Worm

by John McCrae

  The area was a broad building with a high ceiling, most of it occupied by a single machine. The best he could do without a Doormaker of his own. Sixty of his students milled through the area, seeing to their individual tasks.

  “How?” Ingenue asked.

  “We did our research,” Teacher said. One of his students cut the chain between his cuffs. “They had to use the suits. Protocol when Ingenue is involved. The ambient shutdown effect doesn’t include the suits, because the suits have to operate at one hundred percent when there are capes on the other side. Once it was close enough to one of them, the crew on this end could operate it.”

  “If they’d destroyed the pad-”

  “Against protocol, again. You don’t shoot tinker devices. At best you bury them in containment foam, and I used my access to Dragon to find the formula for a counteragent.”

  “You can’t cover every eventuality,” Ingenue said.

  “My plans work,” he said, dusting himself off.

  Her voice was hard. “If you want my help, fine. But don’t involve me in your lunatic schemes.”

  He paused.

  Lunacy, madness.

  Speaking of…

  “Where’s our distraction?”

  “Lung finished the job ten minutes ago,” a student answered.

  “He found it? I’ll want to see pictures. I feel like a child on Christmas.”

  “Bringing them up right now, sir.”

  “No incident?”

  “There was an incident,” the student said. Blunt, there was no emotion on his face. No indication of whether it was a continent-destroying error or Lung killing a student.

  “Show me.”

  Monitors lit up.

  Lung was a mercenary hire. The site was a vault, and fallen capes littered the area. The view shifted as the camera did, showing a share of Lung’s claw. He was so tall that his hand dangled at what was shoulder level for the students walking alongside him.

  The man had refused to let Teacher use his power on him, but he’d agreed to cold, hard cash and a group of Teacher’s students joining him to ensure the job was finished. They were dressed in white outfits, carrying hardware he’d paid a pretty penny for. All had powers of their own, on top of the complimentary powers he’d granted them. They were loyal, and they would die if he ordered it.

  The scene was almost comical, on a level. There were warnings plastered everywhere, skulls and crossbones engraved into stone, and even yellow police tape here and there.

  Lung ignored it all. He’d changed, fighting past the defensive line.

  Every plan had to involve a win, Teacher mused. He had a good streak going. Using Lung, using the man now, it meant pulling stronger heroes away.

  Either Lung was removed from the big picture, and a chaotic element was dealt with, or Lung succeeded, and Teacher could banish one niggling doubt, sleeping just a bit easier.

  He’d done a lot of research, ordering his minions to dig up footage, finding it wherever it was available. He’d had them search it, then double checked it himself.

  But an educated guess was still only a guess.

  Lung tore into the last vault, rending the hinges, then slowly peeling it away, heating the metal as he went.

  “They didn’t send one of the major capes? Chevalier? Valkyrie?”

  “Too far away, sir.”

  Far away meant different things, in this new future. A world away in another universe was very possible.

  “Good fortune for us… or particularly bad fortune, if this incident-”

  He trailed off as Lung entered the vault itself. The camera shed light on the contents.

  Satyr hung back, arms folded.

  “What is it?” Ingenue asked.

  “A quarantine area. That was the weapon the Endbringer was using.”

  A gun. It was dark gray with a faint green speckled coating on it, where one material had been broken down and incorporated into the outer coating. There was a gouge in the side where a feather had cut the housing, but it was otherwise intact.

  Over and over, the Simurgh had protected the weapon. He’d seen it, had checked the footage, had seen her go out of her way to shield it with her wings. She’d done it subtly, most of the time, events contriving to make it look more accidental than anything.

  She couldn’t make tinker devices herself. She had to copy the designs of tinkers near her. He’d found who she’d copied, a now deceased cape from Brockton Bay, and he’d found the designs.

  There were discrepancies.

  He was all too aware that he could be walking into her trap. He had enough precogs around himself and, in that video, around Lung, that the Simurgh shouldn’t have been able to leverage her full power against them, but she could have put things in place, not knowing exactly who, but still knowing it would be bad.

  The weapon had been lost in the course of the battle, and the heroes had decided to minimize contact with the thing, locking it away.

  “Quiet, please.”

  The bustle of his students working around him stopped.

  In the silence, he could hear footsteps behind him. He, Satyr and Ingenue were joined by a third person.

  Teacher spoke without turning his head. “You’ve seen this video already, I expect?”

  “Yes,” Contessa answered.

  Lung tore into the casing, much as he’d torn through the vault door.

  There was a scratch as Lung’s claw touched glass.

  He tore at the metal, peeling it away while preserving the glass.

  There was fluid inside.

  The light caught the glass, at first, obscuring the contents.

  A baby. Male. With large ears and a large round nose. Not attractive, as babies went.

  One or two years old? Accelerated aging? Where had the Simurgh been in contact with a tinker with that particular knowledge? Bonesaw?

  That was disquieting enough on its own. Was the child tinker harboring knowledge?

  “These are the big things you were talking about?” Ingenue asked, her eyes wide.

  “Actually, no. I had suspicions, but the Endbringer making a baby wasn’t one of them.”

