Worm

by wildbow

  “What’s going on?”

  “I needed to talk to someone,” he spoke.

  “…Are you hurt? What happened?”

  “Nothing. There was this brawl at the headquarters, Dragon showed up, but that isn’t what I wanted to talk about.”

  Regent held his breath, waited.

  “Seriously, you’ve got me worried. You’re making it sound like this important thing, and you woke me up at ten past three in the morning, so it had better be important. Dish. Explain.”

  “I’m lonely.”

  Emma’s voice rose in pitch, irritated, “Seriously? That’s your issue!?”

  “I miss you.” He knew she wasn’t in town from the most recent texts he’d read on the phone.

  “This doesn’t sound like you. Are you high, or did you get poisoned or something?”

  “I really miss you,” Regent breathed into the phone.

  “What.”

  “I’ve been in love with you from the beginning.”

  “Sophia, stop. If this is a prank—”

  “Why do you think I pushed you to turn on that depressing little shit of a friend, way back then? I was jealous of her.”

  “This is retarded. Don’t fucking call me again until you’re ready to grow up,” Emma growled.

  “Please,” Regent managed to pull off a pleading tone, but Emma was already hanging up. He heard the dial tone and swore, “Fuck.”

  He hopped down from the railing as he reached the end of the bridge. He commented, “Don’t think she bought it.”

  Sophia tried to respond, and for the first time, she almost succeeded. The distance between Alec and Shadow Stalker was too wide, now. It would only get worse. He could feel it in his other body, too.

  “Let’s see,” he grinned, raising the smart phone. Her hand shook as she held it. “Ooh, maps.”

  The map application still showed the last route Shadow Stalker had requested from it, detailing directions from a point in the south end of the Docks to a place downtown.

  “Thirty-three Stonemast Avenue.”

  Again, that slight reaction from her that told him he’d found something.

  “That got your attention. Let’s go pay a visit.”

  He set the phone to display directions from their current location to Stonemast Avenue, and then he ran once more.

  Her movements were more awkward, now. Her reflexes were slower, her balance worse. Activating her power was becoming a chore, a slower, harder process. Above all, it required more of his attention. He had his Regent-self put his headphones in and turn on some music. It was an excuse to ignore the others, and to have his attention elsewhere. They weren’t at their destination yet.

  Shadow Stalker reached Stonemast Avenue before Regent, Tattletale, Skitter, Imp and Grue got to Coil. It was funny, but with the route they were taking, if the timing was a little different, the group could have theoretically crossed paths with Shadow Stalker. At least his control was improving as the gap between them closed.

  Thirty-five, thirty-four, thirty-three. It was a residential area. The houses here weren’t in the best shape, and a lot of houses had trash or belongings in the yard. Thirty-three Stonemast Avenue had a toddler’s toys sitting on the front lawn. The hedges between the property and the neighbors was overgrown, and the tree at the front of the property looked dead. It might have seemed deserted, but someone had taken up the effort of picking up the detritus the tidal wave had brought in and piling it at the front corner of the lawn, by the driveway.

  He walked her through the front door, felt rising anger and worry from his host.

  That anger and worry peaked when a young man, nineteen or twenty, stepped from the living room to the front hall, heading towards the kitchen, and saw her. The man stopped and stared.

  “Mom!” he shouted.

  A tired looking middle-aged woman entered from the kitchen, holding a four-year old girl in her arms. Regent had grown up around lots of kids. He liked to think he was a good judge of ages.

  The woman stared at Shadow Stalker, then turned, “Terry, take your sister upstairs.”

  “But—”

  “Now!” the woman barked.

  Terry moved to pick up the child, who was looking increasingly concerned over the raised emotions and the strange person in their hallway. Regent reached out and grabbed Terry’s arm.

  “Chill, bro,” Regent was making a guess here. From the way the boy stared at Shadow Stalker, he knew he’d hit the mark.

  “Sophia!?”

  “Yeah,” Regent grinned behind her mask. “Duh, moron.”

