Worm

by John Mccrae Wildbow

  “Rule of three?”

  “Three times, you’ve been forced into the public eye. As the leader of Brockton Bay, as the newly christened Weaver, slayer of Alexandria, and here, in the video.”

  “I was just thinking about something like that, in a totally different way. Twice now, I’ve betrayed my teammates. At first, when they found out I was an aspiring hero, an undercover operative. Then I became Weaver. This’ll be the third. I had the camera, stuff was said and done, private stuff talked about, and they won’t like it. They didn’t ask to be in the spotlight any more than I did.”

  “Some of it will endear you to the public,” Glenn said.

  “Being worshipped as a god wouldn’t be worth hurting them again,” Weaver retorted. Her voice was hard again. “Grue believes that image and reputation are a kind of protection. Being seen as soft, when he’s dealing with people in the criminal underworld? It could get him killed.”

  “They’ll forgive you that setback, I’m sure. They’ll understand you didn’t choose to do it.”

  “Rachel’s not the understanding type. I’ve fought an uphill battle to get her trust, and if she feels hurt by this, or if she registers that others are hurt, and that I’m the culprit in any way-”

  “With luck, public opinion and an insight into the bond you have with the team will make it easier to interact with your old team. You’ll have more chances to fix any damage.”

  Weaver shook her head, staring down at the ground.

  “It’s an honest look into what the heroes do, Weaver. What you capes face every day. Why there’s so much gray in the moral palette. With this, Chevalier’s new Protectorate won’t be something that exists in name only.”

  “You could have asked.”

  “You would have said no. And there was no time. We needed to make it absolutely clear just what you and the rest of the heroes did on the field, so Scion couldn’t overshadow you. We needed to do it right away. Cement the idea into the public mind so it was the first concrete piece of information they got.”

  She stared at the ground. The lines in her face were deep with exhaustion. The butterflies had landed on her shoulders and arms.

  He let the idea sit. Better to let her speak next.

  She did. “Chevalier is laying the groundwork, I’m the harbinger… and you’re the sacrifice, then?”

  He met her eyes. “They won’t be as upset with you as they are right this moment. I’ll draw the initial heat. By the time they’re done with me, my career and any possible job in a related field will be ashes in the wind. For you, well, it’ll tip the scales. If you’re halfway into the ‘deserves a medal’ camp and halfway into the ‘needs to be punished’ camp, this will help.”

  “I could have done some things better, but was I that bad?”

  “Consorting with villains you were supposed to avoid, putting Wards on the line to help them, dealing with Phir Sē without contacting any superiors. You ignored the rules regarding image, took gambles-”

  “I had to. All of that. I was told that rules are relaxed on the field. You can’t seriously expect me to use butterflies against Behemoth.”

  “Of course not,” Glenn responded. “Do you think I’m stupid? I know this. But there’s a lot of people paying attention to this. Many people who will be in that room won’t know these things, won’t fully understand. Some won’t even watch the video before they pass judgement on what occurred in it. Never underestimate the stupidity of people.”

  Weaver made a sound, halfway to a sigh, halfway to a laugh.

  Glenn smiled a little. “The video burns one bridge. No more butterflies. Though they won’t hurt, because it makes it a hell of a lot harder for any common criminals to complain about an excess use of power, but I’m digressing…”

  Weaver’s phone beeped. A moment later, Glenn’s vibrated. He checked it.

  Convening to discuss Weaver’s conduct in room F. Please attend.

  He closed the message window.

  “Thank you,” Weaver said. “I think. I’m supposed to go now.”

  “Me too. Join me?” Glenn asked.

  Weaver nodded. Her collection of butterflies led the way out of the office.

  Glenn spoke without looking at her. “I don’t expect you to like me. Never really did. One of the first and biggest problems you ran into was with your image. It’s a problem even now, I suspect. It will continue to be a problem, especially now that you’re in the limelight.”

