CANS OF WORMS
by Louis IX

Check first chapter for disclaimer and global warnings. Inspiration for this chapter: I see dead people.

Undead Meat

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Free Spirit

I shouldn't have provoked her.

I shouldn't have told her that I will enjoy my Christmas time without her.

I shouldn't have stayed after my last class to talk with Mrs Knott and wish her a merry holidays.

Emma changed her plans. Of that I'm sure. I noticed her going to her two goons and say something I'm sure sounded like "change of plan" and "we act now".

Stupid me. Still, I wasn't that uncomfortable. I learnt from their words, as they taunted me, that they had intended to fill the locker with used feminine hygiene products (bloody tampons) before the holidays, let it fester, and push me inside afterwards.

Instead, I had been pushed inside a relatively clean locker, with "only" a dislocated shoulder. I couldn't move my arm without pain, and I couldn't set it either: not enough space. I couldn't use it to bang on the door either, or push, or whatever. In fact, crouching as I was, I couldn't do much. I didn't realize that my body was pressed on the sole vents in the door, and that my oxygen intake was slowly changing into carbon dioxide… and then carbon monoxide.

After a moment, I notice the blackening of my vision. I notice that I can't move anymore, even though my mind yells at my body to do so. I remember the symptoms I read about, when a plumber last installed a heater in our home. I was going to die.

Panic settled quickly, but it was too late, of course. Still, in our world, some blessed individuals can become super-heroes (and villains) through trying events, and this one clearly qualified.

But it was too late.

Or was it?

The connection to the power-granting alien shard took some time to establish, and the brain can stay alive a bit after the body "dies". I got my connection. But then, I had no living body to return to.

Not only that: I discovered that the more I wanted to re-enter my body, the more it was… damaged. As if my "touch" accelerated the passage of time. A bit "meh" for a power. Especially in exchange for my life. What was I, now? A ghost?

Many questions arose, then: what kind of ghost was I? The fluffy gentle Casper type, or the D&D soul-sucking ones? Would I rattle chains and lift drapes? Only experiments would tell. And the first experiment almost drove me mad with boredom: I couldn't get out of my locker. At all. Even if I was now incorporeal to the point of being able to reach through the walls… I couldn't leave.

Two weeks in the dark is quite a long time. I didn't even had a sense of touch to manipulate anything within.

As the last week-end ended, I could hear the stampede of the returning students, and some walked near my resting place. I heard some complaints about the smell, and tried to attract attention… without effect. And then, after the first bell, I noticed something new: a presence inside the locker. And when the presence exited, I was free to exit as well.

With a shock, I noticed that the "presence" wasn't just a turn of phrase, but an actual person trying to check the inside of a box by putting their head through the container's lid: Sophia Hess. And the only person I knew able to do that was the Ward hero Shadow Stalker.

For some reason, she was mightily pissed. She stomped away and found Emma, who was phoning her dad, in tears. She took the phone, ended the call, and slapped the girl.

"What did I tell you?"

"Strong… predators… weak… preys?"

"No! Yes, that, of course, but what did I tell you two weeks ago?"

"That's quite far! We had Christmas, in between, and-"

Another slap got the redhead red in both cheeks. Despite knowing that the two were in this together, I cheered for Sophia, hoping to stoke her anger. "When we put Taylor in her locker, you were tasked to tell your dad something about not having news. After two days, tops. Certainly not weeks! Now, due to your stupidity, we are trying to get away with murder. Literal murder. The kind that, with how old we are, can and will send us to prison. It's that serious."

"Can't you escape, though?"

"Normal prison, perhaps. But I'm a registered Ward, now. They could make a prison that will hold me. And, besides, I couldn't make you leave."

Whatever Emma wanted to answer went down the drain when her eyes erred towards the mirror – it was an ingrained reflex, now: Emma Barnes, teen model, would always look into the mirror to check her appearance. Except, this time, it was because something caught her attention. And she screamed. Because her eyes had locked onto mine. And then she turned the other way to see if I was really there… so fast that she cricked her neck.

But Sophia (or Shadow Stalker, as I now understood it) wasn't done with her. "We have to get her out, now. Otherwise, the cops will come, block the way, and do all sorts of analyses and shit."

"How?" Emma asked plaintively. "We're in a school, and there are people around. Can't your power do something about that? Can you take her with you inside a wall and, I don't know… leave her there?"

Sophia opened her mouth to refute the idea, and then stopped moving. "That's… not a bad idea, actually."

As I tried to stop them, horrified that they would succeed in getting away with my murder, I realized that I had no power over their actions. Even when I bodily flung myself against them. For all I did, the most that was apparent was an even fuller silhouette on Emma's part.

