Worm

by John Mccrae Wildbow

  “We can’t take back what happened,” Tattletale said. “But we can try to fix it. Some of it. You could go back home. Face the music. Tell your dad some or all of what happened. You could go somewhere else, or I could convince the others to leave you and your dad alone, if you wanted to do that.”

  “I’m not ready to go home just yet.”

  “No? I mean, I knew you hadn’t gone home yet, but I thought maybe that was our fault, you protecting your dad, staying away from places we’d know you frequent.”

  “I’m still hurt, still mad at him. Mad at myself, too. I guess, more than anyone, I expected my dad to understand, to give me the benefit of a doubt. And going home would be going back to the way things were, which is the last thing I want.”

  “So you don’t want to go home, you obviously don’t want to go to the Birdcage, and you turned down an offer to join the Wards.”

  I hesitated, “Yeah.”

  “So, what are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Become a hero? Strike out on your own?”

  I shook my head, stressed the words, “I don’t know.”

  “No hard feelings if you want to go that way. Again, I can talk to the others, ensure they don’t go straight for revenge or any of that. We don’t hate you, now, hurt as some of the others might be. Except maybe Bitch. She probably hates you.”

  “Really, I don’t know,” I told her, exasperated, “I don’t like or even respect any of the heroes I’ve met, I don’t even see the point of it. As villains, we faced down other villains. It wasn’t so different from what I’d be doing as a hero… but what did we really accomplish? What does anyone accomplish, if all we end up with is this?” I gestured out at the cityscape stretching out below us.

  “Maybe you don’t know what you want to do because what you really want to do is come back.”

  I didn’t reply for a minute. The quiet was disturbed by the noise of not-too-distant helicopters moving over the city, some capes flying alongside them as guards. It would be another drop of much-needed supplies.

  I sighed, “They wouldn’t have me, and those guys won’t budge on the thing with Coil and Dinah. Not really.”

  “Probably not. I mean, even if they took you back, you’d have to eat crow, accept a few concessions, like Coil’s ‘pet’. There’d be no more playing around. You’d have to go all-in, from here on out, if you expected to convince them you were legit.”

  I shook my head.

  “You want to be forgiven for what you did? It’s not going to be easy. There’s going to be a sacrifice on some level. And that starts with giving up that stubbornness, being willing to talk to them. To talk to me. You might even change your mind, find yourself able to look past thing with the girl, for the sake of having friends, doing the things you want or need to do in other areas.”

  I stood away from the railing, stuck my hands in my pockets to keep them warm. “Never.”

  “Never’s pretty final. If you’re so certain, what do you have to lose by hearing everyone out? Hearing me out? I’ve got coffee and lunch in my bag, we can sit down, talk it all out. If you’re willing, we can then go meet the others. I’ll talk to them with you, back you up, keep Bitch from murdering you.”

  I shook my head, turned and rested my back against the railing, looking at the memorial, rather than the city.

  So many dead. So pointless. What was wrong with this world, that it was this fucked up? That people like Sophia and Armsmaster were heroes? That there couldn’t even be a proper funeral for the people who had given their lives, because of a small handful of grandstanding idiots?

  The wind blew hard from the north, cold, blowing my hair into disarray. I pushed my hair out of my face, tucked it behind my ear. When I gave Lisa a sidelong glance, she was putting her hood up.

  She spoke without looking at me, “I’d go on, ask about whether you prioritize friends or morals, talk about how you’ve grown as a person in so many ways since joining us, except my power informs me that you just settled on a decision.”

  She was right. As I stared at the monument, a goal was crystallizing in my mind, a focus. I knew, now, what I wanted to do.

  I had to change things. I had to be better than them. Than Armsmaster, Sophia, Coil, and all the others.

  “Yeah,” I replied. She turned to glance my way.

  “And does this plan feature the Undersiders?”

  I gave her my answer.

  8.x (Donation Interlude; Lisa)

  “I think we’ve got a stray, Tasha.”

