Worm

by John Mccrae Wildbow

  “No,” Grue echoed me, his voice carrying across the rooftop.

  “No?” Coil asked, his voice sharp with surprise. Was there condemnation in there? It was very possible we weren’t going the route he wanted.

  Grue shook his head, “We’ll help against the Nine. That’s fine, sensible. But Trickster is right. If we abandoned our territories in the meantime, we’d be putting ourselves in an ugly situation. That’s ridiculous and unnecessary.”

  Trickster nodded at his words.

  “If you keep them you’ll be putting yourself in an advantageous position,” Purity intoned.

  “Don’t be stupid, Undersiders, Travelers.” Faultline cut in, “You can’t put money, power and control at a higher priority than our collective survival. If Coil’s precog is right, we have to band together against the Nine the same way we would against an Endbringer. For the same reasons.”

  “And we will,” Trickster said. ”We just won’t give up our territory to do it.”

  “Because you’re hoping to expand further and faster while the Nine occupy the rest of us,” Hookwolf growled. “We agree to this like you want, and you attack us from behind.”

  “We haven’t given you any reason to think we’ll betray a truce,” Grue told him, his voice echoing more than usual, edged with anger. The darkness around him was roiling.

  “You have. You’re refusing the terms,” Purity said.

  Hookwolf was manipulating this. He wasn’t as subtle about it as Kaiser had been, it was even transparent, what he was doing. Dead obvious. At the same time, the scenario he was suggesting was just dangerous and believable enough to the Merchants, to his Chosen, and to the Pure that they couldn’t afford to ignore it. Coil couldn’t talk sense into them without potentially revealing his role as our backer. Even the heroes couldn’t counter his argument, because there was that dim possibility that he was right, that they would lose control of the city to villains if we continued to grab power.

  Which was admittedly the case. Dealing with the local heroes was one of our long-term goals, for Coil’s plan.

  We were fighting for Coil’s plan and Coil wasn’t helping. He remained silent, inscrutable, sticking to the situation that worked best for him and him alone. Damn him.

  “You’ll be earning the enmity of everyone here if you refuse,” Hookwolf said. Was there a hint of gloating in his tone?

  “We’ll be ruining ourselves if we agree, too,” Grue retorted.

  “I strongly recommend you agree to this deal,” Purity said.

  “No, I don’t think we will,” Trickster said.

  “No,” Grue echoed Trickster, folding his arms.

  That only provoked more argument, along many of the same lines. It was clear this was getting nowhere.

  I turned to Miss Militia, who stood only a few feet from me. When I spoke to her, she seemed to only partially pay attention to me, as she kept an eye on the ongoing debate. ”This isn’t what we need right now. Hookwolf’s made this about territory, not the Nine, and we can’t back down without-” I stopped as she turned her head, stepped a little closer and tried again, “We, or at least I have people depending on me. I can’t let Hookwolf prey on them. We all need to work together to fight the Nine. Can’t you do something?”

  Miss Militia frowned.

  “Please.”

  She turned away from me and called out, ”I would suggest a compromise.”

  The arguing stopped, and all eyes turned to her.

  “The Undersiders and Travelers would move into neutral territory until the Nine were dealt with. But so would the powered individuals of the Merchants, the Chosen, the Pure, Coil and Faultine’s Crew.”

  “Where would this be? In the PRT headquarters?” Hookwolf asked.

  “Perhaps.”

  “You were attacked as well, weren’t you? Who did they go after?”

  “Mannequin went after Armsmaster. Armsmaster was hospitalized.”

  That was some small shock to everyone present, though I might have been less surprised than some. Armsmaster as a prospective member for the Nine.

  “What you suggest is too dangerous,” Faultline said. ”We’d all be gathered in one or two locations for them to attack, and if Armsmaster was attacked, we could be too.”

  “And their whole reason for being here is recruitment,” Coil spoke, “Perhaps the plan would work if we could trust one another, but we cannot, when many here were scouted for their group, and may turn on their potential rivals to prove their worth. We would be vulnerable to an attack from within, and we would be easy targets.”