  “Uh huh.”

  Glenn reached into his vest pocket and withdrew a case. He opened it, removed a business card, and handed it over.

  “My number. In case you need advice. Well, use my cell. My work number probably won’t be mine for much longer.”

  Weaver stared down at the card. She didn’t need to look up as she walked, as the butterflies checked her path for her. Other bugs had joined them.

  “Just do me a favor,” Glenn said.

  Weaver glanced at him.

  “Make friends with whoever they hire to replace me. Listen to them. You’re allowed to hate them too, but hear them out. Can’t hurt.”

  She nodded. She looked down at the card again, then looked up at him. “Can I call this in now? It’s about my dad.”

  ■

  “Defiant?“

  Defiant couldn’t move, as he held a heavy concrete slab out of the way for emergency crews. He used the cursor embedded in his eye to select the ‘answer’ command, and shut the vents around his mouth.

  “Tiamat II, hold off on any reports for now.” Can’t take it, not right this moment.

  “It’s me.“

  Arc 25: Scarab

  25.01

  “This is exactly what I was talking about. She’s a dangerous influence.”

  “She’s a sixteen year old girl with strong opinions, Wilkins,” Armstrong answered. “Nothing more. She holds onto those opinions and her core worldview, and vulnerable people get caught up in her momentum. Cult leaders will do the same thing, only it’s purposeful in their case. Get people tired, get people worn out, scared and hungry, and then give them someone with presence to give them support.”

  “You’re saying she’s an accidental cult leader?”

  “She’s in a position where it’s very easy to sway others. A lot of the parahumans out there fit the criteria I’m talking about,” Armstrong said. He glanced at Glenn, who looked distinctly unhappy. “So, apparently, does our staff.”

  “I think you’re off target,” I said. “You’re talking about Foil, I get it, and Parian, and now the Chicago Wards and Glenn. But all of the decisions they made were when I wasn’t anywhere near them. Unless you’re implying I have some sort of mind control.”

  “No,” Armstrong told me. He didn’t fit his name; he looked more like my dad than anyone, though he had a peculiarly prominent jaw and a forehead that made it look like he was perpetually glaring. “It doesn’t matter if they’re near you. The message and the idea stays with them even after they leave your presence.”

  “Tecton just wanted someone to call the shots, to replace Raymancer,” I said. He was defending me, but it wasn’t helping.

  “We saw the video,” Director Wilkins said. “We know what he said. I think it’s best if you stop talking.”

  I bit my lip and turned my eyes to the table.

  “Well,” Glenn said. “What’s done is done. Can I suggest that perhaps, because it’s been a long day, we should retire? All of us will still be here in the morning.”

  “It sounds like a good idea,” Armstrong said. One or two heads around the table nodded.

  “We’re going to handle this tonight,” Wilkins said.

  “While the girl’s so tired she could fall asleep sitting up,” Glenn observed. “Or is it that you want to resolve this while Chevalier is in the hospital?”

  “Chevalier doesn’t matter,” Wilkins said. “This is PRT business.”

  “I agree. His input would be appreciated, if he was in a state to give it, but it’s ul
timately not his decision,” the Washington director said. He reminded me of Piggot, but he wasn’t fat. Heavy, but not fat like she’d been. It was more the way he held himself, his tone and approach. His graying hair was cropped close, and he had a combination of paler skin and dark circles under his eyes that made me think of a corpse. Director West.

  “We lose nothing by waiting,” Glenn said, calm, unflappable. I’d seen that confidence before, in people who’d had nothing to lose. I’d had that confidence before.

  “We lose time. If we’re going to respond to the press and the public, we need to act sooner than later.”

  “My concern…” a woman said, drawing out the thought, “Is that her actions go against the spirit of the PRT and the groups under the PRT’s umbrella. Conspiring with a known terrorist, betraying the truce, even, for a subtle advantage in dealing with that terrorist, returning to her old team against all terms of her probation, rejecting orders, and taking reckless risks with PRT personnel, getting two injured. A longstanding goal of the PRT has been to reassure the public, and this only paints heroes as something dangerous.”

