Worm

by John McCrae

  It meant I was sick, and I’d have to hope that whatever the illness was, it would be short-lived.

  Shatterbird was still thrashing, trying to do something with her glass and failing because she couldn’t breathe or see. Echidna couldn’t move, as her legs were caught on the dogs. The other clones had been executed by Imp, as far as I knew.

  The sticking point was Weld. Tattletale had apparently figured out that he was immune to Echidna’s absorption ability, but he wouldn’t be immune to her basic shapeshifting ability. She didn’t have a lot of control over her form, or she surely would have chosen something without that number of legs, without the three mutant dog heads, but she did have the ability to shift her flesh around, and Weld was limited in how fast he could cut that flesh away.

  Rachel had moved to my side. She put her arms under my shoulders and my knees and lifted me, grunting.

  I twisted around to cough and gag. I managed to move one arm to my face, but didn’t have the strength in my fingers to move the fabric at my neck.

  Rachel found it instead, pulling it up and halfway up my face. I coughed up lumps of stuff that tasted the way raw meat smelled.

  “Careful!” Tattletale said. “Incoming! Dogs!”

  Noelle had apparently moved one of her heads around, because she managed to spray a stream of vomit our way.

  There was a pause as her body heaved, my bugs could sense the movement as one of the bulkier dogs was repositioned inside her monstrous lower body, and then she puked up one of the dogs, along with a handful of humans.

  It wasn’t large, wasn’t mutant. Well, it was a mutant, but it wasn’t one of Rachel’s mutants.

  “Bentley,” Rachel ordered. “Kill.”

  The bulldog lunged and seized the smaller dog in its jaws in a matter of seconds, crushed it in a heartbeat.

  “Yeah,” Rachel said, her voice low enough that only I heard it. “Feels wrong.”

  “Why?” Miss Militia asked. “Why was it small?”

  “When we were hanging out with Panacea during the Slaughterhouse Nine fiasco, she put her hand on Sirius,” Tattletale said. “And she said that the tissues die as they get pushed out from the center. They’re more like super zombie dogs, really, with a juicy, living center.”

  “And Echidna doesn’t copy dead things,” Miss Militia said.

  Tattletale nodded. “We got lucky. I was worried it would only be a little smaller.”

  Weld was fighting to emerge. He had his hands on Grue and one of the dogs. He hurled them out, and Miss Militia caught the dog. Imp and Tattletale hurried to drag Grue away.

  “Did you bring all the stuff I asked for?” Tattletale asked.

  “Yes. It won’t be enough.”

  “So long as you’ve got some, it’ll help. Just need to buy time,” Tattletale said.

  Echidna’s bulk shifted. I couldn’t see it with my own eyes, but with the blurry vision the bugs offered, I could track how she was getting her legs under her. I could see that there weren’t any distinct bulges anymore. She was breaking down the mutant flesh she’d stripped away from Rachel’s dogs and she was making it her own. Six dogs… if my estimates about them being roughly a third her mass were right, she could be three times as big as she’d been before.

  “She’ll be stronger,” Miss Militia said, putting the dog down. “If this doesn’t work, we just gave her a power boost for nothing.”

  “We’re saving the people she took,” Tattletale said, “And we’re buying time. It’s not nothing.”

  Echidna heaved herself up to her feet. She vomited forth a geyser of fluids and flying clones. Our ranks were scattered, knocked over and pushed away from Echidna by the force and quantity of the fluids.

  It was stronger than before. Whatever the source she was drawing from was, she’d reinforced it with the mass she’d gained from eating the dogs. No less than fifteen clones littered the floor, and there were another twelve or so dogs and rats in their mass.

  Miss Militia didn’t even stand before opening fire. Twin assault rifles tore into the ranks of the clones as she emptied both clips, reforged the guns with her power, and then unloaded two more clips. Several clones were avoiding the bullets more by sheer chance than any effort on their part. One Grace-clone managed to shield the bullets, moving her hands to block the incoming fire. One stray shot clipped her shoulder, but she was holding out.