  Lung touched a burning hand to the glass, melting it. Water steamed on contact with his claw.

  “No,” Teacher said. Idiotic, considering Lung couldn’t hear, and the event had already passed. Still, he couldn’t help but add, “Don’t.”

  The water was crimson and boiling by the time Lung withdrew his claw.

  The monster turned to leave, the polluted water still popping behind him.

  “I’m not sure whether to be relieved or very frightened,” Satyr commented.

  “The… incident?” Teacher asked.

  “Ten minutes from now,” a student said. “He growls a bit, but there isn’t anything we can make out. He was just walking, and our camera follows”

  “Skip forward, then.”

  The video skipped forward. Lung was in a dark stairwell, reinforced concrete and steel beams, light above him.

  He stepped up onto the surface, his clawed feet sliding where they were too long and wide to fit on one..

  The Simurgh was waiting.

  Lung was her height, bristling with scales. She looked more human of the two, pale, her hair blowing a bit in the wind, unreadable.

  Monsters, the both of them.

  “Well done,” Satyr said. “You may have killed us all.”

  “She moved? She isn’t dormant? Did she attack a target?”

  Did I just start the cycle up again?

  “She returned to orbit.”

  Teacher nodded, but as much as experience had inured him to the horrors of the world, he couldn’t help but feel a sick knot in his gut. That didn’t mean anything. Had she gone dormant again, or was she waiting?

  Or was she doing something else entirely?

  “I don’t understand,” Ingenue said.

  I don’t either, Teacher thought, but he didn’t say it out loud.

  “She may
well try again,” Contessa said. “It’s hard to say how, when she isn’t involved in things.”

  Teacher nodded.

  “What will you do?” Contessa asked.

  “If she’s going to try again, I’ll find out, and I’ll take actions to stop it. I’ll have to bring others on board. Heroes, maybe. Learn from the mistakes of my predecessor. Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is insanity, isn’t it?”

  “There’s a saying along those lines,” Contessa said.

  “You said she’d try again. She’ll try what?” Ingenue asked.

  “I’ll find that out too,” Teacher said. “I wish Lung hadn’t destroyed the corpse. With luck, the heroes won’t seal the vault for quarantine’s sake and they’ll check for DNA.”

  “I could find out,” Contessa said.

  “You’re going to help?”

  She seemed to think for a little while. “Most likely.”

  With that, she walked off.

  More a cat now, walking its own path, than a loyal dog.

  Still, she was in his camp. At least for now.

  He nodded. “Right. That was it, with this job? Anything else?”

  “Lung called to leave a message, sir,” the student said. “It was only barely intelligible. He said you could consider that a breach of contract, if you wished.”

  “Pay him. It leaves the door open for future hires.”

  “Yes sir. And you have a message from Marquis. He’ll accept you any time today.”

  “Do you have coordinates?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “I’m coming, I assume,” Ingenue said.

  Teacher nodded. As much as he wanted to rest and get his bearings, he had to keep moving. “Saint?”

  A student in the corner turned. It took him a second to muster the functions needed to reply. “Sir?”

  “Dragon’s code. Any changes? Anything significant?”

  Saint slowly shook his head.

  “What are you thinking?” Satyr asked.

  He shook his head. “A thought.”

  Who had beat his team of hackers? Defiant wasn’t that good. Either something had gone wrong with his team, or Dragon was somehow active and hiding that fact from him.

  Paranoia.

  He and Ingenue stepped into the teleporter.

  Marquis was sitting on the stairs in front of a sprawling summer home. A jug of iced tea sat beside him, along with a plate of cookies.

  “Iced tea?” Teacher asked.

  “I picked too warm a place to spend the winter,” Marquis said. “Ingenue. How’s the love life?”

  She frowned a little.

  “Sit?” Marquis offered, indicating the stairs.

  Teacher sat. It wasn’t comfortable, and he wasn’t a shapeshifter in any capacity.

  “So. Do we discuss business first or do we conduct meaningless small talk?”

  “A few minutes ago, I would have said ‘business’,” Teacher said. “But I’ve had enough business for a time. Is your family well?”

  Marquis stretched a little. He took a cookie, then offered one to Ingenue. “Iced tea?” Either of you?”

  Teacher looked up at the sky. The sun beat down on them. “I’ll take you up on that.”

  “Please,” Ingenue said.

  Marquis took the time to pour it. He handed the glasses to the others, then filled his own glass. “By the by, if you bring up my daughter again, Teacher, I’ll lobotomize you.”

  Teacher nodded. “Noted.”

  “Needle up one nostril, jab the front of the brain, scrape… I digress. There’s no way for you to mention her without it sounding like a threat, so I’d rather you avoid the topic.”

  “I can do that,” Teacher said.

  Marquis smiled. “Since you already asked, though, she’s saying goodbye to her family.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means what it means. Putting bad things to rest. Moving on to, well… bad things. But in a good way, I hope.”

  “I presume you’re the bad things she has in the future. You’re continuing your career, then?” Teacher asked.

  “Could you stop?”

  “No, but I’m tied up in the business, and I never really stepped away from it. I’d wondered if you could, having had some time away.”

