Worm

by wildbow

  RT:

  You see him?

  Charlotte:

  no. no bars here. had to leave to make call.

  Right. Arcadia was one of the schools that had a Faraday cage, if I was remembering right. Something to stop kids from texting and making calls in class.

  RT:

  What was he doing?

  Charlotte:

  asking about u in hallways, checking with ppl to see if u were around.

  Charlotte:

  i approached him and asked how he knew u. he said he didnt. seemed too intense for that so i called u.

  RT:

  GJ.

  All in all, almost exactly what I might have told her to do if I’d been in direct contact with her at the time.

  RT:

  This is Eric with blond hair? Blue eyes? Talks like he’s going to run out of breath and pass out?

  Charlotte:

  Yes.

  My suspicions were confirmed. Greg.

  Charlotte:

  is break btween class atm. have 2 go soon. what shld I do?

  No time to think or plan. It was annoying how these codes and protocols that Tattletale and I had come up with were costing us precious seconds.

  RT:

  Go back inside to see if there’s drama. Tell him I’m not at school, if you can, but that I can meet him later.

  Charlotte:

  k

  While I waited, I patted the mattress dry where the cleaner had soaked into it, then dragged it upstairs. My phone buzzed before I’d dressed to take it out to the balcony.

  Charlotte:

  he gone. class starting. no drama I can see.

  Damn. Not as bad as it could be, but the situation wasn’t resolved.

  RT:

  What’s your next class?

  Charlotte:

  Eng.

  RT:

  Go. I’ll see if I can track him down. Will find you if I need you but don’t worry. Good job.

  I’d let her return to business as normal: I didn’t want her too caught up in this.

  There was something to be said for having good help. I felt more than a little guilty. Much like Sierra had during the worst periods, Charlotte was picking up my slack. In managing my territory while I was going home to sleep at my dad’s house, she was earning her wage twice over. I would have increased her pay but she didn’t want me to, claiming it would arouse suspicion.

  Maybe I could get Tattletale to arrange some kind of scholarship for her. We had funds. Tattletale had acquired everything Coil had owned, and it had been easy enough to assume his false identities and take over the dummy corporations. Now that the city was starting to pick up and people were talking about the potential the portal in the downtown area had, the land was skyrocketing in value.

  Not to mention that the Ambassadors had given us a healthy lump of cash when they’d arrived in Brockton Bay, and were paying rent in the thousands of dollars so we’d be copacetic with them just being around.

  Apparently that was villain protocol, in a way, doing jobs or giving gifts when intruding on another’s territory. I could see why: it let one ask for permission and show respect while still giving evidence to a measure of power. If these guys were willing to hand over tens of thousands in the same way other people gave gift baskets, it showed they had that kind of money to spare, and they were confident. The side benefit for us specifically was that it kept Tattletale from complaining too loudly.

  With luck, there would be others like them. Which wasn’t to say I trusted them.

  I dressed, pulling on my running shoes, a tank top and the lightweight cargo pants I’d worn to run. I left the grungier clothes laid out on the bed, and made doubly sure I had my cell phone, identification and my knife. I doubted I could have it in plain sight, so I stuck it in my sock and pulled my pants leg down around it.

  It was nine fifty in the morning, and I figured I had an hour and forty-five minutes before the second class of the day ended and the lunch hour began.

  I had to find a way to drag Greg out of class and talk to him without alerting others. That, or I’d have to wait until lunch started and postpone plans with my dad. Inconvenient.

  The bus was running on a reduced schedule. There were fewer intact vehicles, fewer drivers in the area, and routes were longer with the detours that they had to take. It wasn’t as bad as it might otherwise be: a twenty-minute wait.

  I stewed in my own frustration. There had been occasions in the past where I’d had to leave my territory to handle greater threats. It irritated me more than it should have, to be forced to leave for this. Such a minor thing, but prickly enough that it had the potential to become something major if ignored, and awkward overall to handle. How did I even approach the conversation?

  I’ve faced down a handful of the scariest sons of bitches in the world, I’ve been intentionally trapped in a burning house, blinded, had my back broken, I’ve been paralyzed and at the mercy of no less than two lunatic tinkers, and I’ve killed a man, I thought. And going back to school stirs up old feelings of anxiety.

  I could feel the building tension and a shift back to old ways of thinking, and the ridiculousness of it made me smile. It was the middle of the morning, the bus was almost empty, and I stretched as though I were just waking up. One or two people glanced my way, and I allowed myself to not give a fuck.

  It helped, as though I were physically shrugging off the old burdens that were settling on me.

  The wind from the open windows of the bus stirred my hair, and I exhaled slowly, turning my face into the sun, letting it warm me even as the breeze cooled me off. I couldn’t do anything about the time it took to get there, so I might as well take the opportunity to get a breather.

  Arcadia High. I’d seen it in the midst of some of Brockton Bay’s worst days, but effort had been expended to fix it up and get everything sorted out. New windows, that caught the light in a way that made them look almost like compound eyes. Some kind of sub-layer or something worked into them that made for a number of quarter-sized hexagons. The front gate had been rebuilt, cracks paved over, and vandalism cleaned up. It was pristine, with panels of white tile and glass that almost glowed in the morning light.

