Worm

by John Mccrae Wildbow

  When it rose through an intersection some distance away, it was significantly larger. Sundancer began bringing it steadily towards the headquarters, moving in towards the opposite face of the building that Grue and I were closest to.

  The Protectorate headed to the windows to see what was happening. I highlighted the window frame with my bugs, clustering them so a general rectangle surrounded the area. Did Trickster have the ability to see them through the window? It was hard to calculate the angles-

  I found myself in the midst of the local heroes. Bugs exploded out from within my costume, covering them. Capsaicin-laced bugs found every uncovered eye, mouth and nose before they realized what had just happened. My bugs could sense Triumph bending his knees to lunge for me-

  And I’d shifted a few feet to the right. Even as my orientation and senses were thrown by the sudden movement, my bugs let me figure out where I’d moved a fraction of a second before the enemy did. I was already reaching for my baton, whipping it out to its full length.

  Trickster switched me again before I could strike Miss Militia with my combat stick. Vista was in front of me, and without really thinking about it, I struck her in the most vulnerable area I could reach, across the bridge of her nose, swatting her in the ear with a stroke in the opposite direction.

  Another swap, not a half-second later. We were counting on my swarm-sense giving me the edge in this chaos, the close proximity and unclear positioning of their allies would keep them from hitting me with the worst of their powers. I caught Miss Militia in the midsection with my baton, swung overhead to try to catch her hand, but missed when Trickster teleported me again.

  Assault kicked me before I could recover and strike my next target. The hit didn’t feel that hard, but it sent me sliding across the floor, into a trio of chairs with plastic seats.

  “The window!” Miss Militia choked out the orders through the pain of the capsaicin and the massed bugs. ”Block Trickster!”

  I climbed to my feet. I’d waited too long to signal for an exit. The plan had been to bring Grue in as I wrapped up my initial attack, let him use his darkness to disable, steal whatever power would serve best and dispatch the enemy. They’d caught on to what we were doing, and they were making their counter-move. If Trickster couldn’t see me, he couldn’t swap me with anyone, meaning I was on my own.

  My opponents were suffering, though. Clockblocker was gone, teleported out as I’d teleported in. Miss Militia, Vista, Flechette, Triumph, Chariot and Kid Win were down, more or less out of commission with their eyes swollen shut and the bugs crawling into their ears and airways. At Miss Militia’s instruction, they had backed up to the window, blocking Trickster’s view.

  Besides bringing Grue in, the plan had been for Trickster to swap the heroes out as he spotted them, using bystanders or any officers in the area. Right this moment, he should have eyes on the uniforms on the roof, could switch their locations with that of the heroes, but he wasn’t. Maybe he felt it was more dangerous for me to be up against a cop with a gun or a PRT uniform with containment foam than against heroes we’d already disabled.

  Or maybe he was fucking me over on purpose. No, it didn’t make sense. He had his teammates to rescue. I was still suffering latent paranoia from Coil’s ‘test’.

  Still, the other heroes were more or less incapacitated. That left me to deal with Weld, Assault, the two PRT officers and the Director. She was an obese woman, two-hundred and fifty pounds at a minimum, with an unflattering, old-fashioned haircut that might have looked good on a model with the right clothes to go with it. Neither Weld nor Assault were advancing, choosing to block my access to the exits. The area was some kind of office, filled with desks, chairs, cubicles and computers. More like an office building than I’d expected from a law enforcement facility.

  “This-” the Director started, stopping to cough and gag as one of the capsaicin bugs found the inside of her mouth. It had already smeared its payload along the inside of Vista’s nostril, so the payload wouldn’t be that intense. “This was a mistake.”

  “If it wasn’t a little reckless, Dragon would have probably anticipated it.”

  “You’ve trapped yourself in here. Two other Dragon models are already on the way.”

  Fuck.

  “Good,” I told her. I was pretty sure I managed to hide the fact that I was lying through my teeth.

  She straightened, pressing one hand to her right eye. “Is this Tattletale’s plan?”

