Worm

by wildbow

Through my bugs, I could feel the thrum of the truck as it started up, I could feel the mild heat and see the flare of light as the highbeams shifted on. If I could see, they would have been blinding.

  I tried to squeeze Dinah’s hand, to reassure her, and found myself clenching an empty fist.

  My bugs weren’t where they were supposed to be. I was momentarily disoriented as I tried to map my surroundings. When I felt hardwood beneath my feet, I scattered the bugs from beneath my costume. Containment foam, all around me. I’d been teleported.

  And Calvert. Calvert and a squad of his people.

  “You bastard,” I said.

  There was no response. I could feel how his arm was outstretched, sense the general shape of the weapon in his hand. The others had weapons too. I could attack, but it would only make them open fire.

  “No monologue?” I asked, “You’re not going to explain how you did it? How you’re going to deal with my teammates or explain what happened to me?”

  He answered with a pull of the trigger.

  Interlude 16 (Donation Bonus #3)

  “Holding court?” Cinderhands asked.

  “We’ve waited long enough,” Marquis answered. “Word’s out, demand’s high, and it’s hitting people harder because they’ve been thinking about it. The time is right, if you’re ready, Amelia?”

  Amelia stared down at her hands. “I don’t want to.”

  “Life is full of things we don’t want to do. I won’t force you, but I think you and I would be very well served if you stepped up to the task. It will be harder to protect you if you don’t.”

  Amelia frowned. “You mean you’d throw me to the wolves.”

  “No. No. If you truly decided that you couldn’t, if the situation forced an ultimatum, I would give up the power I have as the leader of Block W if I had to.”

  “I can’t tell if you mean it.”

  Marquis took his time rolling and lighting a cigarette, then kneeled before her. He spoke with it bobbing in his lips, “My girl. I’m not a good man. I have rules I follow, but that doesn’t make me good. At best, it’s one virtue among many I’ve failed to acquire. I’m rough around the edges, whatever I might play at, and that’s plain enough to see to anyone who pays attention. I grew up in hard circumstances, and it’s taken me a long time to work past that and earn the respect I get. And I would give that up if you needed it.”

  “You don’t know me.”

  “You’re family, Amelia.” He stood, pulled the cigarette from between his lips and kissed her on the forehead. He didn’t miss how she pulled away in alarm and surprise. “Whatever else, that’s the most important thing in the end.”

  He let the words sit with her, turning away. Lung stood by the door, arms folded, and Marquis smiled lightly at the man. He’ll see this admission as weakness, but the right display of confidence will leave him wondering if it’s a lie, a ploy.

  Lung, much like all of the other prisoners, was wearing the gray cotton clothing that was supplied regularly through the drops, alongside the other essentials. He’d torn off the sleeves of the shirt, showing off muscular arms that were emblazoned with tattoos down to the fingertips. The light brown of his eyes was surrounded by an expanse of bloodshot red instead of whites. Other than his muscular physique, they were the only thing that set him apart from any ordinary man who one might see on the streets.

  Lung was a killer, a wild animal who played at being a man. Marquis had picked up enough details to know Lung’s story. He’d broken the rules, broken the code, because he’d thought he had the power to get away with it. But it had been a power he couldn’t quantify, a blend of raw military strength, reputation and circumstantial power.

  Just as there were athletes who studied their sport, trained their technique and honed their bodies with specific goals in mind, there were others who drew from natural talent and instinct. Lung had built his gang by conquering others one by one, going by his gut to identify those who would stand in his way and then violently removing them from his path. His instinct and a tenacious power gave him his success on the street level, where he seized control of the local drug trade, of soldiers, but they hadn’t fared so well in the scope of a greater war.

  And so it was that Lung found himself here. Among the fallen, so to speak.

  He turned his attention to Amelia. His daughter. She sat on the edge of the bed, slouching forward. Her clothes weren’t torn or modified, and her sweatshirt was a fraction too big for her—she was staying in his cell block, and the clothes were meant for men. For the time being, she was being left alone. He’d asked the men of his cell block to look after her, and because of this, she was afforded a certain respect. People got out of her way, not because they knew anything about her, but because they knew him.

  It was precarious and unconventional. A girl in the men’s cell blocks. It wasn’t new, exactly, some had taken wives, had girlfriends or paid girls to serve them as prostitutes. But Amelia was someone with no confidence, no presence, giving every sign that she was a victim rather than a warrior.

  This wouldn’t last. The men in the Birdcage were still men in the end, and they were men who’d found their way here because they had defied the system. Some, like Lung, had broken the unspoken codes, others had challenged authority and lost, while others still had simply broken the rules too many times. It was a matter of time before they lost patience with Amelia after devoting so much time and effort to protecting someone who didn’t have anything to offer. Or they would challenge Marquis; any number of maneuvers ranging from overt mutiny to subtle sabotage.

  “Are you holding court, then?” Cinderhands asked, once again. The man had a shock of red hair that was shaved on the sides, and holes in his nose and ears that pointed to old piercings, only some of which had been replaced by rings and bars hand-crafted from scraps of metal here in the ‘cage. His hands and arms were a burned black up to the elbows, more like a used log gone cold in the fireplace than flesh.

