Worm

by John McCrae

  ■

  Things had gotten worse in the thirty minutes we’d been gone. Whole tracts of New Delhi had been leveled, and where the buildings had been tall and mostly intact while we collected the injured and met the ‘cold’ India capes, only half of them stood even a story tall now. The other half? Utterly leveled.

  It was a small grace that the fires had burned intensely enough that they’d exhausted the possible fuel, and the smoke was mostly gone, but that wasn’t saying much. I couldn’t take a deep breath without feeling like I needed to cough. Ozone and smoke were thick in the air, and the residual charge in the air was making my hair stand on end.

  The Endbringer’s path of destruction had continued more or less in one general direction, but beyond that, the damage was indiscriminate, indeterminate. Behemoth’s location, in contrast, was very clear. A pillar of darkness extended from the ground to the sky. Plumes of smoke and streaks of lightning slipped through the darkness on occasion.

  The Chicago Wards rode bikes that were somewhere between a scooter and a motorcycle in design. The vehicles might have been indistinguishable from normal road vehicles, but Tecton had quickly discovered that they had some other features. There were gyros that allowed them to tilt without allowing them to fall, and the engines were electric, with only the option of a generated sound, to appear normal.

  Near-silent, the Wards zipped down the streets, zig-zagging past piles of rubble and fissures. I flew above the group.

  “Armband,” I said, touching the button. “Status update.”

  The ensuing reply was too distorted to make out.

  Grue had gone ahead, though he’d no doubt had information on our whereabouts. Bitch’s dogs probably could have sniffed us out. He’d gone ahead. Why?

  “Armband,” I said, still holding the button, “Repeat.”

  I thought there might have been an improvement, as we got closer, but it was miniscule enough that I might have been imagining it.

  I dropped down, settling on the back of Wanton’s bike. The wings were already tucked away, to minimize damage from the electromagnetic radiation, but I didn’t want to push my luck further.

  We passed a cluster of dead capes, alongside a series of massive gun turrets that had been mounted on hills and rooftops. The heroes had made a stand here, or it had been one defensive line of many. A number had died.

  Had it been foolish to descend to the cold cape’s undercity? Should I have told them to take the wounded beneath, damn the consequences, so we could have helped more?

  I hadn’t thought it would take as long as it had, hadn’t anticipated a fight with the woman in the suit.

  I hoped I wouldn’t regret this, that the absence hadn’t cost our side something. We weren’t the most powerful capes in the world, but maybe we could have made a small difference here or there.

  I’d learned things, but did that count for anything in the now, with tens, hundreds or thousands of individuals dying where they might have lived if we’d stayed? Another lightning rod? Something to slow him down and give them a precious extra second to form a defensive line?

  The second defensive line, another collection of the dead. Whatever method they’d tried here, there was no trace left now.

  We were getting closer.

  The third perimeter. A giant robot, in ruins. As many dead here as there had been at the last two points, all put together.

  And just beyond this point, Behemoth, in the flesh. He glowed white, marking the radioactive glow, and Grue’s darkness wreathed him, containing it. The ground beneath Behemoth was tinted gold, vaguely reflective, and geometric shapes were floating in the air, exploding violently when he came in contact with them.

  With all of the obstacles he’d faced to this point, he looked less hurt than his younger brother had for his one-on-one fight with Armsmaster. He didn’t limp, or slouch, his limbs were intact, his capabilities undiminished. The tears and rents in his flesh and the gaping wounds here and there didn’t seem to have slowed him down in the slightest.

  And with that, he managed to fight his way forward, out of Grue’s darkness, striking out with bolts of lightning. Forcefields went up to protect the defensive line, but only half of them withstood the intensity of the strikes.

  “Armband,” I said, and there was a note of horrified awe to my voice, “Status update.”

