the city. Did they have to undergo their own kind of quarantine processing as well?

  Doing this all backwards, deciding on a strategy before I’ve fully tested my powers. Don’t even know my own range.

  Krouse pushed his power away from himself, reached for two of the men in the P.R.T. uniforms, each on opposite sides of the crowd.

  They swapped places. He couldn’t really see the physical differences between them, but they were alarmed, confused.

  “I can swap us out with someone in the crowd, if it comes down to it. Happen to know anything about Myrddin? Maybe Jess said something?”

  Noelle shook her head.

  “Fuck. And we have even less chance of knowing something about his subordinates. Far as I know, he does something with these dimensions he carts around. When I ran into him, he sort of banished me into this phase state where I could move around and stuff, but I couldn’t touch anything either.”

  Noelle nodded.

  “He didn’t mean to, though. He thought I’d pop back in like I’d just left. His power, it doesn’t work well if something’s changed between dimensions too much. Which means it won’t work a hundred percent right with us.”

  “Would he listen if we talked to him?”

  Krouse looked outside.

  “No. I don’t think we could. We’re on our own. Just… we just need an opportunity. Stay close to me.”

  Myrddin was flying, now. Two of his subordinates were advancing as well. One had a beachball-sized ball of jet black extending a foot away from his splayed hands, crackling with arcs of electricity that were both absolutely black and somehow still glowing enough to be seen in the dark. The other figure was an Asian woman with a painted mask and a giant lantern in her hands.

  “We have a fight incoming,” Krouse said, backing away from the window.

  Myrddin waved his staff, and the window shattered. With another movement of his staff, he plunged down into the room, landing with an audible impact.

  Krouse had a better look at the guy: A brown cloak-and-robe combination that might have been burlap, but with a heavier material beneath. If the raised metal collar around his neck was any indication, Myrddin was wearing some kind of armor or protective gear beneath the robe. It should have been heavy, but he wasn’t having any apparent difficulty. His staff was a gnarled stick of dense wood, worn by weather. The upper half of his face was hidden behind a metal visor that served more to cast his face in shadow than to be actual armor. He sported a thick, well trimmed beard. Brown, not white.

  This wasn’t a guy that Krouse could fight hand to hand, and between his armor and his stature, he was too heavy to be swapped with anything that wasn’t an appliance.

  “Stand down,” Myrddin ordered.

  “I’ll pass,” Krouse replied. He looked at the injured P.R.T. soldier, “We’ve got-”

  “Begone,” Myrddin said, pointing his staff.

  The officer vanished in a cloud of mist.

  “-A hostage,” Krouse finished.

  Myrddin looked at Noelle, then at Krouse, “So there’s two of you.”

  “One of us, two bodies,” Krouse said.

  “What?” Myrddin’s eyes narrowed.

  No clue. Just confusing matters. His eyes flickered to the scene behind Myrddin. No luck just yet.

  The man with the black spheres floating around his hands leaped up to the shattered window. Krouse could see the Asian woman holding the handle of her lantern as it raised into the air.

  “Banish one?” the man with the spheres asked.

  “Already banished their hostage.”

  “Want me to grab one to take into custody?”

  “Be my guest, Anomaly.”

  Anomaly raised one hand, and the sphere floated up until it was level with Krouse’s head.

  Krouse felt a pull, stepped back and grabbed the footboard of the hospital bed.

  The pull increased steadily, intense enough to pull at his hair with the strength of a gale. Noelle said something Krouse couldn’t make out as she began to slide towards the thing.

  Myrddin, for his part, didn’t budge an inch. The girl with the lantern held onto the handle with both hands to avoid the suction, setting her feet on the windowsill and perching with a crouch.

  Noelle slid, and Krouse caught her with his power. He found the lantern girl, snagged her-

  And Noelle was there, on the windowsill, losing her balance. The lantern girl slid into the sphere, virtually folded over it as it pulled her tight against its surface.

  Noelle caught the side of the shattered window with one hand. He could see her grimace in pain.

  Shattered glass. Sorry.

  He swapped Noelle for Anomaly, and both she and the lantern girl fell hard to the ground. Anomaly tipped from the window to the interior of the room.

  “Who are you?” Myrddin asked.

  Krouse glanced out the window. No. This might go badly before he had a chance to execute their escape. If he had to teleport to the back of the crowd, they could wind up in a situation where there was no escape.

  “Nobody dangerous.”

  Myrddin shifted his staff, and Krouse tensed.

  Where the staff-tip moved, a thread of blinding light was drawn in the air, loose and loopy, like the light trail from a sparkler.

  The light exploded outward with a concussive force, and both Krouse and Noelle were slammed against the walls. The shape of the trail Myrddin had drawn meant the resulting blast passed over and to either side of his lantern-bearing teammate. Her clothes were barely ruffled.

