Worm

by John McCrae

  My bugs were gathering nearby, now, but very few of them were useful. Somewhere in the periphery of my consciousness, I’d connected to a fledgling wasp nest hanging from a storage locker near the Trainyard. They were more useful, but extricating them all from the nest and bringing them to my location would take a minute. I brought the rest of the bugs into a small swarm nearby, letting the group grow until I had use of them. Both Kid Win and Lung had obliterated my swarm when I’d attacked them, and I couldn’t risk being more or less powerless if Leet pulled a similar stunt.

  Leet stepped in as Über circled around us. Reaching behind his back, Leet retrieved what looked like an old school bomb; Round black iron casing with a lit fuse sticking out of it. The way the light bounced off it made it look wrong, though. Like it was a picture of a bomb instead of a real one.

  Regent waved his hand, and the bomb slipped from Leet’s grip, rolling a few feet. Leet’s mouth opened into a round ‘o’, and he bolted. Über wasn’t far behind.

  As he joined the rest of us in running for cover, Regent half turned to thrust out one hand. Über stumbled and fell just ten feet from the armed explosive.

  The blast radius was thankfully small. The shockwave that rippled past us didn’t even make me lose my footing. Über, though, went flying.

  Leet watched his friend roll with the impact, try to stagger to his feet and fall again. He turned to us with his face etched in hard lines of anger.

  “I keep wondering when you guys are going to give up,” Tattletale grinned, “I mean, you fail more often than you succeed, you make more cash from your web show than you do from actual crimes, you’ve been arrested no less than three times. You’re probably going to wind up at the Birdcage the next time you flub it, aren’t you?”

  “Our mission is worth it,” Leet raised his chin – inasmuch as he had one – a notch.

  “Right,” Tattletale said, “Spreading the word about the noble and underrated art form that is video games. That’s from your website, word for word. People don’t watch your show because they think you’re righteous. They watch because you’re so lame it’s funny.”

  Leet took a step forward, fists clenched, but Über called out, “She’s provoking you.”

  “Damn right I am. And I can do it because I’m not scared of you. I don’t have any powers that are useful in a fight, and you guys don’t intimidate me in the least. A guy who’s good at everything yet still manages to fuck up half the time, and a Tinker who can only make stuff that breaks comically.”

  “I can make anything,” Leet boasted.

  “Once. You can make anything once. But the closer something you invent is to something you’ve made before, the more likely it is to blow up in your face or misfire. Real impressive.”

  “I could demonstrate,” Leet threatened, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder.

  “Please don’t. I hear the carbonized ash of geek is hell to get out of a costume.”

  “You say geek like it’s a bad thing,” Über said, in his characteristically overdramatic tone, “It’s a badge of honor.”

  “Among geeks, sure,” Regent replied, “But there’s clowns out there that consider being a clown to be a noble calling, while the rest of us just laugh at them. Catch my drift?”

  “Enough,” Leet growled, “It’s obvious you’re trying to antagonize us-”

  “I just admitted it. That’s not obvious. That’s fact,” Lisa pointed out.

  “We won’t be baited!” Leet raised his voice, I think it’s time for our grand reveal, our guest-”

  He was cut off as Grue blasted him in the face with a cloud of darkness. Leet stepped out of the cloud, sputtering.

  “They’re laughing at you, Leet,” Tattletale heckled him, “You’re trying to be all dramatic, all intense for your viewers, and they’re just sitting at their computers, snorting over how much you suck. Even Über is laughing at you behind your back.”

  “Shut up!” Leet spat the words, glancing over his shoulder at his teammate, “I trust Über.”

  “Why are you even with this guy, Über?” Regent asked, “I mean, you’re kind of lame, but you could at least accomplish something if he wasn’t fucking up half your jobs.”

  “He’s my friend,” Über replied, like it was the simplest thing in the world.

  “So you don’t deny he’s holding you back.” Lisa pointed out.

  “Shut up!” Leet roared. Except he didn’t have a very deep voice, so it was probably closer to a screech. He pulled out another bomb and flung it at us before Regent could make him fumble again. We scattered, with Regent, Tattletale and I running away while Grue shrouded both himself and Über in darkness.

