Worm

by John Mccrae Wildbow

  “You’re going to need to explain that.”

  He smiled a little. “In time. Ready, Satyr? You remember the plan?”

  Satyr nodded. “I have a good memory.”

  “Let’s confront our opponents,” Teacher said.

  Satyr nodded. His shapeshifted clones led the way. Teacher lagged behind, picking up the teleportation circle.

  They headed straight for the men in armored suits. Five in total had gathered. Others were elsewhere in the area.

  “Excuse me,” Teacher spoke.

  The men in suits trained weapons on him. Singling him out in the group. The clones stepped closer to Teacher, providing a body shield.

  “In a matter of minutes, my followers are going to carry out the plan I outlined,” he said. “There are four actions they’re going to carry out. The one you should be most worried about is a tractor beam. It’s set up fairly close by, and it’s going to fire on this structure, cutting out a cylindrical section and slowly withdrawing it. I’m sure you’ve played games as a child, maybe you played that one with the wooden blocks you pull out of a tower. They’re going to withdraw much of this floor. With it gone, the upper floors are going to topple. Some will land on the building next to us. I seem to recall there’s a small hospital in there.”

  “Hands on your head and turn around,” one of the D.T. officers said.

  “The people manning the tractor beam are all ex-heroes. Capes who came to me in desperation, who couldn’t pay, and other innocents. I wouldn’t advise an attack. I set up measures to ensure it would end badly for everyone involved.”

  “Now!” the officer barked.

  Teacher turned around, tossing the teleportation circle off to one side before putting his hands on his head. “Right now, I know you have ships in the area, positioned to catch our getaway vehicle. I know exactly how many you have. With the number of people in this building, you’ll need every single one of those suits to evacuate everyone in time.”

  A D.T. officer reached out, foaming the pad.

  “Every single one. The section of building the tractor beam seizes will be collected by my getaway ship, with me inside it. After that, the building will collapse. You could attempt to stop the process, but I can guarantee there would be a cost.”

  The D.T. officer tapped one foot against the back of his knee, forcing him to bend it. He dropped to the ground. He could hear the clink of chains. Cuffs.

  “The alternative is simple. I know there are heroes listening in. Chevalier, maybe, or Legend. Defiant, perhaps, given how someone seemed to be able to work around my hackers? If you stop jamming my equipment, I’ll use that teleportation pad in the corner there, along with my colleagues. I leave, you don’t have to worry about me, and the building stays up. You can keep the people manning the tractor beam. My gift to you.”

  He waited, feeling the metal cuff encircle one wrist. The D.T. officer circled around, looming over him. Black armor, complete with an onboard system. Ominous.

  “Ingenue wants to go, and if you push matters, you’re going to have to see us in court, and you’ll have to explain the security measures you’re enforcing on her. You’d win, very probably, but it would become public knowledge that you aren’t holding to the spirit of the amnesty. That’s strike one. Strike two? Losing this building. This would be a terrible time to have a fixture and a power base crumble. It would affect the tens of millions who pass through this area or see it from a distance. You don’t want the blow to morale.”

  He waited. The second D.T. officer started working on the others.

  Still kneeling, Teacher met the eyes of the D.T. officer standing above him. The man’s eyes weren’t visible, but a red light blinked in the corner of one. Teacher continued, “Strike three? Even if you brought me into custody, and there’s no guarantee that would succeed, I have other students, elsewhere. You would be sentencing them to die, if I wasn’t there to look after them, to access them where I’ve tucked them away. You gain nothing of substance. Putting me behind bars, fine. But what does that get you? With the amnesty, the only thing you can charge me with is breaking and entering. Losing this building, dozens of lives, reputation… merely to stop me?”

  “You may be understating your own importance,” Ingenue murmured.

  “Shh,” he said. “I’m making a compelling argument, don’t undermine me.”

  The D.T. officer spoke. “I’ve been instructed to tell you that we don’t negotiate with terrorists.”

