Worm

by John Mccrae Wildbow

  How did he do this?

  Squad one had no doubt laid down the containment foam to stop the ones that were small and quick enough to avoid most gunfire, but they’d trapped themselves in the area, and were now falling prey to the hail of spines.

  Coldiron took one spine to the face. He dropped like a puppet who’d had its strings cut.

  The standard PRT-issue suits are supposed to sustain gunfire. Those spines are hitting harder than bullets.

  Rinke was a master who can make these things: real living creatures.

  He cast a glance at squad one, down to one member, kneeling with one arm around a teammate he was using as a body shield and the other hand firing his rifle one-handed.

  “Retreat! Through the store!”

  His team ducked back into a storefront through the shattered display window. Bursts of fire took down the creatures that had been hidden within, a skinny faceless woman with blades for fingertips, a trio of what looked like babies with spider legs, a half-dozen waist-high people with deformed features and mismatched clothing that they’d clearly scavenged from nearby.

  While Shane and Tieu reloaded, he offered supporting fire. He gunned down one of the smaller creatures, caught a glimpse of one of the other thing’s expression. It was female, small, and its face twisted further in rage than it had already been.

  They feel. They have feelings?

  The horrible thought that they might be people crossed his mind. The notion that this was a psychological trick, that he was under the influence of a power, gunning down civilians…

  No. He’d been trained to deal with mental and emotional attacks. They all had. Had to think abstractly, consider the edges of the problem. Even if their perceptions were under attack, there were always hints, always clues. Things matched too neatly.

  If this was a trick, it was complete and effective enough that they were already doomed, no matter what they did.

  His squad headed out the back door of the store, gunned down a tall creature in the alley as they made their way to the next street. Their gunfire brought more of the things crawling from the woodwork, throwing themselves down from windows and crawling out of the spaces in dumpsters and beneath cars.

  “Flare!” He shouted.

  There was a brief whistle as the flare speared up towards the sky. As if in response, one of the beasts perched in a windowframe spat a glob of caustic goo at them.

  Shane went down screaming, smoke pouring off him as his suit was consumed and the acid reached his flesh.

  They couldn’t afford to stop. Evan fired a single bullet through Shane’s skull without slowing his run. Holler got the thing in the window. It exploded violently, globs of acid spraying through the area to steadily eat away at the surrounding architecture.

  Evan reloaded, all too aware of how quickly he was going through clips. Lady was covering their retreat with foam, but the foam would run out.

  One of the helicopters had approached, laying down additional foam to help. There were no safe places here, no places to find cover. The best they could hope for was to get to a spot they could evacuate from. There wasn’t a living soul left in the city, nobody to save.

  The sound of the explosions had drawn the attention of others. They were pouring from nearby buildings. Concentrated rifle fire tore through their ranks, but did little to stem the overall tide.

  “Captain!” Lady shouted.

  He turned to see that she was all right, then saw what she was pointing at. One of the things, a pear-shaped woman with thick legs and no arms, was standing with her legs shaking from strain as she virtually spewed a mess of creatures out onto the ground. They clawed and bit their way free of the sacs that held them and wasted no time in starting to crawl, lurch and run towards his squad.

  Holler gunned the mother-thing down before she could finish or spew more abominations from between her loins.

  Things were clicking into place. It made sense, now, how the situation had gotten out of control so quickly. How Rinke had seized the city so totally and absolutely. It wasn’t just that he was a master-class cape who could make monsters with abilities of their own. He could make monsters that bred, monsters that gave birth to more monsters.

  “Flare!”

  Holler fired another flare into the sky.

  Evan reached for his radio, shouting at the top of his lungs to be heard over the gunfire, even his own gunfire. ”Squad two needs an evac, stat! We just sent a flare up! Where are those capes!?”

  “Choppers one and two down, squad two. Your capes vacated the scene.“

  “Damn them!” He pointed his gun to the sky to gun down an emaciated winged beast that was trying to swoop down on them from overhead. ”Get us chopper three, then!”

  “Chopper three is giving squad three supporting fire while they all retreat to a viable landing point. You’ll have to get to them. They’re north of your position.“

  “You heard the man. Move!”

  They didn’t get two paces before the ground rumbled. A clawed hand speared up through the pavement to catch Tieu by the leg, crushing it as though it was paper. The pavement strained and cracked as whatever was beneath tried to break the surface.

  Tieu looked up at his team, his expression hidden by the pane of his helmet, then stuck the end of his grenade launcher into a crack in the concrete.

  They were already running, their backs to him, when the explosion marked the loss of another member of their team.

  A grenade round cleared away one more crowd, and they hurried through the gap.

  Three of us left.

  Without Tieu or Coldiron, they didn’t have a grenade launcher, no way to deal with the massed crowds.

  “Holler, need ammo!”

  Lady directed a stream at the nearest crowd, aiming the spray at their heads, so any spray that missed would catch the ones who stood behind them. When one tipped forward, the expanding foam served to create a barrier that caught others.

  Holler pulled off his bag, handing out clips. Evan tucked away the ammunition as fast as it entered his hand, pausing only to reload and shoot down the creatures closest to them.

