This probably isn't the first snippet I ever wrote for Worm, but it's probably my first serious attempt at starting a fanfic for it, even if I abandoned it shortly after starting it. I just could never get the plot elements to work properly.
The attack had come without warning.
Taylor hadn't noticed, had not idea she was being followed until the crossbow bolt had leapt from the shadows. She had been too busy enjoying the first good day she had had in a long, long time (ever since mom-). She had finally gotten one over on the trio, had finally forced to actually do something. Maybe it wouldn't fix everything, but Principle Blackwell had to do something (or get her whole rotten school shut down). Maybe, if she was lucky, she'd even get fast tracked to Arcadia…
Then she felt a sharp pain in her shoulder, like a hard punch to the arm, and went down with a shout. It took her a long moment, too long, to realize that the black plastic shaft sticking out of her arm was an arrow, like from a bow, and it was sticking out of her arm-! On instinct, she grabbed it, and shrieked when she jostled the wound by mistake, her vision greying out at the edges.
The thought of getting up, going for help, had just managed to cross her thoughts when she heard the rustle of cloth in the wind, and caught two boots in the back.
Hitting the ground snapped the shaft clean off, and Taylor howled in agony until a firm kick to the gut cut her off. More blows followed quickly, fists and knees and hard boots battering at her as she struggled to roll away, find her feet.
She tried to fight back, using the tricks her father's friends had taught her (elbow's in, thumb outside fist, punch through the target) but the cloaked stranger was too fast, too strong. Every time she tried to stand, she was knocked down. Every time she tried to hit back, she was just hit *harder*. In the end, she was left lying on her back in a pained haze, watching her attacker glare down at her with contempt in their gaze (just like at school).
It took her a few moments to realize that the stern, ferocious visage that glared down at her was a mask, a familiar mask; just as familiar as the costume, with the flaring cloak and the sleek leather and the crossbow hanging at one hip.
Then Shadow Stalker lunged for her again, and she was left to curl into a ball to whether the assault. "Should have kept your stupid mouth shut, Hebert!" the ward shouted as she rained down blows on Taylor's back. "Should have just taken it, like a good like bitch! But no, you had to kick up a fuss! Had to snitch!"
"But don't worry," she growled with a final kick. "Once you're gone, Hebert, this whole problem all goes away." Taylor looked up at the muffled clack, and found herself staring down the tip of a second bolt, pointed unwaveringly at her face. "Should have kept your mouth shut," Shadow Stalker said again, and Taylor saw her death in the girl's unwavering gaze.
But why?
The attack came without warning.
Sophia had probably (definitely) been enjoying this too much. Hebert deserved it, of course, but she knew better than to drag out her fun. She wasn't some cartoon moron, getting caught because she couldn't stop playing with her food.
But she was so *angry*. Angry at Hebert, for causing trouble; at the school, for being full of stupid weaklings who wouldn't do their job; at the Protectorate, for always getting in her way! And here was a stupid little victim that nobody cared about, that nobody would miss, and it felt so good to vent. To do what she was meant to do, beating down the pathetic parasites who deserved what they got.
But she wasn't going to let herself get caught, not this time. This time, she had planned things out; by the time she was done here, nobody would bother looking for Hebert, and she already had a place to hide the body. This time, she was going to *win*.
"Should have kept your mouth shut," she told the wimp as she tightened her finger on the trigger.
The first staff strike caught her across the shoulder, hard and fast but too off center to really hurt her; the surge of electricity that followed, though, was a different story, and she shrieked in agony as her body arched. Her thoughts were scrambled, her eyes streaming with tears, which kept her from seeing the second blow until it caught her hard in the stomach, jackknifing her hard despite the accompanying current.
She collapsed, gasping through gritted teeth and blurry eyes as she watched her indistinct attackers step past her, and over to the wimp. There was something wrong about them both, something off with their shapes; they were too low, too squat, and were those coats hanging from their hips, or tails…?
She fought to clear her vision, to stand up, to aim her weapon, to do *anything* but her body was shaking too hard. She couldn't move, could only grunt and groan as she watched one misshapen shadow bend low to gather wimpy Hebert into it's arms. The other spotted her attention, and with a low growl stalked towards. It's weapon was like a huge, blunt-tipped spear, and she felt her heart sink when red energy crackled menacingly around the tip.
The last thing she saw, before the final blow sent her into blackness, was the glitter and gleam of gold upon the creature's brow.
