Worm

by John McCrae

  “This isn’t the time or place.”

  “With all due respect, spend a day in my shoes, Myrddin. Just one, and then tell me again, that I have to wait one day, one hour, even one minute longer for an explanation.”

  The ground shuddered, and I thought at first that it was her, but she looked surprised.

  It was Noelle. Echidna. She was active and fighting her way free.

  “We’re out of time. Enough of this,” Myrddin said. “Gully, Weld, join your teams.”

  Gully planted her shovel in the ground, put one foot on top of the blade, and folded her hands on the handle.

  “We could share with them,” Miss Militia said. “I know Weld is an exemplary hero, and we could trust him to keep necessary information to himself.”

  “I might agree,” Chevalier said, “If it weren’t for the dramatic flair Gully was displaying. I don’t trust that she will stay quiet on the subject.”

  Another shudder. Heroes were running to adopt battle lines, forming a circle around the construction lot with the ruined building. The invincible, the power immune, masters with durable pets and forcefield makers were positioning themselves at even intervals around the circle.

  “We don’t have time. Myrddin,” I said. “You and I can both fly. If we go to a nearby rooftop-”

  “Fuck me,” Tattletale said. “So much wasted time.”

  She grabbed for Miss Militia’s gun. When Miss Militia didn’t let go, Tattletale took one step closer and pressed her forehead against the gun barrel. “Do it. Kill me. You’ve seen a lot of people die in your lifetime. People important to you, dying because of an idea. So kill me because I believe this idea should be heard by people who care. Close the damn circle.”

  Why? I thought.

  “The Triumvirate,” Tattletale said.

  Miss Militia stared at her, but didn’t pull the trigger.

  “The… Triumvirate?” Gully asked.

  “I’m in deep shit anyways,” Tattletale said. “For saying what I already have. We all are. Sad fact is, I have better chance of surviving if it’s all out in the open. The Triumvirate is Cauldron. Eidolon, Legend, Alexandria. They started it, or they’re so involved in it that it’s incestuous.”

  “Fuck me,” Regent muttered.

  I couldn’t even breathe. I was waiting for Miss Militia to pull the trigger.

  “They made me like this?” Gully asked. “Why?”

  “Not sure. A warning, maybe, to people who didn’t pay their bills. Or they figured that while they were brainwashing you, they’d implant you with a built-in weakness, something a paying customer could exploit.”

  “That’s it? That’s your answer?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. I wasn’t sure if I was apologizing because it was insufficient or because I’d let Tattletale take things this far.

  The ground shook, more violently than before. The air was filled with the thrum of the helicopters that were flying overhead.

  By contrast, he flew so silently that I almost missed him setting down. I didn’t have bugs in the area, and my eyes were trained in the general direction of Gully and the wreckage of Coil’s collapsed base.

  Legend, landing in the midst of us.

  “You heard,” Tattletale said. She didn’t sound surprised.

  “Lipreading,” he murmured. “I can see very long distances. Put the gun down, Miss Militia. The cat’s out of the bag.”

  “You’re admitting it,” Chevalier said.

  There was another rumble, shaking the ground so hard that most of us lost our balance. Legend stayed perfectly upright, no doubt using his flight to hold himself a hair above the ground. He turned to check the fighting hadn’t started.

  “It’s true?” Gully asked.

  “We started Cauldron in the early days,” he said. “They had a way to give people powers, and each of us were desperate for our own reasons. We should have had trigger events, but we weren’t lucky enough to have the potential. Nobody deluded themselves about the risks. We knew that it was all too possible to die or become a monster.”

  “But you did. You made monsters,” Gully said.

  “Everyone who took a dose went into it with their eyes open,” he said. “They refined the process, and we reduced the chance to a single digit of a percent. Two, three percent, if that. And at the same time the numbers were decreasing, we were realizing how badly we needed the heroes that Cauldron could provide. Capes without traumas to drive them toward villainy. Cauldron turned it into a business, producing heroes and acquiring funds from the wealthy to redirect to Endbringer recovery and further research into powers. We knew it wasn’t ideal, that some would turn to villainy, but with the appearance of the Slaughterhouse Nine and the damage the Endbringers were doing, we had to do something.”