  “Mine.”

  “I see, and-”

  I didn’t hear the rest. Behind my back, Assault moved to kick one of the desks. It went flying into the air in the same instant I threw myself to the ground. I could feel the rush of wind as it passed over me, hurtling into a cubicle. I scrambled for cover.

  “Prescience. Interesting,” the Director called out, as I ducked low and used the cubicles to hide. “We assigned you a thinker-one classification, but perhaps we fell short.”

  “I really don’t care.” I used my bugs to speak, so they couldn’t use my voice to pinpoint my location. She was trying to distract me so the others could act, or buying the Dragon suits time to arrive. I was calling in more bugs to the area and slowly gathering them around myself, now that I didn’t need to worry about people spotting them.

  “You can see through their eyes, hear what they hear? Can you see the suit that was outside?”

  The armored mech was moving, its limbs outstretched to catch the air with the flying-squirrel wing flaps. Panels around its body were venting out hot air and giving it lift, and the giant wheel was tilted back at a forty-five degree angle. The suit was clearly designed to fly forward, relying on the wing flaps to make intricate and acrobatic twists and turns in the air. Sundancer’s miniature sun was blocking the suit’s progress, forcing it to make lengthy detours and twist in the air, stalling and dropping several feet before it could catch the air beneath it again. More than once, it lost more ground than it gained while retreating from the burning orb.

  “Yeah. It’s handled,” I called out, from behind the desk. My swarm felt the Director make a hand motion, apparently to signal Weld. As he began advancing towards me, I stayed low and retreated into a cubicle.

  The Director spoke, “More will come. Not just the seven suits that are currently in Brockton Bay. So long as you hold this city, Dragon will bring in more suits on a weekly basis. Dragon will shore up weaknesses, augment strengths. If you’re lucky here, you might win. I’ll credit you that. But you won’t get two or three days of rest before you have to fight again. How many times can you abandon your territory before your followers abandon you?”

  The swarm’s buzz helped mask the location of my voice. “How many times can you afford to let the crooks clean up your messes before the public realizes your Protectorate is little more than good PR, fancy talk and wasted tax dollars?”

  “We’re doing more than you think,” she responded.

  “And less than the people need. I’m filling a void you people left behind. If you were doing a satisfactory job, I wouldn’t be able to do what I’m doing.”

  Come on, come on.

  “Don’t act stupider than you are, Skitter. The city can’t step in to help the people in your territories because we can’t trust you. Your Bitch is already mauling anyone that sets foot in her territory. Any electrician, carpenter or doctor that we send into your territory might come back to us dying from anaphylactic shock.”

  I shut my mouth. I didn’t have a response to that. At least, I didn’t have a response which wasn’t a mere, I promise I’ll be good.

  It wasn’t worth worrying about, because I didn’t get the chance to reply anyways. There was a crashing sound and the lights cracked. Fragments and splinters of glass showered down on top of us as everything suddenly went dark. To take maximum advantage of this shift in circumstance, I complemented the effect by moving the bugs I’d gathered just outside the windows, blocking the meagre light that was filtering through the screens and plunging the
entire room into a dimly lit twilight.

  I drew my knife and bolted. Glass crunched underfoot and caused my feet to slip under me as I ran. Assault charged my way, one arm still covering his mouth. More bugs covered the lenses of his mask, but they slid off him as if he were oiled. His power at work.

  With the bugs around me, I pulled a quick, crude decoy together, running in one direction as my bugs moved in another, slightly closer to him. In the dim, his mask partially covered, he went after the decoy. When his hand passed through, he reached just a little further to grab a desk and heave it my way.

  Once again, I only barely managed to dodge by throwing myself to one side. My landing was hard, undignified, and ended with the armor of my mask and shoulder hitting the corner where two walls met.

  “What are you hoping to accomplish?” the Director called out.

  I stood, trying to look as if I was considering my answer. Weld was approaching, and Assault stood ready to attack. Not like he had anything to lose – I was cornered, quite literally.