  Echidna spat up another wave, and I hurried to get my flying bugs out of the way. I still couldn’t move, but I held my breath. The wave hit us on two fronts, an initial crush of fluid and bodies, and the bodies from the first wave that had been shoved up against us. As the fluid receded, my bugs moved back down to the ground to track how many clones she’d created. It made for a pile of bodies, with snarling dogs and clones struggling for footing as they reached for us.

  Bentley and Bastard provided our side with the muscle we needed to shove the worst of the enemy numbers away, bulldozing them with snouts and shoving them aside with the sides of their large bodies. Miss Militia followed up by sweeping the area with a flamethrower. She stopped, waiting for the smoke to clear, and Tattletale shouted, “Again! Weld’s still inside!”

  Another wave of flame washed over the clones. They were Regents, Tectons and Graces, as well as various dogs, and none were able to withstand the heat. Each and every one of them burned.

  But this much heat and smoke, even with this space being as large as it was, it wasn’t an assault we could sustain.

  Echidna opened her mouth for a third spray, then stopped. One by one, bodies were dropping from her gut.

  “No!” Noelle screamed, from her vantage point on top of the monstrous form.

  Weld forced another dog free, and Echidna moved one leg to step on it.

  Grace and Tecton fell, and Weld dropped after them. He turned the blade of one hand into a scythe, then chopped a segment of Echidna’s foot free. With one motion of the scythe, he sent Tecton, Regent and some of the dogs skidding our way, sliding them on the vomit-slick floor like a hockey player might with a puck on ice.

  Echidna deliberately dropped, belly-flopping onto Weld, Grace and the dismembered foot that had stepped on the sixth dog.

  Miss Militia was already drawing together a rocket launcher. She fired a shot at the general location where Weld was. He forced his way free of the resulting wound a moment later, the dog tucked under one arm, Grace under the other.

  Echidna swiped at him, but he hurled the others forward to safety a second before it connected. He was slammed into the wall, but he didn’t even reel from the blow. He made a dash for us.

  “Retreat!” Miss Militia gave the order.

  The staircase shook precariously as we made our ascent, one group at a time. One of the capes had frozen the staircase of the metal walkway to the wall to stabilize it. They started getting organized to hand each of us and the dogs up to the door, but Rachel barreled past, carrying me and two dogs, with Bastard and Bentley following behind.

  As we reached the doorway, dogs were handed to the able-bodied. Others were helping the wounded. Clockblocker had fallen, and Kid Win was being moved with a makeshift stretcher formed of one of the chain-link doors that had been in the hallway. There was a lot of blood.

  It was Shatterbird’s power, I realized. I’d barely registered the event. Shatterbird was still in the hallway on the other side of the underground complex. Standing away from the main fighting, perhaps, or waiting for an opportunity. She’d found the locker where Regent kept her costume, was using her power to put it on while simultaneously fighting off the bugs that were still biting her.

  Echidna reared back, apparently gearing up to vomit, and Miss Militia fired a rocket launcher straight into the monster’s open mouth.

  It barely seemed to slow Echidna down. Vomit spilled around her, crawling with vermin and bugs.

  The monster was moving slower, now. The entire structure shook as she advanced on us, sections of the walkway crumpling and screeching where her bulk scraped against i
t.

  But the door was just that – a door. Three feet wide and six feet tall. The tunnels the trucks had used were too small for her mass, even if one ignored the fact that they’d been strategically collapsed.

  The entire area shook with the impact of her furious struggles. She was trying to tear her way free. The violence only ramped up as we made our escape, to the point that I was worried the building above us would come down on top of our heads as we headed outside.

  The warm, fresh air was chill against the damp fabric of my costume as we escaped from beneath the building. I could sense other heroes and trucks stationed nearby, no doubt surrounding the area.

  The second we’d reached the perimeter, Tattletale collapsed to the ground, propping herself up with her back to a wall. Grue and Regent were placed next to us.