  He turned his head as he heard a voice.

  “-Eat! Eat!”

  “Go!”

  They’d defaulted to a three-man squad, Lady covering the left and some of the rear, Holler watching the right and the rest of the rear, with Evan leading the way. The voice…

  A laugh. Not the gibbering noise of the creatures, but all too human.

  He spotted the culprit. A man, potbellied and hunchbacked. The style of dress was similar to the patchwork brute they’d fought first, with bright, contrasting colors that he couldn’t quite make out in the gloom. There were jarring patterns with stripes here and checkers there. He wore a cloth crown, and his cloth mask featured beads for eyes and a perpetual leer of a smile.

  Rinke.

  “Rinke!” he screamed the word. He took aim and fired.

  He hit his mark. The man went down, and the creatures wheeled on him, screaming, squealing. If he’d had any doubt about his target, the reaction dispelled it.

  Then he saw Rinke stand.

  “You would shoot me!?” Rinke roared. If anything, his voice was all the more terrifying because it sounded so small, so human. ”I create life! I am a god, and this is my garden!”

  Evan could see flesh billow into existence in the man’s hands, embryonic sacs with the shadows of something forming within them. They burst, and two struggling, childlike figures dropped to the ground to disappear in the midst of the stirring crowd.

  Lady did what she could to suppress the enemy’s approach, laying down the foam, but there were too many, and their irregular sizes and shapes made it impossible to cover all of them with the foam. If she aimed high, she missed the little ones. If she aimed low the bigger ones leaped over and others walked on top of the ones who’d become stuck.

  A spine caught him in the midsection. Before he could react, another struck home. They penetrated his
armor to stab into his stomach like hot knives. He caught a glimpse at one of the bastards that was spitting the things at him, gunned it down before it could shoot again.

  He could hear the helicopter’s approach, knew it was too late.

  “Ring!” he gasped out the word. He could barely breathe, felt like a weight was sitting on his chest, every word he uttered came out thinner than the last. ”Circle us, make high.”

  Lady did, laying down foam in a circle around the remnants of his squad. He couldn’t breathe at all, now. Had one of the spines caught him in the diaphragm?

  He was blacking out, faster than he’d expected, saw the bastards making their way over the top of the wall of foam, getting stuck, others using their bodies as handholds to crawl forward, reaching, drooling, screaming, squealing.

  Didn’t matter. He was dead anyways, knew it beyond a doubt.

  One of his squad members collapsed on top of him, blood spraying out onto the front of his helmet.

  The darkness took him.

  ■

  ‘Lady’ stirred, felt the weight of machinery and tubing that kept her from moving.

  “You’re awake,” an unfamiliar voice called out.

  She tried to speak, couldn’t. Her throat was raw, her tongue leaden.

  “I don’t want to offend you, but I’m frankly surprised you made it,” the man spoke. She turned her head to one side to see a bed in the other corner of the room. A tall man lay there, hooked up only to a saline drip.

  “I’m Thomas Calvert,” he introduced himself. ”Squad three. We’re the only ground forces that got out alive.”

  The only ones… She shut her eyes.

  “Your sister was here. She was talking to the doctor about your prognosis.”

  “Pro-” she started, wincing at the pain speaking caused her, “Prognosis?”

  “You might not want me to tell you. The doctors will be gentler than I will.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Deep tissue damage. Your kidneys are gone, which means you may be on dialysis for the rest of your life. You suffered some muscle damage when they gnawed on your legs. There’s no future for you on the PRT teams.”

  She shut her eyes. She’d lost her squad, her career, her health, all in a matter of an hour, if that. Half an hour? How long had the mission taken? Twenty minutes?

  “You’re not alone. I won’t be joining any future missions either,” Thomas remarked.

  “Rinke?”

  “You mean Nilbog.”

  “Huh?”

  “That’s what he called himself. He’s alive and presumably well. I saw out the window as the chopper pulled us out, Nilbog retreating to hide in some building, his creatures were returning to their hiding places. I expect the man will be alive for some time.”

  “Why?” She wheezed the question.

  “Far as I could tell, he’s wearing one of his creations. Made him bulletproof, maybe fireproof. We won’t be able to bomb the area. He’s created beasts that multiply if you set them on fire. Did you see those?”

  She shook her head.

  “He may have other countermeasures for other courses of action. You’ll get your chance to talk to the Chief Director, but last I heard, they’re planning to wall the city off. They’ll let the motherfucker be the god of his own little town, so long as he doesn’t try to expand any further, which they’re saying he won’t. I almost envy him.”

  “He… gets to live?”

  “Yeah,” Thomas spoke, letting his head rest on the pillow. ”It is a perk of having power, that you get to decide which rules apply to you.”

  She shook her head.

  He sighed. ”I thought I might trigger, perhaps. Hoped. I suppose I don’t have the potential.”

  She glanced at him in surprise.

  “What?”

  “I… I’m glad I don’t have powers. That I can’t have powers.”

  “Why?”

  “They’re monsters. Freaks. Lunatics. They fight only because they have the impression that they’re stronger than their opponents, and when they aren’t they run.” She thought of the squad of capes that had accompanied them. “They abandon the rest of us.”

