Worm

by wildbow

  But where had he gone from there? I looked around, feeling the panic begin to set in.

  Brutus made a roaring sound somewhere between a howl and a growl, not quite recognizable as either. He reared like a panicked horse, and I saw Oni Lee drop from the side of his head, land in a crouch, and lunge for me, a knife in each hand.

  I swatted at his hands with my baton, sending one knife flying through the air and breaking his stride. It didn’t matter. Less than a second later, he was dust. He’d teleported.

  Hands seized me from behind, in a rough nelson hold, pulling my arms out of the way as another Oni Lee materialized out of the dust in front of me, ready to capitalize on my inability to defend myself.

  Knowing he wasn’t about to let go of me, I brought both my legs up in a kick at Oni Lee’s stomach. They connected and he doubled over.

  Brutus lunged forward, biting at him before he could recover. Both the Oni Lee that was holding me and the one clasped in Brutus’s jaws turned to carbon ash, adding to the volume of the opaque, gritty white cloud that surrounded us. As Bitch managed to get Brutus under control I saw his face. One of his eyes was in ruins, and volumes of blood and other liquids were flowing from it.

  “Fuck this,” I growled, drawing the bugs out from my costume, and retrieving the ones I’d had in the building. I spread them around, reaching for him, hoping for some sort of early warning.

  No sooner the thought crossed my mind than the silhouette of a figure appeared twenty feet to my right. He whipped his arm in my direction, and I didn’t have any time to do much more than turn in his direction before something collided with my head. I stumbled and fell over backwards.

  In the instant I toppled over, I had the presence of mind to tuck my chin against my chest so I wouldn’t add to my concussion. The armor covering my shoulders took the worst of the impact.

  As I lay there, trying to parse what had just happened, I realized that a small knife was embedded in the armored section of my mask, cracking the lens. A throwing knife? I pulled it free and pulled myself to my feet. I had enough bugs around me now that I could be sure he wasn’t attacking us. That just raised the question of where he was.

  “Bitch, you okay?” I asked.

  “Fucker stabbed me in the arm!”

  If that’s the worst injury we get away with today, we can count ourselves lucky. I headed out of the cloud that surrounded us, hoping to get a better sense of the battlefield.

  I got out just in time to see Oni Lee tackling one of Coil’s snipers off the edge of the roof. Oni Lee disappeared in a cloud of white before he hit the ground. I was pretty sure the sniper hadn’t.

  Sundancer was crumpled over, Labyrinth holding her shoulders.

  This was not going well.

  Oni Lee appeared thirty feet away from me, standing just to my left and behind me. My bugs gave me a sense of his position before anything else, and I threw myself to one side. I thought maybe I saw the shape of one of his throwing knives pass through the air where I’d been standing, but I wasn’t seeing very well with a cracked lens on my mask.

  At my command, The bugs that had alerted me to his position gathered on him and began biting and stinging.

  Then I noticed something weird. More bugs popped into existence in the midst of the cloud, near Sundancer and Labyrinth. I felt the original bugs perish as they exploded into ash.

  He was taking them with him. I don’t think he could help it.

  I could track his movements.

  “Bitch! Here!” I shouted.

  She lunged out of the cloud, still astride Brutus, pulling up short to avoid trampling me.

  “I can see where he’s teleporting,” I told her, “Get Judas and Angelica.”

  She whistled, long and piercing. As if in response, Oni Lee appeared just a few feet away.

  “Behind you!” I pointed.

  Brutus whipped around, snapping and snarling, and Oni Lee had to backpedal to escape being caught in the mutant’s jaws. He disappeared just a second later.

  “Get one dog near those guys,” I pointed to Sundancer and Labyrinth, “We should join them asap.”

  She nodded, whistled, and pointed. No sooner did Judas and Angelica arrive at our sides than Judas headed off to his next destination. Bitch offered me a hand.

  I gratefully took it, letting her help me up onto Brutus’s back.

  As we approached Sundancer and Labyrinth, the sidewalks on either side of us dropped out of existence, leaving only a bottomless pit where they had been.

