Worm

by John Mccrae Wildbow

  “Earth Aleph,” Tattletale said.

  The Travelers’ world?

  “Are you insane?” Alexandria asked. “There’s sanctions, treaties, truces. If you open this hole to Earth Aleph, it could mean a war between universes.”

  “If that war was possible,” Tattletale said, “We’d have had it already. The possibility of a whole other world of resources is too much to pass up. Sure, our side has more raw firepower, by a factor of a hundred, but their side has just as many nukes. It’s a zero sum war.”

  “You don’t understand what you’re getting into.”

  “What I understand is that accidents happen, and everyone in earshot will call this particular interuniversal portal as an accident, because it keeps things peaceful. I also understand that this keeps Brockton Bay on the map. Any other circumstance, people are going to keep trying to scrap this city, to accept that it’s too costly to rebuild, that the criminal element holds too much power. They’ll throw bill after bill out there until the right combination of people are in power, the right hands can be greased, and Brockton Bay gets bulldozed and paved over.”

  “It still could,” a cape said.

  “Oh, sure, theoretically,” Tattletale said. “But there’s really two options here. Either we spread the word, and a whole sub-industry explodes around this simple little doorway, accessing and trading information between worlds, research, a mess of other stuff, a city full of residents who’ve put up with disaster after disaster get work, get their homes rebuilt, and ultimately get their second chance.”

  “Or we keep this a secret,” I finished her thought, “And we get none of that.”

  “Or we keep this a secret,” Tattletale agreed, “We do what Alexandria wants, and everything stays hush hush, just the way the big bad secret organization likes it.”

  I could see the capes around us paying attention. Ten, fifteen capes, from cities all across America and Canada.

  “You have no idea what you’re doing,” Alexandria said.

  “Fucking you over?”

  “You’re putting everything at stake. All of us, this world. Even if we ignore the chance of our very first interdimensional war-”

  “Traitor!” someone shouted from the sidelines, cutting her off.

  Alexandria turned her head to try and identify the culprit. I got the impression she wasn’t used to people insulting her. There were more capes nearby. Miss Militia had backed up, but was keeping her eyes on the spot where Echidna was trapped. On the far side of the clearing where the gateway stood, Gregor the Snail escorted a bound Sundancer and Ballistic to the periphery of the area.

  “I can’t help but agree with Alexandria,” Faultline said. “This is reckless.”

  “More than a little,” Tattletale agreed. “But I’m not sure you heard the full story. I only heard it secondhand, and I was with you from the time your helicopter arrived. When we last ran into Newter, you guys were looking for dirt on Cauldron. You still looking?”

  Faultline’s eyes narrowed. “Why?”

  “No less than ten minutes ago, Eidolon’s evil double admitted full culpability. The Triumvirate, much of the upper levels of the Protectorate. Kidnapping people from other universes, experimenting on them to figure out some power-inducing formulas, dropping them here. Might help you to understand why people are giving Alexandria the evil eye.”

  Faultline glanced at Alexandria. “A little too easy, to find out like this.”

  “It’s not the full story,” Tattletale said, “Not by half. But it should inform your call on whether to side with her or not.”

  Faultline frowned. “That’s not… no. Maybe she is the person behind the scenes. Fine. But that doesn’t change the fact that she might be right. Better to have Labyrinth find another universe to link to. Maybe one where a mountain is blocking the other side of this gateway, if we can’t close it.”

  “Why do you have to be so reasonable?” Tattletale asked. “That’s the worst of both worlds.”

  “It’s not war,” Faultline retorted.

  “Stop,” Chevalier said. People parted to give him room to enter the clearing. “There’s other concerns. The deal that was described to me was that the Travelers would do what they could to eliminate Echidna. Failing that, we find a way to move her through the gap and deposit her in a place where she can do no harm. That’s our first priority.”

  There was a murmur of agreement.

  “Want to go home, Sundancer? B-man?” Tattletale asked. “Genesis? Oliver?”