The call came without warning.
"I think the Protectorate is trying to kill me," Taylor gasped, and not even the poor connection could hide her fear and stress.
He didn't even remember shooting to his feet; one moment he was hunched over in his rickety chair, his bent beneath the weight of a failing Union in a failing city. The next, he was on his feet, one hand still stinging from where he slammed it onto his desk. The rest of the office was staring at him, and he realized that his startled exclamation had not stayed inside his own thoughts.
The union had been unable to afford wireless phones for the office, so he couldn't simply find somewhere more private, but there was a small nook between the wall and a handy cabinet that he used for bad news he wasn't ready to share with everybody else. Taylor's breathing was harsh in his ears, but she didn't say anything until he managed to splutter, "What? Are you sure?"
"I didn't imagine Shadow Stalker attacking me, or sticking a giant crossbow into my face," his daughter retorted, and he winced at the edge of acidic anger that glistened wetly beneath the fear. When they had worked together to bring the lawsuit against Blackwell and Winslow Highschool, the most common claim had been that she was a liar, or imagining things.
"I know, I'm sorry," he said, and he meant it. "But the Protectorate- how, why would they even…?" He tended to have a poor opinion of government in general, always had, and Mayor Christner's insistence on subjecting Brockton Bay to a slow death, instead of trying to fix things, no matter the cost, had done nothing to change his feelings. Still, the Protectorate were heroes, government or not; imagining that they could do something as wicked as murdering a child strained credulity .
He believed Taylor, though; he had to. "Taylor, listen," he said, his voice low and focused. He tried to be a lawful man, but he had been forced to pull a friend out of a legal pickle a few times before. "Did they say anything to you, give you any sort of reason about why they were attacking you? Carrying a weapon, resisting arrest, anything like that?"
She sniffled, the sound, painfully clear despite the crackle of static. "Nothing like that," she said. "Shadow Stalker just kept saying that I should have kept my mouth shut. She was really angry about it, too."
His heart sank. If Brockton Bay's newest Ward had been shouting justifications, it might have meant a mistake, some form of incompetence; something, in short, which he could have settled with a quick call to a lawyer, and a cautious visit to the Chief of Police to get the offending officer dealt with. If Shadow Stalker had wanted his daughter silenced, though, that could mean only one thing.
Corruption.
Something was dirty in the Brockton Bay Wards, and he'd eat his chair if it didn't involve the Protectorate too. In a city like this, corruption always reached all the way to the top.
Which meant that he couldn't trust a single officer in the entire city. Not the Protectorate, not the PRT, and certainly not the police; even if they were technically a separate branch of law enforcement, everybody knew that they really answered to the PRT.
"Okay, okay," he said, as he thought furiously. The house was out, of course, and so were most of his friends. If the cops were smart, they'd check the house of every man in the Union, but not all the boys showed up on the paperwork anymore. A lot of them were people who'd found other work outside the docks, sometimes in entirely different cities, but some of them might still be willing to give a friend a place to stay for a day or three.
He'd need to pick up a few things from the house, though, so hopefully they wouldn't have staked it out yet… "Here's what we're going to do. I want you to find someplace safe nearby, while I call some friends to come and get you. I'll meet you there as soon as I can, and we can-"
"What? No, Dad! That's not why I called you!"
"...then why did you call me?" he asked as a cold tingle of premonition crawled up his spine.
"Veager said it was a good idea," she finally said, after a painfully long pause, and he distantly wondered who this Vim was. "She said, that just not coming home would be worse for you, that it'd be better if you knew why-"
"Taylor, honey," he said, doing his best to stamp down on the first stirrings of desperation. He had already lost her mother, he couldn't bear to lose her too. "You don't have to do this alone. I want to help. Please, just let me-"
"This isn't like Winslow, Dad," she said, but the desperation in her voice revealed the lie. "You have the union, you have people counting on you, and I don't want to just-"
"Don't want to just what, bother me?" He recognized the anger, barely controlled in his voice, and did his best to stamp down on his frustration. Getting angry and lashing out wouldn't help things. "Taylor, I'm your father. Knowing that you're out there, where I can't reach you, would bother me more than anything else." She didn't answer for a long, long moment, and he felt his restraint snap. "Goddammit Taylor, I just want to help!"
He heard her swallow, hard, before she blurted out, "I'm a cape!"
