Worm

by wildbow

  “The difference between us and Hookwolf is that we’ve succeeded. We have two of them in our custody. You can’t bide your time, organize, and wait for an opportune moment. They have years of experience fighting people who do that. Anything you try, they’ve probably dealt with. We win by catching them off guard with powers they don’t know about, powers they can’t expect and interactions between powers. Calculated recklessness.”

  “We can handle that on our own, with more calculation and less recklessness.”

  “He’s studied you. For any member of your team with more than three months of experience, he already knows everything they can do, their tricks and individual talents. You have powers we need. We have knowledge on their location, firepower of our own and two captives. We’ll only pull this off if we work together.”

  “Putting our lives in your hands,” Miss Militia replied.

  “Only as far as we’d be relying on you,” I answered her.

  “Who are you, Skitter?” Legend asked. He floated closer to my swarm-decoy. “I can’t get a read on your personality or motivations, and that’s without touching on what came up at the close of the Endbringer event.”

  “My teammate is in the hands of the Nine, they could be murdering more people right this second, and you’re talking about me, of all people?”

  “If we’re going to offer you help, we should know who we’re interacting with,” he said.

  I glanced at Trickster, then back at the image on the screen. “What do you want to know?”

  “We’ve talked with the people in your territory. Between what they say and what came out at the hospital, I can’t help but wonder at your motives.”

  “There’s someone specific I want to help. If I can improve the lives of others at the same time, then all the better.”

  “So where do you stand, then? Where do you see yourself in terms of the sliding scale of good and evil, heroes and villains?”

  I almost laughed, and some of my humor must have translated in a mental direction to my bugs, because they started making a noise that wasn’t speech. I stopped them. It wouldn’t have sounded much like laughter anyways. “All of the above? None of the above? Does it matter? Some of us wear the villain label with pride, because they want to rebel against the norms, because it’s a harder, more rewarding road to travel, or because being a ‘hero’ often means so very little. But few people really want to see themselves as being bad or evil, whatever label they wear. I’ve done things I regret, I’ve done things I’m proud of, and I’ve walked the roads in between. The sliding scale is a fantasy. There’s no simple answers.”

  “There can be. You could do what’s right.”

  I was getting an inkling of what Bitch referred to as ‘words’. Prattle that meant so very little in the face of what was happening in the present. Was this the kind of irritation, impatience and anger she felt with so many social interactions? I clenched my fist. “Speak for yourself. You want to hide here while my group and Hookwolf deal with the brunt of the Nine’s attention. Just like you did with the ABB.”

  “That happened under Armsmaster’s leadership. You can’t blame us for being intelligent about how we go about this.”

  I was disappointed my swarm couldn’t convey my anger. “I can blame you for being cowards. I’m going. If you want to talk about morality, start by talking to Armsmaster.”

  “Can’t. He’s gone.”

  I paused. Did the Nine get him? “Dead?”

  “Escaped from his hospital room. With our attention on the Nine, we don’t have the resources to track him down.”

  “Does he know about the Nine’s threat to hit the city with a plague if he leaves?”

  “I hope so.”

  Fuck. Not only was that one more uncertainty stacked onto everything, but Armsmaster was the closest thing I had to a nemesis. Having him running around the city was not a good thing.

  For a brief moment, I contemplated having Trickster teleport me to ground level, so it was me talking to the local heroes, and not just my swarm. I could tell them that I was putting my well-being in their hands, risking them arresting me, as a gesture of good faith.

  Except I couldn’t help but see myself from their perspective. Warlord of the Boardwalk. I’d rotted off Lung’s manhood and carved out his eyes. I’d played an undefined role in Armsmaster’s downward slide. I’d robbed a bank, terrorized hostages with poisonous spiders, attacked their headquarters and used insects dipped in capsaicin to cripple their junior heroes with incapacitating pain. All the while, I’d acted with a seemingly ambiguous morality. Was I a good guy doing all the wrong things? Or did they see me as dangerous and unhinged?

  There was no way I could put myself in their hands without knowing what they thought about me, and frankly, I wasn’t sure how to think about myself. How the hell were they supposed to make a call?

  “So. You in?” I tried, instead.

  I could see him look back at Miss Militia, who shook her head. “Miss Militia runs the local team, so it’s ultimately her call, but… we’ve talked about it, and I agree with her. No. The risks outweigh the potential benefits.”

  My heart sank. “Then one final tip. You should know that Bonesaw’s done some surgery on all of her people. Implanted protection for the more vulnerable parts of their bodies. They’re tougher than they look.”

  “Thank you,” Legend said. “You might not believe me, but I wish you the best of luck.”

  I snarled as I shut the laptop and turned away from the scene, calling my swarm back to me.

  “That didn’t work,” Trickster said.

  “No. And we just wasted a lot of time.”

  “We’ll have Shatterbird working with us, thanks to Regent, and we’ve got Imp as our man on the inside, maybe. We’re going to outnumber the remaining five or six of them, right? It’s not hopeless.”

