Worm

by John Mccrae Wildbow

  “A good lawyer won’t ask a question on the stand if they don’t already know the answer they’re going to receive. You should take that under advisement. With the information you have available, you shouldn’t ever make assumptions. The only person you can blame when you’re proven wrong is yourself.”

  “I feel pretty confident I can blame you on this one, Doctor.”

  “Do what you need to in order to make peace with yourself. At this juncture, it might be all you can do. Buying time and making peace with things at the end. Thank you for wasting my time. Door.”

  Tattletale didn’t respond. I could only assume Doctor Mother had left. I reached out for my swarm, and I found for the first time in months that there weren’t many nearby. How long had it been since I slept and didn’t have an emergency swarm nearby for self-defense and investigation? Since I didn’t leave hundreds of thousands of spiders spinning threads of silk?

  That wasn’t to say there weren’t any. There were bugs throughout the building, but they hadn’t moved until I woke up. Spiders in corners, bugs in the walls. A hospital, newly built judging by the freshness of the wood. I could smell it.

  There were tents just outside, set on grass that was just starting to die.

  I hadn’t even registered it consciously when I visited New Brockton Bay, but the grass had been fresh, alive.

  It had been days.

  I swung my legs over the edge of the bed, sliding them out from under the sheets. I realized I was wearing only the hospital gown.

  My costume-

  -Would be destroyed, I realized, belatedly. The lower half, anyways. No reason to expect the silk would last if the flesh and bone had been obliterated.

  Which raised really strange thoughts on the particulars of having my legs rebuilt. I’d spent years running as a matter of routine. A part of me had been proud of the way I’d honed my body, built up my stamina.

  Had they rebuilt my legs with that same strength and stamina? With the muscles reflecting the regular exercise? If they had, was it really my strength? If they hadn’t, could I deal with it? Work my way back to where I had been?

  If humanity even survived that long.

  I needed to go to the bathroom, which made me think of other things. Had my private parts been reconstituted? Had Panacea paid any particular attention to the redesign or accuracy of the architecture or plumbing?

  Or had it been Bonesaw that fixed me up?

  My skin crawled at the thought, heebie-jeebies from head to toe. No bugs involved. The sensation only served to remind me of how alien the new body parts felt, reinforcing the creeped out feeling.

  Someone found a powerful regeneration-granter and healed me. Bonesaw and Panacea had nothing to do with it, I told myself. Nothing to do with it.

  The first bugs in the hospital were starting to make their way to me. They crawled up the sides of the bed and up onto the hospital gown I wore. I eased my feet down to the cold tile and steadied myself against the bed.

  My body was okay, but I felt out of it in the same way I might have if I’d slept in too long.

  Not that I’d had that luxury in some time.

  Maybe it was odd, to think about things in this sense, to be concerned about my swarm or my body or the fact that I was tired. Part of that might have been an unconscious form of procrastination.

  “Hey,” the yellow-haired girl spoke. She was quiet, but the utterance carried across the room.

  I’d been staring down at the foot of the bed. I looked up at her.

  “You okay? If there’s pain, or if you don’t feel okay to move, I can hit the button to call someone.”

  Her voice was attention grabbing, the pitch and tone shifting very deliberately. Done badly, it might have sounded like she was over-enunciating. She leveraged it well enough that it didn’t sound that way, nor did it detract from the sympathy she was expressing.

  I was a little caught off guard by it. Left wordless, I shook my head.

  “Things are bad, but I guess you heard that much,” she said.

  “Yeah,” I managed.

  “I’d explain, but your friends would probably be kinder.”

  I shook my head a little. “You don’t know my friends.”

  “They cared enough to sit by you. One or two of them even held your hand during the tougher moments.”

  “Tougher?”

  “Panacea said your nerve endings were being reformed, and it was pretty raw. So you had a lot of fits, like seizures.”

  “Oh,” I said. “It’s been a few days, I’m guessing?”

  “I guess. I moved in here last night, and you were still out.”

