Worm

by John McCrae

  I didn’t have any bugs on my person. I’d been concerned about a pat-down at the gate, and I didn’t want to have bugs crawling throughout the inside of my pant leg or in my pockets when a guard searched me for weapons. I wasn’t wearing my costume for much the same reason. Stupid of me.

  I was stuck.

  “May I have your attention please?“ Principal Howell’s voice sounded from speakers throughout the school. “The school is now being locked down. For your own safety, please remain in your classrooms. Students not in an assigned classroom should proceed in a calm and orderly fashion to the nearest seating area. Students in the north wing of the school will need to make their way to the auditorium. Students in the south wing should gather in the cafeteria. Remain calm and rest assured: there is no immediate danger.“

  The noose was constricting around me. The students would be contained in select areas, and classrooms would be cleared one by one. If the Protectorate was involved, I wasn’t even sure I could find a proper hiding spot. Didn’t Kid Win have some ability to see through walls or detect heat signatures with his goggles?

  The two boys had reached a room on the bottom floor, near the gymnasium, and were quickly changing into their costumes. Clockblocker and Kid Win.

  What did the good guys know? They’d been alerted that I was in the school. I’d been in the office only minutes ago, and the principal had put my name into the computer. That was probably the catalyst, given how fast things had proceeded in the minutes since. The principal got the phone call, and had ordered the lockdown as a consequence. The fact that she’d warned me, it didn’t jibe with the lockdown: she probably hadn’t wanted to do it.

  It struck me that they didn’t know that I was in the school now.

  Inside of the building, I was largely defenseless. Outside, I did have my bugs. I doubted I could get out without drawing attention, but I could theoretically get them to call off the lockdown.

  My bugs moved from the surrounding blocks and collected near one of the fire doors I’d noted earlier. They formed into a decoy, a rough copy of my general silhouette, covered in bugs, and then began moving toward the school gates.

  One of the guards standing by the auditorium saw and shouted for Sere. The white-shrouded hero hurried for the door.

  Sere was a long ranged cape, probably capable of killing my swarm with little difficulty. I split my swarm off into further copies, maintaining their movement towards the gate and the walls.

  Another announcement was broadcast throughout the school. “A supervillain is currently near the school entrance. Students in the central areas of the school should relocate to the cafeteria. Anyone already in a secure place should please remain where they are.“

  The office was emptying, now, and guards were breaking away from their groups to ensure that every student that had been sitting around in the hallways was moving to the appropriate areas. Emma was among the forty or fifty students heading toward the cafeteria, nestled in the midst of the group, while the principal followed at the rear with two guards in her company.

  Behind me, the guidance office was evacuating as well. The glass door opened, and the soundproof seal broke. I could hear one of the counselors speaking to the twelve or so teenagers around him. “Let’s go to the cafeteria. If this takes a while, we’ll at least be able to eat.”

  He spotted me and gestured for me to join the group.

  I could have argued and asked to go to the auditorium instead. There were any number of excuses that could have worked, including ‘I have an issue with one of the students who’s in the cafeteria’.

  But I was more interested in being invisible. Better to play along, to think of a plan and execute it, while doing as little as possible to draw attention to myself. Here, at least, I’d be hidden among others. I joined the crowd moving in the direction of the cafeteria.

  More guards were directing other students to the cafeteria, the groups merging into a single mass, with the cafeteria doors as the bottleneck. Inside, everyone was spreading out to find tables. Again, I noted the distinction between the two varieties of student. The bright and cheerful ones were collecting together, filling up every space at the tables closest to the door and to the front of the cafeteria, where all of the food was available. Others were spreading out, alone or in groups of two to five.

  The principal and other staff members were standing by the door, seeing that everyone filed peacefully into the room. Emma was sitting at one table with all of the secretaries and a few of the teachers who I supposed hadn’t had a class to teach. She glared at me as I walked into the room.

  I found Charlotte, too, identifying her by the cube of paper with the ladybug inside that I had my more prominent minions carrying these days.

  “Taylor!” she hissed, as I made my way towards a table at the back of the room.

  I was dimly aware of Sere striking down one of the decoys. The moisture in the air zipped to his hand, and nearly half of the decoy was ruined, the bugs dazed or unable to move.

  The spiders, I noted, suffered worse than most. They used a kind of biological hydraulic system to move. Shit. I liked my spiders. They were particularly useful.

  I reached Charlotte and murmured, “Best if you don’t know me.”

  “Hey, Taylor,” she hissed the words, twisting around in her seat. When I didn’t reply, she repeated herself, “Hey. Is this about you?”

  “I think so,” I muttered.

  I took a seat at a table near the back, folding my arms in front of me and resting my chin on the back of my hands. Staying out of sight, while keeping an eye on everything. It also allowed me to focus on my swarm.

  My bugs were discreetly tracing back routes and other options. Was there a place where the cafeteria staff unloaded the day’s food? Some back way leading from, say, a gym or custodial entrance? A way onto the roof, even? I didn’t have enough bugs to spare that I could leave them on walls. I was forced to personally memorize every corridor and feature of the building that might be important.

