Worm

by wildbow

  “Mad? No. A monster? Maybe. Better to say I’m a freak of nature. My power is to control my own destiny, to reshape and cultivate it. What you see here is only the tip of the iceberg.”

  “There’s a greater plan, then.”

  “Quite. A shame you won’t discover it. Circus?”

  Piggot backed away from the table and ducked low. It didn’t help. Circus lobbed a throwing knife into the air, so that it arced. She didn’t have eyes on the director, but the knife nonetheless went high, catching the light as it reached the peak of its flight near the high ceiling of the auditorium. It plunged down to strike its target and screams sounded from the front of the auditorium.

  “Someone contacted the heroes,” Leet spoke. “My U.I. says they’re on the way.”

  “Good,” Coil responded. “Circus, come. Squad captains, maintain order here. We’ll be back the moment this is done.”

  “The bitch is too fat. Thinking I didn’t hit anything vital,” Circus said.

  “See it through,” Coil ordered, turning to leave with Über and Leet accompanying him. Circus turned to follow, flicking her wrist hard over her shoulder. Three knives traveled through the air, their paths eerily in sync as they nearly touched the ceiling, converging together as they dropped towards Piggot.

  I barely had time to think about it, rising to my feet and calling on my bugs. I knew it was too few, too late, but standing by while someone got murdered? Four or five cockroaches, some houseflies, it wasn’t enough. I’d held the bugs back, keeping them in out of the way areas, and now I didn’t have enough to block the knives or divert them from their path.

  There was a flash of light around Piggot, and for just an instant, I thought maybe she had powers. Maybe she’d had a trigger event, or she always had them but kept them in reserve?

  But it wasn’t her. Weld caught the knives, letting them sink into his palm, down to the hilts.

  It was the Wards. Weld and Vista were at the foot of the room. Vista was raising her hands, folding the walls into barriers to block those of Coil’s soldiers who weren’t holding the reporters hostage. Kid Win was at one corner of the room, firing what looked like concussion blasts into soldier and civilian alike, a gun in each hand, and the hovering turrets at his shoulder adding still more firepower to the fray. He’d taken the fight out of them with the first barrage, and the follow-up fire was apparently to take down the soldiers who managed to climb to their feet or raise a weapon. The concussion-cannons were obvious nonlethal weapons from the casual way he was firing into the massed people, intended to stun and disable rather than harm.

  Chariot had a gun that was firing off charges of electricity, similar to the one I’d borrowed from Kid Win, and was flying over the assembled soldiers, unloading shots on them. His costume was different from the last time I’d seen him, with single-wheeled roller blades at his toes and a flight system that didn’t seem to be attached to him. A disc the size of a car tire floated behind his head and shoulders, almost luminescent with energy, and the wings of his flight suit, tipped with jets of gold light, floated out to either side of it.

  Clockblocker formed the final part of the strike party. He wasn’t fighting—not directly. He stood by a white cloth that had been frozen in time, covering the soldiers.

  They were turning the situation around. The suddenness with which they’d appeared, their positioning, they had planned this, assessing the situation, deciding where they needed to be to make a decisive strike and protect the crowd, and they must have teleported in. I knew they had the technology to teleport objects. I hadn’t guessed they had it for people, too.

  “This way!” Weld bellowed. “Evacuate through the area at the back of the stage! Stick to the sides! And I need medical help for the wounded!”

  Their group was a little battered, beaten and bruised, and they wore replacement costume parts. Where I could see skin, I noted the welts of bug bites and stings that hadn’t yet faded. Vista had covered hers with makeup, but they were there.

  I was frozen by indecision. I felt almost hopeful, strange as that sounded. If the good guys got the upper hand, if they actually beat Coil, then I could rescue Dinah by simply visiting Coil’s base and opening the door to her room. Coil was being ruthless here. At his orders, four people had been wounded to the point that they might die. If I stepped in to help…

  No, my help wouldn’t be welcome. It could even be dangerous, a distraction at a crucial time. I would also have to escape. A resounding victory might see them locking down the area to take down witness statements or make sure no soldiers removed their uniform and slipped out with the crowd. Nobody had seen me gathering the bugs in my futile attempt to try to help Piggot. But if they found out Skitter was in the building and won, then it would be a question of narrowing down which teenage girl in the building fit the profile.