  “Weigh this mathematically, how many lives are ruined by this one moment of stupidity, compared to the lives you think I’d ruin if I continued operating on my own? Weigh it emotionally…”

  The blinking of the red light at the corner of the D.T. officer’s mask sped up. Teacher glanced back. Satyr and Ingenue were caught, hands bound. The D.T. officer was tying up the clones, now. Others were watching hallways.

  The blinking light turned yellow, then green. A mist erupted around the pad. The foam that bound it in place broke down. It skidded across the floor, propelled by small wheels.

  Teacher let himself topple. His shoulder hit the teleportation pad. Crackling swept over the length of his body.

  His students were waiting as he appeared on the other side, dragging him off.

  Ingenue, Satyr, and the woman in white followed, in that order.

  It took time for them to get sorted out. His students milled through the area, scanning them for trackers and other signatures. Devices were used to scramble the teleporter’s signature to prevent anyone from following.

  The area was a broad building with a high ceiling, most of it occupied by a single machine. The best he could do without a Doormaker of his own. Sixty of his students milled through the area, seeing to their individual tasks.

  “How?” Ingenue asked.

  “We did our research,” Teacher said. One of his students cut the chain between his cuffs. “They had to use the suits. Protocol when Ingenue is involved. The ambient shutdown effect doesn’t include the suits, because the suits have to operate at one hundred percent when there are capes on the other side. Once it was close enough to one of them, the crew on this end could operate it.”

  “If they’d destroyed the pad-”

  “Against protocol, again. You don’t shoot tinker devices. At best you bury them in containment foam, and I used my access to Dragon to find the formula for a counteragent.”

  “You can’t cover every eventuality,” Ingenue said.

  “My plans work,” he said, dusting himself off.

  Her voice was hard. “If you want my help, fine. But don’t involve me in your lunatic schemes.”

  He paused.

  Lunacy, madness.

  Speaking of…

  “Where’s our distraction?”

  “Lung finished the job ten minutes ago,” a student answered.

  “He found it? I’ll want to see pictures. I feel like a child on Christmas.”

  “Bringing them up right now, sir.”

  “No incident?”

  “There was an incident,” the student said. Blunt, there was no emotion on his face. No indication of whether it was a continent-destroying error or Lung killing a student.

  “Show me.”

  Monitors lit up.

  Lung was a mercenary hire. The site was a vault, and fallen capes littered the area. The view shifted as the camera did, showing a share of Lung’s claw. He was so tall that his hand dangled at what was shoulder level for the students walking alongside him.

  The man had refused to let Teacher use his power on him, but he’d agreed to cold, hard cash and a group of Teacher’s students joining him to ensure the job was finished. They were dressed in white outfits, carrying hardware he’d paid a pretty penny for. All had powers of their own, on top of the complimentary powers he’d granted them. They were loyal, and they would die if he ordered it.

  The scene was almost comical, on a level. There were warnings plastered everywhere, skulls and crossbones engraved into s
tone, and even yellow police tape here and there.

  Lung ignored it all. He’d changed, fighting past the defensive line.

  Every plan had to involve a win, Teacher mused. He had a good streak going. Using Lung, using the man now, it meant pulling stronger heroes away.

  Either Lung was removed from the big picture, and a chaotic element was dealt with, or Lung succeeded, and Teacher could banish one niggling doubt, sleeping just a bit easier.

  He’d done a lot of research, ordering his minions to dig up footage, finding it wherever it was available. He’d had them search it, then double checked it himself.

  But an educated guess was still only a guess.

  Lung tore into the last vault, rending the hinges, then slowly peeling it away, heating the metal as he went.

  “They didn’t send one of the major capes? Chevalier? Valkyrie?”

  “Too far away, sir.”

  Far away meant different things, in this new future. A world away in another universe was very possible.