  I felt my heart sink. It was confirmation. Scion was still active, and had been for at least one day.

  “How bad is the situation?” I asked.

  She glanced at the door. “Bad.”

  “That’s not telling me anything.”

  “Really bad?”

  “Casualty numbers? Key deaths?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t- I never followed any of the cape stuff.”

  “You’re a rogue, then,” I said. And an ex-member of the Birdcage, if I remember right.

  “Yeah. Canary. I was a singer, until midway through twenty-ten. Indie, but I was breaking through to mainstream, some radio stuff.”

  I nodded, not really caring. I wanted more details, and I didn’t.

  “Another Earth, another time, another society,” she said, more to herself than to me.

  I moved and flexed my legs, trying to judge if the old musculature was intact. It felt more out of sync than my hands did. It wasn’t that I wasn’t ungrateful, but…

  No, not worth moaning over it, one way or the other. I had my life, I had an intact body.

  “Do you know if this is even remotely salvageable?” I asked. “Humanity? Civilization?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  Was that a no, it wasn’t salvageable, or no, she didn’t know?

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to ask. I saw Aisha poke her head in, glancing into the room. She met my eyes, then disappeared.

  “Well,” she said, “They’re still fighting. Kind of. So there has to be something to fight for, right?”

  She injected a note of hope into the statement. I almost believed her, almost bought into it.

  But I shook my head. “Kind of, but kind of not?”

  “People were talking about it, asked if I’d fight, and they encouraged me and stuff, but when I said no, they started talking among themselves, and it didn’t sound so hot.”

  “No. I’m thinking it probably isn’t so hot. You’re right. There are reasons to fight, and saving humanity isn’t necessarily the sum of it.”

  “Selfish reasons,” she concluded.

  I nodded. “Pride. Revenge. Sheer stubbornness. I like stubbornness.”

  She nodded, but she didn’t respond.

  “Why aren’t you fighting?” I asked. Then I raised a hand, stopping her before she could speak. “Sorry. That came out like an accusation. I only… I meant it out of curiosity.”

  “It’s okay. I might deserve the accusations. I’m not a fighter. Like, at all. Besides, what could I do? Girl with a good voice.”

  I shook my head.

  Voices. I thought about it. How many capes had I run into with eerie or altered voices? I’d had the beginnings of a thought while talking to some kids back in my first days among the Chicago Wards. Cricket, Rachel, Labyrinth, Night, Oni Lee, Mannequin and others I couldn’t be bothered to think of, had had their voices or their abilities to communicate either removed or altered irrevocably. Leviathan, Scion, the other Endbringers, they didn’t speak either, but they weren’t quite human.

  Me, Grue, Eidolon, Glaistig Uaine, Dragon, Defiant, Bakuda, Über, Canary… we’d all used powers or technology to manipulate our voices, had done it as a matter of habit. A lot of us were powerful capes, others were minor capes striving to look more important. Odds were good I fit in Über’s position, more than Eid
olon’s. I could guess that Canary was in the ‘low power’ category as well, but I didn’t know enough about her. Bakuda was hard to place, but I suspected her power was devastating, and her lack of success was due to the chassis the power had attached to. An unstable, unpredictable individual, too intent on terrorism to become as big as her power deserved.

  Damn, we could probably have used some of her best work.

  Was there something important in that jumble of stray thoughts on voices and communication problems, or was my mind wandering in vain attempts to avoid thinking about how bad things were?

  Communication. The word crossed my mind.

  Tattletale entered the room through the door to Canary’s left. Rachel and Aisha followed, with Bastard and another dog trailing behind. Tattletale carried a pile of clothes, neatly folded and stacked.

  “Tailored to your measurements. I wasn’t sure if you’d be keen on getting straight into costume or not. A lot of people aren’t.”

  “Thank you,” I said, taking the clothes.

  I didn’t dress. Instead, I stood by the side of the bed, holding the clothing.