  The A.I.’s voice crackled, but Grue’s darkness might have been suppressing the electrical charge, because it was intelligible. “Chevalier is out of action, Rime is present commanding cape for field duty. Legend is out of commission. Capes are to assist defensive lines and fall back when call is given. Earliest possible Scion intervention is twenty-two point eight minutes from the present time, estimated Scion intervention is sixty-five minutes from present time, plus or minus eighteen minutes.“

  I clenched my jaw. I’d committed to doing something, but I had no idea what that could be.

  I felt a sick feeling in my gut.

  “Armband, status of Tattletale?”

  “Out of commission.“

  By all rights, I should have reacted, cried out, declared something. I only felt numb. This was falling apart too quickly.

  “Status of the other Undersiders?”

  “Two injured. Parian and Grue.”

  Which would be why Grue wasn’t replenishing his darkness. I closed my eyes for a second, trying to find my center, feeling so numb I wasn’t sure it was possible.

  Citrine’s effect seemed to be maximizing the effects of Alexandria’s attacks, because Behemoth wasn’t able to channel them into the ground.

  He swung his head in my general direction, and I could see the steel of Flechette’s arrows in the ball of his eye, clustered. Holes marked the point where the bolts had simply penetrated.

  Other capes had managed varying degrees of damage. The Yàngbǎn had formed a defensive squadron, using lasers to cut deep into Behemoth’s wounds, and other capes clustered close to them, adding to the focused assault.

  And yet he advanced. Inevitable.

  A blast of flame caught the defending capes off guard. Their forcefields and walls of stone blocked the flame from reaching the capes, but did nothing to stop it from spreading as it set fire to nearby buildings, grass and the stumps of trees that had been freshly cut, if the sawdust was any indication.

  As if alive, the fires reached forward, extended to nearby flammable surfaces, and cut off a formation. They started to clear the way for retreat, and Behemoth punished them with a series of lightning strikes.

  Golem was already acting, bringing stone hands up to block Behemoth’s legs, two hands at a time. Tecton moved forward, striking the earth with his piledrivers. Fissures raced across the road, breaks to keep any impacts from reaching too far.

  “Antlion pit!” I shouted.

  “Right!” Tecton reported.

  And my team was engaging, finding the roles they needed to play. Grace, Cuff and I couldn’t do much, but there were more wounded needing help getting out of the area. Annex began reshaping the ground and walls to provide better cover. Wanton cleared away debris from footpaths.

  This particular front hinged on one cape, a foreign cape who was creating the exploding, airborne polygons. I could see, now, how each explosion was serving to slow time in the area around the blast. Had he actually been the inspiration for that particular bomb Bakuda had made?

  Eidolon had added his own abilities to the fray. He had adopted something similar to Alexandria’s powerset, fighting in melee, ducking in only long enough to deliver a blow, then backing away before Behemoth’s kill aura could roast him from the inside. Eidolon was using another power as well, one I’d seen him deploy against Echidna. A slowing bubble.

  Cumulative effects. Cumulative slowing. Each explosion added to the effect, and Eidolon’s slowing bubble was a general factor to help them along. What did it really do if you tried to walk forward, and the upper half of your leg moved faster in time than the bottom half? How much strain did that create
? Was there a point where the leg would simply sever?

  If there was, Behemoth hadn’t quite reached that point. Either way, it seemed to be a factor in how slow Behemoth was moving. He was getting bogged down. Bogged down further as one foot dipped into Tecton’s antlion pit.

  Until the Endbringer struck out, targeting one group of capes with a series of lightning strikes so intense that I was momentarily left breathless.

  And the explosive polygons disappeared.

  He lurched forward, and even a direct hit from Alexandria wasn’t quite enough to stop him. The shockwave dissipated into the air, rather than the ground, and flying capes throughout the skies were driven back.

  The Endbringer broke into a run, insofar as he could run, and nobody was quite in position to bar his way. He ignored capes and struck out across the area behind them, hitting a building with two massive guns on it, a clearing, a rooftop with what looked like a tesla coil. Fire, lightning, and concussive waves tore through the defensive measures before they could be called into effect.

  We don’t have the organization. Our command structure is down. Tattletale is gone, either dead or too hurt to fight.

