Worm

by wildbow

  Tattletale, in that same moment, stepped outside. She gazed over at my army, then turned and looked straight at me.

  Her eyes were wide. She looked just a little freaked out.

  I don’t— I can’t…

  My thoughts stuttered.

  Tat—

  I clutched to every image and object I’d set in my mind’s eye, to the tethers that were supposed to keep me tied down.

  It’s too soo—

  Too soon.

  I was running out of time.

  Had to move. Had to act. It was easier, so long as I was in the thick of it.

  Glaistig Uaine was the real threat. She would be first.

  Thing was, I didn’t like the look of those ghosts of hers. A woman, one of the really crazy looking ones who had a costume that was more for revealing than it was for covering up. She was warped, twisted by Glaistig Uaine’s power until the costume and the body were one and the same, which only made her look more vulgar.

  I didn’t recognize her, but she looked like one of the crazy ones.

  There was a guy, built like a football player in full padding, only it was all muscle. That muscle, in turn, was covered in armor that had spikes studding it at regular intervals. The helmet covered his eyes. He sat at Glaistig Uaine’s feet, and he was tall enough that her eyes barely looked over the top of his head.

  And there was a woman, so thin she was barely there, a look no doubt exaggerated by Glaistig Uaine’s powers. When Glaistig Uaine spoke to me, it was the thin woman who passed on the message, her lips moving. Like Screamer, then.

  I prepared to make a move, and I felt the danger sense of no less than twelve different capes in my army go off.

  Yet I still alerted the ghost in armor. He moved, lurching to his feet, and he spoke.

  Glaistig Uaine said something, and it was a single word, a hard word.

  He was a precog, and to look at him, he was a defensive cape.

  She’d been anticipating an attack.

  The thin woman moved, and a current of wind ripped through the air, two feet wide and ten feet tall, less a tornado and more a battering ram. It flew through the sky, homing in on me.

  I moved through a portal, and the column followed. It hit me like a truck, and I nearly lost my grip on the Clairvoyant’s hand.

  I tumbled. In a sense, my lack of control over my own body helped more than anything. I was left panting, but I hadn’t tensed up because the reflex simply hadn’t been there. Being limp when I took the hit was better than going tense and tearing something.

  The Faerie Queen had anticipated an attack. She had to know what I’d been doing, how I was operating. If I used my power…

  What did the vulgar woman with the lipstick smirk and creepy white teeth do?

  Another column of wind homed in on me.

  My army threw barriers in the way. Force fields, walls of crystal and walls of fire.

  The column passed between them like it wasn’t even a consideration. I closed the portal in front of me before the column could zip through.

  I watched as it changed course, heading for the nearest member of my army. I might have been able to do something about it, but I suspected it would have found a way to me anyways. Instead, I shifted my grip, gripping the young man’s wrist, and making him grab mine. A surer grip than hand-on-hand.

  The wind-attack compressed, passing through the foot-wide portal behind them, and it hit me. Not as hard as the first, because it wasn’t as large, but it still hurt.

  The Faerie Queen spoke, her voice imperious, echoing in that curious way of hers. Indignant more than furious, but still with that bite of anger behind it.

  The others on the battlefield reacted, and it wasn’t to rally against Glaistig Uaine.

  Tattletale was murmuring under her breath. Was that— Was it my name?

  The faerie queen banished her wind-witch and brought out another spirit. I tried to capitalize on the distraction, getting one cape with one of the stronger ranged powers to attack her. A gravity pulse, a bullet that imploded things at the impact site.

  The man in armor moved, and the vulgar woman reacted, creating a circle of rippling air. The bullet struck the barrier, and the man who’d sent out the pulse promptly imploded, blood showering everyone nearby.

  Something indirect, then. I opened a portal a distance away, and I used Canary’s song.

  She kept the field up. I could feel the pain wrack Canary, hear her choke on her words. She doubled over and coughed up blood.

  A power counterer, a precog… and Eidolon, now.