  Tasha frowned as she looked up from her cell phone, and looked to where Daniella, behind the register, was pointing. Her lip curled in distaste.

  It was a girl, fourteen or fifteen, with dirty blond hair – both in the sense of being greasy and in color – tipped with streaks of blue. Her clothes looked like they had only barely made the cut for the goodwill bin, and had been worn for weeks or months since she’d gotten them. The girl was pretending to look through a collection of jackets that were still left over from last spring. People like that weren’t supposed to be able to walk around the Boardwalk and bother people.

  “I’ll handle it,” Tasha told Daniella.

  She quietly cleared her throat, straightened her back and approached the girl with a fake smile plastered across her face. “Can I help you?”

  “I’m good,” the girl shoved one jacket to the other end of the rack, and Tasha couldn’t help but imagine a fingerprint being left on the leather. She wouldn’t be able to get that image out of her head until she evicted the kid and chedcked over the jacket herself.

  It bugged Tasha that the girl hadn’t left. Most cleared out when confronted, well aware they were in the wrong place.

  “I’m going to be blunt, then. You can’t afford these jackets. That one you just pushed aside? That’s a design by Fendi. It’s over four thousand dollars.”

  “No shit? It’s ugly.”

  Tasha pursed her lips, glanced at the other customers in the store. A pair of college-age girls, a woman and her boyfriend. Nobody seemed to have heard the vulgarity, or the crass insult.

  Leaning close, Tasha hissed, “Do I need to call security, you little idiot?”

  ‘Security’ served as a euphemism for the enforcers on the Boardwalk, paid uniforms who patrolled the streets and the stores, keeping an eye out for the homeless, gang members and shoplifters. Their methods were as blunt as methods got. Victims generally weren’t in a position to go to the cops and complain, or the police simply overlooked the enforcer’s activities.

  “I really hate being called stupid,” the girl spoke, meeting Tasha’s eyes with a glare.

  “You must be new around here if you aren’t-”

  “Shut the fuck up,” the girl interrupted her, with enough force and hostility that Tasha stopped mid-sentence. “Breathe in my face again and I’m gonna gag. Your breath smells like vomit and a halfhearted attempt at covering up the smell with candy.”

  Unconsciously, Tasha’s hand rose toward her mouth. She stopped and folded her arms, as if to prevent her hand from straying again. She tried to gather her composure, tell off the girl, but the girl was already speaking.

  “Your boyfriend is cheating on you, Tasha Fowler, sleeping with your best friend. Pretty fucking ironic, given how unattractive your friend is, and your continued attempts to puke yourself thin and make yourself pretty for him.”

  Tasha felt a cold feeling in the pit of her stomach.

  “If you hurry and run the entire way, you can catch them in the act. But you can’t waste a second.”

  “How do you…?” Tasha asked, but the girl was already looking through jackets again, clearly not listening. Tasha glanced at the door.

  “Go!” the girl suddenly barked at her. Startled, Tasha moved toward the door, and then she kept moving, running.

  As the saleswoman left the store, the door banging closed behind her, Daniella stared first at the door her coworker had just escaped through, the
n at the ratty little girl.

  The girl turned her head, pretending to examine a jacket, so she could hide a vulpine smile that spread across her face.

  ■

  They arrived on site in a clap of thunder. She almost lost her footing, but Grue offered her a steadying hand.

  The downpour immediately drenched every part of her that had still been dry when the tidal wave crashed into the lobby. She used her hands to pull her soaking hair back out of her face, combing it back into place with her fingertips.

  “He’s down there, Tattletale,” Grue spoke.

  “Yep,” she replied. Leviathan was in the midst of the shattered Boardwalk, pushing one section of the wooden walkway out of his way with the tip of his tail.

  “Bigger in person,” Regent spoke. His normally loose fitting shirt clung to him. After moving his arms and watching the water dripping off of the soaked sleeves, he pulled it off, so he wore only the closer-fitting mesh armor he’d had on beneath.