At least, I wasn't constrained to my locker anymore. But could I explore? Could I haunt Emma in the mirrors of her own home? Could I go to my home and see what my dad was doing? Would I dare do that, even? With me missing for two weeks, without a corpse turning up, he could be going mad, and I wouldn't be able to act.

Call me a coward if you wish, but I wanted information before jumping in, and went to Emma's. I figured that, if I appeared in her mirrors, we could communicate. And we did. Sort of.

First time she saw me, she screamed and fled. She wouldn't use that bathroom afterwards, which was too bad since I found a way for me to write words – although in a strange manner: with my fingers moving through a shape, I could make the parts I touched… older. I could write by forming rust letters in a sheet of metal. Or, apparently, in the backdrop of a mirror. Since I heard her moan that she would rather die than be confronted to all her sins towards me, I wrote "DON'T KILL YOURSELF" behind the mirror. Three words. Three lines.

Due to poor lighting over the thing, Emma missed the first line. And what she read pushed her over the edge. But I didn't notice it at first, because I was summoned.

Yes, like that: I was waiting for her to see my message when I felt like a hook pulling me out of the room, out of the house, through the sky, and into another room in another house. A room where another girl I already knew was praying at an improvised altar. An altar with my picture on it.

"Taylor Anne Hebert." she was incanting, her eyes closed. "Appear before us. Let your pain be our pain. Let your suffering be our suffering. Let y-urk!"

I don't know why I punched her in the throat. Or rather: I knew why (I wanted her to shut up), but I didn't know it would be effective. Apparently, her little ritual had some strength behind it. It could be useful. I looked around and noticed a mirror. After checking that Madison was still alright despite not saying anything else, I wrote something and left. "Rest." it said, followed by "I'll be back."

When I was back at Emma's place, there was an ambulance leaving, empty and its lights off. Emma was in another vehicle, named "Coroner" on its side. And the cops were interrogating everyone. Except her. Because she was dead.

Things were a bit fuzzy after that, but I found myself following Sophia. And as the girl went to sleep, I looked at her mirror version. If I could reach through mirrors…

I threw a punch towards the mirror. It was as if I was trying to move through molasses, but Sophia felt something. Not a blow, but something much lighter. I really had to expend most of my energy to actually hit her. And that woke her up, alright.

"What the hell!" she exclaimed, looking around with wide eyes. And then she lit her light up. She didn't see a thing. After a while, she turned the thing off, and fell asleep again… and then I got my energy back. And I hit her again.

She jumped out of bed, hitting and kicking wildly, but not finding anything. This time, it took hours for her to calm down and let her exhaustion claim her. The third time, she didn't stop hitting everywhere in her room until she had hit everything. Which included her mirror.

Her mother came up, but Sophia sent her away. Instead, she caller Miranda, her "caseworker" (the PRT agent in charge of her) and requested a bedroom in the Wards area – each of them could ask for one. If her room was compromised, she would have to find solace somewhere else. At least, that's what she thought. But she didn't know Miranda that well. At the time of the call, Miranda was completely smashed, and only Sophia's agitated state made her miss the obvious tells in the conversation. When Miranda called the PRT to send that information up the chain, they didn't miss it. She would end up fired, and all her files retrieved… including the automatic e-mail sent every three weeks, as clockwork. As required, it always contained a randomized version of the same: "Shadow Stalker is doing fine."

How do I know all this? Because I kept following Sophia, learning much about the PRT in the meantime.

Apparently, with her lack of sleep, she was more perceptive of my presence. She could even see my face when I peeked through the walls during her day of "work" at Winslow. Lack of sleep also gave her an increased anger and a hair trigger, which made her punch those walls quite forcefully. The surprise inspection by the PRT led to some questions, especially when the last wall Sophia hit had slightly fragmented, revealing… a bone. One of mine. Because she had used her power to push my body inside the wall behind my locker.

When it was discovered, she was led away, the terms of her probation dissolved. And, this time, Alan Barnes had nothing to say to help her.

Shadow Stalker was someone who could be efficient when hunting villains, something someone like Armsmaster could respect. As he had vouched for her several times, her fall almost toppled him from his pedestal – as it was, he had some "console time" scheduled as slight punishment.

More interested by his Tinker-tech despite the fact that his current charges were Tinkers themselves (Kid Win and Chariot), and more worried about the sudden scandal than the Wards under his wing, he didn't correct his charges' patrol course when it was revealed that they were heading towards danger. The fact that Kid Win ended up in the hospital, and Chariot in the morgue, pushed him off completely.

All this I heard in a roundabout way, by reading the PHO boards above the shoulder of people in the library or at school, and it made me want to learn more about the people who should have some oversight about powered people.