  If I’d used a portal, what would have happened to me? Would it have affected Doormaker or me? Or both of us?

  I didn’t feel very stable on my own two feet as I climbed to a standing position. I had a whole army, and I could lose them in an instant if I simply unloaded on her.

  I needed to hit her with something that broke the rules. Not Foil. I wasn’t willing to risk Foil. But something…

  I took control of Alexandria, instead, Pretender. Controlling the person who was controlling the manipulative bitch Alexandria. I took Legend, who was part of that fight, two foreign capes and Moord Nag.

  They were the ones running interference, buying us time to breathe.

  Now I positioned them. As I’d done with my bugs, I lined up the shot.

  He took the bait, shooting. I moved everyone out of the way.

  Glaistig Uaine’s pets informed her of the imminent danger, and the shield was raised in time.

  Smoke poured off of Scion, indicating he’d taken the reflective effect full force.

  And smoke cleared around the Faerie Queen as well. She was panting a little, her ghosts tattered but intact. I made her stand straighter, and then banished her ghosts, replacing them. I’d used the distraction to plant a portal behind her.

  I opened a portal, passing through, re-entering Earth Gimel.

  Miss Militia turned a sniper rifle on me. I caught her before she could fire.

  Then, group by group, I captured the rest of the defending force. Some resisted, some predicted the attack, but it was a foregone conclusion. I had enough soldiers, enough tools at my disposal, that nothing here really stood in my way.

  I created more portals, until I didn’t have space for all of them. I shrunk them, reorganized. Where I could find the open space, I tapped other worlds, reaching for bugs.

  Those bugs then swirled around my captives, flowing around their feet or behind them, where they wouldn’t obscure the view.

  I saw with compound vision. Five thousand pairs of eyes, collecting more with every second that passed.

  I breathed with five thousand mouths.

  I was adrift in a sea.

  My eyes fell on Tattletale. Panacea was behind her.

  She shook her head, putting herself between me and Panacea.

  I reached out, my hand trembling.

  It flopped down at my side.

  I need her as an anchor more than I need her power.

  Anchors…

  My mom’s grave… it was in Brockton Bay, right?

  Brockton Bay. It took me a minute to find, more time because I was busy keeping capes out of Scion’s way. Putting them through doorways, bringing them back. Always being careful to keep the doorways from being touched by his power.

  I couldn’t find the grave. No time.

  What else? The mantle of power, of course.

  Yes.

  Tattletale.

  And…

  I reached out, tried to find others, and I failed.

  It would— would have to do.

  This was it. Finally, everyone was working together.

  Speck 30.5

  Now for the clin— the clincher. The ultimate strategy.

  We ran.

  My number one priority was to keep moving, keep active. Things were easier so long as I was moving towards a goal.

  I had to get myself sorted. Wrap my head around the tools at my disposal. For that, I needed time. I needed
to put distance between us and Scion.

  Stepping up the tempo, have to distract Scion.

  I reached out to Ash Beast, a living force of nature. It had originally triggered in Matruh, Egypt, and had been roaming since, making its way across Africa. All of the destructive power of any class S threat, tempered by the fact that it usually traveled on foot, and people could see it coming from miles away. When it reached a settlement, that settlement was usually evacuated.

  An unending explosion, a rolling mass of fire and smoke with a person at the center. Here and there, it took physical form. Whether it was the fire or a massive leonine claw that tore into the ground, it produced the debris, dust and ash that was its namesake, driven along the ground by the perpetual storm of fire.

  Creating a portal to give me access to it was troublesome. Others had tried to control it before, to steer it in the general direction of their enemies. Warlords, villains, masterminds. It rarely worked for long. When working with power on this scale, chaos had a way of trumping order. Too much energy disrupted the portals.

  I moved a forcefield cape to the Ash Beast’s location, and then created a bubble, putting it in range of the being. I made a portal within the bubble. More forcefields encased the bubble on my side for safety’s sake. My power operated through the forcefield, and the connection formed.

