Worm

by John Mccrae Wildbow

  “Okay.”

  “And measuring cups.” I smiled behind my mask.

  “We can’t pay you back for this, even if you give us a loan, we won’t be able to.” the mom said.

  So they were assuming I was putting myself in some loan shark role. Get them indebted to me, leech them for cash.

  “It’s on the house,” I waved her off.

  “Thank you,” she said, again. I felt bad for feeling the way I did, but I thought her gratitude was a little muted for what I was giving her.

  I could sense Grue a block away, my bugs settling on his helmet, unable to see as they got close. I could feel that faint push of the darkness billowing away from him. He’d been watching for a minute or two.

  “If there’s nothing else that’s pressing?” I asked.

  Silence, a few shaken heads. I turned to go and meet Grue where he stood at the corner of one building.

  “Taking up a side business in extermination?” he asked me. I thought I detected a note of humor in his voice.

  “Assisting my people. Some goodwill will help when I’m more firmly in power here.” I couldn’t help but sound a mite defensive.

  “Yep. That guy over there will be singing your praises.”

  I looked over my shoulder at the ‘dad’ who’d been giving me a hard time. He was ignoring Sierra and Charlotte, who were talking to the larger group of people. Instead, he watched the bugs cart the dead rats down the street, as if he thought I would slack on the job.

  “I don’t understand people sometimes.”

  “My guess? When everything went to hell, he told himself he’d be the ‘man’ for his family. Take charge, provide, protect. He failed. Then some little girl waltzes in and takes care of all that all at once?”

  “Little girl?”

  “You know what I mean. Look at it from his perspective.”

  “What if I recruited him? Gave him the opportunity and the power to help others?”

  “He’d be intolerable. I mean, sure, things would get better in the short-term. But over the long haul? You’d wind up with someone who criticizes every last thing you do, every last call you make, to make himself feel better about the fact that he isn’t the one in control, the one calling the shots.”

  “Fuck,” I said. ”I thought you said you weren’t good with people.”

  “I’m not good with girls, mainly. Guys? Or ‘manly’ guys like him? I’ve met enough people like him in the gyms with my dad, in fighting classes.”

  “Guys and girls aren’t that different.”

  “Aren’t we? Look at our group. Regent and I are going on the offensive. I’ve got Aisha and I making constant, coordinated attacks against enemies in my territory, terrorizing groups with attacks from the cover of my darkness, or from someone they can’t even remember fighting. Regent’s got a squad of Coil’s soldiers with him, and he’s tracking and kidnapping the leaders of enemy groups and gangs, using his power to control them and then having them sabotage their own operations, or start fights with other groups that leave both almost totally wiped out. Then he cleans up the mess.”

  “And us girls?”

  “Lisa’s running the shelter, and she says she’s doing it to get more info, but I think she doesn’t mind how it connects her to the community there, either. You, too, are almost nurturing in how you’re treating the people in your territory. And you’re acting like you’re getting that aspiring superhero thing out of your system. Or entrenched deeper into it. I can’t tell.”

  I didn’t like that he was mentioning that. Sore spot for both of us. ”Just following my instincts.”

  “And maybe pushing yourself a little too hard, too fast in the process.”

  “Mmm,” I offered a noncommittal response. I could have asked how Bitch fit into his interpretation of events, but I already knew the answer. Normal rules didn’t apply to her. ”I think all this ties more closely into how our individual powers work than it does to gender.”

  “Maybe. But… no,” he changed his mind after thinking for a second. ”I think both you and Lisa could be a lot more aggressive. It kind of worries me that you aren’t.”

  “Worries you?”

  “If you aren’t taking out the other gangs in your territory and turning a profit, why should Coil bother keeping you there?”

  “First of all, I’m totally prepared to squash any troublemakers the second they make themselves known around here.”

  “Assuming you can find them.”

  “I can. Second of all, Coil didn’t say a thing about turning a profit. He has money. Scads.”

