Worm

by wildbow

  I began pulling the grid back together, not feeling any better.

  What else?

  I reached out, trying to remind myself of the anchors I’d set up.

  My mom… I found the graveyard.

  My old house…

  Where had it been again?

  The streets were such a mess, one pile of rubble virtually indistinguishable from the rest. What was I supposed to even do to identify it, if there were no landmarks?

  I’d hoped to use the anchors to help push myself forward, but reaching for one thing that I’d known from the very beginning and failing in the process left me in a more unbalanced state.

  I was…

  I was what?

  There had been an idea I’d been reaching for, a word, a symbol, something. Yet I couldn’t clarify it in my head.

  Don’t panic, I thought, but the words sounded panicked in my head. Rushed. Sloppy. My breathing was hard and fast, my heartbeat pacing out of control. Between the two, it was getting to my head, affecting my thoughts.

  Don’t panic, I told myself. The repetition felt good, helping.

  Or had it been my passenger telling me not to panic?

  No. I had a perfectly normal lapse. Perfectly normal. A person in a stressful situation like this is going to have moments where she can’t come up with the right word.

  Perfectly normal.

  My breath wheezed a little as I panted.

  You don’t want to, but you have to, I told myself. Stop Scion.

  The portal slid open.

  Except I hadn’t ordered it.

  You want to take over, passenger? I thought. I began to struggle to my feet.

  The drones moved.

  Defiant?

  Saint, taking over her systems again?

  They flowed through the doorway to Shén Yù, blitzing him in passing.

  No. Neither of the two seemed to be paying attention to me. They were focused on Scion.

  I began erecting portals, shooting the drones out of the air, defending myself against the initial bombardment of tear gas canisters and containment foam. If I was slow to react, it was because of the disorientation, the lack of knowledge of who and what I was up against.

  I had other thinkers available. Understanding their power was easier with the Yàngbǎn’s power boost. If they were puppets, the power boost meant the puppets fit my hand. I put them to work, trying to divine just who was seizing control of these drones.

  It was so much easier to operate when I was doing something. Time and again, my lapses, the slippage, it had been in the quiet moments, between the conversations and the fighting.

  It was easier if I was active, in the midst of conflict.

  This was me. I thrived when I had an opponent, and when I could carry out that goal I’d had from the beginning, getting the world to the point where it all made sense. Bringing people in line, subjugating those who would get in the way or do more harm than good.

  That was how I functioned. I’d always reveled in the chaos, in the madness of it all.

  No, the thought crossed my mind. Not always.

  Once upon a time, I’d been Taylor, minus the powers. I’d avoided conflict. I’d just been trying to get by.

  Does that mean this is you, passenger?

  There was, of course, no reply.

  The drones kept coming, and I redoubled my efforts, calling individuals to me to form a battle line.

  The moment the line was in place, the drones shifted. Some entered the portal, then immediately made a ‘u’ turn, flowing back around the sides of the portal and down. They circled around the building, trying to get at me from behind. I had to redistribute my personal army to block them off.

  The portals were open and I couldn’t close them. But the lights on the drones were off. No lenses glowed, the antigrav panels were the only thing that indicated any power at all. Remote control of some sort?

  The lights are off, but they’re still running.

  I laughed, abrupt, an alien sound, not my own laugh.

  The goddamn lights are off!

  It wasn’t Saint mounting this attack against me. It wasn’t Teacher, or Defiant, or any of those other guys.

  I continued laughing. My winded panting and nausea from before translated to a kind of lightheadedness.

  Fucking Dragon.

  Fucking with my head. Giving me a reality check. Trying to catch me off guard. She’d figured out that I had the ability to see her systems, she’d switched off the lights on the panels, put every system into hibernation, stopped the fans, and cut everything down to a bare minimum while the fans had stopped, so they didn’t overheat too quickly.

  A drone that had crept around behind the building detonated in a flare of pale sparks, and every portal in the vicinity distorted, taking on weird shapes, more three-dimensional than two-dimensional. They winked out of existence.

  Leaving me in the midst of an army I no longer controlled.

  Fucking tinkers, I thought. But I was strangely overjoyed. I was fucked over six ways from Sunday, but I was happy. I hadn’t murdered one of my favorite people.

  The capes at the edge of the rooftop were looking around in a daze.

  The drones were moving, assuming a perimeter. The capes at the edge of the rooftop looked lost and shell-shocked.

  And I was still laughing, clutching the Clairvoyant’s hand as if it was one of the few things keeping me grounded.

  Capes at the edges retreated, bumping into one another.

  The laughter stopped as I abruptly let out a sound, half-roar, half-scream, incoherent, channeling every last iota of the lingering rage and despair into the noise.

  I commanded the people in my range to attack the drones, and I continued screaming even as my throat began to hurt and I felt like I might pass out from oxygen.

  Dragon was only just beginning to speak, some drones blaring out words in what might have been English, others in a sing-song dialect that was likely Chinese. The percussion and detonations that followed the attacks striking home drowned out most of it.

  The ones at the edge took cues, attacking the drones they’d just been fighting.