The words struck him like an almost physical blow. It was too much, it was all too much, and hearing that his daughter had superpowers wasn't doing much to help. "That's...okay, but…" He struggled to find the words. "Does it matter?" he finally asked.
"Yes," she retorted, and he felt himself wonder at the steadily growing confidence in her voice. Winslow had been grinding her spirit down for years, where had this come from? "It means, I can take care of myself. But also…"
He braced himself, as he heard her take a deep breath. "My powers are scary, really really scary. If the protectorate is already trying to kill me, finding out what I can do won't make them any nicer. I don't know if I can keep you safe, dad, not if you're with me."
"Taylor…"
"And I checked online at lots of places, and everyone agrees that the Unwritten Rules can be a pretty big deal. As long as I don't get you involved, the Protectorate has to leave you alone. You'll be safer at home."
He closed his eyes, torn between pride and despair. His little girl, doing the noble thing, but God he wished she didn't have to. "Little Owl," he finally said, and if his late wife's nickname for their daughter felt strange on his lips, it was only a sign of how far he had failed. They should never have drifted apart like this… "I don't know if I could live with myself, if something happened to you."
His daughter's laughter was loud, and hard, and bright. "I wasn't kidding when I said my powers were dangerous," and if he had been surprised by her growing confidence he was shocked by the fierce pride in her words. "I already know we can win. I'm just not sure how much of the city will be left after we're done."
He had worked, sweated, and worn himself down to the bone for this city, and the people in it, but in the end he didn't care if Taylor had to burn it down block by block, as long as she made it back to him. And so, Danny Hebert merely licked his lips and asked, "What can I do to help."
"Shall I count out the sheer number of ways in which you have screwed up, Shadow Stalker?" asked the PRT puke as he stared at her across the thick metal table. She had barely been given any time to recover, not since some assholes had manhandled her down into the interrogation room the very second she had stumbled into the building. Everything still hurt, her whole body feeling like one huge burn, and her skull gonged like a fucking bell every time she moved her head.
When she didn't answer him, the man simply sighed and flipped open the thick sheaf of papers in front of him. "Let's see...first, it seems you violated your parole most spectacularly when you attempted to murder a classmate-"
"It was just a prank!" Sophia exploded, before she all but collapsed under the following wave of pain. "Just a stupid prank," she groaned as she clutched her head.
"Normally, pranks don't put people in the hospital for a month with septic shock," he countered mildly, apparently unbothered by her outburst. "Nor do they involve imprisoning a child in biohazardous waste for several hours." The look he shot at her was deceptively mild, despite the lightest tinge of disbelief in his words. "What on earth possessed you to fill her locker with tampons, of all things? Dirt and mud, I might have understood, but you must have known that used tampons would have been a serious health risk even before you left them to rot for...what was it, three weeks?"
He briefly rechecked his notes, while she waited in stony silence. "Then, when your victim brings forth ironclad proof of your naughtiness," he continued, his tone never changing, "your immediate response was to assault and attempt to murder her. An attempt which failed, and was also caught on camera."
This time she jerked her head up to stare at him, her eyes wide with shock. "That's right, Miss Hess," he said. "You were not as alone as you thought. Not that I'm sure it would have mattered," he added, as he flipped the page. "I'm not entirely sure what you were expecting. Did you honestly think nobody would notice if Miss Hebert disappeared?"
"People disappear all the time…"
"True, but most of them haven't made some truly heinous accusations against one Sophia Hess, high school student, track star, and Ward," he countered. "Even if she had disappeared, the evidence she had presented would almost certainly have come up in the eventual investigation, and the police would have viewed such convenient circumstances as...suspicious."
"Like anybody would care…" she grumbled mutinously.
"Oh, I doubt anybody would be especially invested," he retorted. "But they wouldn't have to be. You're not that subtle, Miss Hess, and if nobody has noticed before it's because they were never looking. As it stands, I suspect Piggot would have washed her hands of you the second you came up in an investigation, and it would only have been a matter of time…"
"So why am I even here then," she growled. The pounding in her head was starting to recede a bit, but it still felt like she had been sunburned on the inside, and all she wanted was the coldest shower in the world right now. "Just throw me in a cell already and get it over with!"
"Fortunately, that may not be necessary," he said, as he shuffled the papers back into one stack. "As I said, Piggot would happily wash her hands of you if an investigation started. As it stands, though, they have not started an investigation on you… yet. And if you can find the restraint, they might not ever start one, understand?"