  “They’ll be ready for us. They’re entrenched, they have a hostage, and we’re totally unable to fight two of them. How long is it going to take to extricate Grue from whatever cage they have him in?”

  “It’s not hopeless,” he repeated. “Whatever they’re doing to keep Grue prisoner, if I can see him, I can free him.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure.”

  “Would it reassure you to know that your conversation with the local heroes gave me an idea of my own?”

  My head snapped in Trickster’s direction.

  “Come on. We should hurry,” he said.

  Snare 13.8

  “I was a lot more comfortable with the risky plan when it was something I thought of,” I said.

  “You said calculated recklessness, right?” Trickster asked.

  “Part of that ‘calculated’ bit is control. Keeping the chaos to a minimum, so we can anticipate and plan.”

  Trickster leaned against the door of the vehicle. “That may be a bit of a problem.”

  “You think?”

  The truck passed over a pothole. Our teams were out in force, our members divided across three trucks. I rode with Trickster, Sundancer and Tattletale. Regent and Ballistic were in the second vehicle. Bitch and her dogs rode in the third.

  This was Tattletale’s first time venturing out of Coil’s base in a little while. Her power was limited when she could only get information by what we communicated to her, and this was the kind of situation where we needed her at full strength. If nothing else, it felt better to have another teammate on the field with us, with Grue’s absence.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. I know Grue isn’t your teammate. You didn’t have to come to help.”

  “We’re all in this together, right?” Trickster said. “You mind if I smoke?”

  I shrugged and Tattletale shook her head. He rolled down the window and lit a cigarette, placing it through the mouth-hole of his hard mask.

  That would be his way of dealing with stress. We were all tense, and we all had our ways of coping. Trickster smoked and stared off into the distance. Sundancer fidg
eted. She frequently realized what she was doing and forced herself to stop, only to pick up something else. Her leg would bounce in place, then she would stop doing that and start drumming her fingers on her kneepad in some complicated pattern. It made me think of a pianist or a guitarist fingering the strings. Tattletale watched people, her eyes roving over the rest of us. Her cheek bulged slightly where she touched the tip of her tongue against the backside of the wound Jack had left her.

  And me? I retreated into my headspace, I supposed. I was maybe similar to Tattletale in that I took note of each of the others, but my thoughts were less about simply observing than about cataloguing and mentally preparing. What options did we have? What tools, weapons and techniques did we have at our disposal? Who was going to be backing me up during this operation, and how reliable were those people?

  It was constructive, maybe, but exhausting. There were so many angles to consider, and the stakes were high. Brian’s life, Brian’s quality of life. The rest of us weren’t in the Nine’s clutches, but it would take only one mistake before any one of us could be in the same boat, wondering just how horrible things were going to get for us.

  Maybe fatigue factored in, but the more I thought on our allies, the less secure I felt.

  The information Cherish had volunteered about Coil, true or not, had left me with lingering doubts. I was also acutely aware of the distinct lack of chemistry and camaraderie among the Travelers. They were keeping secrets, with no promises of divulging the information in question.

  The last time we’d all been in a car with Trickster, he’d noted that there were two major problems that Coil was helping them with. Noelle was obviously one. A part of me could buy that there was something serious going on with her, something that necessitated the help of someone like Coil. Another nagging part of me was thinking that there were still too many unanswered questions. What was holding them together as a group? How fragile was that tie?

  Was this really what I needed to be dwelling on?

  I thought over my arsenal and the options I had with my power. I’d developed enough techniques that I was starting to have trouble keeping track of them all. Should I name them? It seemed like something out of a kid’s show, shouting out the names of the abilities as I used them. ‘Firebug attack, go!’ ‘Silkwrap Strike!’

  I shook my head a little. I was tired. My mind was wandering. I couldn’t remember the last time I had more than five hours of sleep, and I’d barely slept at all last night. Fear and adrenaline usually clarified things, so it probably said something that I was feeling a little dazed despite what we were going into. Some of that was the constant aggression. Since the Nine had made their presence known, I’d barely been able to relax and let my guard down. After Mannequin had started killing people in my territory, taking even a moment to myself made me feel like I was insulting their memories, that I was failing the next batch of people who would become victims of my enemies.

  “We should stop here,” Tattletale said.

  That was apparently order enough, because the driver pulled over. The long seconds of stillness after the truck had stopped said volumes. We didn’t want to get out of the car, we didn’t want to face the Nine, deal with their traps as we tried to catch them in our own. Two or three seconds passed with tension thrumming in the air, every one of our nerves on edge, ready to act, react, even now.

  The sound of a slamming door from one of the other trucks was the little push we needed to move. We climbed out of the truck and joined the others. Bitch had been the first one out. She had Sirius, Bastard and Bentley with her. We ventured over to a fallen section of wall, peering over it to get a better glimpse of what would be the battlefield.

  The final two members of our group arrived a moment later. Shatterbird landed, stumbling, and Genesis began to materialize in a massive form.

  We were close to the site of our last fight. The Nine had been on their way to Dolltown, and we’d ambushed them, divided them, and then provoked them into extending out of position. Having done that, we’d kidnapped Shatterbird as she lagged behind and then looped around to capture the wounded Cherish.