  Each and every one of them had been brainwashed. Some by Teacher, some by the Yàngbǎn. They hadn’t had freedom of choice for some time. Between the scream of rage, a pretty damn universal sound, and the action of the ones I did control, they defaulted to going with the crowd.

  I still had to deal with Dragon. Her intent was clear, from the way the drones were moving. She wanted to target me, and stop me from the source. I needed to do the same, and I needed to do it without destroying her infrastructure. I wasn’t going to risk making that faked death into a real one.

  Fuck you for fucking with my head at a time like this, Dragon.

  The thought wasn’t one of malice. My feelings were so confused I could barely tell on that front. I was relieved, disoriented, but those were more states of being than actual feelings.

  I was muddled.

  One task at a time.

  Stopping Dragon.

  I watched as the suits she’d settled on the ground kicked back into action.

  We’d fought Endbringers together. For a time, the Guild had been one of our biggest assets. I’d seen what happened when Dragon was taken out of action. A.I.? Nothing substantial. But when her main suit was taken out of action…

  I saw the way she deployed the suits. Which was she keeping safest?

  One was in the thick of things, creating different types of forcefield to try to mitigate the damage Scion was doing to our side. Capes had baited Scion out over the water, but the fact that there were less targets in range was counterbalanced by the fact that Scion was more focused on those who were there, and he was hitting harder. When he hit the water, waves crashed against the shore, doing nearly as much damage as any of his attacks might. A Leviathan with one arm, one leg, and most of its head missing was perched on the shoreline, apparently mitigating the damage.

  There were two m
ore suits on the fray, offering long-range fire.

  And one more above the clouds, periodically firing exceedingly long ranged laser beams at Scion.

  The drones were making headway. These capes weren’t completely under my control and they weren’t the most stable, either. They were liable to crumble where other capes might stand firm.

  Doormaker was recovering his power. He could make portals, but it was slow.

  My first instinct was to regain control. I reconsidered.

  I didn’t have time to feel guilty. I didn’t have time to think. There was only a moment where I felt the weight of what I was doing, the knowledge that if this didn’t work, I’d set everyone back for nothing.

  I opened portals behind Dragon’s longest-range ship, the entrance portals above my army’s heads. I began firing through the doors with every individual I could control, creating more portals to seize control of others with every passing second.

  More ranged attacks joined the barrage. Dragon flew out of the way, her ship badly damaged, and I moved the portal, maintaining the assault.

  The wreck of the ship plummeted from the sky, and the behavior of the other Dragon-craft changed, as though they’d switched gears. The drones dropped from the sky once again.

  Something told me this wasn’t a feint.

  I opened portals into the Birdcage, and Dragon didn’t stop me. No containment foam came down from the ceiling.

  Maybe fifty or sixty members of my swarm had been disabled by the nonlethal measures. With the Birdcage, I added seven hundred and forty-three individuals to my army.

  The nonlethal measures would wear off. It was a step forward.

  I turned to my passenger to sort them out, and I sent a share of them into the fight to reinforce the others.

  One obstacle, removed. Dragon would take time to reboot. I could disable her in a similar manner next time.

  Defeating Dragon this way hadn’t been ideal, not completely freeing myself of the distraction and threat she posed, but it beat murdering her.

  I turned my attention to the world as a whole, with the idea of recruiting other capes. I hit a dead end. The worlds were bleeding together, and it had gotten worse while my attention was elsewhere. I had to force myself to clarify what I was looking at, to tell myself that the areas didn’t make sense.

  It took excruciating minutes to get my head out of that sludge, and to make sense of what I was looking at. Minutes, as Scion tore into Alexandria, to convince myself that it was all in my head, and that Scion wasn’t actively tearing apart reality.

  I exhaled slowly, and the exhalation was a shudder. My throat hurt from the screaming.

  The going was slow at first, but it picked up as I let my passenger handle more of the load. Capes in hiding. Rogues. Deserters who had fled for safety in our hour of need. A surprising number of capes who had no costume, and who had barely used their powers at all, judging by the way it felt when I reached for their abilities. They were rogues who’d been subtle at best, or rogues who’d gone without powers altogether.

  There were the retirees, not old capes, but capes who’d been wounded, or who’d dropped out of the scene for other reasons. Their powers were more developed at their core, but rusty at best.

  I reached for the insane, along with those disabled by their powers. A small few, all things considered. Glory Girl was among them, in a newly built wing of a home for non-cape invalids. Something her family had set up, no doubt.

  I found members of Bonesaw’s Slaughterhouse Nine. Clones who’d fled, or who’d been left behind, lurking in dark corners, or simply hiding. A Mannequin, two Damsels that were keeping each other company, a Night Hag-Nyx hybrid, and a Crawler-Breed hybrid.

  When I had the vast majority of them, I began looking to other universes.

  There were capes in Earth Aleph, barely C-list by our standards. Sundancer, Genesis, and Ballistic were there as well, the former two in civilian clothes, retired, the latter in a lavish penthouse, fully done up in costume. My portals opened, and I had control of them. I left Oliver behind.