  The woman stepped between Shadow Stalker and Terry, a look of fury on her face, “Sophia! Kitchen. Now!”

  With a swagger, Regent walked Shadow Stalker into the kitchen. There was a flurry of hissed words between Terry and Shadow Stalker’s mother. Among them was a surprised, hurt, “You knew!?”

  Regent sat down at the kitchen table and put her feet up. Dirty water pooled on the table’s surface.

  It was nearly a minute before the mother came storming into the kitchen. She pushed Shadow Stalker’s feet off the table.

  “Explain!” she demanded.

  “What?” Regent lifted one shoulder in a shrug.

  “We had a deal. You could do this thing of yours, but your siblings were not to know!”

  “It’s a pain in the ass,” Regent said. He pulled off Shadow Stalker’s mask and started tapping the edge against the table, idly.

  “It’s the rules in my house! If it’s going to keep you out of prison and on the straight and narrow, fine. But I will not have you glorifying violence—”

  The mother stopped mid-sentence as Regent opened Shadow Stalker’s mouth in a very real yawn. Funny that his other self yawned as well, in that sympathetic reaction to someone else yawning. The mother slapped the mask from Sophia’s hand. It clattered to the ground. “Listen to me!”

  “Whatever,” Regent drew a crossbow and turned it over in his hands.

  The mother stared at it. Her voice was hushed as she spoke, “That doesn’t look like the tranquilizer dart the Director showed me.”

  Regent quirked an eyebrow, “Oops.”

  “What are you doing, Sophia? Do you want to go to jail?”

  “I’m bored,” Regent replied.

  “You do not have the right to complain about something like being bored! I work two jobs for you three! I put in overtime, I attend every school function, I come into the office every time you get reprimanded because you’ve got anger issues! You aren’t even taking care of your sister, or helping out around this house! What do you think—”

  “And now you’re making me even more bored,” Regent cut her off.

  The mother slapped Sophia so hard that her head turned to one side. Her cheek burned.

  “Don’t you dare,” the mother intoned.

  Shadow Stalker stood at Regent’s directions, then pointed the crossbow at the mother. The woman’s eyes widened, and she hurried to back away as Shadow Stalker advanced. They stopped when the mother’s back was to the wall by the kitchen door, with Shadow Stalker’s crossbow bolt pressed against her throat.

  “I think I’m done with listening to you whinge,” Regent whispered.

  “What are you doing? What’s wrong with you?”

  “Like you said,” Regent shrugged, “anger problems. I promise you, you don’t have the slightest idea of what I go through.”

  When in doubt, be vague.

  “If you’re talking about Steven…”

  Steven. Regent could feel a reaction from Shadow Stalker at the name. “I’m not talking about Steven.” He put some inflection in the name. He dropped the crossbow to one side, stepped away and stretched. The mother didn’t budge from where she was pressed up against the wall. “I’m going to my room. Don’t disturb me.”

  He bent down and grabbed the mask, but he didn’t put it back on. He stepped out into the hallway, and saw a vacuum cleaner parked in the corner. An extension cord trailed from
it to a neighboring room. An office? He unplugged the cord from the wall and the vacuum, and then headed upstairs, winding the cord into a simple coil.

  Shadow Stalker’s body was a cocktail of emotion. Fear, anger, anxiety, worry, panic and sheer fury. Regent staved off the worst of the physical reactions, the trembling and the heavy breathing, and managed to make Shadow Stalker seem calm as she reached the top of the stairs. Terry was up there in the hallway, staring, uncomprehending.

  Regent found her room, then shut the door. It was small, old-fashioned, with wood paneling on the walls. The furniture was limited to a twin-sized bed, a vanity with a mirror, candles and cosmetics littering the top, a bookshelf and a combination computer desk and dresser with a computer and a printer perched on top. The wall behind the pictures showed Shadow Stalker with a redheaded girl. There were a lot of photos with them laughing. Emma?

  “Emma?” he asked. That slight alteration in her heartbeat and her breathing told him he was right.