  And if I tried to help and Coil won, well, my dad and I would be fucked. No sense in putting it politely. He would be in a prime position to not only retaliate, but maybe even retaliate without losing the support of my teammates.

  If anything anchored me in place, it was the way one of Dad’s hands clutched my own, the other hand holding my wrist, and the way he seemed to be trying to shield me with his body. His face was taut with fear, his body rigid.

  “Wards!” Weld shouted. “All clear!?”

  “Clear!” the cry came back three times, from Clockblocker, Kid Win and Chariot. The soldiers had been taken down.

  My dad tugged on my hand. Enough people had made their way down the aisles that we had room to maneuver. I followed his lead, letting him pull me towards the aisle.

  “Regroup! Optimal range, facing the doors!” Weld ordered. Vista, Clockblocker, Kid Win and Chariot hurried to the center of the room. He stayed where he was, watching as civilians from the crowd tended to the wounded. All but the mayor were apparently alive. The only one I could wonder about was the mayor. He was lying prone, receiving CPR at the hands of two people.

  “Now!” Weld shouted.

  Clockblocker moved, lunging three feet to his left to tag Chariot. Chariot froze in the air.

  I stopped in my tracks, momentarily confused. Had some of the Wards turned traitor? No. Kid Win and Vista seemed to be taking this in stride. Both were working together to bind Chariot.

  There were cries of protest from the crowd. “What are you doing?” “He didn’t do anything!”

  “He’s a double agent,” Weld spoke, his voice carrying. “Working for Coil. Go. Evacuate, get out of here. We have this in hand.”

  He radiated confidence. Damn it, for all the times we’d fought the Wards, for every time I’d cursed the heroes for not doing what I needed them to do, I began to feel hopeful.

  My dad and I were making our way down the aisle, past the soldiers that Chariot had laid low. We were at the steps leading up to the stage when the doors slammed open.

  Über led the way, followed by Coil, Leet, Circus and a squadron of soldiers. His metal frame took the brunt of the incoming fire, and he used his arms to shield his exposed upper body from the blasts of electricity and the concussion shots from Kid Win’s guns and turrets.

  Vista began shrinking the arms, but the progress seemed slower. She had trouble using her power when there was living material in the way, but it was still working.

  Being so close to the fighting, to the gunfire and flashes of electricity, people were reacting badly. Screaming, shouting at others to move faster, pushing and shoving. Worst of all, they were making so much noise I couldn’t follow everything that was going on. Coil was saying something, his words carrying to the heroes, but I missed it in the chaos.

  I didn’t want to out myself as being present, so I was limited in how many bugs I could deploy. A small handful on Coil served to let me follow his movements. He’d dropped to one knee behind Über, and Leet handed him a small remote control. He wasted no time in pressing the button.

  The noise of gunfire changed. My head wasn’t the only one that turned to see what h
ad happened.

  Kid Win had stopped shooting, and a shrill whine was filling the air. He turned to Weld, who began tearing at his armor.

  Leet stepped out from behind Über and shot Vista. She was thrown down the length of the aisle, slamming against the base of the stage. He took another shot at Clockblocker, who froze himself. Kid Win drew another gun from a side holster and shot Leet.

  Weld had finished dismantling Kid Win’s armor, freeing what looked to be a power cell.

  I could barely make out the words, but someone in the crowd did. A woman screamed the words, “He said it’s a bomb! Sabotage! Run!”

  In that instant, the crowd became a crush of bodies, each trying so hard to get up and through the stairwell that we barely made any progress. Über, Leet, Circus and Coil began running towards the lobby, Über kicking down the door, leaving the heroes to deal with the bomb they were holding, which was squealing at a higher pitch and volume with every passing second. It was glowing, brilliant in its golden radiance.