  “How do the Travelers factor in?” Miss Militia asked.

  “They got ahold of a dose meant for another group of people. They weren’t screened, they didn’t follow the necessary procedures, didn’t get the psychological or physical checkups… and even with that, we had no idea that the formulae could produce anything like this Echidna.”

  “But the Travelers are from another world,” I said. “Aren’t they?”

  “The Simurgh,” he said, simply. “Madison, Wisconsin, one and a half years ago. She opened a dimensional gate. You were there, Myrddin. You met Trickster and Echidna.”

  Myrddin’s eyes widened. “The hospital room.”

  The ground rumbled again. A burned husk of a building at the far end of the street toppled with a crash.

  “But… if Cauldron’s not taking people from other worlds,” Gully said. “What-”

  “It’s not Cauldron,” Legend said. His voice was flat, without affect. He met her eyes. “Manton worked for Cauldron, before an incident with his daughter led to a psychotic break and a break with the organization. He left with samples that he passed on to others. One of those people sold them for personal profit before Cauldron found him. Another was responsible for the case fifty-threes. We thought it was Manton, but it wasn’t.”

  He glanced at Tattletale, and she cocked her head a little to one side.

  “Why?” Gully asked. “Why do that? Why make us like this?”

  “I’d give you answers if I could. Some people abuse others for the sense of power it gives them,” Legend told her. His voice sounded hollow. “To change someone’s body and mind completely and irrevocably? It could be the same impulse. The appearance of the case fifty-threes has stopped or slowed dramatically. It’s little consolation, but we think the person who did this to you is be dead or completely out of formula.”

  “That’s no consolation at all,” Gully replied. The ground shuddered.

  “It’s worth noting,” Legend said, “That we tracked Manton down. He and Siberian’s master are the same person. Dragon and Defiant have a bead on the Nine. They expect a confrontation to start soon.”

  But I could only think of when Legend and I had been looking down at the Nine from above. He’d recognized the Siberian’s master then, and he hadn’t told me.

  Was he omitting facts now, in the same way? Was he lying like he had then?

  “The Siberian is Manton?” Myrddin asked.

  Legend nodded. “And Manton is ultimately responsible for the case fifty-threes. I know it’s not the explanation you each hoped for, but it’s the reality. Understood?”

  There were nods all around. I wasn’t sure if anyone else saw, or if they knew her well enough to say, but Tattletale was smiling, and it wasn’t the one she wore when she was being friendly and easygoing. It was the one she’d had before she’d unloaded on Panacea, back at the bank. The one she’d had before she revealed to Coil just how she’d screwed him over.

  I directed a bug to fly across her face, brushing the skin. She flinched and looked at me.

  I only stared at her, willed her to be quiet. Saying anything would be disastrous here. I wasn’t sure how much of what he was saying was truth, but Legend had just stepped in
here, pacified the situation.

  Tattletale shrugged with one shoulder, a fractional movement that only my swarm really noticed. The smile disappeared from her face.

  “Sure,” she said, a little belatedly.

  The rumbling continued, steadier now.

  “Is that the essence of what you wanted to tell us?” Myrddin asked me. “What Legend said about Cauldron?”

  “Only thing I’d have to add is that the Travelers came from another Earth. Except for Trickster, they’re more or less on our side here. Tell Ballistic, Sundancer and Genesis that we can get them home, and they’ll help. They have the kind of firepower we need.”

  “We’ll-”

  My bugs sensed Echidna clawing her way to the surface.

  “Armband!” I interrupted Chevalier.

  “What?”

  “Warn them. She’s here!”

