Worm

by wildbow

  Then the light of Sundancer’s orb winked out.

  It took me a few long moments of blinking the spots out of my eyes before I could make out the scene in its entirety.

  Lung was limp, his arms dangling at his sides. He was still bent over, and he might have fallen face first into the tar, if it wasn’t for the spear of iron that was impaling him through the heart.

  “What did you do!?” Sundancer shouted.

  “Obviously,” Kaiser said, “I ended it.”

  “It was already over!”

  I was under the impression very few people really argued with Kaiser. Fenja and Menja joined him, one on either side of him, and neither of them were sheathing their weapons or shrinking back to a normal size. I took that to be a very bad sign.

  I was so preoccupied with watching Kaiser that I almost missed what happened next.

  It started as a flash of crimson in the corner of my eye. I looked, and I saw Lung’s wings fully unfurled. Like the wings of a bat, only they had silvery scales where the bat had fur, and the flesh that stretched between the ‘fingers’ of the wings was the deep, dark red of blood.

  Lung grabbed the spear that impaled his chest and snapped it with his claws. He stood, and his entire midsection seemed to arrange so he stood another foot or two taller. Taking hold of the fragment that was still embedded in his chest, he slowly slid it out. Once it free, he cast it aside. It clattered to the floor of the warehouse.

  We were so quiet, you could hear the ringing of the steel as it settled on the ground.

  “Sundancer! Run!” I shouted, breaking the stillness. I sent my bugs swarming to Lung. Anything to block his vision, distract him for even a second.

  The events that followed seemed to happen in slow motion. Lung repeated what he’d been trying to do as the fight opened, only nothing seemed capable of getting in his way, now. He was faster, stronger, more maneuverable.

  He lunged toward Kaiser, using his wings to carry him effortlessly above a growth of steel blades. Reaching Kaiser, he slammed the man into the wall. Kaiser went limp, but Lung repeated the process, banging him against the brick of the warehouse wall a half dozen times in the span of seconds. When he was done, he flung Kaiser away like a toy.

  Fenja had to drop her spear to catch Kaiser in her arms, which seemed to be exactly what Lung wanted. Lung did the same ‘I explode’ trick he’d done to wipe out my bugs in my first encounter with him, only it was ten times the explosion, ten times as big. The two giantesses staggered back, which gave Lung the opportunity to dart across the floor and drive his flattened, clawed hand into Menja’s belly like a knife.

  As he withdrew his claw, she collapsed.

  “Nessa!” Fenja screamed.

  Lung ignored her and started walking towards Sundancer and I. Fenja rushed to her sister’s side, still carrying Kaiser.

  Sundancer began forming her miniature sun once more, with increasingly frequent flickers of light and fire gathering between her hands.

  “No.” Lung boomed. He raised his bloody claw, and the flame in Sundancer’s hands dissipated, slipping out of her grasp like greased eels.

  She tried once more, and again, he thwarted her with an almost casual ease.

  Before she could make a third attempt, Lung blasted her with a torrent of roaring flame. For two, three, four seconds, the fire washed over her, consumed her.

  When he stopped, there were tongues of flame dancing on the asphalt around her, even her costume had fire lingering on it, but both she and her costume were untouched.

  She, at least, was fireproof. Or she’d had to be, to avoid being burned by her own power.

  She wasn’t, however, invincible. As the flames of his attack dissipated, Lung was made visible again, revealed to be standing right in front of her. He barely seemed to care she was there as he backhanded her aside.

  Then he turned his attention to me.

  Just me left, really. I swallowed hard, drew my very underwhelming knife and stood straight, facing Lung. Please don’t burn me, please, please. Look at this knife and see it as an insult. An excuse to trounce me physically.

  Angelica started snarling at Lung. She took a step toward him.

  “No!” I ordered her, “Back!”

  The snarls ceased, and she looked at me.

  “Back,” I repeated. When I took a step toward Lung, she didn’t follow. A powder-covered Judas stood fifteen feet away, tense, but not approaching either. Good. No use in anyone else getting hurt. There was nothing else she could do.

  Hell, I was almost positive there was nothing else I could do.