  We were covered in blood and vomit, half of us so weak we could barely move. It didn’t convey the best image.

  “Vista wasn’t inside Echidna,” Weld said. “If she’s still in the building-”

  “Triumph, phone her,” Miss Militia ordered.

  “Yes’m,” Triumph replied.

  Miss Militia turned to Tattletale. She gestured at the nearby vehicles. “You said you wanted containment foam.”

  “I did,” Tattletale said.

  “You think she’ll fight free?”

  “Almost definitely,” Tattletale said. “She had a Grue with her. One with teleportation powers. He disappeared partway through the fight, lurking somewhere out of sight. Being pragmatic about the situation. So unless someone can testify to having killed the guy, we can expect her to pop up in a matter of minutes.”

  “Minutes,” Miss Militia said.

  “No reply from Vista,” Triumph reported.

  “Keep trying.”

  “She gets free in a few minutes, and we’ll use the containment foam then?” Assault asked. I jumped a little at the realization it was him.

  “No,” Tattletale said. “We’ll use it as soon as the dust settles.”

  “Dust?” Assault asked.

  She withdrew her cell phone, raised her voice, “If any of you have force fields, put them up now!”

  Tattletale started punching something into the keypad. Miss Militia grabbed her wrist, prying the cellphone from her hand. “Stop.”

  “It’s our only option.”

  “What’s our only option?”

  “Buying time,” Tattletale said. She wrenched her hand free, but Miss Militia still had the phone.

  “How?”

  “You could punch the last two digits, one and four, into that keypad, see for yourself,” Tattletale said. “Or you could give me the phone, let me do it, and then if Vista’s in there, your conscience is… less muddy, if not exactly clear.”

  Miss Militia turned her face toward the phone, stared at the building that loomed over Coil’s not-so-secret base.

  “Shatterbird-” I started to speak, had to catch my breath, “She’s in there too. She was talking to Noelle. To Echidna. Last I saw. They might be deciding to work together.”

  “I won’t have a clear conscience, no matter what I do,” Miss Militia said. “But I might as well own up to it.”

  Miss Militia touched the phone twice. Long, quiet seconds reigned.

  “Didn’t think you had it in you,” Tattletale commented.

  There was a rumble. My bugs couldn’t reach far enough to see, but they could see the blur. A cloud, at the top floor of the building.

  Another cloud expanded out from the top of the building, one floor down from the first.

  The explosions continued, escalating, ripping through the building in stages. I couldn’t even breathe as I experienced the resulting aftershock, the vibrations as the building folded in on itself, plummeting down to the construction area.

  “What-” Assault started.

  There was another explosion, muffled, and my bugs were in range for the explosion that followed. Plumes of earth rose in a rough circle around the building, and then the ground sank. The entire underground base, folding in on itself. Even with the debris of the fallen building on top of it, the area seemed to form a loose depression.

  Fitting for the criminal mastermind, I thought.

  “Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiit,” Regent said, his voice reedy.

  “He didn’t use it on us?” I asked Tattletale. “Coil?”

  She was staring at what must have been a massive cloud of dust.

  “He tried, sort of,” she said. “His computer was rigged to blow everything up if someone tampered too much. I found the stuff when I went looking for his files, as I moved in. Scared the pants off me when I realized that it was already in motion.”

  “Before that?” I asked. “When we were waiting for the meeting?”

  “Couldn’t afford to let ‘Echidna’ loose,” she said. “And I think I would’ve known. Can’t say for sure.”

  It took minutes for everything to finish settling.

  “Containment foam on the wreckage!” Miss Militia shouted. “I want cape escorts for each truck and equipped PRT member, do not engage if you see her!”

  She was rattling off more orders. I couldn’t focus enough to follow it all.

  “She’s not dead,” Tattletale said, “But we bought an hour, at least. Maybe a few. With luck, they’ll upgrade this to a class-S. We’ll get reinforcements… which we’ll need.”

  “She’s stronger,” Grue said. He didn’t sound good. “You fed her.”