  Other earths only had a small handful. No doubt there had been contamination at some point where doorways had been opened. Whole worlds with only ten capes at most, half of which were case fifty-threes.

  Monster.

  I shook my head a little, blinking.

  I found another Earth with a mixture of capes, all incredibly beautiful people, all in what was obviously a global position of power. Every flag that flew in their world was the same flag, and the gauntlet emblem on that flag matched the icon on a particular woman’s costume. A blue costume, with white fur at the collar, and a heavy cape that would have done Alexandria proud.

  I attempted to seize control of them as well, and the woman in blue resisted me. She spoke, and I lost my hold on everyone in her range.

  It was only twenty capes. Negligible. But I wasn’t going to settle. If I was going to compromise on any level, it was going to take more than this.

  I created a portal, and I ensnared Canary, who was busy rescuing the wounded, flying here and there with her Dragonslayer suit, her arms full.

  She set down the wounded, and then she passed through the portal.

  She began to sing.

  I was controlling her, and it was my song in a way, syllables rattled off at a fast tempo and severe clip, followed by long high notes. Not English, but not my own muddled speech either. I could feel her expressing her power through the song, through each intonation and sound.

  I brought her close enough to give her the benefit of the Yàngbǎn’s power enhancer. I had enough awareness of her power to know how to keep myself safe from it.

  I tried again with these foreign capes, in this world where this blue-costumed woman ruled the world, portals feeding Canary’s song into their council chambers.

  Those same portals let me attempt to reassert control.

  An attack from two directions. She wasn’t immune, only resistant. I felt myself assert control. I understood her power, even if I didn’t understand a thing about her. A personal, point-blank trump power, allowing her to tune abilities and defenses much like Scion did. A powerful long-ranged telekinesis, a compulsion power like Canary’s, presence-based rather than voice based, and a personal power battery that let her be stronger, for limited times.

  Where the hell had she come from?

  No powers that really made her amazing against Scion, but it was an asset.

  The others… they weren’t weak. Nothing gamebreaking, at a glance, but they weren’t weak.

  Sleeper. I could see him, sitting on a lawn chair on a balcony, reading a book out loud to himself.

  More trouble than he was worth. I let him be.

  One by one, I brought the ones I’d collected to the battlefield. The prisoners, the brainwashed, the lunatics, the cowards, the monsters and the broken. They assembled in groups, in the spaces between the other major groups. In front, behind, above, and below.

  Canary’s song wove its way out of the portals. Slower than before, working with the wind and the waves rather than fighting against them.

  More doors opened, and more of the ones I’d collected continued to appear.

  Teacher was making his way into Cauldron’s base, walking past the heroes at the doorway like he belonged there. He was talking into his phone, mocked up to be like a PRT-issue phone, and the communication was going to every major member of the Protectorate and Guild.

  Contessa, for her part, was waking up.

  I was shaking, and it wasn’t just the tension. I wanted to sit down, but I knew that if I did, I probably wouldn’t stand again.

  My anchors… The mantle of portals, Tattletale, Rachel, Imp, Grue.

  My old house continued to elude me. That detail gave me a sinking feeling in my gut. I reached out for a replacement. Not my home, then. My dad’s workplace? No. Something else, something family.

  A quaint old house on a hill, surrounded by rose bushes, a grandmother… Not my grandmother. I
barely knew my Gram. I shook my head. The house on a hill had been a memory of something I’d read, once.

  It was unsettling, the seeming reality of it, the nostalgia. If I was a little further gone, could I have clung to it, used something wrong to keep my identity intact?

  I was still lost in thought when I became aware that I’d stepped onto the battlefield. I hadn’t plotted it. Had even felt like it would be a bad idea. Now Miss Militia was turning my way. Exalt was standing beside her.

  Teacher was talking, and they were responding.

  He was warning them about the threat.

  I could see people throughout the crowd. Protectorate members, team leaders of the Wards. They were tense.

  A voice carried over the wind. I recognized the quality of it, even if I didn’t recognize the words. Glaistig Uaine, welcoming me back.

  Crooning. She was pleased, on a level. I found her sitting on a mountaintop, surrounded by three of her ghost-capes.

  My small army had grown to be a formidable force. Three thousand strong in all. I had thirty layers of portals around me.

  Teacher said something, and it was Tattletale who replied. I could see her, and she didn’t look happy.

  So many voices, so many things to focus on.

  I felt momentarily lost in the midst of it. I had a large army, by parahuman standards, I was probably strong enough to kill everyone here—

  I stopped myself.

  Why had I thought that? I didn’t want to kill anyone.

  Glaistig Uaine continued to croon in my ear. Was it her?

  No. I was almost positive it wasn’t, and I had any number of thinkers at my disposal who could have warned me.

  I shook my head a little.

  I had a large army. I was powerful. I could move on to the next big step, but I wasn’t sure how. It was like playing chess, the moves I could make had enough gravity and nuance that I could only make one move at a time. What to do first? What wouldn’t open me up for retaliation?

  It was better if I wasn’t here. I turned to leave, backing through a portal.