Worm

by John Mccrae Wildbow

  “Listen to me, you psychopath!”

  “Colin!” Dragon’s voice hissed from the speaker, not as quiet as it had been. “Don’t provoke him! Help is nearly there!”

  Colin had to stop to control his breathing, and he bit his tongue to keep from saying anything further. His enemy had to have heard her, but didn’t seem to care.

  Mannequin fished through the broken keys from the keyboard, found another, and folded one finger back to pin it against the back of his hand. He ejected a blade from his wrist and used it to scrape the letters that were still intact off the board. They clattered to the desktop, and a few fell to the floor.

  The featureless white head swiveled one way, then the other.

  After a long moment, one arm dropped to the floor, the chain going slack. The hand crawled over to pick up another key, then the arm reeled in.

  Colin tensed as Mannequin approached, backing up as far as he was able The window was just behind him now, and he could almost imagine the crackling of the rainwater vaporizing against the forcefield.

  The villain turned and placed the keys down on the edge of Colin’s desk. The first key was the letter U.

  Six inches away, Mannequin put down an M, sideways. He corrected it so it was upright. Directly beside it, the villain put down an E.

  He stepped away from the desk and faced Colin once more.

  “You… me?” Colin asked.

  Mannequin cocked his head.

  “Is this a riddle?”

  Mannequin swiveled his upper body to face the other direction and reached for the shattered monitor. He picked out a piece of glass and a piece of glossy black plastic. Pressing them together, he raised it to the right side of his face, looking down at Colin. Slowly, Mannequin changed the angle of the shard of glass with the black backing.

  It took two long seconds before the villain’s intent became clear. Colin tensed, and Mannequin froze, fixing the angle of the shard.

  With the black backing, the glass reflected an image. With the angle Mannequin had carefully found, the image reflected was half of Colin’s own face, overlapping with Mannequin’s head.

  “No,” Colin muttered.

  “Quiet!” Dragon’s voice whispered from the nearby speaker, “They’re in the building, they’ll be there to help you in two minutes, maybe less! I can see them on the security cameras!”

  “I’m nothing like you!” Colin screamed at the villain.

  Mannequin stared at him with the shallow, empty eye sockets.

  “I didn’t date, I didn’t have kids, because I wanted to be out there, helping! I knew that any attachments could be used against me, so I went without! I was fucking smart enough to do that!”

  “Colin!” Dragon pleaded. Her voice was louder.

  The villain didn’t move.

  “Fucking answer me! Spell the fucking words with keys if you have to!” He roared the words at the mad tinker.

  Mannequin swayed slightly, then righted himself with a sudden, jerky motion, as if he’d collapse into a heap if he wasn’t careful. He used his hand to shift his back into place with an audible click.

  Colin went on, “I was out there every day, helping. I took steps to fight evil and take down criminals every day, small steps, baby steps.”

  “Colin, stop, please!”

  Dragon’s words didn’t matter. He was going to die anyways. He’d known the moment he recognized Mannequin. He’d go down fighting, hurt this motherfucker the only ways he could.

  “You want to compare us, freak? Maybe we both had bad days. Days where nothing went right, days where we were too slow, too stupid, too weak, unprepared or tired. Days we’ll look back on for the rest of our fucking miserable lives, wondering what we would have done different, what we could have done better, how things could have played out. The difference between us is that I actually did something with my life, and I’m still trying to do more while I serve my sentence!” He stopped and took a breath. “You started your big projects, got every fucking person in the world to get their hopes up, and then you failed to finish anything because you couldn’t hack it when your fucking family got killed! You insult their fucking memories every motherfucking second you exist like this!”

  Mannequin slammed him into the wall with more strength than he might have expected the artificial body to have. The blade came next, springing from Mannequin’s hand to pierce the shoulder that led to Colin’s stump of an arm and stick through the wall behind him.

  The villain withdrew the hand, then punched the blade into Colin’s stomach. Once, twice, three times.

