Worm

by John McCrae

  The darkness was more like gum than smoke, and she struggled. Noelle’s Grue closed the distance, moving over the surface of the road much as the girl in white had.

  Then Noelle saw why and how. A thread of darkness, barely thicker than a finger, extended from the sticky darkness to her Grue. That would be how he’d moved the projectile in the air, and how he was absorbing her power.

  The boy in armor created a fissure that spat debris into the air as it parted, aiming to separate the Grue and the girl in white. By intent or accident, he cut the thread of darkness in the process. Noelle’s Grue stopped, turned to face the tinker and created more spheres in his hands.

  Those two were occupied. Noelle turned to see Trickster dealing with the flying heroes. Two were on the ground, prone. That would be the result of Trickster baiting them into shooting one another. The remaining hero had a weapon in hand but wasn’t shooting.

  Eidolon was there too. His smell was interesting. Complicated, but somehow off. If he was using any particular method of attack on Trickster, then Noelle couldn’t see it.

  Trickster disappeared from the skirmish with the flying heroes, putting one of her creations in his place.

  She sniffed him out. He was in the midst of the one batch of bodies that had piled up against the tinker’s makeshift wall. They were turning on him, grabbing for his arms and legs. He teleported to keep them from getting any serious leverage, but the escape was slow.

  “Leave him!” she ordered, and her voice came out with surprising volume.

  They didn’t listen. They struck him, gripped his costume and dragged him to the ground.

  Trickster shouted in alarm as he was submerged in the mass of clones.

  Noelle advanced on her creations in as threatening a manner as she could, the ground shaking with her advance. They noticed and backed away.

  Trickster, for his part, didn’t even flinch as she closed the distance between the two of them, stepping within a few feet of him.

  It would be all too easy to just snap her tongue at him. Catch him, swallow him.

  She held off. Instead, she faced Eidolon and the other flying cape.

  Trickster adjusted his hat and did the same. The two of them against the world.

  ■

  “It’s not you, it’s me,” she said.

  Krouse folded his arms. ”You can’t blame me at least a little?”

  “No,” Noelle said, shaking her head. If I could only explain, I would… She could feel her throat seize up. Worrying that her voice might crack if she spoke at the normal volume, she lowered her voice to a hush as she said, “You’ve been great.”

  He spread his arms, “I don’t get it. I thought we were doing fine.”

  Doing fine? How many hours had she spent lying awake in bed, agonizing over this relationship? Hating herself?

  She’d relapsed because of it, and recovering was proving to be a long, hard road.

  “We aren’t!” Noelle said, “This is… it’s not working.”

  “I’m okay with it. I enjoy spending time with you, and I didn’t get any impression you were having that bad of a time, either.”

  “But we don’t- we aren’t-” She stared down at her feet. ”We’re stalled. It isn’t fair to you.”

  “That’s what you’re worried about?”

  Only part of it.

  “Don’t dismiss my concerns,” she said, and the anger in her own words surprised her.

  “No’, it’s fine. It’s cool. I get that there’s stuff you’ve got going on that you don’t want to tell me about,” Krouse said.

  Her breath caught in her throat at that. Had Marissa told him? Or had he figured it out? It wasn’t like she hadn’t left signs.

  He continued without a pause, “…I can be a bit of a jerk sometimes, but I’m not an idiot. And I’m not going to twist your arm to get you to share, either. That’s your stuff, and I figure you’ll tell me in time. Or you won’t.”

  “It’s not fair to you.” Noelle knew she was repeating herself, but it was the only argument she could make. All of the others would involve discussing other topics, her issues.

  And she couldn’t bring herself to do that. Marissa knew, would keep quiet because she got it. Marissa knew, wouldn’t bring it up, would back her up when needed.

  Noelle loved Krouse, but she knew he wasn’t so graceful. It would become something jarring, intruding on their everyday interactions.