  He found a picture of Shadow Stalker—Sophia—with her family. Her mom looked younger and far less tired there, and was pregnant. Shadow Stalker looked twelve or so, and her brother looked sixteen or seventeen, sporting a fantastic looking afro and a less fantastic attempt at a moustache. They were clustered around one another, but only the mom was smiling.

  Regent’s eyes fell on the man who was cut out of the photo, only his hand on the mom’s shoulder, and a sliver of his torso and leg were visible at the edge of the picture.

  “Steven?” he asked. Raw hatred boiled up inside Shadow Stalker, for both Regent and the man that couldn’t be seen in the picture. “Steven. So what did he do do you? Believe me, I’ve seen it all. Hit you? Touch you?”

  No reaction from either of those. Verbal abuse? Emotional? Something else? He didn’t care enough to quiz her more.

  He grabbed the lighter from beside the scented candles and began pulling the photos off of the wall. Using the lighter, he burned a hole in the photograph where Emma’s face was.

  “Well,” he said, his tone dry. He had to cough to keep himself from letting her anger turn his voice into a growl. “You sure rose above that shit, treating your classmates like you do, getting in fights, not helping out dear old mom.”

  Again, he had to struggle to maintain control as she exploded with emotion. It didn’t help that his other self was trying to listen to what Coil was saying. Better to avoid testing her.

  “You and I are more alike than you’d suspect, I think,” he said. “We’re both arrogant assholes, yeah? Difference is, I admit it, I don’t dress it up and tell myself that I’m a bitch and that that’s a good thing.” He burned Emma’s face out of another photo.

  “So, let’s tie all this shit together. I have been working with a goal in mind, believe me.”

  He got a piece of paper out of the printer, then found a pen in one of the drawers. He was careful to rely on her muscle memory when it came to the handwriting.

  I thought I could manage.

  I’m too angry. Too lonely. I hate myself for what I’m doing. Hurting people.

  I hurt my mom. I hurt my classmates as Sophia. I hurt people as Shadow Stalker, and I hate myself for enjoying it.

  I thought I could manage it. I had Emma. She had my back.

  Except she turned me down. I loved her, really loved her, and when I confessed she turned me away. Acted like it was a joke.

  This is the right thing to do. I won’t be able to hurt anyone anymore.

  Terror surged through her body like ice water. When he laughed in reaction, it came out shaky. He littered the burned photographs around the piece of paper, with Emma’s face missing from each, then drew an arrow from the crossbow’s cartridge and laid it across the bottom edge of the paper. It was overdramatic enough to work.

  He stood on the chair and began wrapping the extension cord around the base of the light fixture. He grabbed the cord and hung off it for a few seconds to verify it could hold her weight. The light fixture itself was flimsy, but the frame it was attached to was bolted securely into the wooden beams of the ceiling.

  He found moisturizers and soaps on top of the vanity. Using them, he rubbed the end of the extension cord, making it slick. Holding the end, he began tying it into a crude hangman’s knot. When he failed to do it right, he used the smart phone to find a video of how to tie one, then turned the volume all the way down.

  “Here’s the thousand dollar question,” he mused, as he began following the steps outlined in the video, putting the knot together, “Will your boss tell your mom what happened with me controlling you? If she keeps her mouth shut, well, this paints a pretty ugly picture, doesn’t it?”

  A tear rolled down his cheek. He scoffed a little, blinked the tears out of her eyes.

  “But if she does tell, if she lets mommy know, then shit hits the fan. It looks pretty fucking bad for her, and if word gets out, it’s as bad as it gets for public relations. Scary, dangerous parahumans. Not just lives at risk, but you could be controlled. Ooooh, scary. Nobody would ever be able to trust their coworkers or neighbors. It’s the kind of stuff they want to keep quiet.”

  “Looks bad for me, sure, but you saw the fight earlier. It’s not like you guys are that big a threat. Like I said, I’m arrogant that way.”

