Worm

by John McCrae

  The remains of the platform had stabilized. Only a few remained on top. Weld’s people, the Irregulars, made up the bulk of the group.

  Sanguine was tending to two injured. Not Irregulars, but not capes I recognized either. The boy had hair and skin with a texture and color like clotted blood. The injured had blood piled and crusted over their wounds, scabs bigger than my hand. Or my claw.

  Weld looked at me, and his eyebrows raised.

  I opened my mouth to speak, and found I couldn’t. My tongue was thinner, layered in something hard, and the sides of my mouth were odd.

  I communicated through my swarm, instead. What little of it remained, anyways. Drones and buzzes and chirps. “Lab Rat. The boxes he gave us, they’re designed to trigger when we’re hurt, force a transformation.“

  “Might get a few more recruits,” Sanguine said, not looking up from the wounded. He had hands extended to two different wounds on one individual, and was drawing blood into one hand and letting it snake out of the other, flowing into the wound. Was he cleaning it?

  “His transformations are temporary. Buying time. He cut me in half, and I’m not sure I’m going to be in one piece when this stops working.“

  “But it worked?“ Weld asked.

  I nodded. The motion was jerky.

  I reached up with my good hand, the movements twitchy, and felt my neck and shoulders.

  The little muscle I had was gone, and the skin was taut over cords, like tendons, of varying sizes. The muscle had been cannibalized to build flesh elsewhere, I gathered.

  Weld frowned, then reached into the pouch at his belt. He held another device.

  After a pause, he pressed it against one of the wounded.

  It beeped, then a light went on in the corner.

  The cape convulsed, his back arching.

  A moment later, transformations began, veins standing out along his arms and legs.

  “Another one,” Weld said. “Get me a spare.”

  Sanguine handed him another. Weld applied it. Scales were manifesting around the most prominent veins on the first one by the time the second patient started reacting.

  “Gully,” one of the other Irregulars said. “If we can get to her-”

  “We can’t,” Weld said, looking down towards the water, “But she’s wearing one. I trust her to hold her own.”

  Their discussion of how their teammate was doing made me think of others. Grue. He’d come back through the portal, and he’d been close to the edge of the platform, but that was no guarantee.

  It was a hell of a drop to the water, and he didn’t have a flight pack. Not quite something that Masamune had managed to mass produce.

  Above us, Glaistig Uaine had created a spirit that was spreading across the sky like circuits on a circuitboard, extending itself across a plane. Scion was blasting it, but it had reached the point where it was spreading as fast as he destroyed it. Her other two spirits were working in concert, one duplicating the other, so it could create and lob projectiles that exploded in the air. The detonations left patches of a strange, nebulous darkness in their wake. They couldn’t move more than a short distance from their master, which limited their number, but they added up to twenty or thirty in all.

  “It’s working,” Sanguine said.

  It wasn’t. I looked at him, confused.

  His eyes were on the patients. He’s talking about Lab Rat’s matchboxes. I looked, and I saw how the scales were spreading. They were breathing easier.

  “Good,” Weld said. “We need everyone we can get.”

  “It’s a temporary measure,” I spoke through my bugs, my mouth firmly closed. “Moment this wears off, they might need emergency assistance. Me too.“

  “Situation’s bad,” Weld said. “Not sure we’re going to get any help, emergency or otherwise.”

  “The Triumvirate came.“

  “From miles away,” one of the other Irregulars said. She had a head that was many times the size, a body that was disproportionately frail, to the point that I wondered how she could hold herself upright. “They can’t open any gates here until Scion’s gone.”

  “We need to drive him away, then,” I said. “Or hurt him. Kill him.“

  The last two words slipped out, so to speak. Fueled by my anger, my outrage.

  No, not quite my own. A programmed bloodlust, one that came with this body.

  “That’s… not really doable,” Weld said. “Pretty sure the scientist who knocked him through the stratosphere died. Nobody else has really been able to knock him for a loop.”