  “He has his own money. Money that he has to devote time and attention to earning. If your territory never starts earning for him and just becomes some black hole that sucks up tens of thousands of dollars of his money each week, you think he’s going to be okay with that?”

  “What do you want me to do? That doesn’t involve taking protection money or peddling drugs?”

  “Those would be your biggest revenue streams.”

  “I’m taking control like he wanted me to. Faster than the rest of you.”

  “But you’re not leaving yourself in a position to do anything with that control.”

  “I can get all of the people in my territory onto Coil’s side. And I have over three hundred and fifty thousand dollars I can put towards infrastructure here.”

  “That’s not as much as you might think it is, when you’re talking about this much territory.”

  “No, but it’s something. Look, Coil’s a proud guy. He said it himself. He’d be upset if he took over the city and it wasn’t better than it was before. I’ve got the old Boardwalk here. I can help set that going again. I’ve also got the Docks, here. A part of it. If I can improve things here, if I can take this place and make it better than it’s been in decades, wouldn’t that be a feather in his cap?”

  “Even if things went smoothly, that’s not going to happen fast, and it’s not going to be easy.”

  Not fast. Grue had been pretty merciless in trying to poke holes in my approach, but the realization that he was right on that score was like a punch in the gut. ”If I can show Coil I’m making headway…”

  Even I wasn’t convincing myself. Coil wouldn’t give Dinah up for something as minor as a good start. I think Grue noticed my dejection.

  “I’m sorry if I’m being hard on you,” Grue settled one hand on the armor of my shoulder.

  “No. You’re right. I’ve been thinking too short-term.”

  “I really did want to come by and talk about less serious things. It’s a shame we can’t.”

  “We have time to do that, don’t we? We could go back to my lair, hang. I can show you what I’ve got done on your new costume, and we could talk about the mask,” I suggested.

  He shook his head. ”No. What I meant was that I’d hoped to spend today talking about that stuff. But we’re not going to get the chance. Something more serious has come up.”

  “Oh hell.” My initial suspicions had been right. This wasn’t a social call.

  “Regent got a visit from one of the Slaughterhouse Nine last night. So did Coil, though the man is quiet on details. Coil’s also reporting that Hookwolf got a visit on Tuesday, and one of Coil’s undercover operatives died in the ensuing carnage. The PRT office downtown also got hit, according to Tattletale…”

  “They’re active.”

  “Yeah. More to the point, they’re recruiting. Looking for a ninth to round out their group. Regent was one candidate.”

  “Who was the other, at Coil’s?”

  “Coil isn’t saying. We think, with Tattletale’s educated guess helping us out, that Hookwolf might have been another possible recruit.”

  “And at the PRT offices? Shadow Stalker?”

  “As good a guess as any. We’re not sure where she wound up.”

  “So what does this mean?”

  “It means Hookwolf is calling together a meeting of the local powers that be. Crook, criminal, mercenary and
warlord. We have to decide if we want to go.”

  “He was one of the people they visited.”

  “He was. Which means this could be a trap. Some kind of grand slaughter to commemorate his joining the group. Taking out the other prospective members in the process, like Regent.”

  “Or it could be a target for the Slaughterhouse Nine to attack. Create chaos, maximum bloodshed, the kind of stuff that gets attention. They’d be killing some of their possible recruits, but that’d suit them, being unpredictable, never letting you think you’re safe.”

  Grue nodded.

  “At the same time, if we don’t go, it’s crucial info that we’re missing out on.” I thought aloud. ”What does Dinah say?”

  “Her power is out of commission after the attack on Coil’s base, apparently.”

  “So we’re flying blind, with only Coil’s power to back us up.”

  “Whatever it is.”

  “Whatever it is.” I echoed him, feeling bad for the dishonesty and my lack of disclosure. “What do Coil and Tattletale have to say about the meeting?”

  “Coil wants everyone present. Tattletale thinks Hookwolf is on the up and up, but he’s only one of the potential problems that could come up.”