  It was too late. The Grue that was accompanying Echidna emerged from the hole she’d dug. He raised his hands, and I could see the wave of darkness rolling out from the entrance to a parking garage to sweep over the assembled heroes.

  She wasn’t beneath the fallen base. With her shapeshifting and the teleporting Grue’s help, she’d found her way through a side tunnel, clawed or punched her way up into a nearby parking garage, a place where she could stage her attack.

  Echidna materialized out of the darkness the Grue had created. She was nearly twice the height she’d been before, to the point that the human body on the top was miniscule, a speck by comparison. A human figure atop a broad three-story building.

  Her legs were more robust, now. There weren’t any feeble limbs like the ones my bugs had glimpsed or touched. Her lower body was plated in a crust of bone, and two more heads were just emerging from her front, one with the beginnings of a mouth, the other with two large eyes and a lump that would become a snout. She’d developed.

  There were no less than ten capes within range of her claws as she appeared. Ten capes that were caught in her flesh the very instant the fighting began.

  I’d placed bugs on Legend to track his movements, and they went with him as he took to the air and fell into formation with Alexandria and Eidolon. Those same bugs allowed me to sense the smallest movement of his head, as he directed a slight nod toward his longtime comrades.

  If I’d been suspecting that he’d been lying before, that clinched it for me.

  In his shoes, I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t have done the same.

  19.05

  The Grue Echidna had created turned his attention to the rest of us. His power massed around him and then flowed forth like a tidal wave of crude oil. I was already atop Atlas, rising into the air. I couldn’t avoid the fact that Scapegoat was in the truck, and if we were separated-

  I flew after the wave of darkness, tracing its path as it met Scapegoat’s van and making my best guess at where it would wind up.

  The darkness hit a wall, and the van materialized, solid once more. More heroes were deposited two or three city blocks away from where they’d been standing.

  My heart was pounding in my chest as I blinked a few times and double checked that I hadn’t gone blind. If the Grue had cut off Scapegoat’s power, or if he’d delivered enough of an impact to disrupt it, it could have left me in worse shape than before.

  I could see, and I could breathe. Scapegoat was safe inside the containment van.

  He’d scattered us. Our tight battle lines were now spread out over city blocks, and people were having a surprising amount of trouble getting their bearings. One of the team leaders managed to get his squad organized, pointing them in the right direction, before Echnidna’s Grue hit them again.

  There was a limit to what I could do.

  I gathered my bugs and started working out how to stop the Grue.

  I had cords pre-prepared. I spliced a number together into a hundred-foot long line, then had my bugs fly the cord out.

  A minute later, my fastest flying bugs were winding the cord around the Grue’s neck, while others were biting and stinging. He barely even noticed, beyond swatting at the insects wherever they landed.

  I needed something to tie him to. A telephone pole? It wouldn’t stop him or even hamper him in what he was doing to disrupt our fighting lines. If he could teleport himself, then it wouldn’t even hamper him at all in the long-term.

  Legend, Eidolon and Alexandria moved into the fray, accompanied by a number of other flying heroes. They were coordinated enough that they had to have planned it out in advance. Alexandria went in first, circling around and then swooping down to strike Echidna across one back leg. She stuck on contact. Through a combination of her own strength and one of Legend’s lasers, she got free before Echidna could turn and envelop her.

  Eidolon was making his move before Alexandria was even free. He cast out a bubble that swelled as it moved through the air. By the time it reached Echidna, it was twice as big around as she was, enough to reach from one sidewalk to the other. The colors around her became muted, and her movements slowed to a tenth of the speed.

  It was a time-distortion effect. Legend took the opportunity to emit twenty individual laser beams. They each flowed out as a steady, unfaltering stream, and turned in mid-air to punch into Echidna. Each was meticulously placed to drive through the center of her body and avoid the places where her victims were being absorbed, or even cut her victims free.

  One beam turned down and took a sharp right to strike the ground just to the teleporter-Grue’s right. It slashed towards him and he used his darkness to teleport himself to safety, cutting the cord I’d created in the process.