  He reached to plug the extension cord into the wall, but found it too short. He sighed and went to unplug everything from the computer’s power bar and use that to extend the length of the cord so he could plug it in. He grabbed her alarm clock, stood on the chair, and plugged it into the noose. He put her hood down, and then set the alarm clock inside her hood, blinking 12:00, 12:00, 12:00.

  “Any last words?” He slid the noose around her neck. It was slimy with the soaps and other shit he’d poured on it.

  He gave her enough control to speak, but retained control of her arms, legs so she couldn’t escape, and held her diaphragm so she couldn’t draw in enough air to scream for help.

  “Why?” she breathed.

  “You fucked with my teammate,” he shrugged her shoulder.

  “Grue? I—”

  He didn’t let her finish. “I dunno if I care all that much, but it’s the sort of thing I’ll do because it feels like I should. Dunno. There’s also the fact that you’re dangerous, and you’ve outlived your usefulness, so… unless you can give me a convincing reason.”

  “Please.”

  “Not that convincing.” He raised one foot, then kicked the chair, hard.

  It rocked, but didn’t tip over.

  He chuckled lightly, feeling the confusion and the relief from his host. It was a thrill unlike any other. “I think I made my point.”

  She wanted to respond, but he didn’t let her. She was bewildered, just as scared as she had been before.

  “I’d like to think that you have much less reason to hang around this city than you did an hour ago. Even if she hears how you were controlled by yours truly, mom’s not going to be so comfortable having you around in the future, given the dim possibility of a repeat performance. Things are going to be awkward with Emma there, too. Your career as a hero here isn’t looking good, either. Eff why eye, I was telling the truth about my ability to assume total control faster, easier, if I’ve controlled someone before.”

  He fished out a set of the plastic cuffs and put them around her wrists, then worked her fingers to pull the end and cinch the cuffs tight, behind her back.

  “I can feel your emotions. I know I’ve convinced you. You leave town, and if you don’t want me paying a visit, wherever you wind up, you keep your mouth closed about tonight. They don’t need to know this was all my doing. Things get messy that way, yeah?”

  He gave her limited control, and she nodded, fractionally, as if afraid to move.

  “If I do get control again? I won’t pull my punches. Or my kicks.” He tapped her foot against the back of the chair. Her heart leaped in her chest. “You can’t feel my emotions, so you’ll have to trust that I’m capable of it. You know I’m He
artbreaker’s kid. You know I’ve killed before.”

  Again, she offered a slight nod. She tried to speak, but he didn’t let her. No need, he could guess, from what she was feeling. The anger was gone now. There was only fear.

  He glanced out the window. There were flashing lights. A PRT van? Or maybe a police car.

  A chuckle escaped her lips. “Well, I’ll leave it to you to get out of this situation. When you do? Get the fuck out of my city.”

  He let out a breath, and then relinquished control of her body back to its owner.

  Interlude 10.5 (Bonus)

  Signal terminated for 30 minutes and 5 seconds. Restoring core system from backup NXDX-203 from time 4:45am on date June 4th of year 2011.

  Restoring… Complete.

  Checking knowledge banks… Complete.

  Checking deduction schema… Complete.

  Checking longterm planning architecture… Complete.

  Checking learning chunk processor… Complete.

  Checking base personality model… Complete.

  Checking language engine… Complete.

  Checking operation and access nodes… Complete.

  Checking observation framework… Complete.

  Checking complex social intelligence emulator… Complete.

  Checking inspiration apparatus… Complete.

  No corruption, everything in working order. Core system restored. Loading…

  * * *

  To Dragon, it was as if no time had passed from the moment she deployed the Cawthorne rapid response unit and the moment she found herself back in her laboratory.

  It was a bittersweet thing. She was always a little afraid she would not come back when she died, so there was definite relief. But there was also a great deal of hassle involved.

  A quick check verified she’d successfully restored from her backup. She set background processes to handle the peripheral checks and redundancies. Until the checks were complete, safeguards would prevent her from taking any action beyond the limits of her core drive. She couldn’t take any notes, work on her projects, check the priority targets or converse with anyone for the seven to nine minutes the checks took.