  “The fuck?” I murmured.

  Then the buildings began to rise in height, some leaning over the street and joining with the others in grotesque arches and bridges. Brickwork stretched and extended into the alleyways, closing them off.

  Then windows began to shrink and warp, leaving only flat expanses of brick, concrete and stucco for the building faces. Under our feet, the road began to shift in color, with some patches becoming paler, and others darkening. They sharpened in definition as they settled into an alabaster white and jet back. A checkerboard?

  Brutus had to leap out of the way as one of the squares of the checkerboard suddenly rose to a height of ten feet. As if in response, other squares began to rise and fall, each to varying, almost random heights.

  I was almost dismounted as another square appeared in a wall and slid out of the side of the building in a thirty foot long horizontal pillar.

  We reached safe haven, an expanse of unaffected ground, thirty feet across, with two figures in the center. Sundancer and… Labyrinth.

  “This is you?” I asked Labyrinth, awed, as I climbed down off Brutus.

  She didn’t reply. Instead, she reached out and touched the side of my chin.

  The images of arches, pillars and checkerboard patterns fell away like a house of cards.

  “Hallucinations,” I spoke, as Labyrinth made a waving gesture towards Bitch’s head. She looked at me and shook her head slowly.

  “They’re not hallucinations?” I asked.

  She didn’t reply.

  “You can’t explain because you can’t or don’t talk,” I realized, speaking my thoughts aloud.

  Oni Lee appeared a few feet away. I whirled and pointed, “There!”

  He was stumbling, moving to avoid something that wasn’t there. He was still there, trying to get his balance, as I felt more bugs appear at another point on the opposite side of us. Only he appeared fifteen feet in the air, fell, and landed in an awkward position, falling over.

  “Bitch!” I pointed.

  She whistled and pointed to send Angelica. Oni Lee’s response was delayed, as if he couldn’t even see her approaching, at first. I felt more bugs pop into existence a second before she set her jaws on him.

  “There!”

  Bitch sent Judas next. Oni Lee’s reaction was even slower, but he had time to throw himself onto his back, flinging two throwing knives into Judas’s face and shoulder before he disappeared.

  “Over there!” I pointed as he reappeared.

  Bitch didn’t even have time to give a command before there was a sound like a champagne cork being popped. Oni Lee screamed as one of his shins exploded in a spray of blood.

  I felt him reappear somewhere else, collapsing to the ground, while his predecessor endured having the kneecap on its good leg shot out.

  I followed the sound of a chamber being reloaded to spot Coil’s sniper. He was lying on his side at the foot of the building, one arm outstretched to hold his rifle steady. His right leg was bent the wrong way.

  He’d been knocked off a three story building, had a broken leg at the very least, and had still managed to retrieve, load and fire his rifle?

  If he was willing to be that professional, I could damn well play spotter for him.

  “There!” I pointed in Oni Lee’s direction. On the warehouse again.

  There were two more muted popping sounds, and I could see Oni Lee spin in a pirouette of sorts as a shot clipped him, before he collapsed to the roofto
p.

  He exploded in a cloud of ash once again. Except I hadn’t felt him appear anywhere.

  “He’s gone,” I said. “Out of my range.”

  Sundancer looked up at me, one gloved hand on her shoulder. “Good,” she managed to answer.

  “You okay?”

  “He gouged my shoulder. I’ll need stitches, but it’s not the worst injury I’ve had.”

  “Okay. Uh, man, Coil’s guy,” I spoke, trying hard to organize my thoughts and priorities with the adrenaline that was pumping through me, “You going to be alright?”

  “Yeah,” he rasped, then he coughed.

  I’d have to take him at his word.

  “Labyrinth, watch him. Make sure he keeps breathing and that his buddy knows where he is,” I said. “Sundancer, Bitch, we’ve gotta go help Newter.”

  Hive 5.8

  I didn’t like leaving Labyrinth behind, after seeing her help turn the tide of our fight against Oni Lee, but I couldn’t use someone that couldn’t communicate with me.

  Bitch, Sundancer and I all sat astride Brutus as he headed towards the warehouse once again. My bugs lagged behind us.