  I commanded my bugs to collect the thread and cart it to the destination he’d teleported to. It was futile to try to tether a teleporter, I knew, but if I could find a way to trip up his abilities, tie his ankles together at a crucial moment… something, it might help. Beyond that, I’d have to hope the venom brought him down.

  Echidna tried to move to one side, but Legend’s beams followed unerringly, swelling in size and number. Thirty, forty, fifty… each cutting their way through her flesh as though she were made of little more than snow. Smoke or steam billowed around her as her flesh charred and boiled. The lasers might have been affected by the time distortion, but that didn’t matter when the lasers were moving at the speed of light in the first place.

  She feinted right, then lunged left, but Legend’s aim didn’t err in the slightest, and Eidolon’s slowing effect drifted after her. Still, Echidna moved faster than Eidolon’s slowing effect did. Slowly but surely, as pieces of her flesh were carved away and left to fall to the ground, she made progress toward the effect’s perimeter.

  Alexandria flew low to the ground, striking and catching hold of a traffic light. In one second she was a blur, the next she appeared to be moving as fast as a person did when they ran. Charging into the effect’s area, Alexandria made a beeline for Echidna.

  The swing was slow motion, but Echidna was too. Alexandria struck her with the metal pole, and Echidna moved like she’d been hit full strength. Her front claws were lifted off of the ground by the force of the blow, and she reared up, the canine faces contorting in pain and anger.

  The lasers moved around Alexandria, passing within centimeters of her. She didn’t even flinch as she lowered herself to the ground behind Echidna, used her hands and one knee to correct a bend in the pole, and then stabbed it into one spot on the back of Echidna’s leg where a hero was trying to get free. Legend’s cutting lasers and the leverage of the pole pried him free. Alexandria caught him before he hit the ground and threw him.

  Other heroes saw and positioned themselves before he reached the edge of the effect. He resumed normal speed and the heroes caught him.

  Echidna’s Grue blanketed the area in darkness, and Legend opened fire on the area where the darkness had originated from; the ground floor of a nearby grocery store. My bugs identified the Grue on the far side, and with a moment to get arranged, they connected the ends of cords. A little shorter than a
hundred feet, now. If I tied it to a section of a nearby window, and he tried to run, it could maybe yank him off his feet, but that didn’t amount to much.

  The Grue teleported Echidna to him, freeing her from Legend’s attack and the slow effect. The darkness carpeted them and bought her a second to breathe and regenerate.

  Had to remove the Grue from consideration. I tried to visualize what would happen next, anticipate their next move. Noelle would throw herself into the fray again. Either he’d use his teleportation to do it or…

  I tied the other end of the cord to a piece of bone plate that stood out on Echidna’s side.

  Eidolon was pointing to the building that Echidna had materialized behind, pointed two fingers at it with a thumb extended in a gesture much like a gun. Legend took the signal and opened fire, unleashing countless lasers into the ground floor of the building.

  The Psycho-Grue took shelter, ducking to one side of a nearby dumpster. At the same time, Echidna did just what I’d hoped for: she bolted. The cord went taut, and the Grue was pulled off his feet by the suddenness and force of her movement.

  I hadn’t tied it into a proper noose, but the cord was around his neck. I’d read somewhere that nooses tended to kill because they broke the neck rather than by suffocation, provided they were tied right and there was enough of a drop.

  This wasn’t a drop, but it was a tough cord around his neck, and the creature on the other end weighed no less than fifteen tons, maybe twice that. She’d accelerated from zero to fifty in an instant, and he went limp almost immediately, dead or completely disabled in a heartbeat. My bugs cut the cord and held it ready.

  Echidna hadn’t used her power yet. She’d absorbed enough capes, but something was holding her back. I wondered if her regeneration drew on the same pool of flesh-generation that made the clones and she couldn’t make clones while healing the kind of heavy damage the Triumvirate was dishing out. Maybe there was some other drawback.