  Thomas chuckled, and it sounded mean. Mocking.

  “What?”

  “I suggest you change your attitude,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “It’s ironic. When the doctor and the Chief Director were talking to your sister, the Chief Director assured her that you still had a position in the PRT. Some of it is probably to keep you quiet, a cushy desk job and fat paycheck to make up for the fact that they sent you into a deathtrap and killed your teammates.”

  “A desk job?”

  “Director. You’ll manage the local teams, handle the PR, convince everyone else that they aren’t freaks, monsters, lunatics and bullies. I suggest you fake it, pretend you really do believe it. You might start to believe your lies.”

  “And you?”

  “Oh, I did mention I wouldn’t be on the team in the future. Not because of any injuries, mind you. I’m facing a stay in prison. My captain and I were the only ones left,” Thomas knit his fingers together and rested them on his stomach, looking very calm. ”He grabbed the rope ladder first, but he didn’t climb fast enough. I shot him.”

  Her face twisted in disgust.

  “You would have done the same in my shoes.”

  “Never.”

  “Well, it doesn’t matter. A few years of my life. I don’t expect I’ll be there for too long. There were extenuating circumstances, and the PRT doesn’t want me talking to anyone about what happened.”

  She shut her eyes, tried to shut her ears to his smooth voice prattling on with things she didn’t want to hear.

  Monsters, freaks, lunatics and bullies… the labels didn’t belong to just the capes.

  It’s like the world’s gone mad, and I’m the only sane person left.

  16.03

  Well, we’d gone up against Dragon, the Wards and the Protectorate at the same time, and our pains had earned us our hostage. I was worried the next part would be harder.

  Trickster started fishing through the pockets of the Director’s suit-jacket.

  “Looking for this?” Imp held up the Director’s phone.

  “Yeah,” Trickster replied. He took the phone. “There’s a chance it’s not scrambled.”

  “Bad idea,” I said. “If-”

  I stopped when Grue reached over and blanketed the Director’s head in darkness.

  “Don’t need her listening in if we’re talking strategy,” Grue explained. ”Go on.”

  “If Dragon’s listening in on the call, and it sounded like she was, we might accidentally divulge some crucial info. Or we could be alerting those suits to our location. Or the location of whoever you’re calling.” I finished.

  “Might be.” Trickster replied, “But it’s handy to be able to contact others, and that might be worth the chance that we’d have to run again.”

  “Maybe.”

  Trickster went on, “We could call Tattletale right now, hop in the truck Imp brought and have her meet us somewhere secluded, or we could split up, with one or more people going ahead to pass word on to her, then wait for her to meet us, wasting a hell of a lot of time in the process. Keep in mind the suits are still disabled.”

  “There’s still the Protectorate and the Wards,” Grue said.

  “The only ones capable of moving that fast are Assault and maybe Chariot,” I said.

  “We’re short enough on time, and we need to know what happened to our other teammates,” Trickster said.

  “It’s not a good idea.” Grue folded his arms.

  “I’m making the call anyways. We can’t afford to wait.”

  Grue stood there, literally fuming as the darkness roiled around him. After a few long seconds, his pose relaxed and he held his hand out, “Then let me talk to her. We have a password system. The rest of you, keep an eye on her, and don’t forget to watch out for incoming th
reats.”

  “Good man. The two of us will be over there,” Trickster said, pointing to one area where sand and debris had been bulldozed into a small hill. ”Need to talk with ‘Dancer for a second. Shout if you need a hand.”

  I nodded. Grue, Trickster and Sundancer all stepped away, leaving Regent, Shatterbird, Imp and I to watch over our hostage.

  A minute passed, and she shifted position, her head leaving Grue’s darkness.

  “Back up,” Regent warned.

  “I have bad knees,” the Director said. ”I will if you make me, but it’s painful. I suppose that could be a way of easing into torture, if that’s your style.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Regent said, uncharacteristically cheery.

  “No,” I told him. To her, I said, “Sit however you want. We’ll cover you again if we start talking work.”

  She gave me a curt nod.

  “Maybe we should get her to command the suits?” Regent asked.

  “Won’t work,” the Director replied.

  “Why’s that?” Regent asked.

  “I can send them in, I can tell them where to go or when to stand by, but they do what they’re programmed to, and they’re programmed to avoid attacking civilians and local heroes.”

  “That didn’t stop the foam-spraying-” Regent started.

  “The Cawthorne model,” the Director interrupted.

  “Sure. That didn’t stop the Cawthorne thing from shooting Trickster when he had Kid Win hostage.”

  “I expect Dragon accounted for the fact that you might take hostages and use the nonlethality restrictions of the A.I. against it. She would have given the machines tools or strategies to work around it.”

  “And you’re just volunteering this information?” I asked.

  “I said it earlier, I think, but you’re not a stupid girl, Skitter. Reckless, shortsighted, capricious, violent, even vicious… but not stupid. I’m hoping you have the sense to realize how dangerous your current position is. There will be more mechanical suits coming. There will be heroes coming to Brockton Bay to assist us. You can’t afford to hold this city, and we can’t afford to let you. Not in the grand scheme of things.”