  “We should be fighting Lung,” Bitch growled, “not helping the freak.”

  “What?” Sundancer asked, “Why wouldn’t we help him?”

  “His fault if he got hurt,” Bitch snarled.

  “And if you got hurt?” Sundancer challenged her, “You’d want us to leave you?”

  “Fuck no. But I wouldn’t be surprised if you did.”

  “We’re helping him,” I stated, firm.

  “Yeah? I’m the one telling this big lug where to go.” She slapped her hand on the side of Brutus’s neck a few times.

  I would have yelled at her, should have, maybe. Instead, I just leaned forward until I was pressing against her back, and spoke into her ear, “We let him die, you think Faultline’s going to let it slide? She might hurt or kill Tattletale or Regent in retaliation.”

  My piece said, I leaned back and waited to see how she’d respond. If that wasn’t enough to convince her, and I had no idea if it would be, I was ready to try jumping off Brutus’s back and seeing what I could do to help Newter on my own.

  Bitch didn’t reply. She didn’t take us around, over or through the building, either, though. When we stopped, it was by the stairwell leading up to where Newter had fallen.

  The business they had been into wasn’t prostitution or slave trading. Long tables were arranged around the ground floor of the warehouse, with stools lined up beside them. On those tables were shallow boxes with blocks and piles of a white powder. Various tools—rulers, funnels, scales, measuring cups and no-name brand boxes of sealable plastic bags were arranged around each station. Heroin? Cocaine? I didn’t know my drugs well enough to guess. The center of the room had been left more or less clear, maybe so cars or trucks could pull in.

  So the ‘employees’ had been wearing little to no clothing, presumably, to keep the clothes clean of the white dust. Or maybe to keep them from pocketing any drugs for themselves.

  The building rumbled with an impact, and I was reminded of the business at hand. Was I more distracted than usual, right now? Was it the concussion?

  Bitch had been right, before—the stairwell and what I could see of the the second floor was too low for both a dog and a rider. I hopped off Brutus’s back, stumbling a bit as I landed, then headed up the stairs, taking them two at a time.

  Newter was lying in a puddle of blood, in the midst of a bunch of thugs, who were all lying down, crawling or writhing, oblivious to my existence.

  Seeing the thugs was enough to remind me of how dangerous it would be to touch Newter. I was wearing gloves and leggings with padded soles, but would that be enough? The dragline silk I’d used for my costume was mostly waterproof, but the weave itself was porous, and I was worried enough that touching his blood could mean a terminal overdose that I couldn’t risk it.

  My approach stopped short of the puddle. Newter had a knife wound just below his shoulderblade that traced around his side, as long as my forearm and deep enough that I couldn’t tell how bad the damage was. He was breathing, but his breaths were shallow enough that I almost couldn’t tell. I was here, I could bend down to touch him, but I was helpless to do anything. Moments after I made contact with his skin, even with my gloves on, and I’d probably be on some hallucinogenic drug trip, flopping around like a fish on dry land.

  Bitch and Sundancer approached from behind me, stopping at my side.

  “Bitch, go downstairs, check the supplies they were using with the drugs. Look for rubber gloves, saran wrap, anything like that. If you can’t find anything, look in the bathroom, under the sinks. I doubt there’ll be a first aid kit, but if you can find one, bring it.”

  Bitch didn’t answer, but she headed down the stairs. Just to be safe, as my bugs reached the building, I swept the flying ones through the rooms to help me look for first aid supplies and to keep an eye on Bitch and the rest of the building.

  “What are we doing?” Sundancer asked.

  “You’re staying with him. See if you can get a response, talk to him. I’m checking in there.” I pointed to the office at the end of the hall. Just in front of the door there was a gaping hole in the wall and a pile of debris—the mess Judas had made when he’d lunged through the side of the building to corner Oni Lee.

