Worm

by John McCrae

  The looks were hostile. All the worse because they were alien. Hundreds of people, and they didn’t feel any goodwill towards me.

  Strangers. Not strangers like people I didn’t know. That was different. Strangers who had connections to me, who I still didn’t know. Strangers like the masked man who broke into a house. Strangers in the sense of a stalker. Of a jury about to announce a sentence.

  This darkness around me, it was an absence of illumination, an absence of any light that could clarify and make sense of things. I couldn’t recognize anyone, put a finger on them as familiar or unfamiliar, enemy or ally.

  This… it was all ominous, vaguely threatening. People I might pass on the street wouldn’t pay me any mind. People here, almost every single one of them, they had a reason to pay attention to me, and the attention wasn’t good attention.

  Any of them, all of them, they could attack me at a moment’s notice. Inflict horrible tortures, kill me, fates worse than death. There were a lot of fates worse than death.

  I was settling into the end-state of my transition. I knew it, and I could see the dividing lines more clearly. What I could still do, what I couldn’t.

  Taking action, moving… easier so long as I had an objective.

  Objectives, too, were easier. I could still analyze. I could survey the battlefield, interpret powers, put two and two together. I could connect the dots, recall the powers I was up against, and I could form strategies.

  My head hung, but I could see the eyes of the people around me through the clairvoyant. They fixed their stares on me, and I could feel paranoia building. A weight, a pressure, crushing me from all sides.

  I couldn’t recognize anyone, only powers. Everyone was a potential enemy.

  Everyone was capable of using their powers to hurt me.

  Damn them all. After everything I’d done, everything I’d given up, and they were standing there, threatening me.

  Not a word was spoken, though the singing continued in the background. It conveyed the story to those who were still arriving. There were only two reasons things would be so still. The first was that battle could be utterly lost and there was no more need for orders, for communication, for cries of grief and screams of pain. That there was nothing left but surrender for the ones who remained.

  But this wasn’t that, I had to remind myself. We had won. That disbelief rocked each and every one of the people who were present, that silence marked a kind of respect for the fallen.

  And, all too possible, it marked a kind of unspoken agreement. I could see it. The silence was a relief and an added pressure, giving more weight to the eyes on me. Every pair of eyes was telling me the same thing.

  I was the next big threat. The next one that had to be killed before this could all end.

  I tensed. I could barely move, but I could still ready myself for a fight or flight response. Maybe I wouldn’t be able to stand, but I could use the device on my back, I could throw myself at the first opponent to approach me.

  I was lost in this special kind of darkness, but I could analyze this situation too. I could look at my capabilities and what my power had taken away, and I knew that there was a common theme at work.

  Con- conflict. I could function so long as there was conflict, so long as I was creating it or resolving it. Given the choice between paralysis and conflict, I wondered if anyone would really choose the former, committing to it over time.

  Paralysis was a scary thing. There were a lot of forms of it, and they ranked up there as far as fates worse than death.

  Conflict was better. Familiar.

  My swarm informed me that I still had my knife, tiny legs tracing over the weapon’s grip.

  One tinker came through a doorway, as if to survey the situation. Heavy armored boots rang as they struck the glassy, blasted disaster area. The man emerged, and he cast a glance around. He took in, no doubt, the ruined buildings, the clouds of dust that were rolling into the clearing, still following the vast amounts of air that had crashed into the space to replace the atmosphere the blast had wiped out.

  The tinker pointed his weapon. The rest of the tinkers filed into this world, two by two.

  Everyone, just about, was making their way here. Thousands, now.

  Strangers. All of them would, circumstances demanding, aim to get in my way, to stop me, question my actions, condemn me, hate me, maim, torture or kill me. I’d seen good people go bad, couldn’t trust anyone.

  My memories were incoherent, but I could see the common themes, and I knew everything they could and would do, given the chance. Pyrokinetics could burn, telekinetics crush. They weren’t the scary ones, as painful as a burn or other injury could be. It was the thinkers that worried me, the masters, the tinkers.

  I watched that crowd with one eye.

  Some of them would kill me the second they thought they could get away with it. Others would be scheming. I had power, they wanted that power for themselves. They’d take it like my portal man was taken from me. They’d take all of it.

  My hand was clenched so hard I thought something might break.

  Had to remain still. I had a handful of soldiers, a swarm of sixteen people who…

  I’d pushed them away, and these were the ones who I hadn’t pushed out. Why had I pushed them?

  Had I already been interfered with? Had someone already made a move, manipulating me?

  Rrreee-

  I shook my head a little. Couldn’t form complete thoughts. I felt a light weight on my shoulders, heard a voice. Reassuring, coaxing.

  So very small, compared to everything I was seeing, everything I was up against. The voice did nothing for me.

  I was prey in the sights of a predator. Frozen. When two snipers fought, the one who shot first was at a disadvantage. The other would see the muzzle flash and be on target. It was the same for me. My enemy would see the direction I was moving, the strategy I was putting to use, and they’d intercept me on both fronts.