  As I scrambled for cover, I directed my bugs to attack Leet. He’d done something different this time, because the bomb didn’t take half the time the first bomb had before it detonated. It caught me off guard, and I didn’t get a chance throw myself to the ground as a result. The blast caught me full in the back.

  The air and the fire that rolled over me wasn’t hot. That was the most surprising thing. That wasn’t to say it didn’t hurt, but it felt more like getting punched by a really big hand than what I would have thought an explosion would feel like. I could remember Lung’s blasts of fire, Kid Win shattering the wall with his cannon. This felt… false.

  “The bombs are fake?” I asked aloud, as I picked myself off the ground. I ached, but I wasn’t burned.

  “They’re solid holograms,” Tattletale said, “Actually pretty neat, if you ignore how ineffective they are. I guess he couldn’t make real bombs without fucking up.”

  Leet snarled, though it was hard to say whether it was Tattletale’s words or the moths, wasps and cockroaches that had settled on him. As I’d suspected, they weren’t doing much. Even crawling for his nose and mouth, they didn’t really slow him down. Maybe there was a downside to getting him furious, like Tattletale and Regent were intent on doing.

  He whipped out two more bombs and Regent was quicker this time, snapping his hands out. Leet recovered before he dropped the bombs, and pulled his arms back to throw them. Regent was ready, though, and one of Leet’s legs jerked out from under him. He fell to the ground, the bombs rolling only a few feet from him before going off.

  He slammed into a door hard enough I thought he might have managed to kill himself. Before I could approach and check his pulse, though, he began struggling to get to his feet.

  “Good thing you made those things nonlethal,” I muttered, half to myself, “You’re one for four.”

  Glaring at us, he reached behind his back again and withdrew a sword.

  “Link’s sword?” Regent taunted him, “That’s not even from the right game. You’re breaking theme.”

  “I think I speak for everyone when I say we just lost what little respect we had for you,” Tattletale quipped.

  Leet lunged for the two of them. He didn’t get three steps before Regent made him stumble and fall to his hands and knees. The sword slipped from his grasp and slid over the pavement before flickering out of existence.

  He was only a few feet from me, too focused on Tattletale and Regent to pay enough attention to me. I reached behind my back, withdrew my baton and snapped it out to its full length. As he started climbing to his feet, reaching behind his back for what I realized was a thin, hard backpack, I swatted at his hand with the length of metal. He yelped, pulling his hand to his chest to cradle it. I hit him in the calf, just below the knee, a little harder than I’d intended to. He crumpled.

  Stepping around him, I grabbed the end of the baton with my other hand and pulled the length of metal hard against his throat.

  Leet started to make strained choking noises. He caught me off guard by bucking backward, throwing the two of us onto our backs, him on top of me. I winced as the impact brought his weight against the bruised area of my chest where Glory Girl had thrown Tattletale at me. I didn’t lose my grip, though. Ignoring the one hundred and thirty pounds on top of me, I was glad for the extra levera
ge being on the ground afforded me.

  “You okay?” Grue asked me in his echoing voice. He stepped forward so he was standing over me.

  “Peachy,” I replied, huffing with the exertion.

  “Don’t pull it against his windpipe. You’ll get tired enough that you lose your grip before he ever passes out. Here,” he bent down and forced Leet’s head to one side, moving the baton so it was pressing against the side of Leet’s neck, “Now you’re pulling against the artery, obstructing the blood flow to his brain. Twice as fast. If you could put pressure on both arteries, he’d be out in thirty seconds.”

  “Thanks,” I huffed, “For the lesson.”

  “Good girl. Über’s down for the count, but I’m going to go help the others make sure he’s not going to give us any more trouble. We’re only steps away, so shout if you need a hand.”

  It wasn’t fast, even with the technique Grue had instructed. It wasn’t pretty either. Leet made lots of ugly little sounds, fumbling awkwardly for his backpack. I pressed my body tight against it, though, and he gave up. Instead, he tried pressing against the bar, to alleviate the pressure. When that didn’t work, he started scratching uselessly at my mask.