  He struck one area with lightning, and explosives detonated. A massive forcefield went up a moment after they triggered, and the explosion was contained within, a cumulative effect that soared skyward.

  For a solid twenty, thirty seconds, the sky was on fire, and the Endbringer tore through our defenses, making his way to a building with capes clustered on the roofs. They weren’t, at a glance, our offensive capes. They were our thinkers, our tinkers, the ones our front line was supposed to be covering.

  The woman in the suit had declined to share the other reason her power wouldn’t let her simply solve the Endbringer crisis.

  The answer I’d declined to share with the other Wards was a simple one. She had the ability to see the road to victory. Maybe, when it came to the Endbringers, there was nothing for her to see.

  24.03

  Eidolon and Alexandria had settled into something of a rhythm. Though his powerset was similar to Alexandria’s on the surface, the eerie noises and the dimming of the light around the areas his punches landed suggested he was transmuting the kinetic energy of his punches into something else altogether. Between Eidolon’s strikes and Alexandria’s, Behemoth couldn’t quite adapt to the point where he was redirecting every strike, let alone the barrage of ranged attacks that the other capes in the area were directing his way.

  The Endbringer staggered under the onslaught, but he was slowly adapting. They’d managed to pin him for a minute, even costing him some ground by driving him back once or twice, but each successive minute saw him rolling with the punches more, advancing further when he found a second or two of mild reprieve.

  His target: the command center. Our flying capes weren’t working fast enough to clear the entire rooftop, and every shaker we had -every cape capable of putting up a forcefield or creating a portal, raising a barrier- was busy trying to slow down the brute. The Chicago Wards, or most of the Chicago Wards were among them.

  I tensed, but I couldn’t move without exposing myself to one of the lances of electricity that were crashing down around us. The capes on the rooftop were protected by an arrangement of tinker-made forcefields, it seemed, but those wouldn’t hold. Fuck, hanging around on rooftops was dumb. I’d learned my lesson on my first night out on costume, had avoided being put in that position since, excepting the fundraiser, where we’d been on the attack, and the time Defiant and Dragon had dragged me up to one, just a bit ago.

  The guys up there were tinkers and thinkers. They were our communications, supporting roles, strategists and healers. A few of them were long-ranged capes. Not really people who could hop or fly down five stories to the ground and walk away unscathed. Not without help.

  I waited and watched as Behemoth engaged the other capes, tracking what powers he was using and when. He was presently staggering forward when he could, otherwise holding his ground, deflecting and redirecting attacks. When he was free to do so, he reached out with his claws, and lightning lanced out to tear through the assembled capes.

  Golem, to his credit, was going all out. Hands of stone and metal rose from the ground to shield defending capes and balk Behemoth’s progress. I could make out Hoyden, leader or second in command of the Austin Wards. She wasn’t on the front lines, but was defending the mid-line capes. It made sense with how her power worked, as her defensive powers provided more cover from attacks at greater ranges. She threw herself in the way of lightning bolts and stood between Behemoth and the wounded. When lightning struck her, detonations ripped out from the point of impact, seeming almost to short out the currents.

  “Come on, come on,” I muttered.

  I could see Tecton creating fissures in the ground, no doubt intended to reduce the reach and effects of Behemoth’s stomps. Annex was creating bridges so heroes wouldn’t fall into the gaps.

  Dispatch, vice-captain of the Houston Protectorate team, zipped over to a group of wounded with accelerated speed, only to seem to pause, as though he and his immediate surroundings were only video footage. Color and space distorted violently in an irregular area around him as he hung there, just an inch over the ground, one hand at his belt and another reaching for someone with intense burns.

  A half-second later, the effect dissipated, and they were all moving. Dispatch was carrying one of the most wounded, gloves off and the sleeves of his costume pulled up, dried blood up to his elbows. Others were bandaged and sutured. His name, I knew, came from his ability to pick out targets in a fight, closing the distance to them and catching them in his temporal distortion effect. He’d have minutes or hours, however long it took the air within the effect to run out, to end the fight with his super strength, durability and the close confines of the bubble. To any observers, it appeared as though he’d won the fight in a heartbeat. Apparently the idea extended to medical care.