  “Had to. Or she would have escaped before the explosion.”

  “But she’s stronger,” Grue repeated himself.

  Tattletale nodded.

  “Do you have a plan?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “Not really. Ideas.”

  “I have a few too,” I said. “Not good ones, though.”

  “I’ll take bad ideas,” she said. She sighed wistfully, “Fuck. I really wanted an evil mastermind headquarters of my own. It’ll be years before I can build one for myself,” Tattletale groused.

  “So impatient,” Regent clucked his tongue.

  Tattletale pushed herself to her feet. “The next part’s going to be three times as bad. I’m going to go see if we can scrounge up some healing.”

  I brought my legs up to my chest and folded my arms on my knees, resting my head on them. The visions I’d seen were swiftly fading into memory, but the ideas behind them lingered. For the first time in a long time, I wasn’t sure I wanted to fight, to step up and save others. A large part of me wanted to say it was up to the heroes, to take the unsure thing over doing it myself and knowing I’d done everything I could.

  I turned to Grue. “You okay?”

  He didn’t respond.

  “Grue?” I asked.

  Nothing.

  I used my bugs to search for someone who might be able to give medical attention. Everyone was milling around, active, busy.

  Us Undersiders aside, there were only two people nearby who weren’t active, trying to contain and prepare for a potential second attack. Weld and Miss Militia.

  They were talking, and they were looking at me.

  Thomas Calvert. My clone had informed them. And they’d seen our faces.

  19.02

  I wanted nothing more than to stop, to look after Grue and lick my wounds, but I couldn’t let the heroes come to one of their deeply misinformed conclusions at my expense. Not when they were talking about murder.

  It took me two attempts to get to my feet. I didn’t like looking anything less than my best when surrounded by so many people who were judging me, and I felt pretty far from my best. My bugs formed a cloak, strategically covering me much in the way that Grue did with his darkness.

  I noticed how Miss Militia and Weld went silent as I approached. Other heads turned, but nobody moved to stop me. If anything, they edged out of my way. They didn’t clear a path, exactly, but a number of them found reasons to walk away, shift position or avoid looking at me as I moved through the perimeter they’d formed.

&nb
sp; For an instant, I felt like I was among the students at the school. Only this time, instead of drawing attention, with people approaching me and bumping into me, I was pushing them away. Instead of that incessant tolling, there was only quiet, the sound of the wind, a vehicle in the distance, and the buzzing of the insects that cloaked me.

  A part of me wondered how much of that was my reputation beyond Brockton Bay, and how much was my innate creepiness.

  “Skitter,” Weld said, when I reached him and Miss Militia.

  “Thank you for the rescue,” I said. ”I can’t really sum it up in words, but… it was pretty damn heroic. I owe you.”

  “Imp got in touch with me, with a message from Tattletale. The two of them made a pretty convincing argument. You’re okay?”

  I offered a curt nod. I wasn’t, but it wouldn’t do to say so. Silence was a very effective tool, I was finding, because it spoke volumes and rarely put me into a less advantageous position. The more I talked, the more I risked revealing just how exhausted and battered I was feeling.

  “Catastrophic, was the word Imp used,” Weld said, “when describing just what might happen if a clone got your power without any of your restraint. Not to mention the issues posed by the psychotic Grues. Your clones could commit mass murder on the scale of hundreds, but his threaten to lose us the battle.”

  “And we suspect at least one survived,” Miss Militia said.

  I nodded. ”There’s other capes who are just as dangerous as us. Think in terms of the damage some heroes could do. You?”

  Weld looked at Miss Militia. She nodded. ”If anything, this situation is very illuminating, in terms of how bad some parahumans might be in a worst case scenario. There are some powers that are tame at first glance, but utterly disastrous if left unchecked.”

  “I take it I have one of the tame powers?” I asked.

  “No,” Miss Militia said. “I wouldn’t say that.”

  There was a pause in the conversation. I wasn’t going to argue with or agree with her point, and neither she nor Weld were volunteering further information.