  I turned the knife around in my hand so the blade pointed down and slashed to my right, cutting the bug-covered screen with a loose ‘x’. Assault lunged for me, crossing half the room with a single leap. He was too late – I let myself fall through the third story window.

  The outdoors were startlingly bright after the gloom of the building’s interior. I felt my hair whip around me for one second, then landed, sprawling, in a dim setting.

  I hadn’t fallen the full distance. I was inside again, surrounded by the other heroes. I had only a second before they realized what I’d done. I turned and slashed the screen behind me, throwing myself from the window a second time.

  Again, Trickster swapped me with one of the heroes. I landed with my feet skidding on the floor beneath me and caught the windowsill for balance. I waved: my signal.

  “Get away from the window!” Assault bellowed.

  Then I was teleported yet again. I found myself back in the alleyway I’d been in with Grue. Clockblocker was facing away from me, Grue was gone.

  A quick check showed he wasn’t moving. Grue had caught him off guard, and his initiative had beat out Clockblocker’s concern about potentially disabling an ally. Clockblocker was frozen by his own borrowed power. Perfect.

  I reached behind my back and unspooled the length of thread. My bugs took hold of it at various points along its length and began traveling across Clockblocker’s body, winding the silk cord around him and tying it in knots.

  With luck he wouldn’t be a threat even after he got loose.

  I reached out with my power to assess the general situation. Grue’s darkness surrounded the area, keeping the officers and PRT uniforms at the blockades from opening fire.

  The mechanical suit that had been perched on the rooftop nearby was on the ground now, fighting Sundancer, Shatterbird and Grue, the latter two of which were out in the open.

  The plan was to avoid leaving cover, I thought.

  The wheel on the back of Dragon’s machine was already spinning at full speed. I could make out a red eye in the center, identical to the ones that had been on the drone. The suit thrust itself forward with the vents around its body, lunging for Grue, and Trickster swapped Grue’s location with a PRT uniform, putting Grue on the rooftop. It avoided hitting the man by dragging its two left claws in the pavement, lifting its tail so it wouldn’t swing around and strike him.

  The wheel blazed with a wreath of electricity, the entire suit thrumming with enough charge to kill every bug touching it. Without warning, the wheel flared and Grue was yanked over the edge of the rooftop by an invisible force. Trickster caught Grue, swapping him for the same officer before he was halfway to the ground.

  This is Dragon’s counter to a teleporter? I would have called it a magnet, but Grue wasn’t carrying or wearing anything substantial with metal on it. Or was this the suit Dragon had deployed against Genesis, Ballistic or Bitch?

  Maybe I was missing something.

  I used my swarm to keep the windows blocked and the people inside under assault, just enough that they couldn’t recover and complicate an already dangerous situation. I tried to position the bugs I could spare so they hovered around the sensors and the ‘eye’ of the wheel. Shatterbird was pelting it with a stream of glass shards that looped back in her general direction to rejoin the stream and strike over and over again.

  It didn’t work. The thing targeted Grue again and hauled him a hundred feet towards it. Still crackling with electricity from its nose to the tip of its tail, it advanced on him, tail stretching forward to reach for him.

  The machine suddenly shifted position and powered its thrusters to lunge away. Sundancer’s orb erupted from the ground just behind the spot the suit had been standing. I could see Grue raising his hands to shield his face from the waves of heated air as he scrambled to his feet and ran.

  The first of the reinforcements arrived. I recognized it as the suit that had been deployed against Leviathan. The same one that had gone after Tattletale, unless she had more than one. This one had the foam sprayer. It set down on the edge of the battlefield opposite the wheel-dragon.

  We took too long. Or the suits had arrived too soon. There wasn’t really a difference. The wheel-dragon must have pulled Grue from cover and forced Shatterbird to step up to help, and my own invasion of the main building had taken just a little too long, giving Assault a chance to get his bearings and hit me.