  I identified a young man, at the center of it all, and I could now think of the Ash Beast as a ‘he’ instead of an ‘it’. He was surprisingly healthy, but he had a power that kept him in good physical condition, a natural breaker-class adaptation that came with his power. Energy to matter and matter to energy.

  I’d use him first. If he died, the world wasn’t worse off for it. If he lived, well, I could discard him, leaving him in a foreign earth.

  Bringing him through a doorway was hard. He generated so much heat, and while his shape and form were malleable, they weren’t wholly under his control.

  In the end, I made a portal, and I used Trickster to bring the Ash Beast through, replacing a chunk of ruined earth.

  Shaping the fire, driving it out to the sides.

  Shaping the flesh. From energy to physical form. Wings. Catlike legs to spring into the air.

  The Ash Beast lunged into the air, above the water, and he streaked towards Scion like a comet. The forcefield cape followed, to maintain the connection.

  I moved Alexandria, Legend, Moord Nag and the others on the frontline through doorways as the Ash Beast struck the golden man. Golden light tore into flesh that had been forged of fire, and more flesh was created to replace it. The Ash Beast tore into Scion, and the flesh was replaced just as quickly.

  I created more doorways, moving people out of Gimel in an orderly fashion. Here and there, I changed the portals around, dictating different exit points to break up groups.

  Ranged attackers in one group. Brutes broken up into several sub-groups. Thinkers, tinkers, defensive capes… there were a lot to sort, a great many who had powers that needed a half-second to a few seconds to figure out, in terms of classification and application. With scores of these capes, it added up.

  Every cape had a place to be. There were capes who needed something to harvest, who needed materials, and I gave them access to their materials. There were capes who needed others nearby, and capes who were better if set apart.

  I assigned precogs, thinkers and danger senses to the various groups.

  Decentralize, I thought. If Scion was the established force with superior weapons then I had to be the guerrilla army. Different groups moved to remote locations, different worlds. I couldn’t let him destroy too many of us in one good hit.

  Take stock. Who didn’t I have? I didn’t have Contessa, who I couldn’t see. I didn’t have the Blasphemies, who hadn’t even registered to me because they weren’t human, even if they had powers, I didn’t have Sleeper and…

  Why was it so hard to reach for certain names?

  The ones in the cabin… I’d decided to leave them be. I was having trouble remembering why, but I’d trust my older self on that score.

  They were dangerously close to Scion. If I moved them, maybe—

  No. I had to leave them alone. Rules, regulations. I’d set boundaries for myself once, I’d followed them, because I knew how easily I could slip. Those boundaries had been to protect myself, as selfless as they might have seemed. This was to protect others.

  This was good, better.

  Capes who could grant flight… Glaistig Uaine had some. There was a girl in a red, black and white costume who could grant powers.

  Othala.

  Right. Othala. She could give someone else flight. Send the right people to Scion’s vicinity. Trickster, some defensive capes. One of the capes who had served under the Blue Woman in that cape-ruled alternate Earth. He had a power not unlike Gavel’s. Glaistig Uaine offered some offensive power as well, but it was tricky and time consuming to dig for the capes I could use. She knew them personally, I had to find them.

  They appeared behind Scion. Glaistig Uaine distracted, with one ranged cape hitting Scion full-on in the face, another feeding fire into Ash Beast’s body.

  The Gavel-alike dropped out of a portal directly above the golden man, driving a narrow pole into Scion’s neck. Scion was slammed into the water, quite possibly to the bottom of the bay.

  The forcefield cape caught the boy out of the air before he could follow Scion beneath the water.

  I opened a portal, then moved the others aside. Reorganizing, positioning.

  Others… who was I leaving behind?

  There was a group still in the settlement. They hadn’t all moved through the portal. I reached for their names. Right. Tattletale. Rachel. Imp. Panacea. I’d taken the others, collected the wounded. The door was open, but they’d stayed behind, watching the horizon, exchanging words I didn’t understand.