  I released him when he finally slumped over. Extricating myself from underneath him, I adjusted my mask, drew my knife and cut the high tech backpack off him. When I’d done that, I searched him. If we were going to interrogate him, it wouldn’t do to have him digging out some little trinket to free himself or incapacitate us. His costume was skintight, so it was easy enough to verify there weren’t any hidden pockets or devices on him. Just to be safe, I cut the antenna off his head and removed his belt.

  The others returned with a battered and unconscious Über in their arms, his arms bound behind him with plastic wrist ties. They dumped him beside Leet.

  “Now to find out where they stashed Bitch and the cash,” Tattletale said. She looked at me, “Got any smelling salts?”

  I shook my head, “No. These guys have henchmen, don’t they? They’ve probably got them watching over the money. We’d likely find Bitch in the same place.”

  “Close but no cigar,” a mechanical hiss answered me.

  We wheeled around to see a woman in the same outfit Über and Leet were wearing. The difference was that she wore a gas-mask style fixture over her lower face, and the lenses of her goggles were red, not black.

  The woman’s mask seemed to take what she said and replay everything in a robotic, monotone hiss, “I really hoped they would take one or two of you out of the picture, or at least injure someone. How disappointing. They didn’t even get around to introducing their guest star for tonight.”

  “Bakuda?” Tattletale was the first to put a name to the face, “Fuck me, the game their costumes were from… Bomberman?”

  Bakuda stood and bowed in one smooth motion. Regent raised his hands, but she let herself drop to her knees, gripping the roof’s edge with one hand to avoid sliding off.

  “Nuh uh uh,” she waggled one finger at him, “I’m smart enough to learn from the mistakes of others.”

  “You seriously left the ABB to join Über and Leet?” Regent asked, astounded.

  “Not exactly,” Bakuda said. She snapped the fingers of the hand she wasn’t using to keep hold of the roof.

  Below her, the door to the storage locker opened. Three men in ABB colors stepped out, each holding a weapon. A gun, a baseball bat, a fire axe.

  Then other doors opened, all down the corridor of storage lockers. Thirty or forty doors, each with at least one person behind them. Some with three or four. All of them armed.

  “Those two were cheap hires. They just wanted a few hundred dollars and I had to wear this costume. Guess you get what you pay for.

  “Goes without saying, I’m still with the ABB,” Bakuda stated the obvious for us. “In charge, matter of fact. I think it’s fitting that I commemorate my new position by dealing with the people that brought down my predecessor, don’t you agree?”

  She didn’t expect an answer, nor did she wait for one. She pointed at us and shouted, “Get them!”

  4.07

  Grue raised his hands and blanketed the entire area in darkness. It wouldn’t help much. Even if they hesitated or got confused in the darkness, the crush of bodies would eventually stumble into us, and we’d be beaten and battered under the sheer force of numbers. The only real advantage was that if any of them had guns, they probably wouldn’t shoot, for fear of hitting their own guys.

  I felt hands seize my waist, and lashed out with my baton. The hands let go, and the baton hit only air. After a moment, I felt the hands grab me again, the hold gentle. Not an enemy. Grue, I realized.

  “Sorry,” I muttered. He could hear inside his darkness, couldn’t he?

  He hoisted me up into the air, and I immediately understood his intent. I reached up and felt brick, then found the corrugated metal of the roof. I hauled myself up and turned around to reach for the next person, one hand gripping the edge of the roof to keep myself in place.

  I found Regent and Tattletale’s hands in the darkness and helped haul them up. I knew neither was Grue, because they were too light. Five or six seconds long, tense seconds then passed before Grue took my hand and hauled himself up.

  We climbed down the far side, and Grue banished the darkness around us.

  There were three ABB gang members standing at one end of the alley we’d just entered, and a fourth, lone member on the other. Both groups were looking the wrong way, and were standing still, which was as good an indication as any that they hadn’t noticed us.

