Worm

by John Mccrae Wildbow

  “You’ll have to get one.”

  Orders, demands, statements, condemnations, use of skull in costume: solo operator, organized, careful to divorce emotion from action & agenda. Falls back on order, rules, self discipline in times of stress.

  “I was sort of thinking I’d take a backseat role, serve as your contact, the gal on the other end of the phone, keeping you guys on track, feeding you info.”

  “Fuck that,” the only other girl in the group spoke, jabbing a finger at her, “If you’re taking an equal share, you’re gonna get your hands dirty too.” One of the dogs that accompanied the girl growled, as if to punctuate the statement.

  Word choice, ‘too’: haunted by demons.

  Unhappy with status quo: seeking to change things, seeking money, power, prestige.

  Antisocial, swearing, clothes prioritizing function and comfort over style: not seeking human connections, prefers company of dogs. Powers relate to dogs.

  Powers relating to dogs, not seeking human connections, antisocial, inner demons: powers side effects disconnected standard human empathy and understanding, no longer grasps full extent of human relations, signals, signs, cues-

  Tattletale shrugged, admitted, “My power isn’t so good in a direct confrontation.”

  “Figure it out,” the darkness generator told her.

  “Alright, can do,” she assured him. As much to test his patience and see his limits, she grinned and offered the words, “Should be fun.”

  The darkness generator folded his arms .

  Folded arms: Irritation, doubt.

  She glanced at the one person who hadn’t spoken yet. Hard ceramic mask with a blank expression frozen on it, a coronet set atop black hair, renaissance era clothing. Only his eyes were visible.

  “Barrels of fun,” the boy spoke, in a tone that might have been sarcastic, or might have been disinterested. His eyes met hers.

  Disinterest or affected disinterest, lack of engagement, lack of pupil dilation or contraction coinciding with eye contact: limited emotional depth, deeply repressed emotions and/or depression. Sociopath.

  Odd as it was, she felt better, knowing these things. She liked to think that everyone had roughly the same measure of fucked-up-ness in them, some weird or offensive element. Knowing that it was so close to the surface, or relatively close in the darkness manipulator’s case, it was almost reassuring. It meant that she didn’t find out something ugly days, weeks or months down the line.

  Which was a set of memories she was not keen to dwell on. She pushed that thought & the emotions that boiled up with it out of her mind and grinned as though she found Regent’s comment amusing.

  The darkness generator made a noise, which she realized was a sigh. He spoke, “Alright. We do this team thing, we’re going to do it properly.”

  “Of course,” she smiled wider. As much to irritate him as anything else, she added, “How hard could it be?”

  8.x (Interlude; Coil)

  Coil held firmly to the philosophy that one couldn’t be too paranoid. Every moment of every day was a delicate balancing act, anticipating any number of unseen threats from every possible angle, whether he was speaking with his subordinates or simply rising to meet the day.

  In one reality, he was safely ensconced in his underground base, costumed, with no less than twenty armed soldiers between himself and the multiple sets of heavy metal doors. He had spent his night reading, following the news and checking his stocks. His location was known only to those who worked for him, individuals paid well enough that even if they did have reason to attack him, their ‘coworkers’ would have incentive to stop them.

  Second reality: He was waking up in an ordinary, slightly rundown home in the southwest end of the city. He prepared and ate his breakfast, then stepped outside in his bathrobe to pick up the paper and the mail, pausing to wave to the neighbors as they led their two girls out of the house. The flooding hadn’t affected their neighborhood as much as others, but the schools weren’t yet up and running, so the mother and father would be taking their girls to work with them for a short while.

  He headed back inside, showered, then dressed in a button-up shirt, khakis and a silk tie. He got in his four-year old prius and headed into the city. What was normally a ten minute drive took him three-quarters of an hour, as he was forced to detour around destroyed roads, fallen buildings, and reconstruction work, move with the other drivers in a perpetual traffic jam from the moment that he left the little cul-de-sac where his house was. To all appearances, he was an ordinary man leaving for work. His identity, fabricated, was complete, a real job at a real company, records going back ten years in health, taxes, dentistry, house payments and more.