  My bugs gathered on Lung, but as far as I could tell, there was no skin, anymore. No flesh to bite, nothing to sting.

  Lung rumbled with a rough, guttural chuckle, and let a brief flame wash over him, wiping the swarm out of existence.

  I dispersed the bugs in his vicinity that hadn’t yet had a chance to touch him and get burned for their trouble. No point. Detrimental, almost.

  Then Bitch, riding Brutus, bounded down from the hole in the ceiling and crashed into Lung.

  “Bitch!” I shouted, too late, “No!”

  Once he got over the shock of the initial impact, Lung used one hand to grab Bitch from where she sat on Brutus’s back, and took hold of Brutus by the neck with his other. Heaving his arm, and Brutus, to his left side, then to his right, Lung casting the dog head over heels through the air.

  Judas and Angelica began to move forward, but stopped when Lung elicited a scream of pain from Bitch.

  “Nnno,” Lung rumbled.

  “Stop!” I shouted, stepping forward again, “I’m the one you want, aren’t I?”

  It always sounded so good when you heard it in the movies. As I realized what I’d just said, it only sounded stupid.

  He advanced toward me, carrying Bitch like a careless seven year old might carry a cat. I backed away, but his stride was long enough for him to close the gap effortlessly. He grabbed me and hefted me into the air, lifting me above his head so he could look up at me.

  “Ug hurrrrr.”

  He couldn’t talk, so I couldn’t even fall back on the tired old cliche of getting him to monologue. Fuck.

  He had my neck encircled with thumb and forefinger, two claws at my ribcage and his ‘pinky’ finger at my midsection, just below my waist. He squeezed a fraction tighter, and I groaned. The fabric of my costume was preventing the edges of his claws from cutting into me, but it wasn’t reinforced to stop me from being crushed.

  I directed a bug into his eye. It stayed there, wings fluttering in staccato. It was annoying enough for him to drop Bitch and deal with it. He didn’t give her a chance to escape, though. Before he dealt with the bug, he shoved her against the ground and stepped on her, holding her down with his clawed foot. That done, he used the points of his claw to pick the bug from his eye socket.

  He chuckled again, low, gravelly, as he examined the cockroach impaled on his clawtip. “Auuhh-roagh?” Cockroach?

  He lowered his arm so I was at his eye level. Then he squeezed again, weaker than the first time. Shook me, not as hard as he could have.

  Then his arm sagged again, until my toes were brushing the ground. After shaking me, his grip had loosened, and he hadn’t really tightened it, so I managed to get my knee against the base of his palm and shove myself backward, push myself free. My feet touched asphalt, and I backed up a few steps.

  “Hurrrrrrrr,” he rumbled.

  “Don’t fucking underestimate me,” I snarled in response.

  I don’t know if he heard me. I hadn’t even finished the sentence before I had to skip backward two steps to avoid being crushed beneath him as he collapsed face first to the asphalt.

  “Bitch, you okay?” I asked.

  She was picking herself off the ground. She nodded.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  I sheathed my knife and reached for my cell phone with one hand. My other hand, I extended with the palm up. A cockroach settled on it.
r />   “Wasn’t sure it would work, or if it’d be enough. Took a bit of caterpillar, had a roach swab it in that pool of blood Newter left upstairs, and mashed the thing in Lung’s eye. Big and tough as he is, a drug that strong in the mucus membranes of the eye? So close to the brain? Apparently it’s enough.”

  Bitch folded her arms, looking down at Lung. Then she looked up at me.

  “Now what?”

  It was a surprisingly apt question, coming from her. Did we just leave him here? He’d be all better in a matter of minutes. There were options. I just didn’t like any of them.

  I dialed Tattletale’s phone, but it was Regent who answered.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “A, lemon,” I said.

  “C, grass,” he replied. “You wouldn’t believe it. We found one of Bakuda’s workshops. The stuff she has here is crazy.”

  “No time to chat. I need to talk to Tattletale, fast.”

  “She’s checking the place for booby traps. Distractions probably aren’t a good idea.”

  “It’s kind of important,” I said, looking down at Lung.