  I thought of the others who would be at the meeting. ”Like the fact that Skidmark is one of the local powers. Or he is if he’s managed to recuperate rep-wise from the ass kicking that Faultline gave him. He’s not exactly the type to keep to the truce at the meeting. An unpredictable element.”

  “Yeah.”

  “But if Tattletale is right, and Hookwolf isn’t on the side of the Slaughterhouse Nine, if we can trust Skidmark to have the basic common sense to back the rest of us up if they attack-”

  Brian turned toward me, and I could imagine him giving me an ‘are you serious?’ look behind his visor.

  “-Or at least not get in our way,” I corrected myself. ”We could fight back, if it wound up being most of the villain groups against the Nine. Our group’s powersets lend themselves to slipping away if that went sour, and Tattletale might be able to sense trouble before it hit us.”

  “You’re talking like you want to do this.”

  “I do. Kind of. If all the top villains of the city attend and we don’t, are we really doing ourselves any favors? Our rep will take a nosedive, we’ll be out of the loop, and there’s nothing saying we wouldn’t be targeted by the Nine all the same if we sit it out.”

  “Why do I get the feeling your decision here is motivated by your rushed attempts to get more control, more rep and finish this phase of our territory grab as soon as possible?”

  “Because it is.”

  He sighed, and the sound was eerie, altered by his darkness. ”To think I used to like that you were hardcore serious about the supervillain thing.”

  That touched on that sensitive subject again. My original motivations, my act, such as it was back then. I turned the subject of our debate back to the meeting. ”What do you think? If it was up to you and you alone, would you want us to go?”

  “No. But it isn’t up to me and me alone. When I weigh everything in my head, including the risk of our groups spending time fighting and arguing on the subject when we could be organizing and putting measures in place to protect our territory in our absence? I think it makes more sense to accept it and go with the flow.”

  “When is the meeting?”

  “With a situation this critical? There’s no time to waste. Tonight.”

  12.02

  I’d spent nearly sixteen years in Brockton Bay, living a half-hour’s walk away from the ocean and I couldn’t remember ever being on a boat. How sad was that?

  I mean, I was sure I’d been on a boat before. My parents had to have taken me on the ferry when I was a baby or toddler. I just didn’t remember any of it. My parents were introverts, by and large, and their idea of an outing had been more along the lines of a trip down the Boardwalk, a visit to the Market or going to an art gallery or museum. Maybe once in a while we’d go to something more thrilling like a fair or baseball game, but no… this was the first time I could remember being out on the water.

  It was exhilarating, the boat ride. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. I loved the feeling of the wind in my hair, the slight turbulence as the boat bounced on the short waves. It wasn’t that different from how I had enjoyed riding Bitch’s dogs, and there was none of that primal, deep-seated worry that the hulking monster I was riding would turn around and snap my face off. I’d almost think I had been destined to fly, based on how thoroughly I enjoyed myself, and that it was only bad luck that I’d gotten other powers instead… except I remembered flying with Laserdream as the Endbringer attacked, and that hadn’t been the most enjoyable experience. That might have been a special circumstance; I’d been dealing with the fact that I’d had a broken arm, I’d recently puked my guts out, I’d been soaking wet, and an Endbringer had been working on wiping my hometown and everyone I cared about from the face of the planet.

  That day would almost feel like something that had happened in a dream, if I hadn’t spent every hour of every day since living in the aftermath.

  Coil’s people had dropped us off along with two sleek motorboats, depositing them at the water’s edge. Grue was in one boat with Bitch, her three dogs and a puppy she had on a long chain.

  I wasn’t sure if the puppy conveyed the image we wanted, but with her attitude towards me lately, I wasn’t willing to comment and risk her going off on me. She’d remained angry after I’d called her out on her screwing me over and setting me up for Dragon to arrest, but she’d left me more or less alone.