  Who else? I’d left the civilians be. I could arm them, but I wasn’t sure it would be worth the effort. Bullets could only do so much, and the bigger weapons…

  Scion emerged from the water. I didn’t give him a chance to retaliate. Retaliation could mean putting the cabin in danger. I hit him, then backed the capes through the portal.

  He didn’t follow them through the portal, but he did sidestep through dimensions to reach them. I started to mount a defense, and he lashed out. I didn’t have time to react or give a command; I slammed the portals around the capes shut, and I opened another, larger portal, to take in the beam.

  The beam hit the surface of the portal, and only a fraction passed through to strike Scion from behind. Enough to kill someone, enough to kill me, if the beam had happened to touch any of my control portals, but even so, the portal itself took the brunt of the impact.

  Doormaker staggered beside me.

  The portal was wiped out. Without any barrier in the way, the beam radiated forward to wipe Ash Beast, the cape with the pole, Trickster, and Othala from existence.

  I was left with a decision to make, no time to make it.

  Was I going to be moral, or efficient?

  Two capes fell in my awareness. Acidbath was one. Another was a talented shapeshifter who was in bad shape beneath their moldable skin.

  Shapeshifter, I made the call.

  One expendable asset. At my bidding, he strode forward through the portal. The clairvoyant retrieved a tinker device and dropped it through a portal. The shapeshifter caught it.

  Scion pressed the attack, while Glaistig Uaine and her assigned bodyguard managed a fighting retreat to a portal I’d raised behind them. Had to keep Scion in place, buy time.

  I had only a seconds to act, or I’d lose the Faerie Queen. I’d lost good capes already, so very easily. Now I stood to lose more.

  Have to— Have to make it worth it.

  Thinking in words was getting harder. Easier to default to thinking in terms of ideas. I wasn’t going to throw away lives for nothing. I wouldn’t ask others to make sacrifices I wouldn’t make, if the roles were reversed.

&nbs
p; Maybe they’d disagree. Maybe they’d tell me they didn’t want to make that choice. But that was our instinctual self-preservation at work. With things at this scale, that kind of thinking was counterintuitive.

  Maybe they’d agree, if I had the time to explain. To sit down with them in their living rooms and discuss the ins and outs of things over tea.

  But I didn’t have the time to ask politely, and too many had already died. Capes and civilians both.

  I’d leave the civilians alone, but it was fitting if I drew on their strength as well.

  Doormaker was capable of opening the doorways at the speed of thought. I had multitasking abilities. I could open them faster. Not one after the other, a thirtieth of a second passing between each, but simultaneous.

  I didn’t target people this time. Portals opened across the sky in that foreign Earth that Scion and the Faerie Queen fought in. As many portals as I could fit in that Earth’s sky.

  Glaistig Uaine ducked back into the portal, and the shapeshifter I’d left on the ground hit the button.

  The portals around Scion slammed shut, and he disappeared from my mind’s eye.

  It left the shapeshifter locked in the same world as Scion.

  An obstacle, a speed bump at best. I was sacrificing lives for that purpose, putting capes in harms way, and leaving that one cape in an isolated world with Scion nearby. I’d decided to spend a life that lacked strength over the life of a monster.

  But that last gesture had bought me time to move the Faerie Queen of the Birdcage to safety.

  It had also stopped Scion in his tracks for a few seconds. If he was focusing on getting out of that universe, on altering his power to decrypt the portals and free himself to move, then he wouldn’t be paying too much attention to the portals I’d opened above him.

  There were perhaps two hundred Earths in easy reach that had military technology worth talking about.

  Two hundred earths with bombs. Every bomb that hadn’t been in some secure housing, every bomb that was small enough to drop through the doorway, to plummet to the ground below Scion.

  Some would be duds, no doubt, missing an integral component that would be put in place before a bombing run. But a handful, I suspected, were bound to be nuclear bombs.