  “Right.”

  Two seconds later, Tattletale’s voice was on the other end, “Hey?”

  “Quick question. I have to be sure, which is why I’m calling you. Lung heals, right?”

  “Yeah. Wait… Lung’s there?”

  “Unconscious at my feet. But I don’t know how long, so answer fast. He heals? He’s already healing what I did to him from last time, right?”

  “Right. He’ll heal pretty much anything, given time, provided he isn’t dead. Lose an arm, he’d grow it back in a few months.”

  “Thanks. That’s what I needed to know,” I said. “Good luck with the booby traps.” I hung up.

  Then I looked down at Lung. I drew my knife.

  “Why the knife?” Bitch asked. I think anyone else might have sounded concerned. She just sounded curious.

  “I’m ending this.”

  I grabbed one of the larger spikes that framed Lung’s face and heaved it to one side so his accordion-like neck was outstretched, face upturned.

  No time to be delicate about it. I had no idea how strong the toxins in Newter’s blood were, or how fast Lung’s biology would process it.

  I jammed the knife into Lung’s eye socket. His head and consequently his eyes weren’t as large as you’d think, in proportion to the rest of his frame, but the tissue around it was tough. I had to leverage the knife back and forth before I was able to pry his eyeball out. It was hot to the touch as I held it in the palm of my hand, no bigger than a ping-pong ball.

  The second eye was faster, though no less messy.

  When I was done, I stood, sheathed my knife and backed away from Lung’s body. Shouldn’t I feel worse about this? Shouldn’t I feel sick, or grossed out, or disturbed by the morality of it? I didn’t even feel cold, the way Grue had described. It just felt like something I had to do.

  I glanced at the two eyeballs clasped in my hand, then put them out of my mind. I surveyed the room. Priorities?

  I asked Bitch first, “The dogs are okay?” If I placed them second to anyone else but her, or if I forgot to ask, I got the feeling Bitch would mind.

  “They’ll heal when they turn back to normal.”

  “Sundancer?” I asked.

  Sundancer was lying on her side, one arm pressed against the shoulder Oni Lee had stabbed. “I’m… okay.”

  That was everyone I gave a damn about, leaving only Fenja, Menja and Kaiser. I looked across the room and called out, “Fenja?”

  The giantess nodded.

  “Get your sister to a hospital, or whichever doctor your guys use. Get your boss taken care of.”

  She stood without giving me a response. Her sister had shrunk enough for her to cradle in her arms. Kaiser, for his part, was slung over her shoulder, limp.

  “Oh, Fenja?”

  She paused.

  “I’ll leave it to you to make the call, but if you think Kaiser has a sense of honor, maybe point out it would be bad form to push the point on the dogfighting thing, after we dealt with Lung for him, saved his life.”

  She nodded, then ducked through the opening in the wall.

  I stepped toward Sundancer and offered a hand to help her up. She flinched away.

  Oh. My hands were bloody. I dropped the offered hand to my side.

  “Let’s go,” I suggested.

  Hive 5.10

  “Brockton Bay 911, what is your emergency?”

  “Multiple injured,” I said, glancing at the nearest street sign, “Warehouse at Whitemore and Sunset. Send police and capes, too. These guys are ABB members.”

  There was the briefest of pauses, “That’s Whitemore and Sunset?”

  “Whitemore and Sunset, yes. Listen, the leader of the ABB, a parahuman by the name of Lung, is incapacitated at the scene, but that won’t be entirely true for long. He’s drugged and blinded, but the drugs will be out of his system before too long.”

  “You’re a cape?” she asked, “Can I get your identification?”

  “I repeat,” I ignored her, “He’s drugged and blinded, but only the blindness will be a factor when the first responders arrive on the scene. Warn them to be careful. You can also tell them that a second parahuman calling himself Oni Lee was present but fled after being injured. He may still be in the area.”

  “I understand. The Protectorate will be informed before they arrive on scene. I’ve got ambulances, police and PRT teams on their way. Can I please get your identification?”

  I hung up.

  “I can’t believe you carved out his eyes,” Sundancer said. We were walking briskly back to where we’d left Labyrinth.