  Ballistic, Genesis and Oliver stared at the opening. Sundancer was shaking her head.

  “What?”

  Sundancer spoke, “I… it’s not home anymore, is it? I’m not me. Can’t go back to the way things were. I’ve killed people. Accidentally, but I’ve killed. I have powers. If I went there, I wouldn’t be Marissa. I’d be… Sundancer. I’d be famous. If anyone found out about me, or if there was something in the media that goes between worlds, that clued them in…”

  “They don’t have to know,” Tattletale said.

  “I don’t… I don’t know if I can.”

  I spoke up, “Are you talking about going home, or killing Noelle?”

  “She’s… she was my best friend.”

  “She’s not Noelle anymore,” I said.

  Sundancer shook her head.

  “Go,” Tattletale said. “She’s not happy like this. You do this, then you go home. You give your mom a hug, fabricate an excuse to explain why you disappeared, and then go back to life as normal. Never use your powers again, if you don’t want to. See if you can eventually convince yourself that none of this ever happened.”

  “It’s not that easy.”

  “No. But it’s a hell of a lot better than staying here, isn’t it?” Tattletale asked.

  “She’s my friend.”

  “Was,” I said. “It’s a big difference.”

  Sundancer looked at the mound of ice, rock and forcefields. Echidna was thrusting her clawed hands through the barriers, only for them to be reinforced.

  “Are there… does she have anyone inside her?”

  “There’s-” Tattletale started. I flew a bug into her mouth and down her throat, and she choked.

  “No,” I lied. “I’ve been keeping track with my bugs. Weld and the others got everyone out.”

  Saved everyone they could. If Weld had backed out and nobody else was able to free the small handful that were still trapped, that was it.

  Nobody was correcting me. They knew, but they weren’t correcting me.

  Sundancer hung her head. She started approaching Echidna, her hands cupped in front of her.

  “Move!” Chevalier shouted. “Clear out of the way!”

  Capes began to retreat. Final patch-up jobs were thrown onto the mound of rock, forcefields and ice before the respective capes turned and ran.

  It took Sundancer a long few seconds to form the miniature sun. When it was formed, she held it over her head, letting it grow with every passing second.

  I had to back away as the heat reached me. I could note how the ice was melting, even though it was a hundred feet away.

  Echidna roared and threw herself against her temporary prison. Rock and melting ice tumbled away. She began to claw free, until her upper body was exposed. Capes opened with ranged fire, tearing into her forelimbs and limiting her mobility. Alexandria dropped Tattletale and cast off her cape, before flying in and helping to hold Echidna in place.

  “Marissa!” Echidna screamed, her voice guttural, voiced from five different mouths. “Mars! It’s too soon! I want to kill them! I want to kill them all! Kill this world! Destroy this universe that did this to me! Not yet, Mars!”

  The sun flew forward, melting pavement as it traveled, before it enveloped Echidna, Alexandria and the prison of ice and stone.

  It hung there for nearly a minute, deafening with its sizzling and crackling.

  The sun flickered and went out. Echidna wasn’t there any more. Only sections of her feet
were still in contact with the ground, bones and claws scorched black, crumbling and decaying like any part of her did when disconnected from the core that supplied her with power.

  Alexandria was there in the midst of it, panting for breath. Her costume had burned away, and only the metal pieces remained, including helmet, belt and metal underwear, each so hot they were melting and running over her skin.

  But Sundancer was already turning away, not wanting to see it for herself. She pulled off her mask and threw it aside. Blond hair tumbled down around her shoulders, half-covering her downcast face.

  Piece by piece, she removed her costume, not caring in the slightest about the watching crowd. Each discarded piece sank into the melted ground around her or smoked on contact with it. When she’d finished, she wore only her camisole and terry shorts. The ground was still shiny and smoking from the sheer heat as she approached, left cool and solid in her wake.

  She stepped into the portal, without a word, and then looked around, confused. She took another few steps, and passed around the side of the portal as though it were merely a corner, out of sight.

