Worm

by wildbow

  “You meant it, when you said they were your friends,” my dad said.

  “We’ve been through thick and thin. They saved me, in some ways. I’d like to think I saved them.”

  Tagg snorted. I ignored him.

  “They did… bad things, didn’t they?” my dad asked.

  “So have I,” I said.

  “But you’re willing to martyr yourself for them?”

  “No,” I said. “I didn’t come here to be a martyr, I had other hopes. But… things didn’t work out like that. It’s down to secondary goals… and if those fail, then I’m willing to go to jail for their sakes. Not just my friends. The people in my territory, and maybe just a little, everyone.”

  I looked at Tagg as I said that last word. He gave me a dirty look, then more or less turned his attention to his phone, watching me with one eye while texting with one hand.

  “Everyone?” my dad asked.

  “We can’t lose the next Endbringer fight,” was all I could say.

  “No, I don’t imagine we can,” he said.

  That was something he understood in full, even if he didn’t know the particulars. The Endbringers were something we all understood. A fact of reality, something that touched everyone, struck a chord of fear in cape and civilian alike.

  My heart sank as Alexandria appeared. She plunged past the cloud of bugs that had collected over the roof, into an opening aperture in the ceiling. She passed down a shaft that ran parallel to the elevator, and into the Wards’ quarters.

  From there, she reached the elevator and made her way up to the cells.

  Alexandria rejoined us in the cell, virtually the same, though her hair was disheveled, her suit jacket folded over one arm. She laid it across the back of Miss Militia’s empty chair and stayed there, leaning on the back of the chair that was bolted to the floor.

  Noting Miss Militia’s absence led to me double checking on her. She was on the roof. No, I couldn’t count on anything from her. I’d hoped to have one more piece in play, but she was leaning over a railing at the edge of a helicopter landing pad, staring out over the city.

  Alexandria had to be my focus. She was staring at me, scrutinizing me. I met her eyes, and she locked hers onto mine.

  “I’d thought Tattletale had figured it out…” she paused, “But no. You told them. You have an open line of communication with them.”

  I shrugged, thinking of Tagg’s phone, with the handset still dangling over the edge of the desk.

  Wished I could hear her response. What had happened to my teammates?

  “Let’s take five minutes more to talk. Then I’ll take care of another of the Undersiders.”

  “Another?”

  “A PRT van will be along shortly. I wanted to keep to my time commitment, so I sent a truck.”

  “Why should I say anything?” I asked her.

  “Because as long as we’re talking, I’m not out there, taking your team to pieces, and you have a shot at passing them information. It gives them time to recuperate and strategize. Five minutes gives them time to make a getaway, or contact help. I imagine you arranged for backup. Hired mercenaries to help break you out if this went badly enough that you faced jail without getting anything you wanted or needed.”

  I set my jaw.

  “I know the general value of the properties you acquired, the proposed value of it. Your team would spend it. Ninety two million dollars, spent on hired soldiers, hired parahumans. That’s only your liquid assets.”

  I didn’t reply. I set to typing the next message on Tagg’s phone. K-N-O-W-S-A-B-O-U-T-M-E-R-C-S

  She straightened, removing her hands from the back of the chair. “If you’re not going to say anything, I might as well go now. You’re rather partial to Grue, aren’t you? Or should I take Tattletale out of the picture?”

  “We can talk,” I told her.

  “Excellent,” she said. She stepped around the corner of the table and sat in her chair, opposite me. “Do you need anything? Water? Coffee? Soda?”

  I shook my head.

  “Mr. Calle? Mr. Hebert?”

  Two refusals.

  She removed her phone from her jacket pocket. “Forgive me for using this in the midst of our discussion. Chevalier is likely to become the head of the Protectorate once the Triumvirate has departed, and he’s insisting that I keep tabs with him, what with the scandal and all. I’d show you, but that would be a breach of confidence.”

  She smiled, as though at a private joke. The smile didn’t matter to me. It was the way her eyes didn’t leave me.