  Outside, Sere was working at destroying my decoys. I split off more copies, and then moved one group to him to see if I could blind him.

  The bugs were being sucked dry of moisture as they got too close to Sere; I wouldn’t be able to disable him with just my swarm. He drew more water from a cloud of bugs, desiccating and killing hundreds.

  The number that died was indicative of something, though. As devastating as the attack was, the effect didn’t cover a massive area. It was a roughly cone-shaped area, with a long reach, but narrow breadth.

  If he was surrounded by moisture, maybe I could use that against him? My flying bugs started doing bombing runs. They picked up small stones and dirt, using the fine tarsals that helped them cling to walls. There wasn’t the suction, but it served to allow them to pick up specks at a time. They flew in tight loops, staying high over Sere as they dropped the fragments, touched ground to collect more dirt, and repeated the process. I was careful to spread them out and collect the fragments from multiple places so he couldn’t kill too many at a time.

  Dense moisture and dirt could become a thin mud, and it might serve to blind him or distract him where my bugs couldn’t.

  In the cafeteria, another group of students was filing inside. Fifty or sixty in all, they each bore telltale signs of the kids who’d stayed. Many were drenched in sweat, and the teacher with them held a basketball. Had they been in the gym, burning off nervous energy, working on building social bonds and all that?

  There were maybe three or four hundred people in the cafeteria, now, as students from all over the school streamed in, including most of the ones from the auditorium. With the increasing number of students, it was impossible for anyone to have a table to themselves. A group of three boys claimed the far end of Charlotte’s table, and she stood up.

  She had issues around unfamiliar men. It might have served as a push for her to do what she’d been debating doing anyways. She joined me at my table, sitting close enough that our
shoulders touched.

  “What’s going on?” she whispered.

  “You know when Tattletale vetted everybody?” I whispered back.

  Charlotte nodded.

  “She made a list of names, some vetted people along with some others who were safe. Mixing it up. She gave the list to the principal, with the idea that maybe she could cut us some slack and we’d help keep the peace in the school in exchange. So she had an idea that I was related to the Undersiders, she told me to run and hinted someone might be after me,” I said.

  Charlotte nodded again, mute.

  “I tried,” I whispered, “but I couldn’t cover enough ground in time. Someone forced her hand and ordered her to put the school on lockdown. I can’t slip out without drawing attention to myself, I’m not in a position to fight, and it’s only a matter of time before they find me.”

  “Shit,” she said.

  “Exactly,” I said. “I won’t blame you if you want to move somewhere else.”

  “I’ll stay,” she said.

  “Char-”

  “I’ll stay,” she repeated.

  I relented. I couldn’t afford to focus on this, when I needed to control my bugs and memorize any possible escape routes or hiding places. “If anything happens, get clear. You don’t know me. Your ‘little brother’ is counting on you, and he should be your priority.”

  “Little brother?” she asked. I saw the realization as she remembered our code word. ‘Little brother’ referred to all the kids in her charge.

  “Oh. Right,” she said.

  Kid Win was making a beeline for the front door. I clustered bugs on the surface of the door, blocking his line of sight as much as I was able.

  It didn’t work. The thermal goggles. Which means he can tell there’s no body inside any of the decoys. He pushed the door open and shouted, “Sere!”

  That was about as far as he got before my bugs descended on him, filling his open mouth.

  “What are you going to do?” Charlotte asked. With the degree of attention that I was devoting to what was going on, she sounded almost distant.

  Even with the murmuring of hundreds or so students conversing, the cafeteria was eerily still and quiet compared to what was going on outside. Adamant was standing at the doorway to the auditorium, simultaneously trying to keep an eye on the stray students from the north building and the fighting outside. Clockblocker was making his way to the front. He was slightly different; he wore what seemed to be a gauntlet, out of proportion with the rest of his body.

  “I have a few options,” I whispered my response. “I could be aggressive, take on the people at the door. I think I could slip away.”

  “Why didn’t you do that already?”

  “They were too guarded, and they were anticipating trouble from within the building. My bugs are causing some chaos outside, now, and they’ll have their backs turned. I’ll have time to improvise a mask, which I didn’t, before.”

  “You have to get out of the cafeteria first.”

  “I’m not too worried about that,” I said. “There’s two or three possible escape routes I’ve been able to find, if I can get my hands on a set of keys or create a big enough distraction to get away with making some noise. The principal has my back, and she might make it easier. I’d ask her for a key, but I’m not sure she would be willing to risk it, and there’s too many people around her.”

  Including Emma, I noted. One person I could count on to pay attention to me.

  “What if she’s the one who made the call to these people who are after you?”

  The principal? I shook my head. “Her priority is keeping this school and its students safe. Besides, I overheard her communicating with someone on the phone. If she was playing both sides, there’d be no reason for her to maintain the ruse when I wasn’t anywhere nearby.”

  “Unless she knew you could hear through your bugs,” Charlotte added.

  “Unless she knows,” I echoed her. “I don’t think she does.”