  Kid Win pointed at Chariot. The boy was frozen, still, but the wings and pack on his back were still active, not attached to Chariot’s suit and therefore unaffected by Clockblocker’s power.

  Weld caught the setup out of the air, tearing away the outer casing the second it was in his hands. Kid Win changed the wiring. They were shouting something to one another, but I couldn’t make out the words. Weld pointed up.

  The bomb or sabotaged power supply disappeared, teleporting away in the same grid of lines that I’d seen Kid Win use to summon his massive cannon. It dawned on me what they’d done. Teleporting the bomb straight up into the sky, where there was nobody and nothing to be affected.

  Or that had been their plan. It didn’t work out that way. I saw a flicker of light from the lobby, the glow of the device, and Coil wheeling around to face us, his screaming lost in the midst of the shrill whine and the shouts of the others.

  My eye to brain response was too slow to process everything that happened next. I saw it in snapshots: the swelling energy of the sabotaged power supply, Coil’s body coming apart in pieces, the chairs of the auditorium and fragments of floorboards being thrown into the air as the explosion seemed to move in slow motion.

  Then it hit us, and I saw only white, felt only pain.

  Monarch 16.9

  Heavy. The weight of the body on top of me was making it hard to breathe. Some backup process kicked into gear as my body tried and failed to take in air. I was thrust out of unconsciousness, or out of the semiconscious daze I’d been in. I managed to struggle to get my upper body free, fighting past the aches that made every joint and every bone hurt to heave the body off me.

  It hadn’t felt like sleep, or the darkness of unconsciousness, but I hadn’t been thinking either. I felt a moment’s disorientation and wondered if I’d suffered another concussion. My thoughts felt too lucid.

  The body. My dad? I opened my eyes to look, saw only cloudy white. Dust? It was similar to when I woke up with bleary eyes, but no matter how many times I blinked, I could only see a white haze with vague patches of light and dark. Blinking made my face burn where the skin of my eyelids and around my eyes moved. More irritating was the sensation that I had something in my eyes, except no amount of blinking was helping. They’d been damaged?

  Stupid to look straight at the explosion. I’d thought I had another half-second to grasp what was going on before I had to turn my head and shut my eyes. Apparently that wasn’t good enough.

  My dad. Right. I reached over and fumbled to find his throat. He had a pulse. I put one hand in front of his mouth and found him breathing.

  I was whole, he was alive. Anything else would be hard to verify.

  I was forced to use my bugs to see. What their eyes processed might not translate well in my brain, but it was about as good as what I had. Didn’t want to move the bugs or gather a swarm. It would be too easy to track me down, to find Skitter lying among the wounded.

  No, I only looked, keeping the bugs where they were, and feeling things out where necessary with only a handful of flies. I could feel a breeze. The front of the building had a hole in it. The lobby had been annihilated, and much of it was open to the sky. The black blobs that had pulled up around the building had flickering lights on top. Sirens. They would be the first responders.

  I’d noted the structural damage. I tried to picture the scene as I’d last glimpsed it. What had been where? Who had been where?

  The reporters had been at the very back of the room, the last to make their way down the aisles in the press of the crowd and the people making their way out of their seats. Some had lingered, protecting their equipment or filming the scene. I tenderly moved one fly over the area, feeling the shattered boards, the blood-slick expanses of floor, the charred flesh.

  Several of the Wards were working to tend to the wounded. Clockblocker had saved the Wards, apparently, but had been too late in tending to himself, and was currently lying prone, receiving some care from Weld. Chariot was gone.

  There had been hundreds of people present, and too many had still been in the building when the explosion went off. The dad and son who’d been restrained in the lobby? The mayor, candidates and director who’d been wounded, then left without aid when the explosion injured the people who were giving them first aid, sent the people flying?

  I couldn’t even grasp the entirety of the scene, not without bringing my swarm to bear. I couldn’t do that without possibly revealing my presence when I was in a vulnerable position.