  “I’m not saying things have to be equitable or balanced or fair or any of that. So who cares if things aren’t fair?” Krouse asked.

  “Don’t do that!”

  She could see his expression change to bewilderment at her reaction. He spread his arms, as if he were asking a question without opening his mouth. I’m being irrational… but that’s the disease at work.

  It took her a long time to find the words.

  “Someone said, a little while ago,” Noelle spoke without looking at Krouse, “That I can’t really forge a good relationship with others until I have a good relationship with myself.“

  “You don’t?” He asked. “I think you’re fantastic, if that counts for anything.”

  The words stung, nettled her, as if they personified his lack of understanding. She said as much, “You don’t know me.”

  “I’ve been getting to know you some. And I have yet to see anything that’s going to scare me away.”

  She couldn’t keep going down this road, couldn’t have an argument, or she’d let something slip. She stared at her feet. ”…I don’t think we should date.”

  “Okay. If you think that’s for the best. But I just need you to do one thing. Look me in the eye as you tell me that.”

  Noelle glanced up at him, then looked back down. She tried to find the words, but both brain and mouth failed her.

  “Because,” he went on, “I think you’ve seemed happier than I’ve ever seen you since we started going out. Marissa said so, too.”

  It’s… it’s a bad time for me, she thought, as if voicing the words in her head would let her utter them out loud. The wrong moment. Any earlier or later in my recovery…

  He continued, “If you really feel like us dating is making things worse in the long run, then I’m perfectly okay with breaking it off. I can leave the club if that makes things easier on your end. It was your thing before it was mine, and you’ve got enough on your plate with being team captain.”

  “I don’t want you to leave the club,” she said, meaning it.

  “Okay,” he said. He paused very deliberately. She didn’t take the invitation to speak.

  He sighed, ”Listen, I get the feeling today is a bad day. Don’t know why it is, but it is. And that happens. Fine. But I’m not willing to end this if it’s because the stars aligned wrong. So I’m asking you to tell me that you’re worse off because we’re together. Not asking for an explanation, just-”

  Can’t do this. Can’t break it off. Not when he’s being this good about it. Not when it’s making the both of us this miserable.

  “Never mind,” she said, abrupt. I’ll find another way.

  “Never mind?”

  “I’m- just never mind. Can we forget this conversation happened?”

  “Sure,” he said.

  Her feelings were a chaotic storm. Relief, quiet joy, fear, misery, self loathing, panic…

  I’m not well, she thought.

  ”Want me to walk you home?” His voice was gentle.

  She nodded mutely, unable to find the words to speak. A simple five word confession would simultaneously explain everything and spoil the tone of their relationship. She knew it, knew she was being irrational, that her recent relapse was making her that way, was making her nasty and emotional and unpredictable.

  How could he not notice? The way she picked at her food, the way Marissa got on her case about eating? The countless other clues? Yes, she’d been in recovery for much of the time they’d known each other, but… hadn’t he been paying attention?

  She s
imultaneously loved and hated him, in that moment. He was the best thing in the world for her, and the worst thing in the world for her, both at the same time.

  And it wasn’t fair to him, putting that on his shoulders.

  ■

  She was fighting with Eidolon. The realization startled her. She’d been adrift in vivid memories, and she’d lost time.

  She sniffed, for lack of a better word, and found Skitter prone on the ground. Her tongue snatched the girl up, and she swallowed the girl anew. The taste and smell were right. Good.

  That spooked her. Her body wasn’t making good decisions when it was on autopilot. Or, at least, it wasn’t making decisions she’d accept. Almost losing an Undersider? No.

  She double checked. Skitter, Grue, Regent and the little space warper were safely ensconced inside her, each tucked away in neat little wombs, unconscious and helpless and safe from the ongoing fighting.

  Why did you show me that? Why was that so important?

  There was no reply. Never a reply.

  Eidolon reached out with one hand, and she instinctively rushed out of the way.