  Dragon’s scream came from every speaker in the room.

  A slash of the blade caught Colin across the face, blinding him in one eye and tearing through the bridge of his nose.

  None of it hurt as much as it felt like it should have. More serious wounds didn’t tend to, odd as it was.

  Colin tried to laugh, and found he couldn’t. He could feel blood flowing into his mouth and throat through the gaping wound in his face. He let his head hang forward, so the blood could mostly flow out of his mouth.

  He tried to move forward, lunge with his knife, but he couldn’t pull his shoulder from the wall, even though the blade was no longer pinning him there. Was it a lack of physical strength, or something mechanical, flesh and bone shoved into the hole in the wall?

  Couldn’t lapse into that kind of thinking.

  Still had the knife. One hole in the self-contained systems that were one of Mannequin’s vital body parts would cause a leak of fluids, an introduction of pathogens that Mannequin surely wouldn’t be able to fight off.

  He tried to speak, but there was too much blood in his mouth, and he only managed to start coughing violently, spraying blood on the white of Mannequin’s chest. His vision was getting hazy.

  He wouldn’t be able to distract the lunatic with words while he acted. He could only pray.

  Don’t do it for me, God. I probably don’t deserve the chance. Do it for every soul this motherfucker would kill from here on out if I fail.

  He thrust out the knife, swept it towards his opponent’s chest cavity. His hand stopped.

  With his vision in his good eye failing him, it took him a second to see why. Mannequin’s hand gripped his wrist.

  He pushed, as if he could beat this monster in strength. By some miracle, his hand moved a fraction closer to his enemy’s chest. He redoubled his efforts, and it moved still closer.

  A blade stuck out of Mannequin’s upper arm, near the elbow joint. The upper arm fired like a small rocket to stick in the wall, and for a second, there was slack in the chain. Colin thrust the knife forward, came within inches of making contact with Mannequin’s chest before the chain reeled in and the metal links went rigid.

  The chain started to gradually reel in, and Mannequin started pulling his hand backward, toward the wall where the section of arm had stuck.

  Then, as if to taunt Colin, Mannequin dropped to a crouch, moved his face less than an inch from the blur that marked the edge of the blade’s effect.

  No!

  He couldn’t say where, but he found some reserve of strength. The knife inched closer. Hairs away. He could see the material of the casing smoke just beneath Mannequin’s ‘eye’, a dark patch revealing itself beneath.

  Mannequin’s head fell, tipping over backwards to strike the ground, dangling from the chain, out of reach of the blade. Still holding Colin’s wrist, the headless villain stood straight.

  He was toying with me.

  Mannequin wrenched his hand back, as if to make it clear that he had let him get that close, that Colin had never really stood a chance. Colin was pulled to one side, and he didn’t have the strength in his midsection to keep from falling over. His knife clattered from his grip as he fell to the floor.

  The villain picked up the knife, examined it, then pressed the button to test it. The last thing Colin saw before darkness consumed his vision was the bastard using the weapon on the wall beside the window, dus
t billowing where it made contact.

  In the last seconds of consciousness, he heard Dragon’s voice, as if from a far away place. “No! No, no no! Colin! Stay awake! I need you!”

  ■

  Her voice was the first thing he heard when he woke. “Welcome back.”

  “I survived,” his voice rasped. He’d had a tracheotomy. The only explanation for his throat being this sore would be having a tube rammed down it. Looking around, he saw a laptop propped up beside him, and a get well card from Miss Militia. She must have put the laptop there when she left the card.

  “Your heart stopped nine times on the operating table,” Dragon said, “A lesser man wouldn’t have made it.”

  “How?”

  “Artificial parts. I supplied your headquarters with a 3D scanner of my design weeks ago. I had them make the parts I specified. The on-site doctors kept you alive long enough for the scanner to make the necessary components, and they followed my instructions in installing them.”

  “Good girl,” he told her, with genuine affection.