  Tattletale grinned. Sometimes you couldn’t do anything else. “We are so fucking out of our depth.”

  “Everyone is. Even Legend,” Grue replied.

  “Listen,” she said, “If I die-”

  “None of us are dying,” Grue spoke, his voice hard.

  “Odds are one of us is going to. Statistically speaking,” Tattletale pointed out. “As there’s only four of us…”

  “Three. Bitch isn’t here and Skitter’s not in the group,” Grue spoke.

  “Right,” Tattletale answered. She looked for Skitter and spotted her in the jumble of people, on her hands and knees in the receding waters from the tidal wave. The girl stood, coughed a few times, water spraying from the fabric of her mask, then turned her attention to surveying the scene in that peculiar way she did.

  Skitter was so focused on the scene that she didn’t even seem to notice the bugs congregating around her. More than one out-of-town cape gave her a weird look when a bug flew by, to settle on a wall or somebody’s shoulder, but the girl was oblivious. Maybe she was so used to being self conscious and imagining people avoiding her or looking at her funny, she couldn’t see it when it was real. Funny, that Skitter had turned her ability into such an effective tool for sensing and assessing her environment, yet she was so unaware of some things.

  She’d be better at using my power than I am.

  Skitter had a piece of wet paper hanging off her shoulder, some trash that the wave had picked up, but there was nobody to point it out or pick it off. She was alone. Tattletale felt a pang of sympathy. She’d never been able to stand being isolated, had always had her family, with roommates, friends and fellow squatters living with her after she’d run away. Taylor, though, seemed to gravitate towards solitude. She pushed people away, and when it came down to the nitty-gritty, when their group had found out the details with the kidnapped girl, Taylor had left. Tattletale couldn’t imagine doing the same thing, and she had strong suspicions Taylor was closer to the others than she was. It was a damn shame that things had gone that way, because she been blossoming as a person, lately, actually connecting to others. To Bitch, even, of all people.

  Tattletale couldn’t help but feel regret, too. She had to admit the schism was at least partially her own fault. Not paying attention, not getting the right info. Tattletale couldn’t help but feel she should have been watching out for this sort of thing, knowing that it would take so little to spook the most sensitive member of their group.

  She’d grown lax. It had been easy to, with the knowledge and comfort of the fact that Coil’s power gave them something of a safety net. But when she’d phoned, informed him, her fingers crossed, he’d told her that he was already focusing on other things. He could only make the call on one series of events with his power, after all, and in the wake of the Endbringer’s arrival, he had greater priorities. The opportunity had been lost.

  “If I die,” she spoke, leaving no room for further argument, “An envelope should arrive in the mail for me, a week or two after I’ve bitten it. I wrote it. It’s got all my passwords and account numbers for the money I’ve set aside, so far. You guys take it, give some to Taylor if you run into her.”

  “Alright,” Grue spoke. Tattletale quirked an eyebrow at him. She’d expected more resistance.

  “And if you happen to get yourself killed, we’ll make sure Aisha gets what she needs. Just so you know.”

  He didn’t voice a response, but he nodded once.

  She cast another glance Skitter’s way. She should’ve asked, before they parted ways. Would Taylor want her dad to know what she’d been up to? It was impossible to say. Taylor wouldn’t want her dad to know about her villainous activity, but to at least have him know she’d gone out as part of a huge sacrifice like this? Maybe.

  “Get Ready!” Legend cried out.

  Tattletale grinned, turning her full attention to the Endbringer from beneath the waves. It was crouching, preparing to charge.

  Using her power wasn’t a switch she turned on. It was letting the walls come down, letting the information start pouring in. It meant a killer migraine if she used it too much, especially on people or living things, but if she had a headache three hours from now, it would be a damn good thing. It would mean she was alive.