  The gravity effect hit her, and she could feel her flesh tearing, feel the extremities ripping: her ears, nose, lips and all the little pieces of her monstrous lower half. At her shoulders, the top of her head, the flesh above her spine on her lower half, the flesh was pulled down and away until it started to rip.

  Eidolon fell out of the air, hitting the ground hard.

  Noelle turned her head, saw Regent. Her Regent. He was only half-formed, one arm missing, the features of his face more like a fetus than a teenage boy.

  She smiled. Maybe her other half had made some good decisions.

  Her flesh was already knitting back together, everything shuffling into their proper places or shifting around to fill in gaps. The fluid that welled from a bottomless source in her monstrous lower half bubbled up and coursed through her veins to supply the needed materials.

  The girl in white hit her again, striking the joint of one outstretched limb. Noelle swiped at the girl in mid-air with her other forelimb, came within inches of making contact.

  The ground underfoot shattered. Noelle leaped before the tinker could repeat the effect and sink her into another sand trap.

  There was another explosion from beneath her. She leaped to avoid the worst of that one. She vomited in the direction of the tinker, but he was anticipating the attack. He provoked an eruption of rock shards and dust midway between them. The bulk of the flying bodies and fluids were knocked off course by the plume of debris. With a third strike he raised a barrier around himself. Two of the three bodies that hadn’t been stopped by the debris were caught on the shards of pavement. One suffered a broken back, the other hit the edge of a fragment with enough force that his stomach was ripped open.

  The third flew over the barrier. The tinker caught it with a punch, and the piledriver in his gauntlet extended twice in an instant, punching two neat holes through the upper body.

  He didn’t even wait for the body to hit the ground before striking and creating another fissure that extended beneath the barrier and beneath her. She leaped out of the way before it opened wide enough to catch her or one of her feet.

  It was bad timing. She had been distracted by the recent vision. Eidolon hit her square-on with another gravity attack. Her flesh was savaged and split, she was almost immobilized under the force of it. If the tinker used his power now-

  Trickster broke Eidolon’s contact with the gravity field by teleporting him. The hero reacted in an instant, releasing a half-dozen blue sparks from each hand. They grew until they were each three feet across, crackling with electricity, moving at a walking pace as they slowly homed in on Trickster.

  He had to teleport to avoid the closest one. Only some of the orbs followed him to his new destination, the others remaining where they were.

  Noelle opened fire on the tinker, two streams of vomit, each directed to one side of him.

  She considered vomiting on the electric orbs, then thought twice about it.

  Trickster teleported again, trying to maintain distance, but Eidolon had created more of the sparks, and the things were spreading out evenly across the battlefield, moving closer to Trickster if he got within ten paces of them.

  It threatened to hamper her own movements too, Noelle noted.

  Eidolon raised a hand in Trickster’s direction, and Trickster was quick to teleport away. The gravity slam hit one of Noelle’s creations instead. Trickster wound up within two paces of one orb, and had to scramble back before it touched him.

  Noelle looked at him, remembered the scene from the most recent memory. In this moment, with so many other people to be angry at, so many others to hate, she didn’t feel that bottomless resentment for Trickster that she’d experienced ever since the transformations started.

  It wasn’t you, she thought. I keep saying it was your fault. It wasn’t.

  She was already moving towards him as the thought came to her.

  I blamed you for giving me the elixir. The potion. Whatever you call it. But it was me. I heard you guys talking about how the people who drank the stuff were supposed to get tested for psychiatric issues. I didn’t tell you the Simurgh showed me visions of my worst days, of my relapses, my lowest points. That she drove me into a state where I was reluctant to take the full dose, eager for a compromise.

  She started running.

  I knew all this, and if I’d only had the courage to say it, maybe this all would have gone a different way.

  Oh, the irony, that this was what she’d become.

  She crashed into the first of the lightning orbs. She felt the current surge inside her, settle in her bones, latent.