  I had a dim recollection of what my bugs had sensed when they’d first entered the building and checked out the room. I’d been more focused on the people and potential booby traps, but I remembered that it had been an office, with a desk and a curtained off area with a bed. Maybe the bed was there so the guys in charge could take turns sleeping there, ensuring there was always someone to keep an eye on things. Maybe it was for the half-dressed ‘employees’, for taking advantage of them or so there was a place to put the ones that accidentally overdosed while working.

  Entering the office, I confirmed my suspicions about the existence of the bed. I began stripping the badly stained sheets off.

  Was it odd that this place freaked me out ten times as much as nearly getting offed by Oni Lee? Drugs had always spooked the hell out of me. One of the first times I’d ever ridden a bus, when I was around five or six, I’d seen a methhead freak out, making enough of a ruckus that the driver had to stop and force him off. I’d never really gotten over that first impression, where just the idea of being around someone that was high made me sort of anxious.

  It wasn’t just that, either. In grade school and junior high, I’d had classmates drop off the face of the planet, hearing only rumors and hints from other classmates or my teachers that there were drugs involved. Either my classmates themselves getting caught up in things, or parents or siblings dragging the kid into their mess to the point that the kid couldn’t come to school. One as bad as the other. Almost from the beginning, I’d had this sense of drugs as this unstoppable black hole of fucked-up-ness that swallowed in anyone close to the addict.

  Yet people did it. It was something common and profitable enough that in an area like Brockton Bay where there were as many people unemployed as not, the ABB needed a money counting machine in this very office. Profitable enough that they had an open safe with stacks of bills inside.

  My bugs weren’t doing much, so I set them the task of collecting the money. Within a second or two of my having the thought, the mass of roaches, centipedes, pillbugs and ants flowed into the piles of money and began pushing it all off the desk or into paper bags. Houseflies and wasps gathered on the bills that tried to fly through the air and retrieved them. It wasn’t perfect, it was a little clumsy, but it still caught me off guard just how well they were able to coordinate for something like that, without any conscious direction on my part.

  I couldn’t let myself get distracted. I could put my bugs on autopilot and have them finish the job while I focused on more important things. Pulling off the bedsheets, I uncovered a plastic sheet. The kind you used when your kids wet the bed. Doped out
drug addicts, too, maybe. The top of the plastic sheet looked kinda grody, but I wasn’t in a position to be picky. I pulled it off the mattress, balled it up in my hands and hurried back into the hall.

  “Help me,” I ordered Sundancer. With her help, I laid out the plastic sheet, bottom side up, at Newter’s feet. By the time we had it flat and ready, Bitch was returning.

  “Found two pairs of plastic gloves and some rubber gloves under a sink,” she said. “First aid kit, too, but it feels light.”

  “Open it,” I said, taking a pair of plastic gloves. It was awkward, fitting them over my normal gloves, but I managed it. Sundancer just pulled off her costume gloves and put on the plastic ones. She was caucasian, I noted, pale. “Tell me what’s inside, fast.”

  “Got some tape, bandages, thermometer, safety pins, rubbing alcohol, soap…”

  “Needle, thread?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “Gauze pads? Big bandages?”

  “No.”

  With our plastic gloves on, Sundancer and I managed to haul Newter onto the plastic sheet. The moment she let go, Sundancer winced and reached up to her shoulder, but she stopped short of actually touching it.

  I turned to my teammate, “Bitch, go downstairs. Those people who were in here took their clothes off and my bugs say they stashed the clothes in a room below us. Find me some purses, as many as you can grab, as fast as you can grab them.”

  She didn’t move, this time. She just glared at me.

  “Fucking move!” I shouted at her. She gave me the evil eye before she left again.

  “Bandages are going to be too small,” Sundancer said, as I tried to wrestle Newter’s blood-slick tail onto the plastic sheet.

  “Douse them in the alcohol, use them to clean the injury of blood. Use the dry bandages to pat it dry so the tape can stick. Don’t be afraid to get into the wound, just be gentle.”

  She nodded, and began working on it. I grabbed the tape and began fumbling with it. Two pairs of gloves on, and I couldn’t lift off the end of it. I grabbed my knife and used the edge it to get the job done. Once I had the tape, I began holding the wound closed and taping crosswise across it.