  He has personal dimensions he carries around with him, Krouse theorized. And each one follows different rules. One holds banished people, maybe that one holds energy or compressed air, and he just needs to open it a crack to let the stuff out.

  “Can you open doors between
worlds?” Krouse asked.

  Myrddin went stiff. ”No. Are you implying you’re one of the creatures from the world she opened a door to?”

  She. The Simurgh.

  “Nah,” Krouse replied, climbing to his feet. ”Just wondering.”

  “Stay down,” Myrddin warned. The hero drew another glowing ribbon into the air, more intricate and convoluted than the former. Krouse braced himself for the resulting impact.

  Then he saw it. A belated arrival to the party. A police car coming down the street in the distance, maneuvering to pull in and join the ranks of officers and rescue personnel on site.

  Krouse turned his head, trying to catch Noelle and the crowd in the same field of vision.

  He swapped her for someone at the back of the crowd. A moment later, gathering enough air, he swapped himself.

  The cold air was like a slap in the face. He reached for her hand, grabbed it. This new vantage point let him see the inside of the police car. He reached for the officer and partner, then swapped again.

  Krouse found himself sitting backwards in the driver’s seat. He flipped himself over and, as nonchalantly as he could manage, pulled away, heading deeper into the quarantine area.

  We’ll abandon the car as soon as we can, then go back to the house. Face the music.

  He reached for Noelle’s gloved hand and squeezed it, but she didn’t smile, didn’t show any relief. She looked troubled.

  He realized why. Her left hand was undamaged where she’d slashed it on the shattered glass of the window.

  ■

  They traveled the last leg of the journey to the house on foot. There were no words exchanged between them, even as minutes passed.

  As they approached the house, Krouse was left to wonder which one his friends would be in. He settled on the first house they’d broken into.

  Jess, Luke, Marissa and Oliver were there, arranged in the living room. It was dark, barely lit. Makes sense. They’ll be looking for houses with lights on.

  “Noelle,” Marissa said, leaping to her feet. ”You’re okay!”

  She hurried across the room, reached out to give Noelle a hug, and was stopped. Noelle had her hands on Marissa’s shoulders.

  “What’s wrong?” Marissa asked.

  “Nothing,” Noelle said.

  “You really did it, Krouse,” Luke said. ”I almost didn’t believe them. That you’d be that stupid.”

  “Oh, I’m a hell of a lot stupider than that,” Krouse said. ”But I saved her.”

  “You gave it to her? The can?”

  “Half,” Krouse said. He withdrew the canister from his front jacket pocket and switched it with a book on a nearby bookshelf, then threw the book aside. ”Just enough to heal her. Save her life.”

  “And now you two have superpowers,” Luke said. ”You’re doing exactly what we said we wouldn’t.”

  “The Simurgh set it in motion, not really my fault,” Krouse said.

  “That’s bullshit,” Luke replied. Unlike Cody, he was quiet, and the words almost had more impact as a result. Krouse wondered, Is it because he’s my friend?

  “If I hadn’t done it, things would have gotten even worse. If she wants us to use the stuff, then we eventually would have. It’s extortion, extortion through fate, I dunno. But I chose to pay the price rather than wait for her to ramp things up until I had to. If you want to blame me, blame me.”

  “No fucking shit we’re blaming you,” Luke said, and the hint of anger in his voice wasn’t as calm as his earlier words had been.

  That anger seemed scarily similar to what Krouse was used to seeing from someone else.

  “Where’s Cody?”

  “Here,” Cody said, from behind Krouse.

  Krouse whirled around.

  Cody was smiling, swaggering.

  “You too?” Krouse asked, unsurprised. He’d left Cody in the house with the four remaining vials.

  “Yeah. Me too.”

  Everything in the room shifted. The curtains flickered and appeared in a fractionally different position, Noelle had moved a foot away, now squarely facing them, and Cody was in the center of the room.

  “See?” Cody asked.

  “What just happened?”

  “I got powers. The paperwork said it was the ‘Vestige’ can. And as luck would have it, my power counters yours. Totally and completely.”

  There was another shift, things moving all at once, and Cody was now a foot in front of Krouse. He was laughing.

  Teleportation? No. The others wouldn’t move like that.

  “Stop it, Cody,” Marissa said.

  “He doesn’t care, he doesn’t know,” Cody said.

  “Just stop!”

  Everything shifted positions again, and this time, Cody was swinging a punch at Krouse. It connected and Krouse crashed to the ground. The punch had landed painfully close to where Krouse had been struck not long ago, and the resulting pain seemed to radiate across the surface of his skull.