  I already didn’t like her. I wasn’t even sure what city she was from.

  “That doesn’t even include the fact that this leak shows capes going all out. When the joy at the victory wears off, people are going to look at the footage and wonder if they’re in danger,” West said.

  We won, I thought. We beat him, and you’re quibbling over details.

  Why were they doing this? Why were they so intent on railroading me? Screwing me over?

  These guys, or some of them, were the old guard. Defenders of the status quo. Tagg would have fit into this little cadre.

  Maybe that was part of the reason.

  “-Birdcage.”

  The word hung in the air.

  I snapped to attention, fully awake in an instant. I had to take a second to look at the faces of the people around the table before I realized who’d said it. Armstrong, the man who’d been my advocate an instant ago.

  “A little extreme,” West said.

  “The next few fights are going to be crucial. Every time the Endbringers come, there are major losses. We lose good capes. Others step in, but they don’t have the experience or the organization, so we lose more. New Delhi was very nearly the culmination of that.”

  “We won New Delhi.”

  “We lost. Scion won,” Armstrong responded. “Participation will be up for the next fight. Let’s use that. We bolster the numbers further, by tapping the Birdcage. There are powerful capes in there, and some are cooperative.”

  Oh. They aren’t talking about me.

  “And if they start wreaking havoc afterward? Or turn on us?”

  “We can be select about it. Dragon’s willing to give us a searchable database of all of the conversation and behavior records within the Birdcage.”

  I raised my head at that. “Dragon’s alive?”

  “She got in contact with us a short while ago.”

  I nodded. I felt a little dazed, confused. Too much in a short time. I was reaching the point where I wasn’t sure I’d be able to take it all in.

  “It’s not worth it,” West said.

  “A moderate risk for a chance to save hundreds, thousands, even millions of lives,” Armstrong said.

  “How many lives do we lose because of the monsters we set free?” West retorted. “Those criminals were put there for a reason.”

  “At first,” Armstrong said. “But the rationale for indefinite detention has been getting weaker, and the number of capes going in has been increasing. I-”

  “It’s not going to happen, Armstrong,” West cut him off.

  Armstrong deflated a little, settling back in his chair.

  “The media is already reaching out to us to ask for interviews with Weaver,” one of the other Directors said. “They love her or hate her, but this won’t die down anytime soon.”

  “Primacy effect,” West said, frowning. “That video is going to be the first thing people will think about when they think about people in the field during an Endbringer attack.”

  “So we drown it,” the woman from before said. “Release the footage we held back, footage with a more favorable effect on us. Weaver gets lost in the shuffle, and we quietly address the unbecoming conduct.”

  We won, you bastards. I clenched my fists beneath the table.

  “Address how?”

  “It’s a violation of her probationary membership. She’s off the team for the time being, if not permanently. She fulfills the remainder of her sentence, then remains in our custody as a consult. “

  I noticed that my bugs were acting of their own volition, treating this as a crisis scenario. They were massing, and they were winding silk threads around the PRT uniforms that guarded the room, around the containment foam sprayers and guns that they held.

  I’d missed the Undersiders, hated that I wasn’t there with them as they said goodbye to Regent. Part of the reason I’d become a hero had been to reconnect with my dad, but the gap seemed too wide. I’d killed, and he’d seen me kill. He was afraid of me.

  It would be easy to disable the PRT uniforms, attack the directors and simply make my way to Brockton Bay. I could patch things up with Grue, help Rachel, ensure that Imp didn’t go to a dark place.

  But it wouldn’t get me anywhere.

  He wanted to play hardball? I’d play hard in return. I turned my attention to my swarm for a moment.

  “I think you’re underestimating how badly the public would react if Weaver was punished,” Glenn said.