  The soldier that met him was known to the other soldiers as Creep. No captain would have the man in their squad, his predilections made him unemployable in the public sector, and the fact that Coil was the sole person who could and would provide him with the ‘payment’ he craved makes Creep as loyal as men can get.

  Everyone had a hook, a vice or something they needed on a primal, desperate level. Sometimes that need needed to be created, or nurtured, so it could later be hand fed. Those people who were driven by such things, carried that craving for something especially close to the surface, were among Coil’s favorite people, coming in a very close second to people who were useful. Those who were both useful and desperate for something Coil could provide?

  Well, they were the Travelers, Creeps and Grues of the world.

  Wealth would have to suffice for anyone and everyone else.

  Creep remained the one individual that had the opportunity to discover Coil with the mask off, so it was worth buying his loyalty. The man waited in the front seat of the white van, eyes forward, until he heard the three knocks on the back door of the vehicle. He pressed a button, opening the door to allow Coil to enter.

  Once inside the back of the van, hidden from Creep’s view by a barrier between the seats, Coil removed his clothes, folding them neatly. He donned his costume, his second skin. A zipper was hidden in the image of the long white snake that weaved up around the body of the costume to the head. He drew it together around himself, tucked the metal tab of the zipper into a flap at his ankle. The fabric of the costume allowed him to see and breathe through it, but was an opaque black-gray to outside observers in all but the brightest light.

  He was spending less and less time in his civilian identity, these days, to the point that he was pondering dropping it altogether. He could be Coil full-time, when the base was fully set up. For now, though, so long as he needed a bed, and a place to get away from the noise of construction, the ruse was necessary. He seated himself in the one chair at the back of the vehicle.

  To outside observers, Creep was an ordinary laborer driving an electrician’s van to the construction site. Coil’s underground base had fallen just beyond the scope of the massive lake in the middle of downtown. Had the crater extended another forty or fifty feet, it might have done more than crack the interior walls, cost Coil months of time rather than days, hundreds of thousands rather than thousands.

  Creep directed the vehicle down the ramp and into the parking garage. He stayed behind with the van as Coil departed.

  Coil entered a doorway in the lowest, most secluded corner of the parking garage, entering a room with an electrical system behind a metal cage. Opening the door to step into the cage, passing around behind the electrical box and passing through the concealed doorway there, he reached the heavy vault door that marked the entrance to his underground base.

  Even after he was inside, with two employees waiting to greet him, a contingent of his squad captains standing at the ready, he remained careful. Back in the other reality, he stood from his computer, traveled into the room beside his own. He paused in the doorway, staring at the girl who lay on the cot. She was dressed in white, unmoving but for the rise and fall of her ribcage, her eyes open.

  “It’s morning, pet. You know what questions I ask you.”


  “It’s morning?” she asked, head rising. “I feel like I just had dinner. Candy?”

  “No, pet. It’s too early. Now please answer my question.”

  Petulant, she replied, “Zero point two five two percent chance there’s any problems here in the next hour. Three point seven four four one percent chance there’s any problems before lunchtime.”

  “Good girl,” he spoke.

  With that, he collapsed that world where he had stayed up all night, studying the news, following international business trends, tracking the details on his troops’ most minor operations – he helped ensure the success of the major ones with his power. The reality swiftly faded, leaving only the world where he had a full night’s sleep, ate a hearty breakfast, drove to the base with Creep. Only the memories and knowledge remained.

  Standing before his employees and soldiers, he divided realities once more, leaving only a heartbeat between the erasure of one existence and the creation of another.

  He often wondered if he really was creating the realities, or if it was solely in his perception, foretelling futures to the extent that they hinged on his actions. He’d asked his Tattletale, and she hadn’t had an answer for him.