  “You’re cold reading me,” I said.

  “Cold reading?” My dad asked.

  “Tattletale does it too. Mixes details she knows with ones she doesn’t, with very careful wording and a bit of an edge with her thinker powers.”

  “Mm hmm,” Alexandria said. She typed expertly on her phone, almost absently. “I know you’ve probably got someone in the lobby or outside, receiving coded messages. I know about the mercenaries. More mercenaries than I implied. I expect Tattletale called in favors. Probably not the Irregulars, but I didn’t read that. Simple logic. They wouldn’t work for you. I know that you’re still feeling confident, but not entirely so. If you were very close to breaking or very, very confident, you would have accepted my offer of a drink. And I know that your bugs can’t see computer screens.”

  Was she bluffing on that last part? Did it matter if she was? I could refuse, play some kind of trick, and she’d see right through it.

  “I could make some noise about my client’s rights being trampled, a lack of consent to that kind of analysis,” Mr. Calle said.

  “But you know the law doesn’t apply here. We’re in a gray area, up until the moment we decide to press charges and set this into motion, or you decide to force the issue. But neither of us want that. For now, this is… somewhere between her being in our custody and us having a friendly chat.”

  My lawyer glanced at me. I frowned. “Yeah. So long as she doesn’t start grilling me.”

  “As you wish,” Mr. Calle said.

  My head turned as I sensed the truck arriving. Bugs clustered to it as it found a spot at the side of the building, PRT uniforms moving their target on a stretcher. My bugs shifted position, tracking what they were moving. The white mask, the curls, the shirt, with a tightly woven fabric beneath… a spider silk shirt? It was Regent, unconscious.

  The bugs moved, tracing down the length of his arm. It was broken in two places, virtually zig-zagging. His leg was the same. I caught the words ‘medical’ and ‘doctor’. ‘Tranquilizer’.

  “He’s arrived, I take it.” Alexandria said.

  I nodded tightly.

  “The paradigm has changed,” Alexandria said. “In… two minutes and thirty seconds, I go and dispatch another of your teammates. I’ll hear concessions, offers or relevant information, and I’ll adjust my methods and the severity of my attack where appropriate.”

  “This is extortion,” my dad said.

  “She makes the process easier for us, we make it easier on her and her friends.”

  I frowned. “That’s still extortion.”

  “Two minutes and eight seconds,” she said, not even bothering to deny it. She had the same habit as Tattletale, of knowing the time without looking at a clock. “They’re going to be running, now, trying to throw me off their trail. I’ll find them. I can study the environment, I’ve studied the case histories and I know where they own property.”

  Another alert I needed to give. I was still typing in the last one. The cockroaches weren’t strong enough to hit the keys with enough force, so it was more of a case of having to leverage the key down through the combined efforts of several larger roaches and carefully arranged silk.

  I grit my teeth, trying to focus on the spelling while keeping track of what Alexandria was saying. Started on the next message. X-K-N-O-W-S-P-R-O-P-E-R-T-I-E-S

  “You’re backing me into a corner,” I said. “Backing them into a corner. Some
one’s bound to snap.”

  “Most likely,” she said, and there wasn’t a trace of concern in her expression. It was almost eerie, how little she seemed to care. Was that her passenger at work, or was she simply good enough at what she did, comfortable enough in her invincibility, that she’d grown able to shrug off the insignificant things?

  I shook my head. “I’m not making concessions. The terms I gave still stand. If you want to discuss the reasons behind—”

  She was already getting out of her chair.

  “—behind why I made the demands I made, we can. I think you’ll find it reasonable.”

  “I’ve heard this,” Alexandria said. She donned her suit jacket, buttoning it up in front. “Read it, rather. I’ve thought about all the permutations and unless you’re willing to change tack or tell me something I don’t know, there’s no point to this discussion.”

  She walked to the door and knocked. While waiting for the officer to open the door, she turned, “One last chance to offer me something. Any detail I can use, things to watch out for.”