  The thing that caught me off guard was the people. Classes had started, but there were forty or so students gathered around outside, sitting and talking, texting or simply enjoying the sun. A half-dozen adults in outfits that were uncomfortably similar to the enforcers of the old Boardwalk were stationed at the gates and at points around the school grounds that let them keep an eye on things. Security? Volunteers?

  That wasn’t the entirety of it. The students fell into two groups. One was very much what I might have expected, kids in new clothes or casual summer wear, smiling and talking. Months ago, I might have felt like the smiles and periodic laughs were directed at me, and not in a flattering way. I’d always rationally understood that they weren’t, but not to the point that I could convince myself. Now I reveled in my anonymity. I knew what it was to have every set of eyes on me, people covertly trying to gauge who I was and what I was doing every time I moved a finger. This wasn’t it.

  The other, larger group of students, adding up to maybe thirty-five of the forty kids present, was something else. They were the Sierras, the Charlottes, the Ferns and the Forrests. They were the Jessies and Bryces, the Taylor and Danny Heberts. The people who had stayed.

  I just had to look at them, and I knew it. Some had dressed in new clothes, but others wore the clothes that had weathered the last few weeks and months, worn and frayed at the edges. Physically, some were frayed. They had lines in their face that spoke to weeks with a bare minimum of sleep, and both skin and hair bore the coloration that resulted from days spent outdoors.

  One or two, I noted, carried weapons. One had a knife displayed visibly at his hip. A girl with a burly frame very similar to Rachel’s was sitting beneath a tree, eyes closed, her hands on a stick with an electrical tape grip. There wasn’t anything definable,
only little clues that added up, and a general atmosphere about them.

  I didn’t miss the division between the two groups. The five or so fresh-faced teenagers weren’t hanging out with the ones who had stayed.

  “You just arriving?” one of the enforcers at the gate asked me.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  He studied me just long enough that I felt acutely aware of my bare shoulders and arms, and how my top clung to my stomach. I glared at him, and he met my eyes with an ease that suggested he didn’t care I’d caught him looking. Creepy.

  “Got a weapon?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I replied.

  “Can’t keep it if you want to go inside.”

  I was only keeping myself armed as a matter of practice, and I was aware I wasn’t alone on that front, or I wouldn’t be doing it so casually. I reached into my sock and withdrew the sheathed knife. It says something that we can even take this conversation in stride.

  I handed it to him. It wasn’t worth the time it would take to argue. “What’s with these people outside, here?”

  He shrugged. “Easing into it. We asked if we should round ’em up and take them inside, but the principal said we should give them a few days to depressurize if they wanted it.”

  “Depressurize,” I said.

  He glanced at the knife, “All I know is we’re not enforcing a lot of rules yet. Sometimes a few take a break and come outside, smoke, talk, get some fresh air and sun. Those ones don’t tend to stay long.”

  He was looking at one group by the front door, three of the ones who didn’t have that weary, worn, and wary sense about them. The ones who’d no doubt fled the city when things turned ugly.

  I’m not the only one who sees the distinction, I mused.

  “I think they’re intimidated. Or you and I see it as a nice sunny day and they see it as being outside in a shithole of a city.” When I didn’t keep the conversation going, he shrugged, “If you’re going in, you’ll want to go to the office. They’ll sort out where your classes are.”

  “Okay,” I said. There was no need to explain that I wasn’t here for classes.

  By the time I’d reached the front door, a trio of teenagers younger than me had already approached the same guard. It would be another litany of questions.

  It did something to explain why the guards were there. The two kids who hadn’t been willing to part with their weapons were no doubt another part of that. The whole dynamic was skewed, now, and they were mediating the worst of it.

  I’d been in Arcadia High once, and it had been more of a life or death situation, one where I had been able to tentatively use my bugs. In this unfamiliar territory, with a thousand or more students throughout the building, I had to actively work to suppress the powers I’d been using on an almost automatic level. I couldn’t be sure that a small cloud of flies would go unnoticed as they traced the contours of a hallway.

  Much like I’d seen outside, there were a handful of students who hadn’t yet made their way to class, or had stepped out for a breather, congregating in pairs and trios, or standing alone.

  I knew I could have asked them for directions, but I wasn’t keen on approaching people who were in the process of avoiding socializing. The men and women in uniforms that were stationed at the intersections where the halls met? More of a possibility, but there was no need. Directions were posted on the wall.

  I glanced at a note on the wall. One sentence, with no punctuation, and a big black arrow pointing one way.

  New sudents go to front office

  If I’d had a little bit of hope that things were working out here, they faltered some when I saw the typo.

  I noticed another set of papers that were arranged on the wall, not because of what it said or the title, but the cartoon etched on the wall in permanent marker.

  The heading of each of the sheets read ‘Know where you are’. The paper with the graffiti was Rachel’s; a crude drawing of a dog was violating one corner, which had been torn slightly to accommodate the dog. A speech balloon over the smiling dog’s head read ‘you don’t know shit’.

  Fitting, if it was one of Rachel’s followers.