  “I’ll hold court. Amelia can sit in.”

  “You sure?” Cinderhands asked.

  Marquis turned to stare at the young man, drawing in a lungful of smoke from his cigarette, “You’ve never questioned my decisions before.”

  “Your decisions haven’t raised any questions before.”

  “Watch yourself,” Marquis said.

  Cinderhands narrowed his eyes and pursed his lips, but he nodded slightly in acquiescence.

  “Go pass on word, let the other block leaders know. I’ll hold audience for one hour, starting one hour after the next shipment arrives, ending at lights out. First come, first serve. They can come themselves or send a representative. We won’t challenge their passage, but no more than two from a block. Stay by the cell block gates and keep an eye out for trouble.”

  “I’ll need some guards if you want me to do anything about that trouble,” Cinderhands said.

  “Then find them. Or tell me you can’t, and I’ll find someone else to handle the job,” Marquis let his annoyance seep into his voice.

  Cinderhands stalked off.

  How long before they confronted him? There was a difference between being someone strong enough to be left alone and being leader of a cell block. Lung was the former, he was the latter.

  That said, his real worry was that they would attack him indirectly, standing by while Amelia was hurt, or failing to back him up at a crucial moment.

  In fact, he was giving serious thought to the idea of provoking a mutiny among his people. A solid and undeniable victory would remind people of why he was leader of Cell Block W and help to root out any of the more conniving individuals who were plotting a more subtle form of attack. That is, if they were impatient enough to capitalize on the ensuing chaos.

  Actually being defeated, it wasn’t really a consideration. He’d only lost a fight on one occasion, and those had been extenuating circumstances.

  In any event, instigating a mutiny would only serve as a stopgap measure. This was a problem he needed to addr
ess at the root. Amelia.

  He glanced her way. She hadn’t moved, and she was still staring at her hands.

  She wasn’t the first of her kind that he’d seen. A hollow shell. Tabula rasa. A blank slate. She wasn’t sleeping at night, not easily, and she had frequent nightmares.

  He’d seen others, had had two appear in his cell block, delivered by their tinker overseer. Except he wasn’t a nurturer. He had no experience on that front. He’d done what he could to see if he could wake them up from the neuroses that gripped them, and then he’d bartered them away to other cell blocks when he hadn’t seen improvement over one or two weeks. People who were damaged on this fundamental level tended to go one of four ways. They recovered, which was rare; someone filled the empty vessel with an ideology; they were used as a resource, cared for so their talents could be exploited; or they were spent, burned up of whatever they had to offer, be it making things or violence.

  He wished he’d tried his hand at fixing the two who Dragon had delivered to his block. Maybe he’d have a better idea of how to deal with Amelia if he had.

  “We have twenty minutes until they start arriving. Go shower, Amelia. Make sure your hair is dry when you return, and don’t wear a sweatshirt. They envelop you, make you look like you’re hiding. A short-sleeved shirt will do.”

  She stood and headed out the door, her slippered feet slapping as she walked.

  He could have escorted her, but he didn’t. It would be better in the short-term, but more damaging to their image in the end. Instead, he ventured out of his daughter’s cell, standing at the head of the railing for the raised area that overlooked his cell block.

  There were thirty people in Block W, including himself and Amelia. Those thirty people shared five televisions with no remotes, two weight benches, one open area for general exercise and sports, and a seating area with tables and benches. The cells themselves were arranged in a horseshoe shape, encompassing the area, with two gently sloping ramps meeting at the furthest cell, his own. Beneath his cell was a corridor that led to the supply delivery area and the showers.

  Tidy in appearance to the point of caricature, Spruce stood guard by the televisions, helping ensure that Block W remained the only block with a full set of working sets. He would ensure everyone had a turn to choose the channel. Whimper was overseeing the auction. Everyone had already received their share of the cigarettes, which served as currency for bidding over the more in demand items of the supply drop. There were less new blankets than there were people in the block, for example, and each drop only included maybe three or four books; always one classic and two from the recent bestseller’s lists. Good reads and books with raunchy scenes could be resold to other prisoners for a decent amount, and they would exchange hands until they were too worn to keep.

  From his vantage point at the railing, Marquis could see most of the way into virtually every cell in the block. Only the cells at the very end were at the wrong angle, and he’d stationed his lieutenants there. His lieutenants and Lung.

  Not every block worked the same way, though the layout and the scheduled drops were the same for each. The advantage of Marquis’ arrangement was that it kept his people relatively happy and it kept them in their place. The lieutenants and Marquis himself got first pick of any of the items from the supplies, but nobody truly went wanting, so they generally agreed with minimal complaint.

  He watched Amelia make her way to the point on the ramp where the railing terminated, step down to the corridor below that led to the showers. He could see the glances that were directed her way, some almost animal, hungry. Others, almost more alarming to that part of himself that he associated with fatherhood, were cold, measured and calculating. More than a few sets of eyes belatedly turned his way after looking at his daughter, as if gauging whether he was noticing that they’d noticed.