  “He’ll heal,” I pointed out, “Eventually.”

  “You blinded someone who was helpless to fight back. That’s kind of fucked up.”

  I couldn’t say much to that. Fucked up or not, it had been necessary. I couldn’t have dealt with it if I’d known we left him there and he got back to business as usual by the end of the day. I’d stopped him, best as I was able.

  Okay, alright, I was willing to admit that maybe the means were a little suspect. I’d fought alongside some fucked up people, I’d maimed him. By letting Fenja, Menja and Kaiser go I’d sort of condoned what they’d done to Lung’s men. But in the end, it was what I’d wanted to do when I’d wanted to be a superhero. I’d taken down a horrible person.

  I just hoped the heroes could clean up the mess and get Lung behind bars for good this time.

  “Hey Bitch,” I said, “why’d you come back?” I couldn’t phrase it better without offending her, but I wanted to know was why she’d come back when she was supposed to be taking Newter and Coil’s soldier to a doctor.

  Bitch was sitting tall astride Brutus. She seemed to get my meaning, “The other soldier said he was a trained medic. Told me he could handle it, so I came back to fight.”

  “Ah,” I said. “Got it.”

  Bitch hadn’t been lying, I saw, as we approached the rest of our group. Newter was bandaged and awake, while the other soldier was lying down, unconscious. Maybe drugged for the pain.

  “You made it,” Newter grinned.

  “Barely,” I admitted. “You okay?”

  “I’m tougher than I look,” he responded. “Benefit of my, um, unique biology.”

  “Cool,” I replied, feeling lame for not having a better reply, but I couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t sound like it was trying too hard or, worse, sound sarcastic.

  “This fella says you guys probably saved my life,” Newter jerked a thumb toward the one of Coil’s guys that was awake.

  “Honest, I’m having a hard time believing you’re up and talking right now,” the medic replied.

  “Anyways, thanks,” Newter said, eyes moving from me to Sundancer to Bitch and back again.

  “No problem,” I answered him, feeling lame for not having a better or more suitable reply. Embarrased, I looked for a reason to change
the subject. “Look, we should get out of here in the next few minutes. Capes, cops and ambulances are on their way to deal with the aftermath.”

  “Alright,” Newter said. “But I have to ask… a small army of roaches dropped those off?”

  He was smiling as he pointed to a spot near where he was lying. A stack of paper bags were organized in a pile.

  “I forgot I did that,” I admitted. “It didn’t feel right to leave the ABB’s money behind if we wound up retreating, so I had my bugs haul it out of there. Everyone might as well take a bag.”

  “We can take it?” Newter asked, “You sure?”

  I shrugged in response. The money didn’t matter much to me. “Consider it a bonus, a thanks for helping. It’s, um, not exactly divided to be fair, so no insult intended if any of them end up being a bag full of ones.”

  “No complaints,” Newter said. He reached out with his tail and used it encircle and pick up a bag. Coil’s guy gave him a hand in standing up, and you could see him wince and huff out a breath at the effort. He swayed a bit on his feet, then put a hand on Labyrinth’s shoulder to steady himself. Sundancer grabbed a bag, and Coil’s medic/spotter grabbed two.

  Labyrinth didn’t reach for one, so I walked over, grabbed one, and held it out for her. She didn’t respond.

  “I’ll hold that for her,” Newter offered.

  “Is she okay?”

  “She’s… pretty much normal. For her, anyways.”

  He claimed the bag, leaving three for Bitch and I, but nobody was complaining or pointing that out.

  “You guys need a ride?” I asked.

  Newter shook his head, then pointed to a manhole cover a ways down the road, “We’ll head back to one of our hideouts through there. Familiar territory for me.”

  “Is that a good idea, with your injury? I mean, stating the obvious, but it’s gonna be pretty gross down there.”

  He smiled, “Can’t get an infection. My biology’s toxic to the bacteria and parasites, I think. Never been sick, that I can remember.”

  Of course. Now I felt dumb for making Sundancer use the alcohol to sterilize him, and for going the extra mile with the sanitary pads, to ensure what I was using was clean.