  Being small and still helped. I wanted to cover myself, to hide in my swarm, big or little, but I couldn’t afford to move.

  Again, the voice. I shifted the clairvoyant’s grip, sliding it up from my wrist to my shoulder. Severing threads so the hand was free to move. Once it was on my shoulder, I moved it under a strap and used the cut threads to secure it in place.

  My hand was free.

  That singing- Singing was bad.

  But it wasn’t the- wasn’t the winged being that was perched on a building at the far end of the battlefield. She was silent, her wings folded over her shoulders and along the edge of the rooftop. Worse for wear, with wings broken, but her body was pristine alabaster, her hair blowing in the wind.

  The singing… it was one of my minions. The words had been faster in tempo before, now they were… I wasn’t even sure.

  Singing was bad, wasn’t it?

  I silenced her.

  Stunning, to be in the middle of a city and not hear the roar of distant traffic, of conversation or anything of the sort. There was barely any wind, even, and no debris here for the wind to stir.

  There was only my swarm. A dull buzzing roar in my ears, for the smallest ones. I could sense the pounding heartbeats, feel the breathing. I could imagine the sounds so clearly that I couldn’t pick it apart from what I was actually hearing. Periodically, I could hear a voice, which was the same in some ways. In my head or in my ears?

  Muscles creaked when moving. For some, bones ground together. Joints popped. Stomachs gurgled.

  My swarm had formed a loose ring around me, more by accident or manipulation than by any design on my part. There was a gap just beyond them, where others were afraid to cross. The noises of their bodies, the sensations, the perceptions… they were an island of forced familiarity in a sea of hostility.

  If even one wave of that sea hit me and my island… if they charged, if someone gave them an excuse…

  I repositioned my hand, a shaky, uneven movement. One side of my wrist pressed against the butt-en
d of my knife.

  The last of the phones finished relaying the music. Only two seconds had passed? If that. The spell broke.

  Someone cried out.

  It had started.

  The outcry was picked up by others. People grabbed one another, arms were thrown around necks, fingers dug into costumes and skin. They whimpered, screamed, shouted. I could see tears in eyes, faces contorted in emotion. Groups turned inward, focusing on one another, loners backed away, positioning themselves where they had space to maneuver. Madness, hysterical, chaotic. Grown adult and child alike, costumed and uncostumed, individuals dressed in white or in bright colors, individuals in black, they were part of the riot.

  They held nothing back, emotionally. I saw fireballs explode in midair. People streaked into the sky, lightshows following after them.

  But the yelling, the echoes of that first cry, they were what shook me, what shook everything. The only thing around us to block the sounds were people, and those people were making more sound. Thousands echoing of that one cry.

  None of this surprised me, that they’d turn on each other the moment the real threat was gone. It was the way our species operated. A reality that had been writ over and over again in my experiences. I couldn’t remember the specific cases, but the lessons remained with me.

  I was standing, already, making my way to my feet with the help of the clairvoyant, with the device on my back, the attached arms.

  Easier to move when there was something to do. Fighting, fighting back.

  My movement had drawn attention. I started to draw my knife, and something stopped me, keeping it in its sheath. I abandoned it, turning instead to my swarm. They shifted positions, ready to use powers, to protect me against outside threats, and my bugs filled the spaces between them. The strangers around me responded in kind, preparing for a fight. Thirty, fifty people, waiting for me to act. More lurked in the fringes, ready to step in.

  It wasn’t an unfamiliar experience, to be surrounded in chaos, to be arrayed against impossible odds. For what I was now, for what remained, it felt only natural. All of this was as I’d expected.

  They were talking, exchanging hurried words, questions. Trying to cobble together a strategy. I had no such need. My side didn’t need to communicate. They were perfectly coordinated.

  Everyone here was a potential enemy, and I’d treat them appropriately. I just needed to focus, to get my bearings, and identify the biggest threats to me. If I eliminated or captured them, I could systematically kill everyone present.

  It was… not a calming idea. But it reassured.

  I was just a little unhinged, my perceptions were broken. I knew that. But if I had to live like this forever, if everyone was a threat for the rest of my life, I’d well and truly lose it. Stopping them, eliminating them and bringing them under my control…

  The only way we’d all achieve anything resembling peace.

  I’d wanted peace for a very, very long time now.

  After everything I’d given up, I deserved peace.

  Someone was pushing their way through the crowd around me. I tensed. My hand went to my knife again, and again it was stopped.

  I heard the voice in my ear. It was trying to sound soothing, gentle, but it was failing. I heard the fear in it. That fear was reassuring in its own way. It told me I was right. That the world did revolve around fear and violence. That I was doing the right thing, standing guard, being ready for a fight at any moment.

  The madness around me continued unabated, the shouting fading, then starting anew, picked up by others, different factions, fresh sets of lungs.

  I wasn’t going to listen to the voice. Not with all of the powers arrayed against me. it would be idiotic and foolish if I did listen, whether I understood or not.

  The others, they were arguing amongst themselves, barking out insults, yelling, pointing at me. I’d taken control of them, and that was a fresh wound.