  “We could make the same arguments about ourselves,” Grue pointed out, “If we agreed, we’d be sitting ducks for whoever came after us.”

  “I think the Protectorate can help watch and guard nine people,” Coil replied, “I’m less confident of their ability to protect everyone present.”

  So Coil wasn’t willing to play along if it meant losing his ability to stay where he was, but he was willing to make life harder on us, his territory holders. Did he have some plan in mind? Or was he just that callous? Either way, he was an asshole.

  “No. I’m afraid that compromise won’t work,” Hookwolf said, squaring his shoulders.

  Miss Militia glanced my way. She didn’t say or do anything, but I could almost read her mind: I tried.

  Hookwolf wasn’t about to give up anything here. He had us right where he wanted us, and he was poised to kill two birds with one stone: The Nine and his rivals for territory.

  “It seems,” Hookwolf said, “The Travelers and the Undersiders won’t agree to our terms for the truce. Merchants, Pure, Faultline, Coil? Are you willing to band together with my group?”

  Purity, Coil and Skidmark nodded. Faultline shook her head.

  “You’re saying no, Faultline?”

  “We’re mercenaries. We can’t take a job without pay. Even a job as important as this.”

  “I will handle your payment here as I did for the ABB, Faultline,” Coil said, sounding just a touch exasperated.

  “And Miss Militia?” Hookwolf asked, “A truce?”

  “Keep the business to a minimum, no assaulting or attacking civilians,” Miss Militia said, “We still have to protect this city, there’s no give there. Don’t give us a reason to bother with you, and we’ll be focused wholly on the Slaughterhouse Nine in the meantime.”

  “Good. That’s all we ask.”

  The leaders of the new group crossed the roof to shake hands. In the process, things shuffled so that our group, the Travelers and the heroes were near the bottom of the roof. The heroes moved off to one side, as if to guard us from any retaliation, making the separation in forces all the more obvious.

  “You guys are making a mistake,” Grue said.

  “I think you have things the wrong way around,” Hookwolf said. ”Nobody wants to break the peace at neutral ground, so perhaps you should go before things get violent?”

  Tattletale asked, “You won’t let us stick around and discuss the Nine, who they attacked, what our overall strategies should be? Even if we aren’t working together as a single group?” She paused, looking deliberately at Faultline, “You know, the smart thing to do?”

  She was met only with cold stares and crossed arms.

  There was little else to be said or done. We’d lost here. I turned and helped push our boat into the water, then held it steady as everyone piled in. Tattletale had started the motor, and we were gone the second I’d hopped inside.

  12.03

  “Fuck!” Grue swore the second his boat hit land.

  “Let me guess,” Regent remarked to Bitch, “He’s been swearing since we left.”

  Bitch nodded.

  The Travelers had already arrived. They stood in a huddle by the water while Genesis disintegrated into several vague floating body parts.

  “Coil just bent us over and fucked us,” Grue said.

  “I dunno,” Tattletale answered. “That might have been the only way for him to play
things, with the way his power and operations work.”

  “That would do a hell of a lot more to ease my concerns if I had any idea what his power was.”

  Tattletale only offered an apologetic half-smile and a shrug to that.

  I tried to help her out. “Look, we do know that Coil is smart, he’s proud, and he’s at his best when he’s managing his enterprise. Being cooped up, he’d be hit hard in all three areas. Limited tools to work with, limited access to his people, and he’d be less powerful in a way that everyone would be aware of.”

  “That doesn’t excuse how thoroughly he just screwed us, without even trying to help us out.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think he’s completely screwed us over. We know Coil’s got at least one undercover agent, Trainwreck-“

  Tattletale interrupted to say, “He’s got a whole lot more than one.”

  “Thought he might. Doesn’t it make sense that he’d assist us by being one himself? I get the impression he likes the control it affords him and the amount of information he can get this way.”

  “Maybe,” Grue conceded.

  “We should focus on where we go from here,” I said.

  “Agreed,” Trickster called out.