  A heartbeat later, every single orb that Eidolon had cast out flashed with visible arcs of electricity, striking her. The energy ripped through her, stripping flesh from around the bone of her arm, her ribs, her spine, and the larger bones of her lower body. The electricity surged to the ground and out the top of her head, stabbing toward the sky in a visible lightning strike.

  Noelle staggered, touched one hand to her face, where her flesh had been distorted by the strike, separated from bone so it hung down, large patches of hair at the crown of her head burned away. The ends of her fingers where she’d touched the orb were blasted away, revealing bone.

  She could feel it growing back, flesh knitting together.

  Even this wasn’t enough to kill her.

  She touched another, and it was worse, drawing on the residual energy from the first contact.

  The third was worse still.

  She’d complained of the sheer heat of this body before, but this… it was heat and pain on an inhuman level. Transcendant. Were she regular Noelle, Noelle without the powers, without the monstrous lower half and warped brain, even a tenth of this would knock her out, stop her heart from the sheer intensity of it.

  On contact with the fourth orb, her frontmost legs collapsed under her, with everything within a half-foot of the major bones being rendered to little more than ash. There was nothing to connect flesh to bone, and she toppled.

  She roared, and for perhaps the second time in the past hour, both she and her monstrous half were in agreement. With her other legs, she pushed herself forward, and extended one of her long tongues for the orb closest to Trickster. To Krouse. She screamed in pain and fury as it ripped through her, and another bolt stabbed toward the sky.

  Too much damage, too fast. She wasn’t healing fast enough.

  A series of lightning strikes nearby marked the deaths of some of her clones.

  Eidolon was there, too, at the end of the street. The glow beneath his hood and sleeves was almost blue in the reflected luminescence of the twenty or thirty orbs that hovered around him. A further twenty or thirty orbs were spread out over their immediate surroundings.

  The others… the tinker had created short walls of stone to shield himself and the girl in white. The rest of the battlefield consisted of
bodies and other fallen.

  Eidolon spoke into his wrist. Noelle realized that there were other capes nearby when they each came to a stop, resting on rooftops and behind cover a few blocks away.

  Short of Eidolon, there was nobody for Trickster to swap himself with. And given that Eidolon had so many orbs in his immediate vicinity… no, Trickster swapping himself for Eidolon wasn’t an option.

  Her other half hated him, and she was realizing just how much her monstrous body had been influencing her without her knowledge, now that her emotions were all pointed at this one individual, this one target. It left her feelings towards everyone else at an almost normal level. Her feelings for Krouse, her hatred of the Undersiders, her anger at Coil, each had been twisted, magnified, warped.

  “If he does another gravity attack, I’m kind of dead,” Trickster said.

  “He won’t,” Noelle rasped, “He’d knock those orbs out of the air, and he’s counting on them to destroy me. They probably will.”

  As some of her tendons and ligaments knit together, she got two legs under her and positioned herself as close to Trickster as she could without touching him, shielding him from the orbs that were approaching at a crawling pace.

  “I’m sorry,” Trickster said.

  Noelle couldn’t bring herself to reply. She wanted to say she was sorry too, that his apology was unnecessary, but a kind of indignant rage was rising deep within her, threatening to overwhelm her. All of it was directed at Eidolon.

  And in the midst of that rage, she felt a killing instinct she hadn’t experienced before. Even coming this far, she’d never wanted to kill. She’d wanted the Undersiders dead, yes, she’d tried to kill people, but a part of her had always held back from wanting to kill, from wishing to carry out the act of murder herself.

  To execute this man who sought to end her existence.

  It wasn’t her desire, not really. It was her body’s.

  “You want to kill?” she asked. “You really think you can fight your way through this?”

  “What?” Trickster asked. “What are you talking about?”

  Not talking to you, she thought. “I have two conditions. Don’t harm Trickster, and make it a nice memory this time.”