  The puppy was cute. It was skittish, especially around people, which seemed a little odd. It wasn’t the kind of dog I’d expect Bitch to favor. Too young, not vicious or intimidating in appearance. On the other hand, skittish as it was, it had an aggressive streak. It constantly hounded Bentley, nipping at his flanks, then spooking and running away the second the bulldog looked at him. It had made for a fair amount of noise when we’d been getting the boats into the water. One for Bitch, her dogs and Grue, one for the rest of our group.

  Our boats weren’t out on the ocean. We traveled through the area downtown where Leviathan had collapsed a section of the city. It was now more or less an artificial lake. The water was fairly still, lapping gently against the ruined roads and collapsed buildings that surrounded the crater, but with the speed these boats were capable of going, even waves a half-foot high made us ramp slightly off one and then crash down onto the next with a sudden spray.

  Tattletale was at the back, steering the thing. It seemed counter-intuitive, with the boat going the opposite direction she pushed or pulled the stick. Still, she seemed competent at it. Better than Grue, which I found slightly amusing.

  From time to time, I was finding myself in a strange emotional state. As I stayed alert for it, I was able to catch those moments, try to pick them apart for what they were. The high-end motor whirred and the boat bounced over the waves, the wind and water getting in my hair, all while we headed into the most ridiculously dangerous and unpredictable situation we’d been in for weeks. It was one of those moments; I felt almost calm.

  For a year and a half, I’d spent almost all of my time in a state of constant anxiety. Anxiety about schoolwork, my teachers, my peers, my dad, my mom’s death, my body, my clothes, trying to hold conversations without embarrassing myself, and about the bullies and what they would do next. Everything had been tainted by the constant worries and the fact that I’d constantly been preparing for the worst case scenarios and maybe even setting up self-fulfilling prophecies in the process. I’d spent every waking moment immersed in it. Either I was stressing over something I’d done or something that had happened, I was concerned with the now, or I was anxious over what came in the future: distant or near. There was always something.

  And that was before I’d ever put on a costume and found myself caught up in my double-crossing plan against the Undersiders a
nd everything that had stemmed from that. Before Dinah and running away from home, before I’d decided to go villain. Stuff that made some of what I’d been worried over before seem trivial.

  So why could I feel calm now?

  I think it was that realization that there were moments where I was helpless to act, oddly enough. This boat? Speeding across the Endbringer-made lake? I had to be here. There was no other option, really. As I clutched the metal rim of the boat with one hand while we soared forward, the wind in my hair, I could accept the fact that I couldn’t do anything in this time and place to get Dinah out of captivity sooner.

  With that in mind, I surrendered myself of that responsibility for the present. Much in that same way, I cast off all the other worries, great and small.

  A light flashed ahead of us. Three blinks, then two.

  “Regent!” Tattletale called out.

  Regent raised a flashlight and flashed it twice, paused, then flashed it twice again.

  There was one flash in response.

  Grue slowed his boat as we reached our destination. Our meeting place was in the center of the lake, one of the buildings that still partially stood above water, leaning to one side so a corner of the roof was submerged, the opposite corner peaking high. Tattletale didn’t slow our boat like Grue had his, and instead steered the boat in a wide ‘u’ to ride it up onto the corner of the roof. Regent and I hopped out to grab the front of the boat and help pull it up. When Grue rode his boat aground as well, a little more carefully, we helped him too. Bitch hopped out and spent a moment using gestures and tugs on the puppy’s leash to get her dogs arranged and settled.

  Hookwolf and his Chosen had situated themselves at the corner of the roof that stood highest from the surrounding water. Hookwolf stood with his arms folded, densely covered in bristling spikes, barbs, blades and hooks, only his face untouched by the treatment, covered by his metal wolf mask instead. Othala, Victor and Cricket were sitting on the raised edge of the roof behind him. Stormtiger floated in the air just beside Cricket, and Rune had levitated three chunks of pavement into the air behind the group, each the size of a fire truck, like weapons poised at the ready. She sat on the edge of one of the chunks, her feet dangling over Victor’s head. Menja stood just behind Rune on the floating piece of shattered road, twelve feet tall, fully garbed in her valkyrie armor, a shield in one hand and a long spear in the other.