  The other Travelers went through next. Oliver and Genesis didn’t look like anything but ordinary people, with no costume or monstrous form, respectively. They merely passed through.

  Ballistic hesitated for long seconds. “Trickster?”

  “We have him in custody. He’ll go to the Birdcage,” Chevalier said.

  “Good. Because we don’t want him,” Ballistic said.

  He walked through the portal, still wearing his costume.

  “Can you close it?” Faultline asked, when Ballistic had disappeared from sight.

  “No. Not really,” Labyrinth said. “I can pick a different world. So there’s no war. Or do like you said, find a place where a mountain covers the hole.”

  “Feel free,” Tattletale said, grinning. “In fact, that might even be more useful. Can you imagine how significant Brockton Bay might become, if we had a whole unpopulated world to get to, harvest for resources, and Brockton Bay was the terminal you had to pass through?”

  Faultline frowned. “You used us.”

  “I hired you. Not my fault if you didn’t ask for enough money.“

  Faultline put her arm around Labyrinth’s shoulders. “Can you find a world without people?”

  “I… yes. There’s one with lots of trees. I’m looking all over, and I can’t find anyone at all. Not even on the other side of the oceans. Only animals.”

  “That’ll do,” Faultline said. She looked at Tattletale, “Not for you. Only because I couldn’t stand to let her be responsible for an Endbringer finding a defenseless world.”

  “Much obliged, whatever the reasoning,” Tattletale replied. She flashed a smile.

  Faultline only frowned and turned to usher Labyrinth away.

  “Wait,” someone called out.

  Weld, with the red skinned boy and Gully beside him. They caught up with Faultline’s crew.

  Whatever words they exchanged, I didn’t get a chance to hear. There was no way that the ‘monsters’ could serve the Protectorate. Faultline was a known element, someone who had, as far as everyone was aware, always been good to the people I was now thinking of as the Cauldron-made.

  I couldn’t even begin to guess where they’d go from there, but they’d have stuff to talk about, no doubt.

  I’d mentioned to Tattletale that I’d felt adrift, after letting Dinah go. Untethered, I think, was the word I’d used. Everyone here now felt like that, to some degree. The future had never been quite this uncertain.

  I saw Alexandria standing by the sideline. Eidolon had gathered her heavy cape where she’d tossed it aside and was helping to drape it around her shoulders. I wasn’t the only one looking, but she was oblivious, uncaring. She still stood with all the confidence in the world.

  She was barely covered, with one hand pinching the cape shut in front of her, traces of now-cooled metal lacing through her hair, the eyebrow and eyelashes of her one good eye. It highlighted the lines at the corner of her eye, a finer metal finding its way into the crevices. Her other eye held only a scarred over ruin with cooled metal pooled in the deeper recesses. There were nubs of melted metal rods, no doubt there to help hold a high-end prosthetic in place. Tinker-made, if she’d been hiding her injury to play the role of the PRT’s Chief Director.

  Without Echidna to divide our number, our ranks were free to line up in a rough semicircle around Alexandria and Eidolon.

  “Nobody can know what happened today,” Alexandria said, utterly calm.

  Someone scoffed. ”You want us to keep your secret?“

  “Not the secret,” she said, unfazed by the scoff. “Echidna. Four capes were inside her when she was scoured away. More were injured or killed in the course of the fight, or in Shatterbird’s attack. We can’t cover that up. We shouldn’t. They were good capes. But we can’t tell the whole story.”

  “You don’t get to say that,” the ice-generating cape said. “You have no place, saying that.”

  “I won’t argue,” Alexandria said. “Everything we did, we did for the right reasons. I understand it’s ugly, without the context.”

  Someone at the front spat in her face. Alexandria didn’t even blink. She let the spit run down around the ruined pit where her eye had been, much like she had with the molten metal.

  “If word were to get out about the clones, the ramifications would be too damaging. We’ve spent decades cultivating an illusion, that we’re heroes. Decades shaking the idea that we’re killing machines. The nature of this fight threatens to reveal just how much damage even the more mundane of us parahumans could do to the common people. That’s not only the clones and what they did, but how we dealt with the clones, in turn. We can’t shatter the image that the Protectorate has so painstakingly built, or the entire world will turn on us.”

