Worm

by John McCrae

  Tagg faced the window, no doubt staring at it, at the bugs.

  “Arthropodaudience,” Miss Militia said. “She’s fully aware of everything that’s been going on in this building.”

  “I’m gone,” Dinah said. “I can’t communicate with her or the numbers change. I’ll be letting the PRT know you pissed me off. They can expect prices to go up five percent from here on out.”

  With that, Dinah was gone, saying something to her parents that I couldn’t make out.

  My focus was more on Tagg.

  “So,” he said, his voice low, “You can hear me.”

  “Yes,” my bugs replied, speaking throughout the building. They were distributed evenly enough that it would barely be audible. A thin, almost imperceptible sound. More than a few people jumped in reaction to it.

  “I see,” the Director said. “You tipped your hand.”

  I didn’t have a response to that. I had.

  He turned to Miss Militia. “See that Kid Win gets the defense system online sooner than later. I’d like this building cleared of bugs.”

  “I’ll talk to him.”

  “And you,” the Director said. I was getting used to his voice. I caught the emphasis there. “You stay put and be good.”

  I shifted position, sitting on the end of the bed, elbows on my knees, staring at the floor.

  Waiting, listening, watching.

  Another twenty minutes, forty minutes, sixty minutes passing, with irregular check-ins by way of the monitor. Every member of the PRT was set in place, some near the PRT headquarters, others elsewhere in the city. Heroes went on patrol and came back, making short trips, no longer than half an hour each. Each hero in a pairing took turns reporting to Tagg.

  Rachel had been seen crossing the city earlier, as had Grue. A meeting at the Forsberg Gallery. If they were following Tagg’s orders, there was now a PRT wagon stationed nearby, ready with a containment foam turret, in case the villains decided to meet there again.

  Miss Militia got a list of phone calls to make from Tagg, then left, exiting my range.

  Another half hour. Another check-in, a group of four heroes teleported in, Miss Militia returned and whispered back and forth with Tagg. There was a long discussion between the new heroes, Assault, Miss Militia and Tagg about how concentrated the forces were, now. Too many PRT uniforms and heroes in one place, the danger if they were all wiped out.

  In a matter of minutes, they’d organized another distribution. Expanding control over the area, keeping two major groups out of my reach.

  Only five minutes after the groups had departed, Kid Win activated his system. Floating drones started to roam the PRT headquarters, each no larger than a toaster, each with multiple settings that they rotated between. They emulated Sere’s power on a low enough level to kill bugs in the area without doing undue harm to any people, then became laser turrets, firing an invisible beam every second for about a minute, killing a bug with each shot. Then they shifted focus and accelerated, veering to a different location with unpredictable trajectories.

  Kid Win was making more, too. He was joined by one of the heroes that had just arrived. Another tinker. I caught a snippet of what they were talking about before the next drone kicked to life and killed the bugs I had on the new arrival. Workshop talk. Improving designs.

  Damn tinkers.

  Avoiding the drones became something of a game, occupying my attention to the point that I was still able to keep tabs on a few important people, but I was badly limited in terms of my ability to listen in. Fifteen minutes passed without me seeing or hearing anything significant. The monitor flared yellow for another check-in. Two minutes later, there was another. Irregular, unpredictable.

  As a plus, Tagg seemed to be getting restless, if the movements of his blurry form within his office were any indication. He’d arranged his forces, and the only thing he could do now was wait.

  We were both waiting. Both biding our time in the hopes that the other would crack first, make the first move and initiate conversation.

  Miss Militia left to make another batch of calls outside my range. She returned sooner than before, made a beeline straight for Tagg, and exchanged a few more whispered words.

  Together, they made their way to the elevator. The Protectorate tinker that had just arrived was sealing off the staircase, and there was only one way down.

  As a pair, Miss Militia and Tagg walked down the length of the hallway, stopping outside of my cell. I combed my hair out of my face, squared my shoulders and faced the door.