  The individual reached the edge of the crowd. A man, bearded, with a small entourage of people wearing white.

  When he spoke, his voice was soothing, a constant stream of words, more like he was talking to a wounded animal than a person. He stopped at the circle’s edge, and I could see how many of the others were tense, wary.

  They recognized him, and they didn’t like him.

  If I was going to exterminate them all, then I could use the fact that they weren’t all friends. Let them fight each other, wear each other down…

  Except I had this to focus on first.

  He was gesturing at his mouth, moving his hand as he talked. he pointed to me, then to one of his underlings. He repeated the three gestures, speech, me, underling.

  I wasn’t stupid. I grasped his meaning. I could see others around the circle relaxing.

  But they weren’t relaxing entirely. But they were relaxing, tension leaving their shoulders and hands. Weapons, poised at the ready, dropped a fraction.

  He was saying he had a means of communicating with me? But it, or he, couldn’t be trusted a hundred percent, judging by my own gut and the reactions of the others.

  He sent one of his underlings into my reach. A boy with a shaved head and thick eyebrows.

  I felt the underling’s body and powers unfold before me, and I could tell right away that there was something wrong.

  My eyes told me one thing, my power told me another.

  My eyes told me the man was just beyond the reach of my power, the boy following his orders.

  My power told me that whatever the boy looked like, he was a half-foot taller, he had a beard, and he was loaded down with trinkets and tidbits. I recognized him by his power. He made thinkers and tinkers, granted powers.

  He had three more, hanging back, watching. No doubt to help facilitate this ruse, whatever it was. To watch for people who could see through it, to watch his back.

  He was putting himself in my power. Whatever he’d had his other self, his disguised underling or his clone say, he was making his offer plain and clear to me. He’d let me use his power on myself.

  A chance to communicate, to fix something.

  I sensed my bugs moving, shifting position without even moving a limb or wing. Before I even grasped what was happening, I was moving. I cut out with my knife, feeling like I was swinging madly into open air.

  A girl materialized, shouting or saying something. She’d appeared just a little in front of me, her back initially to me as I continued cutting, the actions jerky and stiff, uncoordinated and continuing long past the moment there was any point. I could feel her body appear in my mind’s eye, and I asserted control over her.

  At my command, her hand moved up to her mask, raising it enough that she could press her own knife’s point to the roof of her mouth. One good push, suppressing reflexes, and she’d impale her brain. It was a good place to keep her, keeping any of her allies at bay.

  I was left panting, my knife-hand trembling. Someone had moved to get a bead on me with their gun, but boys in white had intervened to block the shot with their bodies. The girl… she’d been materializing, been making herself known, and I’d caught on a second before anyone else had become aware.

  The man had stopped in his tracks in front of me. Still in my control.

  Was it a trap? Probably. People didn’t like being controlled. He’d have measures in place. Maybe his underlings, maybe a device he wore.

  Was the offer still tempting? Yes.

  I had him extend his hands, offering them to me.

  Sometimes there was a need for making a point. He wanted to manipulate me? He could bleed.

  I cut.

  The blade of my knife found the flesh of his palms twice in quick succession. The slashes were as wild and frenzied as before. My aim was good, but my control wasn’t. A cut found the back of his forearm, tore deep through cloth, skin and muscle.

  My next cut was comparatively feeble, though it hardly mattered. A barrier appeared, a crystalline wall, and the knife bounced off.

  All arou
nd me, people reacted. My swarm shifted position, and were summarily buried in prisms of that same transparent, floating crystal.

  I had that one member of my swarm start singing again and she was shot an instant later, electricity arcing around her armor as she collapsed, unconscious.

  I had my bugs, but-

  I stopped. The reactions, the calls of alarm and the occasional shriek, they extended beyond the ring of people that surrounded me.

  It wasn’t right. The chaos beyond this one group, it should have left people blind to what was going on here. They shouldn’t have been able to turn their backs on the others.

  I was- it was parsing wrong. Didn’t connect.

  In that riot, that mob, there was no blood. The girl I’d cut wasn’t bleeding, the people in the crowd weren’t dying… only the hands and arm, held out for the knife to slash, were weeping with blood, only the older injuries, from a short time ago.

  People wrapped their arms around one another, but bones weren’t broken, limbs weren’t disjointed. The shouting and screaming wasn’t directed at anyone in particular, nor were the powers that were actively being thrown around. There were tears, but those same people were smiling.

  I hadn’t counted on having to deal with this many people.

  Too many with powers I wasn’t familiar with. The ones closest to me? The ones I’d just been controlling? I had a grip on them. But the mob beyond was something else.

  I felt a moment of trepidation.

  My senses… I was more disabled than I’d thought. I couldn’t make sense of what was going on beyond my swarm, could barely make sense of what was happening here.

  I moved, relying on two individuals to support me where my one leg wasn’t working properly. Not that the other was in great shape. Two individuals, the clairvoyant walking behind, hand strapped to my shoulder-

  I saw the forcefield woman in the crowd. Taller than most, a curved, crystalline horn on her forehead.