"So what, I turn goody-two shoes and you make this all go away?" she said with a sneer she didn't really feel. As much as she loathed the PRT and Protectorate's spineless policies, she knew they could bring her down easy, and she didn't want to go rot in a jail cell somewhere.
"Nothing quite so drastic as what you're thinking, I'm sure," he said with a shrug. "But it's clear that you need a close hand to keep you out of trouble. So while you'll remain with the wards, you'll also answer directly to me, understand? And you'll have to be on your best behavior too. No more solo patrols, no more rule breaking, and certainly no more of this."
His finger jabbed straight into the pile of papers, and Sophia felt her eyes following it involuntarily. This guy was a skinny looking little wimp, but that sudden violent gesture gave her some bad vibes about him, like the coked out winos who were pathetic little shits until they flipped out and killed somebody.
But he was the best chance she had of staying free, at least until she could ditch this dump entirely.
"Even if I said yes," she said, even as she came to a decision. "How would you even fix something like this? Blackwell already-"
"Principle Blackwell can be...handled," he interjected. "She is a clever woman, who knows which way the wind is blowing. If we tell her to keep her mouth shut, then shut it will stay."
"And Hebert?"
"Since Miss Hebert is currently absent, she can hardly have a say in the proceedings, now can she?" he said with the first hint of humor she had heard from him. "And even if she does come back, well...the PRT has its own way of dealing with inconvenient witnesses. Methods which work, unlike yours."
That last jab stung, but he was holding all the cards, so Sophia bit back her anger and forced herself to shrug. "Well then, I guess you've got yourself a deal."
"Good," said PRT trooper Robert Brown, as he snapped the folder closed. "I look forward to working with you, Sophia Hess. And the first thing you can do for me, is explain everything you can remember about these," he added as he pulled out a photo with a familiar squat figure glaring out of the picture, it's face nearly obscured by the glitter of gold.
He picked up the phone as soon as he heard it ring. "How did it go?"
"Went perfect, boss," Pierre said in his usual nigh-incomprehensible accent. "We got the evidence, and dealt with Blackwell. Dumb bitch hadn't even made any copies…"
"I assume you made it look like an accident?"
"Boss, you wound me," the former Frenchman chuckled. "Of course we did. Stupid whore was hiding a nasty drug habit. We didn't even have to touch her, just added a little something special to her fix, and she went and OD'd herself. Standard Merchant crap."
"Excellent. You'll receive your usual bonus when I have the video in hand," he said as he closed the other timeline.
"Pleasure working with you, Boss," Pierre said, before hanging up.
Halfway across the city, almost six stories underground, Thomas Calvert leaned back in his chair with a thoughtful expression. Truly, Shadow Stalker had proven to be a boon for his work, far more so than he'd ever expected.
When he had set out to humiliate Piggot, and take over for her as head of the PRT, he had been expecting months of work to look forward to, possibly even years, but Shadow Stalker's stupidity and rampant violence had just cut his workload in half. As it was now, he not only had a useful tool which could be disposed of at his leisure, but he had demonstrable proof that Piggot was letting her troops run wild.
At this point, it didn't matter if Stalker self destructed, or stuck it out to work under his leadership, because he won either way. And with the evidence he now had in his possession, Stalker had better learn to toe the line extremely quickly. Unlike Piggot, he would not be putting up with her reckless attitude, not in *his* Wards. Luckily, Brown had plenty of practice dealing with recalcitrant soldiers, from his time as a freelance mercenary; if anyone could get her into shape, it was him.
The more important question at the moment, though, was what to do about Hebert…
Masters were always useful, whether they summoned minions or controlled people, and as it stood the poor girl was alone, afraid, and absolutely convinced that the PRT and Protectorate were out to get her. No doubt she could use a friend to help her out, keep her safe, and all the better if that friend could use her.
Coil split the timeline.
There was nothing quite like being in two places at once. The fact that he was actually occupying separate timelines, rather that actual locations didn't actually matter much.
One body for up from his chair, and walked out of the office to make his steady way towards the kitchen. The other simply picked up the phone with a sigh. This next part was guaranteed to be both tedious and annoying, which is why the Coil from timeline A was making a beeline for the triple-layer chocolate cake with coconut sprinkles.
Because if he was going to put himself through this, he might as well get something damn well good out of it.
"Hello, Tattletale," he said when he heard her finally pick up the phone. "I have some good news for you."