  The screen turned red. A matter of seconds later, the doors slid open.

  “Flechette?” Miss Militia asked.

  Flechette? Had my allies done something?

  “Did you plan this?” Miss Militia asked.

  I elected not to answer. This was a small victory, no matter what they were referring to. Tagg had broken first, had come to me more on my terms than his. I was going to play it for everything it was worth.

  I met Tagg’s glare with a level stare of my own.

  “If you used Regent to make this happen-” Miss Militia said.

  Regent?

  “Not Regent,” I said. I hope it’s not Regent.

  “You’re admitting you planned her defection, then?”

  Defection? I thought of Parian.

  “I… left the door open for it to happen,” I said. True, though not nearly to the extent I was implying.

  “And this plays a role in your greater plan?” Miss Militia asked. She was doing all the talking, here. It seemed Tagg didn’t want to break the silence.

  I thought for a second. “Consider it symbolic.”

  “Of?”

  I smiled a little, then shrugged.

  That seemed to be the point where Tagg lost his cool. He didn’t get angry. Instead, he merely said, “Interrogation room B.”

  Miss Militia held a pair of ordinary handcuffs in one hand, a taser in the other. I turned and extended my hands behind me, and she set the handcuffs in place, holding my arm as she led me down the length of the hall, around the corner and into a large room with only a table, a chair, and more sheet metal covering everything.

  “One o’clock,” I said, when I’d taken my seat. Miss Militia was unclipping my cuffs, moving my hands around in front of me to slip them through the reinforced table.

  “I think it’s about one,” Miss Militia said.

  “Exactly one,” I said.

  “Is the time important?” she stepped away from the table.

  “Her friends will move to attack at a set time,” Tagg said. “She won’t share that time, because she wants us to squirm, to be on high alert.”

  “Eight thirty,” I said. “Sunset.”

  I could see his heavy eyebrows rise in mild surprise.

  “You planned something for eight-thirty?”

  “No,” I said. I smiled a little, looking down at the table. “I didn’t plan anything. I didn’t say goodbye. I walked away, and I turned myself in.”

  “You’re acting like that’s something special,” Tagg said, leaning against the wall by the door, his arms folded.

  “The only instruction I gave was to Tattletale, to hold the others back until sunset, and to give them direction when they do act. They’ll have time to get angry in the meantime. They’ll be mad at me, but they’ll take it out on you. You have to understand, even at my worst, even when I’m as mad as I was the other night, when you’d outed me, I was sensible, reasonable in terms of how I dealt with you and held back. Now you get to see how unreasonable the rest of the Undersiders can be, without me to rein them in.”

  “I thought this might be it. A lesson in the role you play here. Leading us to think that we need you,” Tagg said, “To keep them in line.”

  “That’s not it,” I said.

  “No?”

  “It’s not even secondary, in terms of what I’m looking to achieve. I don’t think I could go back to them and return to my position if I wanted to. And I don�
�t.”

  “Then what?” he asked.

  “It’s a time limit. You saw what we were willing to do to Butcher, to Valefor. Even with that, even there, we were holding back as a group. Trust me when I say that I know my friends. If you stand between them and me? If you hurt me? They’re going to go thermonuclear on you. On the PRT as a whole. Tattletale will make sure of it. She’ll keep them on target, guide them, and maximize the damage. She’ll do most of the damage.”

  “You said you weren’t going to do any harm to the PRT,” Miss Militia said.

  “If things go that way,” I said, “It’s because the PRT is hurting the PRT. Which wouldn’t be an isolated incident.”

  “Cute,” Tagg said.

  I met his eyes. “I’m just saying. It’s really up to you guys. Send me to the Birdcage, you lose everything. Things get ugly for the PRT at a critical point in time. I suffer, the Undersiders suffer, you suffer, the world suffers.”

  I stopped, watching him for any sign of doubt, for a waver in his eyes, for a change in his expression or posture. His poker face was good.