  By way of response, he called on his power, generating twin spikes of bone that crossed the end of the corridor in an ‘x’. Amelia passed through the gap, crouching slightly, and he filled the remainder of the space with branching lengths of bone.

  Even the littlest things were a hassle, now.

  He snapped the bone, keeping his expression blank in the face of the mind-shattering pain that resulted. It faded quickly, and he let the remainder of the bone fall to the floor, joining countless other shards and fragments around the mouth of his cell. It invoked a mental picture of a lion’s den.

  This was a gamble. Amelia could be the excuse his enemies or more ambitious underlings needed to mount an attack. At worst, he’d die and she would… well, she’d be a resource that was burned up, exhausted of anything and everything she had to offer. If he was able to buy enough time, verify that she was beyond saving, then he could return her to the women’s cell blocks, cut his losses and take the resulting hit to his reputation as the only real cost of trying.

  He didn’t want to take either of those options. He had so few memories with her, from when she’d been a toddler, but they’d stayed with him. He remembered the sparkle in her eye as she saw the princess costume he’d had tailor-made for her. He recalled the look of consternation on her face as she’d sat at his dining room table while she practiced writing her letters. That frustration had become awe as he’d showed her what she could accomplish once she mastered the art, penning out florid letters in cursive with a fountain pen.

  More than once, as he prepared tea to share with Lung during one of their long discussions, he’d thought of the mock tea party he’d had with his daughter.

  Those moments seemed farther away now than they had in the days before he’d been reunited with her. He would never recapture them, he knew, but maybe he could find other, new memories to share with her. A deep conversation, a father’s pride at her accomplishments.

  Before that was possible, he had to resolve this situation. Fixing her was too lofty a goal. Cementing his own power base would do as a short-term goal. He would need to show his people and the other cell blocks that there was a reason why he’d invested this much attention and effort into his daughter. To do that, he would have to decipher the puzzle of her psyche, figure out a way to coax her into demonstrating her power.

  He was running out of time, judging by how his followers were acting.

  “You will be disappointed if you expect my help, Marquis,” Lung’s low, heavily accented voice came from behind him.

  “I know. You’re your own man.”

  “I had more respect for you before this.”

  Before my daughter.

  “You and everyone else here. It’s a shame. I’d hoped I’d amassed enough credit that you and the rest of them could trust me to see this through to a successful conclusion.”

  “Mmm,” Lung rumbled. “Do you trust that you’ll see this through to a successful end?”

  Marquis didn’t trust himself to lie convincingly, so he only smiled.

  “You do have a plan?” Lung asked.

  “You’ll see,” Marquis replied. “Will you be attending the meeting?”

  “I am not one of your lieutenants.”

  “But you’ve earned yourself a reputation in a short span of time. That’s commendable.”

  “No flattery. Get to the point.”

  “It helps us both if you’re there.”

  “You look more powerful if you have the mad dog on a leash,” Lung growled.

  “Some may see it that way. I won’t deny it. But in my perspective, you’re dangerous, and people will notice if I’m unconcerned about having you loose in my block.”

  “You’re insulting me. Saying you look down on me.”

  “No. I’m stating the facts. Yes, in a straight fight, maybe you could give me a run for my money. Maybe not. But I have my underlings, and that leaves me fully confident I’d win.”

  “You might not have those underlings for much longer if this continues.”

  “I notice you’re not disagreeing.”

  Lung offered a noncommittal grunt in response.

 
; “If you stay,” Marquis said, resting his elbows on the railing, “You can meet the other cell block leaders, get a head start on figuring them out for when you’ve murdered me and taken over W Block.”

  “You don’t sound concerned.”

  “Someone’s going to try, Lung. Someone’s going to succeed. Might be in two years, might be in five years, or ten—”

  “Or today,” Lung cut in.

  Marquis waved him off. “Not today. But it’s a fact that it’ll happen someday. I’d rather it was you, when that day comes.”

  Lung’s eyebrows rose in a rare expression of surprise. “Why?”

  Marquis stood, stretching, and tossed his stub of a cigarette to the corridor below.

  “You can’t imagine I’d be a kind or generous leader.”

  Marquis laughed. “No. But wouldn’t you rather be murdered by a rabid wild beast who happens to share your living space, than to have a onetime ally stab you in the back?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Lung replied. “You’ll be dead either way.”

  Marquis gave the man a slap on the shoulder. Lung tensed, more because of surprise at the abrupt, familiar gesture than anything else. Marquis sighed. “There are times I envy you.”

  He turned to head down the ramp, descending into the crowded area where supplies were being sorted.

  Whimper showed him the books. A murder investigation novel, a young adult story featuring some romance with a ghost, a book with a bird mask on the cover and a Dickens novel. Marquis selected the last.

  He seated himself on a bench where he had a view of both the corridor and the cell block entrance. While others cleared out of the area, Marquis glanced up at Lung, who still watched from the railing above.

  He turned his attention to the book, pretending to read while thinking over the situation.

  * * *

  He glanced toward the door of bones in time to see the shadow of Amelia’s approach. Controlling his own ‘dead’ bones was harder, but he’d been standing at the ready to demolish the barrier, and pulled it down before she got there.