  Genesis had finished disappearing, and Trickster was walking over to our group, followed by Sundancer and Ballistic. He extended a hand for Grue to shake, then turned to Tattletale, me, Regent and Bitch to do the same. Bitch didn’t take his hand, turning away to focus on her dogs instead. Trickster took the snub in stride. “If nothing else, I’m glad we get a chance to talk. Unless things get a lot worse from here, I’m hoping we’ll all be working side by side for a little while.”

  “Let’s hope,” Grue agreed.

  Trickster said, “We just sent Genesis back in a more discreet form to listen in.”

  “Imp is staying behind as well,” Tattletale informed him, “So we’ve got redundancy there.”

  “Christ,” Grue snapped his head from one side to the next, as if he could spot his sister that way. With a note of alarm in his voice, he asked, “Imp’s still there?”

  “She’s okay,” Tattletale reassured him, “They won’t notice her.”

  “They could. We don’t know how consistently her power works, or if it works in a group that large, and we can’t be sure we know every power the people there have, if anyone has some extra senses that might bypass her ability. Fuck! This is the exact type of situation I wanted to keep her away from. The whole reason I let her join this group was to keep her close enough that I could rein in this sort of recklessness.”

  “She’s a bit of a rebel, but she’s not stupid,” Tattletale said, “Trust her to hold her own.”

  “I wouldn’t trust myself to hold my own in her shoes,” Grue told her. “Christ. Skitter, can you send a few bugs over that way, tell me if she’s in one piece?”

  I nodded, while Trickster slapped his forehead.

  “The bugs,” he said, “I could have told Genesis to stick around while you scouted, wait, no. Why send Imp if you have the bugs?”

  “I can’t see or hear through the swarm, really. Not well enough to listen in.”

  “You did once,” Tattletale told me.

  That surprised me. “When?”

  “After the fight with Bakuda. You were doped up, hurt, you had a concussion, but you were able to tell us the kind of music someone was listening to, and he was way out of earshot.”

  “Seriously? And you didn’t tell me this?”

  Grue shook his head. “Just speaking for myself, I had a lot on my mind, between you and the others being in rough shape and the ABB setting off bombs across the city. I completely forgot until just now. Sorry.”

  Tattletale nodded.

  “That’s huge,” I said, “Do you know how much I could use something like that?”

  “Why can’t you now?” Trickster asked.

  “Bugs sense things so differently, my brain can’t translate what they see and hear into something I can process. It’s all black and white blotches, high-pitched squeals and bass throbs.” I paused. ”Imp’s perfectly fine, by the way. At least, I can’t find her, but nobody’s reacting like they found a spy in their midst.”

  Grue sighed, “Okay.”

  “So this sensory part of your power, you stopped trying?” Tattletale asked.

  The way she phrased that nettled me. “In the three months between my getting my powers and first going out in costume, I saw zero improvement in that department. None, zilch. When I did start going out in costume, I was worried the useless sights and sounds might distract me at some crucial juncture. Between that and the fact that it was like hitting my head against a metaphorical brick wall…”

  “You gave up,” Regent said. He was trying to get on my nerves, I knew it.

  “I stopped trying. But now that I know it’s somehow possible, I dunno. I can start looking for a way.”

  The degree to which it would expand my capabilities, it was tempting. That kind of expansion of my sensory abilities could be a matter of life and death at some point. I could theoretically listen in on most of the people in my territory. Would I want to, though? The invasiveness of that kind of creeped me out, and I had a pretty high creepiness tolerance.

  “It might be like your range boosts. Tied to your mental state,” Tattletale said.

  “Except my range boosts are probably linked to me feeling trapped, and I somehow doubt I felt that way when I was doped up and waking up in that hospital bed or ambulance or wherever.”

  “It’s something you can work through,” she said. “And now that you know to look for it, you should push yourself to use that part of your power so you can see when it’s stronger or weaker.”

  I nodded, and willed myself to tear down all the mental barriers and safeguards that walled my brain off from the sights and sounds the bugs wanted to send my way.