  “Only bad part is,” Cody said, shaking one hand as though it were sore, “If I use it on myself, I don’t get the satisfaction, and if I use it on him, he doesn’t even know.”

  “Just leave him alone,” Marissa said.

  Krouse looked at Noelle, saw her with gloved hands pressed to her mouth.

  “What’s he doing?” Krouse asked, not moving from the ground.

  “Time travel,” Luke said.

  Cody shrugged, “Directed time travel, anyways. Backwards only, a few seconds at a time. You teleport away, I set you back to where you were, then kick you in the balls for being an asshole.”

  “Well,” Krouse said, “Do you feel better now? After however many beatings you just gave me? Kicks in the balls?”

  “I feel a bit better. But what has me tickled is that I can do it again and again, whenever I feel the urge,” Cody said, smiling.

  “Don’t,” Luke said. ”That’s…”

  “Brutish,” Jess said, her voice low. She was glaring at Krouse.

  “Not the word I would have chosen,” Luke said, “But yeah.”

  Cody shrugged. He couldn’t stop smiling.

  “Listen,” Krouse said, “Noelle’s better and she’s safe. That’s priority number one done with. Now we need to get out of here, and then we focus on getting home.”

  “You know, Noelle?” Marissa asked, “You know about our situation?”

  “Some.”

  “Come on then, let’s leave the boys to hash this out. I’ll fill you in on what’s going on while we get our stuff packed.”

  “Food first?” Noelle asked. ”I haven’t eaten since yesterday.”

  Marissa gave her a funny look, but she led the way to the kitchen.

  “Stuff?” Krouse asked the others, when the two girls had left.

  The room flickered.

  “Stop, Cody,” Jess said.

  “I’m tired of everyone catering to him. He fucked up, broke the rules he set,” Cody said. ”So if he wants to run off and be the lone maverick, he can deal with the consequences. That means we don’t go out of our way to get him caught up.”

  “You’re being as bad as he ever was,” Luke said.

  Cody turned towards Luke, “No. No I’m not.”

  “You’re making calls on our behalf. You’re not being a team player, and you’re making things harder than they have to be to get your way.”

  “It’s not the same,” Cody said.

  Krouse looked at Cody, then grabbed him from behind and threw him into a bookcase.

  “Krouse!” Luke shouted. Marissa and Noelle hurried back to the hallway.

  Cody appeared back where he’d been standing, in the exact same position. Krouse repeated the throw from behind. ”Two!”

  Again, Cody reappeared, setting himself back to where he’d been three seconds ago. Krouse shoved him yet again. ”Three!”

  On the next reappearance of Cody, Krouse shoved him and called out, “Four! Blade cuts both ways Cody!”

  This time, Cody didn’
t use his power on himself. He landed amid the fallen stacks of magazines and books, offered a snarling noise.

  “Your power works against you,” Krouse said. ”Using it to protect yourself? It doesn’t work if your opponent knows how you function and you don’t have backup to break the loop. You shift yourself back in time, you don’t remember, and I can use the same strategy over and over.”

  “That’s not-” Cody said, then he stopped. His eyes narrowed. ”I don’t have to put you back where you were after hurting you. Any time you do something to me, I can set you up to a position where I can hurt you, then leave you like that, hurting. Using my power doesn’t tire me out. I can set you back as many times in a row as I need to.”

  “Just stop,” Jess pleaded. ”All of this is hard enough without you two being enemies.”

  “Problem is, Jess,” Krouse said, not breaking eye contact with Cody, “Cody’s got this mindset where the guy with the bigger stick wins. He doesn’t care about the big picture until he’s established his dominance. Since idea of dominance is kicking my ass, we can’t have him doing that while we’re trying to get back home. It’s… counterproductive.”

  “Yeah? What are you going to do about it?” Cody asked. He was pulling himself to his feet.

  “Nothing,” Krouse said. ”You want to pull stunts like that, feel free.”

  “Thought so,” Cody smirked.

  “And,” Krouse said, stepping close enough to whispered in Cody’s ear, “Your power’s kind of a liability, you know. Not just the double-edged sword part.”

  “Liability?” Cody asked in a normal speaking volume.

  Krouse continued whispering. ”A liability. You saw what I was willing to do when the Simurgh forced my hand by putting Noelle’s life on the line. Now my hand’s dangerously close to being forced again. Because I will get these people home, and if you get in my way, if you give me reason to fear for my safety or to make me think we aren’t making as much progress as I want? Well, the only way I can think of to shut down your power is by killing you.”

  Cody smirked, stepping away.

  His eyes flickered across Krouse’s face as he read Krouse’s expression. Cody’s smile faded.

  Cody forced a smile onto his face again, but it didn’t seem quite so genuine. ”I’m going to go pack my shit. You have my permission to fill the asshole in on the details.”