  Miss Militia shifted position, but didn’t speak.

  “Or?” Tagg finally asked.

  “Or you let me call my lawyer, and then you hear my demands,” I said.

  “Demands?” he growled the word.

  “Demands. I have several conditions you guys will have to meet before I capitulate. I’ll bow my head, appear in public, plea bargain, do whatever you want. You get me, wholesale, no contest, and no complications. The PRT gets a victory at a point in time when, like I said, it’s most vulnerable.”

  I studied his expression, then looked at Miss Militia.

  “It’s your choice. You won’t like my demands. They call for big changes. But the alternative is an all-out war. I think Miss Militia will agree with me here, if the PRT doesn’t hear me out, it deserves what it gets.”

  22.02

  Miss Militia handed me a phone and uncuffed one hand from the table. I dialed the number I’d memorized and waited while she and Director Tagg watched.

  “Mr. Calle, Esquire,” the voice on the other line said. He sounded distracted, and the voice was slightly muffled. I could hear noise in the background, voices.

  “It’s time,” I said. ”I’m at the PRT headquarters, second basement floor.”

  “Ms. Hebert! Excellent! I was just telling myself that I’d almost run out of things to see in your city, here, and was about to let myself start being concerned for your welfare if it got much later. I’m in your territory as we speak.“

  “My territory?”

  “Getting a sense of who you are as a person and a personality. There’s a number of people here who are very concerned for your welfare. They don’t quite believe me when I say I’m looking out for your interests.“

  “Okay,” I said. ”Big guy? Beard?”

  “A young lady, dark-haired.“

  I thought for a second. “Tell her ‘fly in a paper box.’”

  He didn’t cover the mouthpiece of his phone as he spoke the phrase. There was a pause, then Mr. Calle spoke into the phone once again, “That did it.“

  I don’t really care, I thought. I just didn’t want him getting in any trouble. “How soon can you be here?”

  “A five minute drive.”

  “It’s not a five minute drive from there to here.”

  “I’m a fast driver. No need to worry, but… maybe don’t mention it to the law enforcement officials that are looking over your shoulder. Do you have any preferences for donuts? Coffee?”

  There was a murmur on the other end.

  “Someone’s telling me you want tea,” he asked.

  “Just-” Just get here, I was about to say, then I reconsidered. I knew where he was, and I was tempted at the thought. Besides, I knew Tagg was watching me. ”A BLT on toasted white and a sugar donut. And tea.”

  “They don’t sell any tea here, but I’m sure we can contrive to get you some in a timely manner. I trust you haven’t said anything to the glowering heroes?”

  “No.”

  “Excellent. Keep your mouth shut, now. I’ll be there in six.”

  With that said, he hung up.

  “A sandwich, donuts and tea,” Tagg said. He had his arms folded.

  I smiled a little, but I didn’t reply.

  “Very casual,” he mused. He took the phone, gripped my wrist in his hand and set the handcuff back into place.

  I shifted position, and the movement raked the chain of my cuffs against the ring that held them fixed to the table. It was hard to get comfortable. The table and chairs were bolted to the floor, and my hands were held in front of me. I got the impression the setup was meant for villains just a touch taller than I was – I couldn’t quite lean against the chair back without the cuffs cutting into my wrists.

  “I’m trying to figure you out,” Tagg said.

  I ignored him.

  “My aims aren’t very high. I’m not a psychologist, like Mrs. Yamada, I’m not experienced in the ins and outs of the traumas you capes go through or the damage that shit causes. You and I haven’t really squared off yet, like you have with Miss Militia. Those two understand you on levels I never could.”

  I glanced at Miss Militia. Her expression was inscrutable behind the stars-and-stripes scarf she wore over the lower half.

  “I’m setting my sights lower than that. I’m trying to figure out if you really think you have the upper hand, here, if you’re arrogant enough to expect everything will go your way…” Tagg paused, studying me, as if looking for a response. “…or if you intend to martyr yourself. Is that the idea? You go to the Birdcage, but you make some demands first?”