  The tendril-girl spoke, her voice harboring a soft Russian accent. “We should go, Weld. Run. There’s nothing more we can do here.”

  “There’s nowhere to run,” Weld said. “Even if we swim-”

  “We’re stronger than we think,” the tendril-girl answered, her voice soft. “Isn’t that what you always say? There’s a strength inside us and we just need to dig for it. We came to help the wounded, with Sanguine and Matryoshka. Let’s take the wounded and go.”

  Weld hesitated. I suspected I could understand why.

  “I want to help too,” I said. I twitched, as if my body was taking that sentence as permission to go. “Murder that fucker. But there’s only so much we can do. Go.“

  He gave me a funny look.

  “I was put in charge of ordering people in the field. Take it as an order from me.”

  “I’m not your subordinate,” Weld said. “And I’m not sure you’re in your right mind. You keep talking in a strange voice.”

  “Everything she says is in a strange voice,” Sanguine murmured.

  “A stranger voice,” Weld clarified.

  “Not in my right mind,” I said. I stretched.

  Not in my right body.

  I shook my head a little. “But this is the smart thing. Retreat for now. This was never supposed to be a prolonged fight.”

  “No,” Weld said. “I’ll stay. I can help others. I’m tough enough to walk away with most of my body gone. I’ll search for others who need help.”

  There was the mask again. Even the case fifty-threes had them. The emotional defenses, the guise. He was hiding something, lying without speaking falsehoods.

  “Go,” I said. There was an emotion in the sound there really shouldn’t have been. Anger. Irritation. Insofar as I could even express that with a voice generated by my bugs.

  He hesitated.

  Scion erupted with golden light. It wasn’t the sort of attack one dodged. Instantaneous, hitting everything in every direction.

  My skin began to blister, the golden light searing through it, appearing in the ridges between spots where flesh was simply being eaten away.

  I scrambled for cover, moving back towards the underside of the platform. As I leaped over the railing, I grabbed one of Sanguine’s patients with my claw. My movement was reckless, too quick, unpracticed, and I nearly threw the cape I was holding over the edge.

  I waited, hanging by my three legs, two flight-pack arms, and one hand, the cape dangling below me, gripped in my claw.

  The light faded. I checked, then climbed back over the edge.

  Weld and his people had taken cover. Sanguine was covering injuries with scabs, but the damage was bad. The tendril girl’s tentacles were worn so thin they were barely there.

  The cloud cover had been largely dissolved, bringing more light down onto the battlefield. More to the point, Scion’s likely target had been affected as well. The cape that had spread across the sky was falling apart.

  Scion turned his attention towards Glaistig Uaine.

  Eidolon appeared beside her, taking her in his arms, and then the pair of them disappeared just as quickly. Legend opened fire with a series of lasers, while Alexandria ducked around to get behind the bastard.

  The cape I was holding climbed over the railing. I made my way under it, then sort of staggered in Weld’s direction, the tarsus segments of my legs sliding on the slanted, gritty surface. The light had eaten through me
tal, eroded everything in sight.

  Below us, the water had been affected, boiling. Clouds of steam rose from the water’s surface.

  My thoughts turned to the capes below us. My friends, past allies.

  Murderous instinct flared, and I restrained it.

  “We need to go,” the tendril girl said. “We’re no use to anyone dead.”

  “I can’t swim, Sveta, understand?” Weld’s voice was quiet. “It’s not- I’ll stay behind. We’ve got the case for you to hide inside. Sanguine can carry you. You should go.”

  “We need you, Weld,” Sveta said.

  Weld looked away.

  “Another form,” Sanguine said. “Something that floats.”

  “I’m metal.”

  “Metal boats float,” Sanguine said.

  Weld frowned.

  “What is it?” Sveta asked.

  “I’m not sure it’ll work.”

  “If it doesn’t,” Sanguine said, “walk.”

  “On the ocean floor?” Sveta asked.

  “He doesn’t breathe.”

  “It’s not that simple,” Weld said. “I’m going to stay. I have old teammates to look after. You guys should leave.”