  “I’m sorry about your face.”

  He tried to raise his hand, but found it attached to IVs. He had to maneuver it carefully as he lifted it to his face, so as not to tangle the wires. Almost seamlessly, his flesh transitioned into a smooth plastic and back to flesh again.

  “It’s alright,” he said.

  “Your new eye doesn’t work. I think I know what’s wrong with it, and I can get you something that will work, I just need time.”

  “You have better things to be doing.” He coughed and regretted it as pain ripped through his throat with the movement of the muscles. His stomach felt strange. He started to speak, cleared his throat, then said, “I think I could pull off an eye patch.”

  “The parts won’t last. All of this is prototype stuff. Some of it I revised and invented while you were in surgery. They’re temporary, but I can make better. I’m afraid you’re going to need to go under the knife a few times. More than a few.”

  “That’s fine. Thank you for all this.”

  There was a pause.

  “You’re a fucking idiot, Colin. That was the stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever seen.”

  He laughed. His breath caught with the pain each laugh produced, but he couldn’t help it.

  “Yeah, I hope that hurt.”

  “Wanted to provoke him. See if I couldn’t find an opening.”

  “I repeat: Stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “Was going to kill me anyways.”

  “Was he? He could have killed you there. He didn’t.”

  “He tried.”

  “No, Colin. Look.”

  The laptop screen on the table beside him lit up, and a browser page opened. An image loaded.

  A photo. Mannequin had left a message. 3 keys, again, on the edge of the desk. BR8.

  The eight, Colin supposed, was meant to stand in for a second B. ‘BRB’, an acronym used by countless denizens of the internet and innumerable cell phone texters. Be Right Back.

  “Could be meant for you guys.”

  “Or it could be for you.”

  “He left me for dead. He couldn’t really expect I’d survive.”

  Dragon didn’t reply. He thought of Mannequin. Despite the silence, despite the uncanny behavior and the dramatic self mutilation, Mannequin was a brilliant man. A man who could have looked at the resources that were available in the building, who could have figured out Colin was in touch with Dragon, done just enough damage to push him to the brink of death.

  “Shit. He probably could,” Colin conceded.

  He stared at the photo for several long seconds, then turned away.

  Hoping to inject some levity into the grim conversation, he smiled and asked her, “What was this I heard when I was passing out? ‘I need you’?”

  The silence stretched on for so long that he knew he’d made some faux pas. He just wasn’t sure what. Stupid. This was the kind of thing that had cost him his position, started the dominoes falling in such a way that they’d led him to being prisoner in that room, led to him being an easy target for Mannequin, to him being here, in this bed. Never knowing what to say, or how to say it, or who to say it to.

  He was about to apologize when Dragon said, “Those prosthetics I gave you? They were part of a bigger project. Something I’d intended to use for myself.”

  She was a cripple? He’d known she had survived Leviathan’s attack on Newfoundland, was it such a surprise that she’d gotten hurt then? It would explain her aversion to showing her face. One of the things she’d given him was a facial prosthetic.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, “I didn’t know.”

  “No, it’s not that,” she paused. ”There’s something you need to know about me.”

  11.e

  The high-pitched song of steel rang through the air as sword parried sword, struck shield and fell to the ground. Somewhat less sweet were the guttural grunts and muffled slaps of flesh being battered and struck. A boot in the stomach, an elbow or fist striking a face.

  Hookwolf walked between the groups of his sparring recruits. They were tired, pushing themselves through their exhaustion. All wanted to be here. The training was too punishing for anyone who didn’t. With small exceptions for eating and sleeping, their days were filled with exercise, hand to hand sparring, gun training, and practice with melee weapons.

  The main adversaries of the Chosen were mercenary soldiers, police and trained heroes. Why should the standards of his Chosen be any lower than theirs? No, if his group was to represent the true Aryan warrior, they had to have higher standards. They had to be the best.