  I would have put my head on the table and tried to close my eyes for a minute, but the setup wasn’t very accommodating. I didn’t want to try to then realize I couldn’t get comfortable.

  “Maybe you don’t really get what the Birdcage is. See, I hate it. I was in Lausanne in two-thousand two through oh-three. Fought a whole mess of ugly. People that couldn’t be reasoned with, people who were hopeless, in the grand scheme of it. Victims, as much as anyone else.”

  I found myself listening, despite myself.

  “We shot them, the people who heard too much of the Simurgh’s song, who weren’t just walking disaster areas, but who’d listened long enough that they lost something. Men, women and children missing that moral center that people like Miss Militia and I have. Hell, even you’ve got morals. They didn’t. I’m sure you heard about it, you’re not that young. Suicide bombers, dirty bombs. Terrorism, if you will. Eleven year olds and old men making their way to Amsterdam or London and opening fire in a crowded area. Just like that.”

  Tagg slammed his hand down on the metal table, coinciding with the ‘that’. I jumped a little, despite myself.

  He’s just trying to rattle me.

  “Once we realized what was happening, we had to act, contain the damage. Contain families. Had to act against people who went home from a day of trying to kill the rest of us and cooked a nice dinner, oblivious to just how fucked they were in the head. People who were otherwise good, who got warped on a fundamental level, left open to the preaching and the incitement of their angrier neighbors. Two years of fighting before we got the word down from on high, that they couldn’t rehabilitate the ones they’d captured, the ones who’d listened too long. The poor assholes would play nice until they saw an opportunity, then they’d take it, do as much damage as they could. Two years fighting good people who’d been convinced they had to throw their lives away fighting an enemy that didn’t exist. So we closed the perimeter, bombed them out, herded them and gunned them down.”

  I glanced up, briefly meeting his eyes. The lines around them seemed just a little deeper. I wasn’t sure if it was emotion, memories coming to the surface, or if it was just the lighting in this interrogation room.

  “Which takes me back to my original point,” Tagg said. “The Birdcage. I hate it. Hate what it stands for,
the affront to our freedoms. The farce of it. You know what that word means, little girl? Farce?”

  I almost took the bait and responded, bit my tongue instead.

  “Guess not. And Miss Militia said you were smart. When it comes to the monsters and the menaces who are more trouble than they’re worth, I wish with all my heart that we had another option. Look me in the eyes, now. I want you to see I mean what I say.”

  I met his eyes.

  “I’d rather do what we did in Lausanne than use the Birdcage. End result’s the same. You’re gone from this world. It’s more merciful, understand? If it was legal, if I got the okay from on high, I’d make you kneel in the center of this very room and end you with one well placed bullet. Better than you getting in a van and getting disappeared, dropped into a pit that some of the scariest, meanest capes around haven’t figured out how to escape, a literal hell on earth.”

  Disappeared.

  “But as much as I hate the Birdcage, I’ll gladly use it if it gets menaces like you off the streets and out of the way of civilized Americans who are trying to live their lives. And my bosses know that. They know I’m just as stubborn as the worst of them, because I’ve fought bastards like the sad souls in Lausanne, who didn’t even know how to yield, and I outlasted them.”

  I wasn’t sure I could have responded if I’d been willing to open my mouth.

  “I want you to think on that. As much as you see me as an asshole, maybe you look down on me because you think you’re smarter than I am, but you think about what it means that I’d sooner shoot a misguided sixteen year old girl than send her to that place… and I’d sooner send you there than let you go free to keep perverting the system.”

  “My lawyer’s here,” I said. I could sense him, striding through the lobby to talk to a receptionist at the front desk. “Mr. Calle. He’s upstairs.”

  “Someone will show him the way down here,” Tagg said. “You and I, we can keep chatting here.”

  I shut my mouth, frowning. Miss Militia wasn’t acting, wasn’t saying a thing.