  ■

  Getting rid of the saleswoman had been easy-peasy. The bit about the cheating boyfriend had been an outright lie. In a similar vein, the part where she’d mentioned the best friend had been an educated guess, but the salesgirl, Tasha, wasn’t the type to have a friend prettier than her. The way she’d obsessed over her phone and the revelation about the eating disorder were clue enough that the woman had been deeply insecure. By the time she realized she’d been played, she would still feel compelled to hurry home and check. Probably bad karma to leverage that sort of weakness, but it meant getting one obstacle out of the way.

  The woman had been a bitch anyways.

  Lisa watched out of the corner of her eye as the cashier picked up the phone, her eye on attitude, posture, body language, volume of speech.

  Worry; calling coworker, not getting response.

  Quiet, hushed; hiding anxiety from customers. Wants to convey professionalism, confidence.

  Anxiety, wants to convey professionalism: new to the job, only started two weeks ago. Doesn’t know how to open safe: not much money in register. Doesn’t know how to close store alone. Still no response desperately needs break for bathroom and to sneak a smoke not allowed to smoke on the job looks bad for customers and manager has hard stance on it making clothes smell.

  Lisa closed her eyes briefly, took a small breath to center herself. This power was new, untrained. It had a way of running away from her, overwhelming her and leaving her bedridden with headaches if she wasn’t careful. People were too random, too chaotic, too complex. She could only push herself like this for an hour or two every few weeks before she started to suffer. It was getting better over time, as far as her tolerances, but the rate of improvement was agonizingly slow.

  No, she had to focus on the essential detail: the girl behind the counter wasn’t calling security. This was good. And given the other bits of information Lisa had picked up, she could be sure the cashier would probably be calling other coworkers before getting someone to kick her out of the store.

  Which meant Lisa could do what she came here to do. She turned her attention to the man that sat on the leather covered bench by the change rooms. Thirty-something, wearing fashionable clothes and a nice jacket that was perhaps a bit too big for him, hair recently cut. He waited with his attention on his smartphone, while his girlfriend or wife tried on something. Deserving of a little more scrutiny.

  Expensive clothes, expensive phone; wealthy.

  Confident, patient despite being in a position many guys hated; mature, adult. Clothes style match his personal tastes, not the type to dress according to girlfriend’s tastes. Tall, athletic: exercise habits developed in military but not currently enlisted this ties into confidence and patience he�
�s used to waiting and-

  She stopped. Needed to get back on track. Just needed a starting point to get at the stuff he’d keep secret. Confidence, military. How would he pick a four digit number?

  Confident and military trained; goes out of his way to keep numbers random. Looks early thirties; born late 70′s. Tendency to go with higher number to start. 8 or 9, mid-range number like four, five or six, then high, low, no repeating numbers. Dressing in darker jacket, pants, trimmed beard, conservative; number will be even-even-odd-odd or odd-odd-even-even.

  “Something else,” she murmured to herself, as the flow of information began to slow. If it slowed enough, it meant that there weren’t enough points of reference to generate new data, it could even mean her power would start supplying information based on speculation or falsehoods. She chanced a look at the cashier, but the girl was studiously ignoring her, for the time being.

  She looked back to the man. Shoes were nothing special. No logos or brand names on anything he wore, that she could see… but he was using his left hand on the touchscreen of his phone.

  Southpaw; tendency to go for numbers on left side of keypad, eight, then four, seven, then one or three. One. 8471.

  Good. And his wallet…

  Southpaw, confident; wallet in left jacket pocket.

  He was distracted. She abandoned the coat rack and approached the man, being careful to stay directly behind him, in his blind spot. His jacket was unbuttoned, and the end with the pocket was draped beside him on the bench, the pocket facing her. Easy grab.

  Wallet in left jacket pocket; intended to help mask presence of gun holstered at left hip.

  She turned a hundred and eighty degrees on the spot and walked back the direction she’d come. Concealed gun? Not worth it.

  Her retreat stopped when she saw the man that was entering the store. Maroon uniform, cap, belt. One of the enforcers from the Boardwalk. Shit.

  She glanced at the cashier. She didn’t need her power to read the girl’s look of surprise and relief to know that the girl hadn’t made the call. Bad luck? She looked at the enforcer.