  Kid Win was suffering at the hands of my swarm. He drew a weapon, but my swarm was already prepared with lengths of silk. They constricted the weapon and prevented it from unfolding. Sere, for his part, had his hands full trying to take down the decoys. A large part of what I was concentrating on was the decoys, getting enough details right, and splitting them off in a way that suggested I could be any of them, while simultaneously keeping them far enough apart that he couldn’t attack more than one at once.

  “Taylor,” Charlotte whispered. “If they know who you are, they know. They could find you again, or put your face on the news.”

  “If they did, it would be breaking a good few unwritten rules. Especially if they only knew who I was because I helped with the Echidna situation. They can’t afford to punish villains for helping against the big threats. It would mean fewer people showed, and they need all the help they can get. Here, at least, they could say I was intruding on neutral ground.”

  The explanation felt feeble.

  “It doesn’t make sense,” Charlotte whispered, echoing my line of thinking. “Doing it here, at a school, with so many potential hostages around. Breaking the code?”

  “I’m thinking…” I replied, “I’m thinking everyone knows the Protectorate is falling apart. Legend’s gone, Eidolon’s announced he’s leaving as soon as things get quieter, the head of the PRT stepped down, a whole bunch of rank and file members left, and so did Weld and a lot of the more monstrous capes. Maybe there’s pressure from the top to put one in the win column, remind people why the Protectorate exists.”

  And who better to take down than the creepy teenage supervillain who’s leading the team that took over a city?

  “But in a school?”

  I didn’t have any guesses to offer on that count. I focused on the fighting outside instead of responding.

  Getting too close to Sere was killing my bugs just as easily as his long ranged absorption attack. I had to attack him from range, and the rain of dirt and small stones wasn’t doing anything, as far as I could tell.

  I turned to a tactic that had crossed my mind while fighting Echidna. She, like Sere, had been tricky to get close to. Unlike Sere, she’d been too big to really tie up.

  Spiders drew out lines of silk and formed them into cords, weaving them into one another to form extended lines, fifty or so feet long. With the combined efforts of dozens of flying insects, half gripping one end and half gripping the other, the lines were flown in Sere’s direction, so he was caught by the middle.

  The bugs holding the ends then continued onward, keeping the cord taut as they circled him, one group flying clockwise, the other flying in the opposite direction. In this manner, they orbited him, winding him up in a single length of cord.

  With five cords being wound around him in that fashion, I soon had him hampered, his arms and legs restricted in movement.

  He kept moving forward, attacking my decoys. As he passed a signpost, I hurried to have my bugs wind the remaining lengths of cord around it. Lines went taut, cords constricted around him, and he fell. He struggled, but it didn’t seem he would be on his feet anytime soon.

  With Kid Win on the ground, thrashing, that was two down.

  The other two, I was pretty sure I could deal with them if it came down to it. I wasn’t sure what Clockblocker’s glove did, but I had a suspicion. Adamant’s armor was just begging to have silk cords wind through the chain links and armor plates.

  My bugs rifled through Kid Win’s pouches and armor compartments. Masses of bugs and teams of the larger, stronger bugs working to pull silk cords helped to divest him of various tinker tools and components. His smart phone, a cylinder with a trigger on the front and a button on top, a sphere with a hole through the center, with screw-like rifling and electrical connectors in the interior. There were two devices like tuning forks, too, with tines that wound around one another without touching, and wires beneath the handles. Bugs in his ears helped to work an ear bud out of position and carry it off.


  Once he was denied as many of his tools as I could move, I dragged them away. It was only when I was sure that he wouldn’t be able to use them against the swarm or against me that I eased up on him. I let my bugs drift in the general direction my decoys had gone, as though I were leaving or gone.

  He stood, gagging and choking. Sere wasn’t in sight, and I’d taken Kid Win’s phone. There was only one place for him to go if he wanted to communicate with the others and touch base. He headed back into the school.

  I was ready. Bugs flowed out of his pockets, gaps in his armor and from where they’d clustered at the small of his back. I tied his wrist to the door handle.

  It took him a long few seconds to realize the door wouldn’t swing shut until he moved. That bought the remainder of my swarm time to turn around and flow through the open entryway. They headed straight for the guards, and swept into their pockets the same way they had with Kid Win’s pouches.

  Keys? Yes.

  While Kid Win and the guards were blinded, my bugs fetched the keys.

  I stood from the bench of the lunch table. “I think I’m set.”

  “Just like that?” Charlotte asked.

  I looked at the front of the room, where other students were feeling hunger and teenage appetites overcoming their fear of what was going on elsewhere in the school. Only a dozen or so. Maybe they don’t have a steady supply of food where they are, I mused. There were areas of town which weren’t in good shape.

  There’re pizza slices, I noted. It was a reminder of how the day wasn’t going as I’d planned.

  “It shouldn’t be a problem,” I said. Get out, then see what Tattletale can manage as far as damage control. “Wish me luck. I’ll send you a message and meet you at the lair after school if everything goes according to plan.”

  I crossed the cafeteria, heading for the buffet tables and sneezeguard-protected counters with empty trays waiting to be filled by staff. Emma was at her table, I noted, surrounded by secretaries and teachers. I was joined by other hungry students, eager for their free food, and their bodies helped to block me from the sight of both Emma and the staff.