  Revel, leader of the Chicago Protectorate and official overseer of Tecton’s Ward team, was stepping up to the plate. Floating up to it, whatever. She rose into the air, and caught one full current of lightning inside her lantern. The sheer force of the blast knocked her back, and she struck a wall, pressed against it with her lantern held in front of her.

  She began releasing spheres of light from the lantern, each larger than a human head, slow-moving but numerous. Their trajectories were unpredictable, some striking friendlies, others carrying forward towards Behemoth. Where they struck friendlies, they only exploded in brilliant showers of sparks. When they touched Behemoth, they sheared right into him, cutting two or three feet deep before flickering out.

  When she saw it was working, she only intensified the assault, spending the charge she’d accumulated to create fifty more orbs, before hurrying forward to intercept another stream of lightning that was flowing from Behemoth’s claw-tip. It was impossible to actually get in front before the lightning appeared, to save the lives that Behemoth was taking with the initial moments the lightning appeared, but she was stopping the lightning from flickering to the fourth, fifth or sixth target.

  That was what I was waiting for. My limited experience with Endbringers had taught me one thing. When someone actually found a way to respond, to cancel out the attacks or to deliver a measure of real damage, they changed tactics.

  Some capes were already responding. Captains and leaders were giving orders, and various barriers were being reinforced or thrown back up. Some were trying to give the warning, but their voices disappeared in the midst of the chaos around us.

  “Take cover!” I hollered, and my swarm carried my voice.

  It was only two or three seconds later, as the second wave of spheres drifted to Behemoth and began to cut into his torso and groin area, that he responded. His ‘mouth’ opened, the craggy spikes of obsidian ‘teeth’ parting.

  And he roared. A sound that was slow at first, growing steadily more powerful.

  Sound was a bitch of a thing.
It could be muffled, but blocking it entirely? We didn’t have Grue.

  I fled, cranking my antigrav to ‘high’ and risking unfolding my wings to use the propulsion systems as I made my way to for cover, putting as many buildings between Behemoth and I as I could.

  My swarm responded to my call, assisting the capes who weren’t fleeing fast enough. They rose as a singular mass, a wall of tens of thousands, and absorbed the worst of the scream. I wasn’t sure it was enough. Even with some distance and a dozen buildings between Behemoth and I, I had no defenses as it reached a crescendo. My sense of balance went out the window, my very bones hurt.

  Closer to Behemoth, capes were bleeding from their ears, vomiting, passing out. Organs and brains would be reduced to jelly as he continued. My bugs weren’t doing much to muffle the noise or soften the damage, if they were helping at all.

  But my focus was on the rooftop. I’d been waiting until he stopped using his lightning. There was nothing saying he wouldn’t use it now. He could use multiple attack forms at the same time. Still, he was more focused on picking off the defending capes, the ones who were suppressing the noise. Was Citrine among them? I could see the golden glow of her power in the distance.

  Director Tagg had given me an effective ranking of two for every single power classification. Ostensibly, it had been because he hadn’t wanted to underestimate me. Was there a note of truth to that, though? I wasn’t sure about the ‘brute’ or ‘mover’ classifications, but did my power over bugs afford me a versatility that let me cover the bases on other fronts?

  They still hadn’t completely evacuated the roof. The people who might have helped them down were disabled or otherwise occupied. Getting them down was key, here. The flying capes were more focused on assisting the capes near the front lines, helping the ones who could deal damage escape Behemoth’s implacable advance and avoid the kill aura that accompanied him.

  The roaring made it impossible to hear. Even seeing was difficult, as my vision distorted and lost focus. I very nearly tipped over, until I turned to my swarm sense. Not perfect. Even they were suffering, scattered and dying, at close range to the roar. But it gave me an orientation, a plane to compare the tilt and angle of my body with.