  “And the Protectorate?” Miss Militia asked, her voice hard.

  “What of it?”

  “The involvement with Cauldron. It won’t stand, not like this.”

  “It has to,” Alexandria replied. “Too much depends on the Protectorate, even internationally. If it crumbles, then the whole world suffers for it. Other teams around the world would go without the resources we provide. If it means keeping the Protectorate intact, I will step down. I’ll tender my resignation as Chief Director of the PRT, effective the moment I can reach my desk. I’ll consent to being watched until the moment I can step down as Alexandria, if you are uncomfortable with me continuing to serve the Protectorate in costume. Eidolon, I’m sure, will do the same. Myrddin’s death will be excuse enough for our retirements.”

  “What about Legend?” Miss Militia asked.

  Alexandria raised her head, staring up at where Legend hung in the air, unmoving.

  “He was only aware of the most basic elements. That Cauldron sold powers, but not how we tested them. He did not know of our relation to the Nine.”

  “He made excuses for you,” Miss Militia said. “Lied. We can’t trust him any more than we can trust you.”

  “I’m aware. But what he does next is ultimately up to him. I am only telling you what I know, and I know he did not know as much as Eidolon and I did.”

  “That’s not good enough,” a cape said. “You’ve committed crimes against humanity. You bastards should be tried.”

  “Do that, and the whole world pays. Every cape would come under scrutiny, both from other parahumans and from the public. Teams would dissolve, faith would falter, and I sincerely doubt we’d last through the next two Endbringer attacks in that kind of a state.”

  All around me, capes exchanged glances. I could hear angry murmurs, my swarm could sense fists clenching in anger.

  “And the captives? The people from other worlds Cauldron kidnapped?” Miss Militia asked.

  “Anyone with clearance should know that the number of people with physical mutations has declined steeply. We’ve stopped experimenting.”

  “Or so yo
u say,” Tattletale cut in.

  “I do. Tell me I’m lying, Tattletale,” Alexandria said.

  Tattletale shook her head.

  “You need us,” Alexandria said. “If not for the assistance we can provide in the face of class-S threats, then for the image, for the idea. I’m trusting that each of you are sane enough, reasonable enough, to understand that. You could come after us, but I assure you it wouldn’t be worth it.”

  “And Cauldron?” someone asked.

  “As I said, we’re only barely involved. If you want to try going after them and get justice for what happened to the captives, feel free. Just know that we can’t help you there. We can’t give you access or information, because they’re out of your reach, and in the wake of all this, they’ll be out of our reach too.”

  I felt numb. She was everything I despised. Authority, the institution, the self-serving people in power, the untouchable. All around me, I could hear angry voices, each trying to drown the others out. Chevalier was among them, Miss Militia was quiet.

  Tattletale was quiet, oddly enough.

  “I-” I started, but the voices drowned me out.

  My swarm buzzed with noise. People startled and jumped as the bugs moved, shifting from the various positions where I’d more or less hidden them at elbows and in armor plates.

  I stepped out of the crowd, toward Alexandria, and then turned my back to her, facing the capes. So many eyes on me.

  “She’s right,” I said, my swarm carrying my voice for effect.

  Voices rose in anger, and again, I had my swarm move, buzzing violently, until they stopped.

  “I’m not a public speaker, so I’ll make it short. I’ve got a long history with the Protectorate, a hell of a lot more experience being angry with them. I wouldn’t be where I am if it weren’t for them, and that’s not a good thing, not entirely. But Alexandria’s right. Not about Cauldron, or the human experimentation. I don’t know anything about that. But she’s right that we shouldn’t make any rash descisions. Talk it out with your teammates before you make a call. Maybe the various team and squad leaders should convene, form a unanimous decision. I don’t know. But… don’t let your anger push you to do something that affects everyone. Please.”