  The sheer number of soldiers we’d seen didn’t fit, and I said as much, “What the fuck? How many people was that?”

  Grue was apparently thinking along the same lines. “The ABB shouldn’t have that many members.”

  “They do now,” Tattletale glanced over her shoulder at the ABB members behind us, then back to the lone one in front who still hadn’t reacted to our approach, “Trap! Down!”

  She practically shoved me to the ground, then took cover herself.

  The lone figure in front of us shimmered, then disappeared. In his place, for just a fraction of a second, there was a cylindrical object the size of a mailbox. Knowing what kind of devices Bakuda specialized in, I drew my legs close to my body, screwed my eyes shut and covered my ears.

  The force of the explosion hit me hard enough I could feel it in my bones. It lifted me clear off the ground. For a moment, it felt like I was floating, carried by a powerful, hot wind. I hit the ground with my elbows and knees first, and they thrummed with agony at the impact.

  Chaos. The four or five storage lockers that had been closest to the canister had been reduced to chunks of flaming brick, none any bigger around than a beachball. Other lockers near those had doors, walls and roofs blown away. More than one locker had been actually used, because the blast had emptied them of its contents. Pieces of furniture, boxes of books, clothing, bundles of newspaper and boxes of papers filled the alley.

  “Everyone okay?” Grue asked, as he staggered to his feet.

  “Ow. I’m burnt. Fuck! She was expecting us,” Tattletale groaned. However bad her burns were, they weren’t severe enough to be seen through the smoke and dust. “Set traps, had her people waiting. Shit, we were only a half hour later than we planned. How?”

  “We have to move,” Grue urged us, “This gets ten times harder if she finds us. Tattletale, watch for-”

  “I already found you,” Bakuda called out in what could have been a sing-song voice, if her mask didn’t filter it down to a monotone, rythmless hiss. She emerged from the smoke that billowed from the explosion site; her hood was pulled back and her straight black hair was blowing in the wind. The lenses of her dark red goggles were almost the exact same color as the sky above her. There were five or six thugs just a step or two behind her, a middle aged guy that didn’t look like a gang member, and a skinny boy who was probably younger than me. I was glad to see none of them had guns, but
they were all armed with weapons of some sort.

  “Not that you were hard to find,” Bakuda continued, sweeping her arms out to gesture at the devastation all around her. “And if you think this only gets ten times harde-”

  Grue blasted her, shutting her up, and his darkness billowed into a broad cloud as it struck her, enveloping her group. We took advantage of their momentary blindness to scramble for the other end of the alley.

  We were only halfway down the length of the alley when there was a sound behind us, like the crack of a whip. It struck me as deeply wrong, since we shouldn’t have been able to hear anything through Grue’s darkness. All at once, it was like we were running against a powerful headwind.

  Except it wasn’t wind. As I looked for the source of the noise, I saw Grue’s cloud of darkness shrinking. Debris began to slide towards the epicenter of the darkness, and the wind – the pull – began to increase in intensity.

  “Grab something!” Grue bellowed.

  Breaking posture and lunging to one side was like forcing myself to leap over a hundred foot chasm. I don’t know if I misjudged, or if the effect that was pulling on me increased in strength as I leaped, but my hand fell short of the doorknob. I missed the one on the neighboring locker as well.

  I knew in an instant that even if I managed to get my hand on something, the force of the pull would yank me from it before I secured a grip. I grabbed my knife from its sheath at the small of my back and swung it with all the strength I could spare for the next door I saw. It bit into the wood, stopping me from being dragged backwards, or falling sideways. The one-hundred and twenty pound body hanging off of it was too much, though, and almost immediately, the knife began to slip from the hole.

  It had slowed me down enough, though. As the force of the drag increased to the point that my body was parallel to the ground, I waited with my heart in my throat, watching the area where the knife met the door, seeing it slide out millimeter by millimeter. The moment it slipped free of the wood, I grabbed the doorknob that had been just a few feet beside my toes. My arm jolted painfully, but I managed to hold on and jam the knife into the gap between the door and the frame. Even with two things to hold onto, it didn’t feel like enough.