  “Good fortune for us… or particularly bad fortune, if this incident-”

  He trailed off as Lung entered the vault itself. The camera shed light on the contents.

  Satyr hung back, arms folded.

  “What is it?” Ingenue asked.

  “A quarantine area. That was the weapon the Endbringer was using.”

  A gun. It was dark gray with a faint green speckled coating on it, where one material had been broken down and incorporated into the outer coating. There was a gouge in the side where a feather had cut the housing, but it was otherwise intact.

  Over and over, the Simurgh had protected the weapon. He’d seen it, had checked the footage, had seen her go out of her way to shield it with her wings. She’d done it subtly, most of the time, events contriving to make it look more accidental than anything.

  She couldn’t make tinker devices herself. She had to copy the designs of tinkers near her. He’d found who she’d copied, a now deceased cape from Brockton Bay, and he’d found the designs.

  There were discrepancies.

  He was all too aware that he could be walking into her trap. He had enough precogs around himself and, in that video, around Lung, that the Simurgh shouldn’t have been able to leverage her full power against them, but she could have put things in place, not knowing exactly who, but still knowing it would be bad.

  The weapon had been lost in the course of the battle, and the heroes had decided to minimize contact with the thing, locking it away.

  “Quiet, please.”

  The bustle of his students working around him stopped.

  In the silence, he could hear footsteps behind him. He, Satyr and Ingenue were joined by a third person.

  Teacher spoke without turning his head. “You’ve seen this video already, I expect?”

  “Yes,” Contessa answered.

  Lung tore into the casing, much as he’d torn through the vault door.

  There was a scratch as Lung’s claw touched glass.

  He tore at the metal, peeling it away while preserving the glass.

  There was fluid inside.

  The light caught the glass, at first, obscuring the contents.

  A baby. Male. With large ears and a large round nose. Not attractive, as babies went.

  One or two years old? Accelerated aging? Where had the Simurgh been in contact with a tinker with that particular knowledge? Bonesaw?

  That was disquieting enough on its own. Was the child tinker harboring knowledge?

  “These are the big things you were talking about?” Ingenue asked, her eyes wide.

  “Actually, no. I had suspicions, but the Endbringer making a baby wasn’t one of them.”

  Lung touched a burning hand to the glass, melting it. Water steamed on contact with his claw.

  “No,” Teacher said. Idiotic, considering Lung couldn’t hear, and the event had already passed. Still, he couldn’t help but add, “Don’t.”

  The water was crimson and boiling by the time Lung withdrew his claw.

  The monster turned to leave, the polluted water still popping behind him.

  “I’m not sure whether to be relieved or very frightened,” Satyr commented.

  “The… incident?” Teacher asked.

  “Ten minutes from now,” a student said. “He growls a bit, but there isn’t anything we can make out. He was just walking, and our camera follows”

  “Skip forward, then.”

  The video skipped forward. Lung was in a dark stairwell, reinforced concrete and steel beams, light above him.

  He stepped up onto the surface, his clawed feet sliding where they were too long and wide to fit on one..

  The Simurgh was waiting.

  Lung was her height, bristling with scales. She looked more human of the two, pale, her hair blowing a bit in the wind, unreadable.

  Monsters, the both of them.

  “Well done,” Satyr said. “You may have killed us all.”

  “She moved? She isn’t dormant? Did she attack a target?”

  Did I just start the cycle up again?

  “She returned to orbit.”

  Teacher nodded, but as much as experience had inured him to the horrors of the world, he couldn’t help but feel a sick knot in his gut. That didn’t mean anything. Had she gone dormant again, or was she waiting?

  Or was she doing something else entirely?

  “I don’t understand,” Ingenue said.

  I don’t either, Teacher thought, but he didn’t say it out loud.

  “She may well try again,” Contessa said. “It’s hard to say how, when she isn’t involved in things.”

  Teacher nodded.

  “What will you do?” Contessa asked.