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Realization

With my ability to infiltrate any location, I was able to peek upon secured ones, and the PRT was no exception. Once there, I heard many discussions about many interesting topics, but the ones most interesting, to me, would be those about me. And I chanced upon one, between Miss Militia… and Dragon.

"I'm worried about Colin." the Canadian Tinker said. "He's obsessing about something Sophia said, and points his new equipment everywhere, all the time. It's as though he's afraid of a ghost."

"The PRT is always afraid when new capes arrive, until we can establish their profile, you know that." Militia reminded her. "And then they fall in the usual cases: hero or villain, and we act accordingly."

"Sophia's case is one where that very measure failed badly. I heard she killed someone."

"According to her words, badly strung as they are, she participated in a badly-executed prank that killed someone, whose body she proceeded to hide with her powers. She had two accomplices, and we found one dead by suicide. The other… is not coherent: she's sure that their victim is still alive. As a ghost."

"An undead?" Dragon asked. "We have never had those before."

"If she's intangible as one, and mostly invisible, communication with her will be difficult. Even detecting her presence will be quite the task. And making her see reason or forcing her would be impossible."

"No Birdcage could hold a permanently-intangible Shadow Stalker already." Dragon concurred, before trying another tack. "Have you tried to use a Trump?"

"What for?"

"To detect her, at first. And then communicate through her power."

Militia ended up bringing a Trump from New Orleans, specializing in communication with spirits. The man's power allowed him to act in the stead of a dead person, for a while. But his senses were opened quite wide, because the spirits of the dead weren't quite "there", to begin with.

When he opened his senses, I was right there, and he almost choked to death. And then my true power expressed itself, making his flesh start to rot on his bones. I quickly escaped from the decaying body, whom I saw Militia try to subdue.

But with my power still flowing through the creature, the shotgun she brought to bear on the zombie's chest misfired, its mechanism stuck with rust. She was too shocked to realize the danger as the zombie bit the arm she was using to push him back.

And then, when he stepped back and waited, she was surprised, and then worried when she felt quite ill. Soon, she was a zombie herself.

I think I know where this leads…

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Uprising

While I had been worried for dad's reaction to my death, and then to my apparent new life as a ghost, I was now quite anxious to get him out of the city. Despite the PRT's best intentions, the two zombies had managed to chew through the Boardwalk, killing dozens and managing to turn another ten to their side.

I was too late: he had been on the Boardwalk… on a drinking binge. After having driven to the Barnes and killed Alan (who didn't resist) and caused several accidents along the way. And he was one of the "surviving" zombies, alongside three PRT agents and other members of the previous crowds.

Facing them was Lung, lured here after a wild chase after the Undersiders. Mister Escalates-to-Fire-Dragon against a mob of undead creature potentially vulnerable to fire? Who would win?

Certainly not my dad, whom I saw thrown like a rag doll. I hurried after him and tried to push him back when he stood again to face the angry dragon. My touch seemed to do something, and I accelerated my power. We were in the shadows, and his physical body was disintegrated, leaving only the shadow of what he had been. Despair, regrets… but tangibility for me, and I hugged him.

When we heard Lung roar his imminent victory to the skies, we turned back to him. Dad settled protectively in front of me… and charged the beast. As a shadow, he wasn't blocked by physical defences, and his cold presence stole strength from the fiery beast, forcing it to de-escalate.

"Fuck this, I'm out." came a voice above me. I floated upwards, still invisible. On the roof were four teenagers and three monstrous lizards. The Undersiders. And the girl was twitching each time she looked in the direction of the fight… or towards me. Yes, even when I was somewhere else. She tried to avoid looking in my direction, but it was difficult since she couldn't see me.

"Li… Tattletale?" came the voice from the tallest of them, human-wise.

"I can't deal with undead." she replied, gesturing vaguely in both directions. "Bloated corpses, moving around…" She paused, trying to find her way around the words. "It reminds me too much of my… trigger."

I was curious and approached, but she backpedalled quickly again.

"Now, please, Grue. Let's get back to the lair, and I'll give you my share from the casino, and then I'll leave."

"But… the boss…"

"I'll… tell you. Afterwards. Let's go."

I let them leave. It's not like I knew them that much anyways. On the ground level, dad had ended up with a clearly exhausted Lung, but I called him away from the approaching motorbike. Strangely (or not), I knew that his ultraviolet projector would harm the shadow that he was now made of.

Apparently, both the zombie infestation and the threat of an angry fire-breathing dragon were now contained.

For how long?

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To be continued… terminally

Author's Notes: After Dead Meat, I was morally obligated to do something about zombies…