  They waited, as if apprehensive. Aisha wasn’t visibly upset, so I could assume Grue had gotten out.

  I sighed a little. “How bad is it?”

  “We lost just about half of everyone,” Tattletale said. “Maybe more, but communicating’s hard right now. Don’t exactly have an infrastructure.”

  “Everyone being-”

  “The capes, the civilians. Everyone. Half of Bet’s onetime population is gone, just about. Good news is he’s traveling between possible Earths, hitting major population centers, so the individual incidents aren’t doing so much damage on a relative level. Bad news is he’s traveling between possible Earths.”

  I tried to process that, then gave up. “How many possible Earths are there?”

  “Not as many as there should be,” Tattletale said. “Technically, every action should create a world where that action came to pass. Best guess is that he compartmentalized everything. Limited how far we could roam so he could save the other Earths for… something.”

  I nodded slowly.

  “We’re in bad shape,” Tattletale said. She offered me a sympathetic half-grin, as if she’d just told a joke she knew was bad.

  “We’re doomed,” Aisha added. “The dog is fucked.”

  Rachel wrapped her arm around Aisha’s neck, seizing her in a headlock, wordless. Aisha struggled and squeaked, while Rachel maintained the hold, not so tight as to choke, but tight enough to be uncomfortable.

  I looked pointedly at Canary, as if to say, I told you they’d be blunt.

  Tattletale followed my gaze. “Refugees. We’re forced to keep moving, split up and spread out because of limited resources, and to minimize the damage when any one location gets hit. Canary was a refugee from another group. She wanted a place to stay, I offered.”

  “Canary said people are still fighting,” I ventured.

  Tattletale didn’t budge an inch. A poker face. Aisha’s expression, by contrast, gave it away. Pained, concerned, looking to Tattletale for validation.

  “No?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Tattletale said, but she didn’t look confident. “Except it’s not Scion they’re fighting.”

  I’d heard of someone’s heart skipping a beat, had read about it enough times, but this was something else. It was more like missing a stair and hitting the ground floor a little too hard, a thud in my chest.

  So many things that could mean, none of them good.

  Tattletale tucked her hair behind her ear, a tell, and then pointed at the door. “Easier to show than to tell. Come on, Canary.”

  “I don’t- I’m not sure I want to know,” Canary said.

  “You’re going to find out one way or another.”

  Canary didn’t budge.

  “Okay. Whatever,” Tattletale said. She glanced at me. “I’m gonna pull up all the relevant files, so this won’t be five seconds of explanation with thirty seconds of searching between each bit. Come whenever you’re dressed and ready. If you want to get her to come along, it probably wouldn’t hurt.”

  I nodded.

  Tattletale stepped out, and Rachel let her arm drop. I was surprised to see Aisha there, a little flushed in the face as she fled. She gave Rachel the middle finger on her way out, walking backwards through the door.

  I almost started to close the curtain for privacy, then realized I didn’t give a damn. I began pulling on the underwear.

  “Are you going to try to convince me to fight?” Canary asked.

  “No, I don’t think so,” I responded. “No point, is there? Unless you want me to.”

  “She’s scared,” Rachel observed.

  “Everyone’s scared,” I responded. Rachel hesitated, then nodded a little.

  Canary spoke up, “What did she mean, it wouldn’t hurt?”

  I started putting on the skinny jeans Tattletale had given me, hiking them up beneath the hospital gown. “My guess? Most of the people we lost were some of the best of us. Team leaders, brilliant tinkers, people who’ve seen ten or more Endbringer fights. People you’ve heard about in the news, people you grew up reading about in magazines or newspapers. Heroes, villains, people who don’t apply to either category, all gone.”

  I watched her expression change, studied it. Eyebrows raising, the movements of her eyes as she mentally processed the fact that people like Eidolon weren’t around any more.

  I continued. “…They were the sort of people who’d go to the front line without hesitation. Not sure how many we have left, but odds are good we’re down to a select few. Major players who were lucky, clever or tough enough to walk away, capes with crappy powers or powers that don’t apply, and then rogues or new capes who aren’t experienced in fighting.”