  “We’re facing a lose-lose situation, Mr. Chambers,” Chief Director West said. “We cut our losses, take a hit in PR, but we can continue operating as we need to. So long as it’s quiet, she goes to prison and doesn’t go out on another big excursion, I don’t think anyone’s about to make a big deal of it.”

  …make a big deal of it. I turned the words around in my head. Manipulating the media, manipulating the local capes. Damn. I’d had high hopes for Chevalier’s new Protectorate, but it didn’t seem to extend to the PRT.

  “We can deflect,” the woman from before said. “Raise another issue, change the focus of the public.”

  “Not so easy,” Glenn said. “It’s been done too often in the past. They’re watching for it, even anticipating it.”

  “But the majority won’t be,” she responded. She turned to Director West. “The alert, educated minority will complain, but they won’t achieve anything meaningful. They never do.”

  “I’m inclined to agree,” Director West said. “It’s not pretty, but it’ll suffice.”

  “Why?” I asked. “You can’t deny I helped. I didn’t deliver a serious blow, but I helped to coordinate, I had ideas, I used them.”

  “There’s other smart capes out there,” a man said. He didn’t give me the impression of a PRT director. Another staff member?

  “I did a lot of good, and you’re railroading me. Is it because you’re losing control of things and I make an easy target? Because you’re afraid of me?”

  “Because you’re consistently unpredictable. Unreliable. We set rules and you break them,” West told me.

  “Rules don’t generally apply during an Endbringer attack,” I said. “The only thing that matters is taking the motherfucker down. We did.”

  “I’m inclined to agree,” Armstrong said. “This is going a step too far. She did well.”

  A few heads nodded around the table, but they didn’t have the majority, and they didn’t have the clout that Chief Director West did. Glenn had spoken of a fifty-fifty split in the reactions, and he was more or less on target. But the power held by the people who were standing up for me was nothing compared to the clout the others had.

  “This is beyond the Endbringer attack. It’s overall conduct,” the woman at the far end of the table said.

  “When? Can you name incidents? Beyond the Endbringer attack?” I challenged her.

  “Spiders in the less trav
eled areas of the prison,” West told me.

  Spiders in the prison. Shit.

  I felt myself deflate a little, but I managed to keep my face straight. “If there are any, they’re eggs that recently hatched.”

  “And the costume? A weave of silk cloth hidden out of sight.”

  Damn.

  “That predated my discussion with the Warden,” I lied. “I got rid of the spiders, moved on.”

  “You could have reported it.”

  “That an abandoned time-killing project was stuck in behind some pipes? Why?”

  “Because this happens. There’s no reason to believe you.”

  I clenched my fists.

  “You’re dangerous, Taylor Hebert. Unpredictable. You’re deceptive, clever enough to come up with tricks, but not clever enough to stick to the straight and narrow from the beginning. Armstrong said it himself. You’re good at manipulating people.”

  …Manipulating people, I thought. Not as good as I wanted to be.

  Armstrong spoke up, “You’re twisting my words, West. I said she was well situated for interacting with vulnerable people, and stalwart enough in her own worldview that others can get swept up in her flow.”

  “Regardless. Ms. Hebert was right about one thing. It’s late. It’s been an emotionally exhausting day.”

  “Physically exhausting too,” I said, not taking my eyes off the Chief Director. “You know, running around, fighting Behemoth while you guys sit in your-”

  Glenn shifted one leg under the table, pressing it against mine. A nudge, not overt.

  I stopped.

  My power crackled at the edge of my attention. My bugs were moving again, without any direct instructions from me. I reined them in, and then distributed them through the building. Was there someone I could contact? Something I could communicate to the right person, to change what was happening here?

  West ignored my comment, turning his attention to Glenn. “Mr. Chambers, you’re relieved of duty. You likely knew this already.”

  “I understand,” Glenn said.

  “We’ll discuss on our own whether we need to press charges.”