  My swarm informed me in advance of the second of the suits that were arriving on scene. The wheel-dragon thrust itself forward, skimming the road’s surface to put itself next to the PRT headquarters. The drone-deployment suit set down on top of a nearby building so they were spaced out evenly.

  They had Grue and Shatterbird surrounded. I stood off to one side, between the drone-deployer and the foam-sprayer, still too close for comfort but they didn’t seem to have noticed me.

  I glanced towards the building where Trickster and Sundancer were holed up. Sundancer wasn’t moving her sun, and Trickster was apparently unable to see a valid target to swap Grue for. The officers and PRT uniforms had been disabled while I was indoors, and both Kid Win and Miss Militia lay at the base of the building.

  I used my bugs to write him out an order: ‘swap me for sun, swap me for kid’.

  A long second passed. Was Trickster illiterate? Why was it so hard for him to notice the key info I was trying to write down-

  I found myself surrounded by darkness. Only a slit of light filtered into the room through the plywood. Trickster stood beside me, and the words I’d written out with bugs were on the plywood. He’d swapped me for Sundancer.

  “You sure?” He asked. He’d gathered what I was hoping to do.

  “Yeah,” I said. I pressed my knife into his hand.

  He moved me in an instant, putting me at the base of the headquarters, facing a wall. As I turned around, the three suits shifted position to look my way.

  Trickster stepped out of the building, the tip of my knife pressed to the point where Kid Win’s chin joined his neck.

  We could have used Sundancer’s sun to threaten the people inside the building and get the suits to back off, but I didn’t trust her to be mean enough. I didn’t have much respect for Trickster as a human being, but that was an advantage when we needed someone to be more vicious.

  The suits stood down. I could see the wheel spin to a stop, the drones returning to dock.

  Right. Dragon wouldn’t risk a human life. She’d discarded her suit rather than let an established criminal die. She wouldn’t let a young hero die for the sake of getting us into custody.

  “Let’s go!” Trickster called.

  I hurried to cross the area between the three Dragon-suits, Grue joining me halfway. Trickster backed up with a barely conscious Kid Win in his grip.

  We’d nearly reached safety when one suit shuddered to life. Trickster spun around, still holding Kid Win, turning his attention to the wheel-dragon. The wheel was moving again. “No
funny business!”

  It wasn’t the wheel-dragon that attacked. Before I could open my mouth to warn Trickster, the suit with the containment foam sprayed him, swamping him from behind. The weight and force of the spray knocked his knife-hand away from Kid Win, and the swelling, gummy mess kept it away. The sprayer proceeded to slowly bury the two of them, trapping hostage and hostage-taker together.

  “Swap for Miss Militia!” Grue shouted, turning around as the drones began deploying once again. The wheel was getting up to speed, crackling with electricity.

  “Can’t- Can’t turn my head to get a look at her!” The foam was spraying him from behind. If he turned his head, he’d be blinded.

  And we weren’t in a position to grab her and haul her into Trickster’s field of view. It would take too long. Drones were sweeping down onto the street level, moving into position so they hovered above Grue and I. I waited for the electrical charge to hit.

  It didn’t.

  The drone tapped my head as it descended. I stepped back and let it descend slowly to the ground.

  The foam sprayer had stopped. Trickster was buried up to his waist, Kid Win face down in the foam in front of him. The wheel was spinning down for the second time in the span of twenty seconds.

  Trickster swapped himself for Kid Win, putting himself knee-deep in the foam. He craned his head around and managed to get Miss Militia in his sight, then swapped for her.

  We ran, following after the others, who’d already left the battlefield.

  “Why did they stop?” Grue asked.

  I shook my head. ”Tattletale?”

  I kept waiting for the suits to perk up and give chase, or for further reinforcements to appear. There was no pursuit. Fifteen minutes passed before we had to stop, settling in an abandoned building to hide and catch our breath.

  I sorted out my weapons, taking my knife back from Trickster, and sat down to rest. I ran my fingers through my hair to get it in a semblance of order.