  I headed in the direction of the office, feeling strangely out of place. This entire thing was surreal. There were the hallways with gleaming floors smudged by the passage of hundreds of feet, the bright primary colors in trophy cabinets and on bulletin boards, all contrasted with the security guards that were set up and standing to attention as though they expected a fight to break out any moment, and the innumerable teenagers who were being allowed to roam the grounds, some hanging around with weapons at hand.

  But more than anything else, it was the notion of where I fit in the grand scheme of things. Growing up, attending school, there had always been this general sense of the local gangs and powers and their influence. It was the little things. The gang tags scrawled on walls, the posters informing Asian students of who they could contact if the ABB started pushing them to join or pay tribute. There had always been the rougher kids who wore certain colors and symbols of their affiliation. It had meant something when a teenager wore yellow, or when an adult had an eight-ball tattooed on them.

  I was aware that Arcadia High had been scrubbed clean, and that things wouldn’t become fully apparent until people had gotten more settled and more comfortable. Even with that, though, it was unsettling to notice that for the first time since I was eleven, I couldn’t see anything relating to the hostile gangs in the area.

  There were no real gangs except for ours. Grue, Tattletale, Bitch, Regent, Imp, Parian and I were the vague, intimidating forces that people worried about crossing. We weren’t as bad as some of the ones that had come before us, sure, but people still saw us as something to warn others about.

  I’d seen all the people working for me, sensed them with my bugs. I’d read about myself on Parahumans Online, and in news articles. At the same time, high school was sometimes described as a microcosm of the world at large. There was something else about being in the midst of a three-dimensional model of it all, seeing it have a concrete impact on a place that was more familiar.

  Four teenagers were sitting along the side of the hallway as I walked by. They stared at me as I passed.

  I had to work to reassure myself that there was no connection between what I was thinking and the fact that they were looking at me.

  It did remind me that the Wards were here, and whatever else had happened, they might have seen my face. Not my face, but they could easily have seen a deformed evil clone of me.

  There was that surreal sensation, again. Was it weird that I felt most like Taylor at school? That I was all the more cognizant of the weirdness of all the cape stuff?

  They were still looking. I gave one a curt nod, and she nodded back.

  I quickened my pace as I headed to the office. I wanted to be gone.

  There were a lot of students in the office, and I was soon aware of why. There were capes present. Ones I only barely recognized. Adamant and Sere.

  “Listen!” a woman behind the counter raised her voice to be heard over the general babble. She had more authority than I might have expected of a secretary. “Get in a line! If you’re here to look at the superheroes, you can do it later! They’ll be here all week!”

  Nobody listened, of course, and the secretaries weren’t really helping, taking requests and giving out information to whoever was closest to the front. It only encouraged the press of bodies.

  I headed to the other end of the room, hoping I’d be able to work my way around the end of the crowd.

  I glanced at the clock. Ten-forty. I had maybe twenty minutes before my dad called me, and getting back in time would be difficult, even if I was lucky enough to have the bus show up at a convenient time. I could postpone, plan a late lunch, but I really didn’t want to.

  “Please,” Adamant spoke, and his voice was filled with confidence, “Do as Principal Howell is asking and form lines.”

  That worked, but
not all that well. People elbowed and pushed against me as we arranged ourselves into loose columns. I’d never liked the feeling of being in a press of bodies, and it made me think of other unpleasant situations: Bonesaw straddling me, being drawn into a massive, monstrous lump of flesh. It made me exceedingly uncomfortable, and being uncomfortable made me instinctively reach for my bugs.

  That was another reason to not be in classes. How long would it be before my power did something while running on autopilot and drew attention?

  I studied Adamant and Sere while I waited. Adamant, naturally, wore a metallic costume, featuring metal bands and panels that were loosely linked together by chains, fit over a black bodysuit. He’d been at the fight against Leviathan, if I remembered right. He was a member of Legend’s team in New York. Or he had been. Legend was gone now.

  Sere wore cloth, in contrast to Adamant. He wore a kind of nomadic, desert-tribe style of robe, all in pristine white with a fine pattern embroidered onto it. His mask was more stylistic than representing anything, a solid white plate with light blue lenses for the eyes and no opening for his nose or mouth. What made him stand out was the moisture that flowed from the gaps in his handwraps and from around his mask. It swirled around him like a breath outdoors in winter, pale. Almost an inverse of Grue.

  Powerwise, I knew Adamant was a bruiser, though I didn’t know the specifics. Sere, I did know about, but only because I’d once come across a cell phone video of him brutally taking down a number of thugs, posted online somewhere, months ago. Some capes shot fire from their hands. Sere was the opposite—he could draw moisture to himself with surprising speed and violence. It didn’t matter if a foe was armored or behind a forcefield, he could dehydrate them in a flash. It was the kind of power that might have earned him a villain label if he hadn’t had all of the Protectorate’s PR at his back.

  I idly wondered what had made the pair stick with their employer, in the wake of the recent events that had so many leaving the Protectorate with little to no explanation, Legend among them.

  More than that, I was wondering how I’d fight them if it came down to it. With the way the armor and chains of his costume were arranged, Adamant was just begging to be tied up. Sere would be trickier.