  “Not without you,” Sveta said, her voice angry.

  A golden light speared past us. Striking the water. Scion was cutting up the capes who’d fallen in and survived.

  Glaistig Uaine appeared behind him. Three spirits surrounded her.

  One to levitate, grant the ability to float. A telekinetic or power granter.

  Another to duplicate capes. Duplicating the telekinetic, in part. But more focused on duplicating the third spirit Glaistig Uaine had made.

  Gray Boys.

  She’d gone through a phase, hunting down some of the scariest capes around, defeating them, claiming them.

  This was one.

  Scion was trapped in a time well, turning monochrome.

  Without any apparent effort, he broke free of the effect, shattering it.

  Only to be frozen again.

  My swarm was agitated.

  Agitated but futile.

  Scion started moving in the direction of Glaistig Uaine and her creations, gliding through the air. The effects went up as easily as they were torn down.

  I wanted to help. To stop him. I was powerless. A cockroach.

  Glaistig Uaine wasn’t stopping him, but it seemed to have his attention. He wasn’t using his power, either. Was it because he couldn’t, or something else entirely?

  Eidolon, Legend and Alexandria flew down to the water. They rose with no less than twelve capes between them, Eidolon levitating several, and then disappeared towards the horizon.

  Weld seemed to come to a decision. “Okay. If it’s what it takes to make you guys leave, I’ll go. Make our way down.”

  I shut my eyes, exhaled slowly. The air moved in a funny way across my mouth-parts.

  “Here,” I said.

  I reached for my belt. It dangled, held in place by the silk cords that wound under and beneath my costume. Some of it had been obliterated by the blast. I used my bugs to start connecting the silk cords together.

  Too thin, too short.

  I reached behind my back, instead, past the small tube of pepper spray. More silk there. Some beneath the armor panel on my hand, others beneath my shoulders.

  I plaited them together into a rope.

  “Others go down first,” Weld said. “Order of weight. Let’s get you packaged up, Garotte. If you aren’t climbing down, stay still.”

  Stay still?

  He began undoing the little clasps of metal that bound Garotte against his body. She unfurled, reached out to railings, to edges of metal.

  Where the tendrils surrounded the railing, a barrier that might have stopped a speeding car, the metal bent, crushed tight.

  The tendrils continued to find their way to things to grip. There were more of them than I’d thought.

  One tendril seized my claw, faster than I could react. Just as fast, it pulled back, found somethign else to hold.

  She and Weld both stopped.

  I watched as she closed her eyes, drew in a deep breath, and then exhaled.

  Weld released her organs, hidden in a space in his broad back, and she was free of him. She collected herself around the railing, her eyes closed, drawing in deep breaths and then exhaling slowly. Slowly, the tendrils released, and she stretched out to her full length.

  She looked like a fish underwater, a lionfish or jellyfish with dramatic, crazy fins or fronds. Where they weren’t bound to her surroundings, the fronds fell in line with one another, moved with their own rhythm, a mind of their own, that searched the surroundings.

  “Tight, Garotte,” Weld said, an order. His eyes weren’t on her, but on Scion and Glaistig Uaine.

  Garotte wound herself around the railing, weaving her tendrils into gaps of the platform itself, to seize infrastructure. It was beautiful in a very different way, sinuous like a snake was, a face with everything condensed behind it, a mobile, flexible body.

  Scion and Glaistig Uaine began fighting in earnest. They weren’t more than a hundred feet apart. Glaistig Uaine was drawing on spirits with a shorter range, now.

  One with a fox-face that seemed to be granting three different kinds of enhanced movement, teleportation, super speed and flight. The other two varied from moment to moment. Some existed so briefly that Glaistig Uaine didn’t even try to keep them afloat in the air, images that lasted two or three seconds, employing their powers before they exceeded her natural range and dissipated.

  Some came back, used powers in different variations. The ones Scion destroyed, though, they didn’t recur.

  Glaistig Uaine was running out, and running out fast.