  Bitch, I thought. Her power, it screwed with her head. She can’t relate to people. She doesn’t understand facial expressions, body language or our social constructs. It’s all replaced by dog behavior.

  Grue. Post traumatic stress. He doesn’t like doctors, doesn’t like being confined, or the dark. But he’s stable otherwise.

  Information that could be used to protect Bitch, protect Grue. To keep a bad situation from getting worse. It felt like it would be a betrayal anyways. It was an eerie reversal of the rationalization I’d done back at the bank robbery, on my first job as a villain. Telling myself that terrorizing the hostages was for their own good.

  But I couldn’t bring myself to betray them on that level. Not to people who trusted me.

  And she was gone.

  I grit my teeth. I looked at Calle, but he shook his head.

  Tagg reached for his phone, where it sat on the table.

  Long minutes passed, as Tagg texted and I sat in anxious silence.

  “You said you’ve worked with cape families,” my dad spoke. It took me a second to realize he was talking to Calle.

  “Yes,” my lawyer answered.

  “Can I ask you some questions?”

  “I was just about to step outside, call some colleagues.”

  “Oh.”

  “After. Unless you want to join me?”

  “Isn’t it better if she isn’t alone?”

  “Everything’s recorded. Short of her being threatened with serious bodily injury or death, I don’t see a problem.”

  My dad cast me a look. I nodded.

  He left with Mr. Calle.

  “You and I,” Tagg said.

  I folded my arms as best as I was able, then leaned forward to rest my head. Not worth giving him the benefit of a conversation.

  The table shook, and I briefly looked up, only to see Tagg setting his feet on the metal surface.

  He took his time getting comfortable, and kicked the table several times in the process.

  When I set my head down, he started humming.

  He’s trying to get to me, I thought to myself, for the Nth time.

  They were bullies. Tagg and Alexandria both. They were the equivalent of the older child picking on the kindergartener, or the adult picking on the child. They had power to throw around that I didn’t, they had freedom, liberty, the power of choice. They wanted to punish me, to put me off-balance for their own ends.

  Just… bullies in a grander scale.

  I simultaneously felt like I understood Tagg a little more, and a little less.

  Mr. Calle answered a ton of my father’s questions, big and small. About things I’d thought were common knowledge, like trigger events, and more specific, grave matters, like the prospect of my receiving the death penalty. When he’d exhausted each of those questions, he asked about other things. Smarter things, like the degree to which he might be able to stand up to Alexandria or Tagg, about how he could work with Calle to throw them off-balance, and signals to arrange a plan of attack.

  My dad, entirely out of place, out of his depth, confused and utterly unarmed, fighting to get up to speed, in the hopes that he could do something to help.

  It was a step forward. A small step, but a step forward.

  Tagg stood, approaching me, then leaned on the table just beside me, so he loomed over me, not speaking, invading my personal space, denying me the ability to rest or relax.

  And my bugs, in his office, continued punching away as best as they were able. Me, communicating with Tattletale, unable to hear her response, straining to hear some sign of the violence. Had they split up?

  Regent’s arms and legs had been set, and he lay on a bed identical to the one I’d had, apparently tranquilized.

  I was the target, the mastermind, the one they were trying to break.

  Alexandria only took six minutes. She arrived by the same route, only she held a girl this time. A hard mask with horns and slanted lenses that tapered into points at the corners, a skin-tight bodysuit. Imp.

  Alexandria had found a way around Imp’s power. Or her mental powers had overridden them.

  One more body in the cells. One more Undersider down.

  Alexandria found her way back to the cells before my dad and my lawyer did, accompanied by Miss Militia. Alexandria grabbed one of Kid Win’s active drones from the air and tucked it under one arm like a football as she made her way down, and held it up as she visited the cell where they were checking an unconscious, tranquilized Imp. Every bug was eradicated by the mist that appeared, leaving me utterly blind.