  Gently, cautiously, I added, “We need everyone we can get.”

  “I… I can’t do violence. Like, at all,” Canary protested. I turned my back to pull off the hospital gown and do my bra. I noted a change in the coloration of my skin where the flesh had been regrown.

  “It’s easy,” Rachel said, taking over while I was distracted. “You hurt people until they stop doing whatever it is that irritated you. Taylor kicked me in the head the first time we met, and she was way scrawnier than you are now. I stopped doing what she hated me doing, setting my dogs on her.”

  “No. I mean, it’s like, mentally, I couldn’t do it. I get sick at the sight of blood. Besides, my power wouldn’t affect Scion.”

  “Probably not,” I agreed, pulling on the strapless top with the string going around the throat. I turned around. I thought about what Doctor Mother had said at the last big meeting. “But the real question is, do you want to be there when the world ends, struck by the sudden realization that maybe, possibly, you could have done something to help?”

  She stared down at her legs.

  “Baby steps,” I said. “I’m not asking you to fight. Just… come. Listen to what Tattletale has to say. Guilt free, just to go that far.”

  “And then it’s harder to refuse the next part,” she said.

  “I promise I won’t ask you to do anything,” I said. “Strictly volunteer stuff. If nothing else, think of it as a morale thing. I’m using my bugs to feel out the surroundings, and the building is damn empty. I’d feel a hell of a lot better about this if we had just one more body in the room.”

  “A morale thing.”

  I nodded.

  “Okay.”

  I grabbed the heavy jacket Tattletale had included and pulled it on. If we were going anywhere Scion had been, odds were good it’d be cold, much like Earth Bet had been on our last visit.

  We made our way out of the little room with the beds.

  Tattletale had set up a command center. The bulletin boards, the notes, the files, books and more had all multiplied tenfold. She must have moved me closer to home, so I could be watched.

  Aisha was with her, sitting on the edge of the desk.


  “Bitch,” Tattletale said. “Can-”

  “I’ll go patrol,” Rachel said.

  Tattletale nodded.

  She turned one of her computer monitors our way as we approached, so we had a clear view. When she started the clip, the same video showed on each of the monitors on the desk.

  “Video feed from a cape called Greenhorn.”

  “I know him,” I said. A new member of the Wards, having joined just before the Slaughterhouse Nine reappeared. Untrained, he’d deigned to wear Defiant’s combat calculation suit.

  The image played out. It took me a while to realize what I was looking at. A crowd of refugees, fleeing into a portal.

  The camera panned as Greenhorn turned his head.

  Faultline was there, along with Dinah, Gregor, Labyrinth and Scrub.

  Tattletale waited, then paused the image. She tapped the screen.

  I glanced at the image, but I didn’t see anything out of place. People in the crowd, tired, worn out. A middle-aged man with a group of male teenagers and other men aged twenty to thirty.

  “I don’t see it,” I said.

  “You will,” she said. She resumed the video.

  I watched the man she’d pointed out. Familiar, but not overwhelmingly so. Nobody I knew.

  The crowd flowed through the portal as a mass. Up until the man I was watching stopped, turning around. The men and boys from the group around him did too. They became obstacles, standing against the stream of bodies.

  “Far left,” Tattletale said. “Recognize him?”

  I looked. A tan young man with dark hair cut close to his head. He was perched on top of a thick wooden sign, his hand on a taller man’s shoulder for balance.

  “No, I said.

  “You only saw him without his mask a few times,” Tattletale said.

  He was a cape? I thought about it. How many capes had I seen without a mask on? Someone I’d seen while in Tattletale’s company, or who Tattletale would know I’d only seen a few times?

  It clicked, but something was already happening on the image. Greenhorn was standing on the same side of the portal as the group. Then he wasn’t. The image had shifted, and he was standing by other Wards and Protectorate members.