  Now the Nine were inside Dolltown. I could only hope the noise and fighting of our last encounter would have given most of the residents the time and the motivation to run.

  “How’s she handling?” Tattletale asked Regent.

  “Not the easiest power to use,” he muttered. “It’s not a physical power, so I’m learning to use it from scratch. Doesn’t help that she’s really, really, really pissed off. I think she’s a serious control freak. My control’s slipping a bit.”

  “How much is it slipping?” I asked. “Is there a chance you’ll lose control of her?”

  “Always a chance. But I think I’m okay, so long as she and I remain pretty close to each other.”

  “Tattletale, Where are they?” I asked.

  Tattletale pointed at a squat building a few blocks away. It had the look of a small library, maybe, or a hardware store. A place meant to accommodate a lot of people for one job. “Somewhere in there.”

  “Then we wait,” Trickster said. “And we cross our fingers.”

  Waiting. The last thing I wanted to do.

  Using my bugs, I tried to scope out the area. Please don’t let there be people here.

  There were. I had to be subtle, not giving the Nine any reason to suspect I was around, but even if I counted only the people who had bugs on them already, there were far too many people in and around Dolltown.

  “Regent, can you stop Shatterbird from listening in?” I asked.

  “Sure,” he said. Shatterbird shut her eyes and covered her ears with her hands.

  I asked, “Tattletale, do you know where the Nine are, specifically?”

  She shook her head.

  “There’re people here. I’m counting thirty or so, but there could be twice that many. I haven’t even taken a serious look at the building the Nine are in, because I don’t want to alert them.”

  “Ignore them,” Trickster said. “This is risky enough without splitting our focus.”

  “If I know where the Nine are, I can tell these people where to run, give them a chance.”

  “It’s not worth the risk,” Trickster stressed. He glanced at his teammates, “There’s still five or six of the enemy in the area. If they see what you’re up to and get any advance warning we’re here, this all goes balls-up, and we suffer for it. Grue dies for it.”

  Regent nodded in agreement.

  I looked at the others for help. Tattletale remained quiet, and Sundancer, the one other person I’d hoped would be sympathetic, looked away.

  “Those are people,” I said. “Real people.”

  “So’s Grue, and so are we. We look out for ourselves first. If we can take out members of the Nine, we’ll save more people in the long run.”

  “The ends justify the means? You realize that when this all goes down, they’re going to die? Almost guaranteed?” I’d directed Sundancer to attack a group of people who included bystanders, but they’d been goners already, dead for all intents and purposes. This was something else.

  “Thirty people for the sake of hundreds. It balances out,” Trickster said. “If we stick to the plan and if we’re successful.”

  “I can’t agree with that.”

  “Then make your call. If you’re absolutely certain you’re not going to fuck us over and give away the plan, if you’re positive that the lives you might save are worth risking our lives and Grue’s, you can go ahead. You don’t have anyone’s support here, and it’s all on you if you fail.”

  Tattletale spoke, “If you’re going to do something, you better do it fast.”

  She pointed, and every pair of eyes in our group turned to look.

  Purity streaked across the sky, followed by Crusader and a floating rock carrying a whole contingent of their group. The rest would be moving along the ground.

  “Shatterbird, Genesis, go!”

  Shatterbird took flight, ca
lling up a storm of glass shards to accompany her. She flew low to the ground, relying on the surrounding buildings and ruins to keep out of sight.

  Genesis had finished pulling herself together. Her form resembled Crawler, but with some additions. Growths on her back resembled Bonesaw and Jack. She tested her limbs, then looked at us. At me? I couldn’t tell. She had too many eyes to tell.

  Then she ran, stampeding off. Not quite as graceful as the real Crawler, but that was one more area where we just had to cross our fingers and hope she could sell the ruse.

  There was the dull rumble of a distant impact as Purity opened fire on Genesis. Genesis dodged into a nearby alleyway, leading Purity and the rest of her group off to one side. Shatterbird fired on Purity and her allies, guiding a torrent of glass shards toward the incoming enemies. Not enough to kill, or even to maim. It was enough to hurt and to piss them off.

  Coil had informed Hookwolf’s contingent about the general location of the Nine. Sure enough, they’d gathered, girded themselves for battle and marched on, hoping to overwhelm through sheer firepower and force of numbers. Odds were good that it wouldn’t work. It hadn’t in the past.

  But, we were hoping, it would put the Nine in a position where they had to decide whether to hold their position or respond to the immediate proximity of this many enemies.

  Shatterbird and Genesis were tasked with distracting Hookwolf’s forces and preventing them from mounting a direct attack on the Nine’s real position. We couldn’t save Grue if Purity leveled the building.

  So much hinged on how the next few moments played out.

  “The Nine are distracted. I’m going to help the people run.”

  The lack of response was as damning as anything they could have said.

  I waited until Purity fired again, then used the rumble as an excuse to stir various bugs into action. I did a body count, placing bugs on people’s right feet, trying to calculate how many there were and how they were distributed.