  He had hated these moments, before he’d acquired his pet and the assurances she provided. These were the times when he was most vulnerable, when he’d just started a fresh use of his power, his selves so close to one another. It was sadly inevitable, unless he found a way to expand to a third world. Though he knew the chance of danger was miniscule, that his pet could not lie to him if she had wanted to, he still made efforts to distance the two worlds as much as possible.

  The first reality: “Captains, with me. Empire Eighty-Eight is divided, and I’m going to direct you on a series of strikes to ensure we deal as much damage as possible before the two factions can merge once more.”

  The other: “I wish to survey the base. Captains, as you were.”

  Two groups traveling in separate directions. One of his selves traveled with the troops, down the metal staircase to the lower level, the other moving in the other direction, across the metal walkway, the two employees hurrying to keep up with his long strides.

  He eyed the base as it was developing. The massive quantities of crates and boxes were being unpacked, bunk beds for soldiers on call, a fully equipped medical bay, stocks and facilities for the kitchens, innumerable weapons. It was taking shape, fine details emerging where there had been only right angles and neatly organized stacks boxes.

  He owned the company that had built the underground shelters in Brockton Bay and neighboring cities. Hiding the details on his base in construction was a matter of intercepting information at the right time and place, paying with his own money rather than the city’s, controlling what was reported and to whom. His pet’s powers had assured him that nobody would be noticing any disparity anytime soon.

  “The Travelers’ room,” it was more statement than question, but it required an answer.

  A man in a sweater and small round-rimmed glasses, Mr. Pitter, spoke, “Done. Individual rooms, furnishings, kitchen and wardrobes. Some minor modifications are needed to make it more handicap accessible, but they could all move in today.”

  “And the containment facility?” he asked, though he already knew the answer, from the interruptions while he spent the night in the facility. He’d heard the noise of the work just hours ago, been informed that people were arriving.

  “The vault door was placed just last night. She was-” Mr. Pitter paused, “Agitated. We had to call Trickster in to talk to her. He’s here now.”

  “I’ll speak with them.”

  “Yes sir.”

  He didn’t like interacting with people, especially not subordinates as important as the Travelers or Undersiders, without the ability to create or banish the reality if the discussion didn’t go his way. Here, he was safe. His other self was giving orders on movements, targets to attack, individuals to watch out for, informed by the night he had spent tracking the deployments and patrol patterns of the Protectorate and Wards.

  He let Mr. Pitter take the lead as they headed to the Traveler’s apartments. The man was small, unassuming, ordinary. A registered nurse, he had an exemplary eight-year record of acting as nanny and caretaker to a pair of very ill children. Then he had found out his wife had cheated on him, attempted to divorce her. Deciding that wasn’t acceptable to her, the woman had set about dismantling his life, ruining his careers, friendships, familial relationships and everything else, laying accusations and planting evidence of the worst sort of crimes. The sort of accusations and suspicions that a male nanny had to be leery of at all times.

  Mr. Pitter was one of those particular people who was both useful and bought with stronger things than currency. He would ensure the Travelers were comfortable and well stocked. More specifically, he would take care of Dinah, ensure any and all dosages were clean and properly administered, that the girl was kept in the best of health. All he had required was for his wife to disappear, the chaos and problems the woman had caused him discreetly sorting themselves out in the aftermath of her death. He had gone from being a broken man to a person who was so unflinching in his duties that it had given even Coil pause.

  Mr. Pitter knocked on the door, waited. It was almost a minute before it opened.

  Trickster stood in the doorway, unmasked. His skin tone was darker in a way that left his ethnicity ambiguous, to the point where the boy could have been a darker skinned Caucasian, biracial, Middle Eastern or Eastern Indian. His dark hair was long, hanging to his shoulders, and a hook nose coupled with a widow’s peak gave him something of a severe appearance. His eyes, normally sharp, were bleary with sleep.