  Weld patiently helped Sveta bind herself to a single pole inside a half-sphere the size of a beachball. When she was inside, he attached another half to the sphere and began screwing it shut.

  Here and there, the smallest tendrils found their way out of airholes. They gripped his hand.

  “Be brave, Sveta,” Weld murmured.

  “I just tell myself I need to act like you,” Sveta’s voice came from within the sphere.

  Weld didn’t answer that. He handed the sphere to Sanguine. The red-skinned boy gave his leader a nod, then started sliding down the length of the cord.

  The capes who had taken Lab Rat’s juice were among the largest. They descended the rope I’d created. Only a couple were left, now.

  “Matryoshka, get the ones from inside,” Weld said. “Think you can manage?”

  A young case fifty-three with horizontal lines marking the length of her body nodded. She began dissolving into ribbons as she made her way across the platform.

  “You’re not coming, I suspect,” Weld said. I realized he was speaking to me.

  I shook my head, the motion jerky.

  “If it’s about the injuries, the juice wearing off, we can support you, give you some healing.”

  “Not that.”

  “There’s nothing you can do. Nothing we can do. Any of us.”

  “String Theory hurt him.“

  “String Theory died. And she didn’t hurt him so much as shove him. It’s like a three year old pushing a grown man. Right time, right place, catching him off guard, nothing more.”

  The metaphor was eerily similar to Shadow Stalker’s one about cockroaches.

  “I’m talking abstracts,” I spoke through my swarm.

  I watched as a very androgynous figure left the building Matryoshka had entered. She bore innumerable injuries, but stoicly limped her way to the rope, gripping it. She glanced at Weld, then nodded.

  “Abstracts.”

  “We know it’s possible to shove him, maybe other stuff is possible too. There’s hope.”

  “So you want to do this again?” Weld asked. “How many of your friends came? What did you stake on this?”

  I thought of Grue. I didn’t know if he was okay, or if he was one of the capes who had been in
the water.

  “One came,” I said.

  “Is he okay?”

  “Maybe.“

  “I brought everyone, lost three for sure, one that’s a maybe,” Weld said. “You don’t- we can’t do this again. He’s too strong. Unstoppable.”

  “You wanted to stay,” I said, stressing the you as much as I was able, speaking through the bugs.

  “No,” Weld said. “I didn’t want to leave. Different thing.”

  I didn’t have a response to that. Legend, Alexandria and Eidolon had returned. Legend and Alexandria rescued more stranded capes, flying off, while Eidolon rose into the air, positioning himself so Scion was between him and Glaistig Uaine.

  “Sveta idolizes me. She sees me as a hero, a spokesperson for our kind. Her therapist asked me to come visit, because she heard about what happened in the Echidna attack, what Cauldron was doing. All of her progress, gone. So her therapist wanted her hero to show up. Give her guidance, support. It worked.”

  “That’s a good thing, isn’t it?” I asked. I saw Eidolon open fire, not a dramatic attack, but a subtle one, a series of darts that left dark streaks in the air. My entire body tensed, as if I could jump into the fight.

  Weld was shaking his head. “She thinks I’m fearless, but I’m not. I don’t have any hormones, any real heart that can pound, adrenaline to flow through my veins. But I still feel fear, still feel despair. I can’t jump into the water and sink to some point lower than mount Everest is tall, spending months or years without any goddamn music. So I stay here and… I try to convince them to leave. I’m a coward in the end, putting them at risk because I’m scared I’ll sink.”

  “They left,” I said.

  “Because I lied. I’m not going to follow them. I’m staying.”

  I nodded.

  “Sweet fuck all we can do, you know.”

  “I know,” I responded. “But nothing we can do except fight.“

  “I don’t know if I should pity you for that perspective or envy you.”

  I shook my head.

  Weld spoke, his voice grim. “In terms of morale, there’s no fixing this. We put our best foot forward, we failed. I can’t speak for the others, but I can guess how they’re going to feel. I think of myself as a brave guy. I pulled off the hero bit, I lead by example. But I don’t think there’s anything we can do but run.”