  I felt around to find Kurt and Lacey.

  “Hey baby,” Lacey said. “You woke up.”

  “You hurt?”

  “Just a little bit. Might have slipped a disc. Probably nothing to worry about, but I’m going to stay as still as I can with how bad this hurts. I’ve been watching your dad, trying to tell if he’s breathing or if I’m imagining it. You didn’t freak out, so I take it that our Danny’s okay?”

  “He’s okay. I think.”

  “Good. Kurt’s unconscious but he’s alright. You see Alexander anywhere?”

  I blinked a few times. Did she not realize I couldn’t see? “No.”

  “Okay, hon. You should stay as still as possible.”

  I shook my head. “No. Going to see if anyone needs help.”

  She gripped my hand, started to say something, then winced.

  “What’s wrong.”

  “Hurts, is all. Stay put? Safest thing to do.”

  I shook my head. I couldn’t say it, but I felt like I’d been through enough crises and suffered enough that I was aware of what the pain was telling me. I was almost certain I wasn’t in critical danger. It was what my gut was telling me.

  With only a small few bugs to guide me, I left my dad, Kurt and Lacey behind, climbing up the stairs to the damaged stage, fumbling for the other wounded. I could only draw crude images of the situation from touch, from the blurry images my eyes offered me and through my bugs. A woman, unconscious like my dad. A man, his arms hugged to his lower stomach as he writhed in perpetual agony.

  The mayor. I crawled over to him, pressing my fingers to his throat. He had a pulse, but it was thready. I drew bugs from where they hid in the midst of my hair, commanded them down my arms and tried to bend over so my hair masked what I was doing. Once they were on him, I sent them over the length of his body, noting where there was blood. No use fumbling around with my hands. I didn’t want to bump one of the throwing knives and gave it the push necessary to drive it into one of his arteries. One of the knives that impaled his hip had moved, probably when the explosion happened, and the offending weapon wasn’t serving to cork the blood flow.

  I pulled my sweatshirt from around my waist, leaving my knife where it was on my belt, folding one sleeve and pressing it around the base of where the knife had penetrated. It wasn’t enough, didn’t feel like I was doing anything, but I wasn’t sure what else I could do. I wasn’t strong enough to do chest compressions.

  “Help!” I shouted
. “I need help here!”

  Nobody leaped to the rescue. Anyone else that was still in the building was too busy with their own injuries, were still unconscious or were making their way outside.

  Damn them.

  Damn Coil. I would make him answer for this.

  Yes, I had seen ‘Coil’ die. I had little doubt others had as well, even news cameras would have had eyes on the scene. Especially news cameras. Coil had staged this, taken advantage of the reporters’ cameras, the fact that there were no working communications, and all the important figures would be attending. He was too savvy, too invested in his plan to not have taken all the variables into account. Just the fact that I knew about his power turned this whole scenario on its head. He wouldn’t have charged in like this without a backup, without a version of himself staying safe and secure in his underground base, just in case things went awry.

  No. I might have seen the man die, but the more I thought about it, the less I could believe that man was Coil.

  The emergency response team had stopped outside, at the perimeter of the building. I listened through the bugs in the area, but I couldn’t follow any of the conversation. Even tracking who was speaking was nearly impossible.

  Whatever they had been discussing, they ventured inside. Some, who I gathered might be police officers, were moving to the most affected areas, the places where the reporters had been, the lobby. The paramedics proceeded down the aisles, too slowly for my liking, checking on the wounded.

  “Help!” I called out, but my voice was nearly drowned out by the other wounded. It was one or two minutes before a paramedic saw the mayor and hurried to my side. I could tell where he was because of the bug I’d planted on him, but I couldn’t say as much.

  “I’ve got this,” she said. The paramedic was a woman.

  I gratefully backed away. Even the strain of pushing the makeshift bandage down had been making every ache and pain across my body stand out in sharp relief.

  “Your name?” she asked me.