  “Are you really that sadistic, Mr. Pitter? I get dragging me here at five in the morning if Noelle needs it, but waking me up three hours later?”

  The ‘nanny’ didn’t reply, instead stepping out of the way, to give Trickster a better view of Coil. Trickster leaned out of the doorway to look his employer up and down, picked some sleep from the corner of his eye with his thumbnail. “Damn it. Okay.”

  “Thank you,” Coil replied, “I would like to speak with your friend, downstairs. Past experience has suggested this works best if you act as an intermediary.”

  “I don’t know if that’s a great idea.”

  “Indulge me. Would you like me to wait while you wash your face? Get dressed?”

  “If we’re just going to talk to her, and if you don’t have anything else for me to do, I’ll probably go straight back to bed, after.”

  “As you wish.”

  Trickster pulled on a black bathrobe, cinched it around his waist, then stepped onto the metal walkway.

  “Is there at least anything I can tell her?” Trickster asked. “Anything encouraging?”

  “Nothing definitive. I had intended to introduce Tattletale from the Undersiders to this situation, ask her for her opinions. That is, if she doesn’t already have some idea of what’s going on. Either way, her talents might turn up some details we have missed.”

  “Had intended? I take it that she can’t, now, because of what happened at the hospital?”

  “Something like that. She’s informed me that there’s currently difficulties within her group and requested that I not distract her or give her tasks until things have been settled ‘one way or the other’. Her words.”

  “That’s not really anything that’s going to give Noelle hope.”

  “No. No it isn’t.”

  They headed back onto the walkway, then down the stairs. A vault door, twenty feet across, was set into the concrete wall. It loomed over them, three times as tall as even Coil was.

  Coil stepped to the side, gestured toward the small monitor and keypad to the left of the door.

  Trickster touched a button on the keypad, “Noelle? You there?”

  The monitor flickered. A girl’s face took up most of the screen. Her face was framed with brown hair, greasy, and she had dark circle
s under her eyes. Her eyes moved as she looked at the monitor on her end, but she didn’t reply.

  “Hey,” Trickster spoke.

  “Hey,” her voice had a ragged quality to it, as though she had screamed herself raw.

  “Coil wants to speak to you.”

  There was a pause. “Okay.”

  Coil stepped forward so he shared the camera with Trickster. “Noelle. I’m sorry the construction work disturbed you. We shouldn’t have been doing that so late in the night.”

  “You locked me in,” Noelle accused him.

  “For your safety, and ours,” Coil spoke.

  “You agreed to this,” Trickster told her, “We talked about it. You asked us to do this.”

  “I know. I- I didn’t think it would be this claustrophobic. Or lonely. I swear I’m getting cabin fever and it’s only been a few hours.”

  Trickster opened his mouth, then closed it. When he finally found the words to say, he spoke, “You can call me any time.”

  “Except when you’re doing a job.”

  “You can talk to Oliver, then, or Mr. Pitter.”

  “Oliver’s still busy talking to you guys, and Mr. Pitter creeps me out.”

  Coil raised an eyebrow behind his mask, gave Mr. Pitter a glance. The man hadn’t reacted.

  Trickster diplomatically didn’t comment on Mr. Pitter’s presence nearby. Calmly, he spoke, “We’re working on a solution.”

  “You’ve been working on that for a month now!” She began to shout, which only added to the gravelly quality of her voice, “Fix this! Fix me! You did this to me, Krouse!“

  “Noelle,” Coil spoke, controlling his voice, “Trickster is not to blame. At the next possible opportunity, I will be inviting an employee of mine to speak with you and the rest of the Travelers. Her power will provide hints. I’ve also been in contact with the head of parahuman studies at Cornell. An expert in the field.”

  Her scream sounded through the intercom system, “That’s just more poking and prodding and theories! You promised us you’d fix me!”