  It was that knowledge, that commitment that drove his trainees to give their all. Too many saw the Aryans as hatemongers, failed to see the greater picture, the hope for raising humanity to a higher level. He stopped at one end of the room to watch their progress, watch for the ones who had the killer instinct he needed. Stormtiger and Menja were at the other end of the room, looking for the same. Stormtiger had cast off his mask, and wore only face paint. He still walked a little stiffly from the gunshot wounds that he’d taken to his legs. Othala had attended to them over the past few weeks, would give him a half-hour to an hour of regenerating ability each night until he was better, but knees were slow to heal. Menja wore her armor, her expression stern as she watched the form and habits of the combatants. Cricket sat in one corner of the room, typing on a laptop without looking at the screen, taking notes on the trainees.

  Hookwolf looked at Menja, and she raised one hand, two fingers extended. Signalling, she pointed to two of his thirty-four recruits. A bald man in peak physical condition and a twenty something girl with the ends of her hair in thin bleached blond braids. A little too much like cornrows for his liking. Maybe it was supposed to be ironic. He liked her first pick, though. He’d noticed the bald man. He’d committed their names to memory on first meeting them, but he’d forgotten some. He knew the man was Bradley, the girl was Leah or Laura or something like that. His own pick was a lean scrapper in his early thirties, Ralph.

  “Stop!” he ordered.

  As one, his recruits pulled away from their fights and sheathed their blunted swords. Not all of them were able to stand straight. More than a few had bloody noses or black eyes.

  “You’re three days into our week of training. If you’re still here, you’re doing us proud.”

  He could see a few of them stand a little taller at that. Hookwolf had been a fighter before he’d been a fighter with powers. He had spent a great deal of time around athletes, knew all too well that just a little recognition and a little motivation could make a world of difference.

  “Some of you have earned special attention. You’ve fought harder, meaner or better than the others. Bradley, come here.”

  The bald man approached.

  “Menja.”

  Menja stepped through the gathered recruits to stand beside Bradley.

  “You two are going to fight. No
weapons, no armor. Menja? You can use your powers, just a little.”

  Menja smiled, then she grew a foot and a half. Bradley stood at a height of just over six feet, but she still loomed head and shoulders above him. She unstrapped her armor and threw it aside.

  Bradley looked at Hookwolf, a flicker of concern crossing his features.

  “Part of the reason for this is that I want to see how you do against someone bigger than you,” Hookwolf said. “You’re tired. You’ve been training and sparring all day, Menja hasn’t. Tough. If you’re going to represent the Chosen as one of our elite, you’re going to be expected to go up against capes. Things will be just as one-sided or worse.”

  Bradley looked to his left, sizing up Menja.

  “Think you can fight her without embarrassing us? If you think you can do it, you might just have a place as one of our lieutenants or as a leader of one of our warbands.”

  “I’m no coward,” Bradley replied. He turned to Menja and adopted a practiced fighting stance.

  Hookwolf watched with approval as the two squared off. It was clear from the start that Bradley was thrown off guard by how strong Menja was, and doubly apparent that he wasn’t used to fighting someone with better reach or more power behind their hits. But he was trained, and he was familiar in how to use his body, and he adapted quickly.

  Bradley shifted to the defensive, and Menja struck with sharp kicks to his side and lunging steps forward to jab at his face. He timed a grab and quickly shifted to an arm lock, forcing Menja to bend over. For just a moment, it seemed like he had control of the situation, but Menja snapped back to her normal size, slipping her arm free, then struck at him, simultaneously growing. He was shoved to the ground.

  “Enough,” Hookwolf said.

  It wouldn’t do to let the man defeat Menja, and it was looking increasingly possible that he might. It would hurt her pride and weaken the position of his powered lieutenants in comparison to the unpowered ones.

  “Good man,” he said from behind his mask. He offered the man a hand, and Bradley took it. ”Well done. Welcome to the Chosen’s elite.”

  Bradley nodded and stood at attention.