  “I was cell block leader. Hardly a vacation from supervillainy.”

  “But you’ve left your old business partners behind, there wasn’t anything to return to, after eleven years in the ‘cage.”

  “I went back to it right away,” Ingenue said, quiet. “It’s surprisingly lonely.”

  “Raises the question,” Marquis said. “Can a person change? I suppose if I was going to, my daughter would be a reason. My job took her from me in the beginning, after all.”

  “But you’re going back?”

  “Call it narcissism. I love ‘Marquis’ too much to say goodbye to him.”

  “The original Narcissus loved himself so much he withered away,” Teacher said. “It can be a kind of personality disorder. A kind of madness.”

  “An odd tangent,” Marquis observed.

  “Isn’t it? I’ve been focused on the big picture for some time, and I found myself in the position as one of the most powerful villains. My plans came to fruition. I have what I want. I’m looking at things on a different level. Where do we stand?”

  “Humanity as a whole, or us, as individuals?”

  “Both?” Teacher asked.

  “You’ve been dwelling on the subject. Tell me your thoughts, first.”

  “You asked if a person could change. I look at us, at the people we interact with, and I see madmen and monsters. Is that just us, the individuals, or is it mankind? I could use my power, set a team on it, find out, but I’m not sure I’d like the answer. I’d like to change, and that’s a heck of a lot easier, because I can lie to myself, whatever the outcome.”

  “Which leads, I presume, to your business deal.”

  “Capes. The theory going around, after the revelations about Scion, involved all powers being parts of a whole. We’ve seen how some powers are devastating in concert. It was, after all, how we won, on a level.”

  “More or less true,” Marquis said.

  “I’ve achieved all I wanted to achieve. I sell powers, I have wealth, I have a small army at my disposal. I have enemies, and in an odd way, that’s something I wanted too, because it keeps life interesting. But I feel a need to strive for something higher. Can we put the whole back together? At least in part?”

  “This is why you wanted me to come,” Ingenue said.

  “Everyone wants something. I think, with the right people, the right combinations, and unity, we can achieve what we desire most. An alliance, not for villainous purposes, but to achieve something greater. Fighting against entropy and all that is wrong in the world. Satyr is on board, but he wants a great deal. I don’t think I need to ask if there’s something you want, Ingenue.”

  “No,” she said, looking momentarily distracted. She looked up, “But I don’t see how this helps.”

  “We habitually seek out money and prestige,” Teacher said. “Why? Because it’s power, in an abstract way, and you need power to change the world. I think we can achieve power in a more direct manner. There’s a trend at work, parahumans taking positions of power. What if we take it a step further? Forget money and position. Everyone in our group gets what they desire most, we enforce a kind of cooperation, a joining or sharing of powers. We put ourselves above even governments and warlords.”

  “Everyone gets what they want most,” Marquis mused. “I can’t think of anything more terrifying. If I back out, will you be plotting to murder me?”

  “No. But I would prefer you didn’t go talking about this.”

  “I’m to remain silent while you build your secret society and start tampering with things that should be left alone?”

  “Call it professional courtesy?”

  “On the topic of courtes
y, something tells me you’re after my daughter, for this group of yours.”

  “Your daughter is an adult. Capable of making her own decisions. I was going to bring her up later.”

  “You’re not winning me over, Teacher.”

  “I’ll make you a deal. Let me make the offer to her. She accepts or refuses it herself. If she says no, I leave it be and find someone else. Either way, you respect things with your silence. I won’t take any action against you, but I can’t promise my partners will be so polite.”

  “Mmm. A counteroffer. I make the offer, as you outlined it here, and she decides from that.”

  Teacher nodded.

  “Power and control,” Marquis said. He sighed, then bit into a cookie.

  “You can’t avoid it,” Ingenue asked. “Can you live without charm, intimidation, or some form of influence over others? Without making others do your bidding on some level? You flirt, they react one way or another. Everything is manipulation.”

  “I think there’s such a thing as extremes,” Marquis said. “Case in point…”

  “I think I know who you’re thinking of,” Teacher said.

  “She had it all, and see where it got her,” Marquis said. “A lesson for you, Teacher.”

  It was enough to give Teacher a moment’s pause.

  E.x (Interlude: End)

  The train jerked into motion, and the men and women in the aisle stumbled. There was a crowd at the front, where an old woman had taken a while to handle her fare. Even now, she made her way down the aisle with excruciating slowness. The people behind her looked irritated enough to snap.

  “Hey. Miss?”

  The old woman stopped, glancing down. The seat was occupied by an older teenager, bundled up in an overcoat and scarf, with a wool cap pulled down over close-cropped light brown hair.

  “Take a seat?”

  “Oh, that’s alright. I prefer window seats. I think there’s one open at the back there.”

  “Take my seat.”

  “I couldn’t do that. I-”

  But the teenager was out of the chair, swiftly vacating the spot. With a peculiar awkward slowness, the teenager picked up the backpack and moved out into the aisle, leaving the way clear.

  “If you insist. Thank you,” the old woman said. She took a few seconds to get settled.