  It was every bit as grating and annoying as I recalled. This would take some getting used to.

  “Listen,” Trickster said. “Ballistic’s HQ is close by. Since my group is going to be waiting for Genesis, and you guys will want to hang around and pick up Imp when she’s done, maybe you want to come by and we can discuss strategy in the meantime?”

  “Sounds like a good idea,” Grue said. “Thanks.”

  Ballistic gestured toward a nearby street and we all started walking in that direction.

  Grue started us off. “Number one, we know that they were here to recruit. Who were they recruiting?”

  “Me,” Regent said. That drew a few looks of surprise from the Travelers. He elaborated, “My sister is their newest member, replaced Hatchet Face. She did it to fuck with me more than out of a genuine desire to have me join.”

  “Armsmaster is another,” I pointed out. “According to Miss Militia, Mannequin wanted him.”

  “The, uh, sixth member of the Travelers is the next recruit, I guess,” Trickster admitted. “Crawler hit Coil’s place.”

  “Sixth?” I asked. “If there’s four of you, then-“

  “We have two group members who don’t see any combat. They spend most or all of their time at Coil’s headquarters. I understand if that raises a lot of questions, but I –we– would really appreciate it if you guys could leave it at that for now. I’m thinking we’ll introduce you to the others soon.”

  “I’m okay with dropping it so long as you’re not withholding anything crucial,” Grue said. “I’m happy to stay on topic as much as possible anyways.”

  Trickster tipped his hat. “Appreciated. Looked like Hookwolf got hit. His entire group did. Shatterbird?”

  “Yeah,” Tattletale replied. “Can confirm that one.”

  “Shatterbird, Crawler, Mannequin and…” I trailed off, looking at Regent for help in placing the name.

  “Cherish.”

  “If the condition of Faultline’s crew was any indication,” Tattletale said, “We can make an educated guess that Burnscar paid them a visit. Thing is, I can’t even begin to guess
who she visited. Spitfire’s too nice, and none of the others really have the, I dunno, edge?”

  “In any case, that leaves the people who Jack, Siberian and Bonesaw nominated. Any ideas?”

  I glanced across our groups. Nobody moved to reply.

  “Maybe they’re not done?” Sundancer spoke up, “Or maybe some of them aren’t picking new members?”

  “Maybe they’re not done,” Tattletale spoke, “But I think they are. From what I’ve read on them, and from what my power is giving me, I have the distinct impression they all would have made some kind of move by now. They either hit all at once, shock and awe, or they draw it out. This is the former.”

  “But are they all picking new members?”

  Tattletale shrugged. “No clue. We know of four, at least.”

  Ballistic led us into a parking garage. We walked between rows of cars that had been pummelled by the floodwater. Panels had been dented, windows shattered, and some of the cars had been lifted and pushed into one another.

  Sundancer formed a tiny ‘sun’ and held it up for light, while Regent turned on the flashlight he’d brought. We descended into the bowels of the garage, and stopped at the ramp between the second level down and the third. It had collapsed, and both rubble and two or three cars sat in the water that flooded the floor below.

  “This way,” Ballistic said. He grabbed a length of pipe that stuck out where the ramp had collapsed and climbed down. Trickster gestured and we moved to follow.

  Clever, clever. Out of sight from any vantage point on the level above, short walls had been set around the fallen ramp. They ensured that the flooding and the wreckage were all contained to one area to sell the illusion, and kept everything else on the lowest level of the basement dry. Cars had been removed, clearing the area for use as an underground base.

  Ballistic pulled off his mask and tossed it onto the bed that sat in one corner. He cleared a few dirty dishes from the table in the middle of the area and invited us to sit while he fetched some extra seats.

  He had a bit of a heavy brow and a snub nose, and his short brown hair, damp with sweat, made me think of the jocks that always seemed to gravitate towards Sophia. Still, he wasn’t a bad looking guy. If a guy like him had asked me out in some alternate universe where Emma had never stopped being my friend and I’d never been bullied? Just going by his looks, I might have said yes.