  I didn’t see her again until she opened the door and joined us. She was drenched, her hair soaked, swept back away from her face, and the makeup that had hidden the seam of her prosthetic eye had been washed away, leaving a conspicuous line in place. Miss Militia looked grim and very dry beside her.

  “They fought back?” I asked.

  “A firehose, and a cape with a water geyser power. They tried to drown me. It didn’t work. Others have tried the same thing, in many different variations. Old hat.”

  A cape with water generating powers? The Ambassadors.

  She looked around, “Your lawyer?”

  “Out,” Tagg said, not looking up from his phone.

  “I suppose it would be bad manners to talk to you while he’s occupied,” Alexandria said.

  I didn’t reply.

  “Well, five minutes before I go again. If this is a delaying tactic, it won’t work.”

  “Read my face,” I said. “It’s not a delaying tactic.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “I’m keeping to a schedule. Roughly half an hour at a time, collecting one Undersider with each excursion. I told you I’d hold off on collecting Tattletale, so I’ll save her for last. Four minutes and forty seconds.”

  Tattletale was still periodically speaking into the phone, while I typed out letters. She’d stopped talking as much when I’d typed out a few words to let her know I couldn’t understand. No, her focus right now would be on arranging her remaining forces, handling what she could, dealing with Alexandria.

  “I’d like to stay,” Alexandria said. “May I sit?”

  “If you want,” I said. I gestured towards the chair, best as I was able with the cuffs.

  “Excellent. So cooperative.” She sat down. “And we can talk?”

  I nodded mutely.

  Alexandria, a bully, believing herself untouchable. I felt a grim sort of loathing stirring in the depths of my gut.

  “My terms, to you. You surrender. The Undersiders receive no amnesty, but I let captives go, with all required medical care. They fend for themselves from here on out. Tagg remains in position. He’s here for a reason. Miss Militia is promoted elsewhere. With the fall of the Triumvirate, we need a new core group. We can market it.”

  “That’s not what I wanted.”

  “It’s what I’m offering. And you… provided you coope
rate fully, giving us all the information we desire on you, your histories, and the Undersiders, we put you in juvenile detention. Two years, followed by a long probation and acknowledgement that any conceivable violation of that probation will be counted as a third strike and cause for sentencing to the Birdcage.”

  My dad and lawyer were just arriving.

  “What’s this?” Mr. Calle asked.

  “Skitter’s hearing my revised terms,” Alexandria said.

  “And?” Mr. Calle asked.

  “They want me to turn myself in. I get virtually nothing, except the prompt release of the Undersiders she’s picked up and a stay in juvenile detention until I’m eighteen.”

  I could see my dad’s eyes light up. He saw this as a way out, when he was seeing just how deep we were in the midst of this.

  Which broke my heart, in a way.

  “And your thoughts?” Mr. Calle asked.

  “No,” I said. I looked at Alexandria. “No.”

  “This isn’t the sort of offer that stays on the table,” she said. “If you want to push this further, we could keep the Undersiders.”

  “You need the Undersiders,” I told her. “You need someone on the ground, keeping the real monsters out of the city. You need us, so don’t pretend you’re really going to keep them.”

  “There’s other options,” she said.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “Because even if there wasn’t that security, no.”

  “That’s a disappointment,” she said.

  “You wanted compromise, Skitter,” Miss Militia said, “But you’re asking for the impossible.”

  “I’m asking for the improbable,” I said. “But it wouldn’t be worth fighting for if it was easy. Alexandria isn’t asking me to meet her halfway. She’s threatening people I love.”

  “From teammates to friends to people you love.”

  I grit my teeth.

  “I don’t blame you,” she said. “I loved Hero. I loved Legend, and Eidolon, and Myrddin. I know what it means to pass through hell together, to take a desperate breath for air, to clutch for clarity of mind, and help each other find the briefest of respite in the little things, only to plunge into that hell once more. The little jokes, the familiarity, the gestures and small kindnesses, they count for a lot, when you’ve been through what we’ve been through—”