  “If she’s going to try again, I’ll find out, and I’ll take actions to stop it. I’ll have to bring others on board. Heroes, maybe. Learn from the mistakes of my predecessor. Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is insanity, isn’t it?”

  “There’s a saying along those lines,” Contessa said.

  “You said she’d try again. She’ll try what?” Ingenue asked.

  “I’ll find that out too,” Teacher said. “I wish Lung hadn’t destroyed the corpse. With luck, the heroes won’t seal the vault for quarantine’s sake and they’ll check for DNA.”

  “I could find out,” Contessa said.

  “You’re going to help?”

  She seemed to think for a little while. “Most likely.”

  With that, she walked off.

  More a cat now, walking its own path, than a loyal dog.

  Still, she was in his camp. At least for now.

  He nodded. “Right. That was it, with this job? Anything else?”

  “Lung called to leave a message, sir,” the student said. “It was only barely intelligible. He said you could consider that a breach of contract, if you wished.”

  “Pay him. It leaves the door open for future hires.”

  “Yes sir. And you have a message from Marquis. He’ll accept you any time today.”

  “Do you have coordinates?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “I’m coming, I assume,” Ingenue said.

  Teacher nodded. As much as he wanted to rest and get his bearings, he had to keep moving. “Saint?”

  A student in the corner turned. It took him a second to muster the functions needed to reply. “Sir?”

  “Dragon’s code. Any changes? Anything significant?”

  Saint slowly shook his head.

  “What are you thinking?” Satyr asked.

  He shook his head. “A thought.”

  Who had beat his team of hackers? Defiant wasn’t that good. Either something had gone wrong with his team, or Dragon was somehow active and hiding that fact from him.

  Paranoia.

  He and Ingenue stepped into the teleporter.

  Marquis was sitting on the stairs in front of a sprawling summer home. A jug of iced tea sat beside him, along with a plate
of cookies.

  “Iced tea?” Teacher asked.

  “I picked too warm a place to spend the winter,” Marquis said. “Ingenue. How’s the love life?”

  She frowned a little.

  “Sit?” Marquis offered, indicating the stairs.

  Teacher sat. It wasn’t comfortable, and he wasn’t a shapeshifter in any capacity.

  “So. Do we discuss business first or do we conduct meaningless small talk?”

  “A few minutes ago, I would have said ‘business’,” Teacher said. “But I’ve had enough business for a time. Is your family well?”

  Marquis stretched a little. He took a cookie, then offered one to Ingenue. “Iced tea?” Either of you?”

  Teacher looked up at the sky. The sun beat down on them. “I’ll take you up on that.”

  “Please,” Ingenue said.

  Marquis took the time to pour it. He handed the glasses to the others, then filled his own glass. “By the by, if you bring up my daughter again, Teacher, I’ll lobotomize you.”

  Teacher nodded. “Noted.”

  “Needle up one nostril, jab the front of the brain, scrape… I digress. There’s no way for you to mention her without it sounding like a threat, so I’d rather you avoid the topic.”

  “I can do that,” Teacher said.

  Marquis smiled. “Since you already asked, though, she’s saying goodbye to her family.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means what it means. Putting bad things to rest. Moving on to, well… bad things. But in a good way, I hope.”

  “I presume you’re the bad things she has in the future. You’re continuing your career, then?” Teacher asked.

  “Could you stop?”

  “No, but I’m tied up in the business, and I never really stepped away from it. I’d wondered if you could, having had some time away.”

  “I was cell block leader. Hardly a vacation from supervillainy.”

  “But you’ve left your old business partners behind, there wasn’t anything to return to, after eleven years in the ‘cage.”

  “I went back to it right away,” Ingenue said, quiet. “It’s surprisingly lonely.”

  “Raises the question,” Marquis said. “Can a person change? I suppose if I was going to, my daughter would be a reason. My job took her from me in the beginning, after all.”