Crucible Zero

by Devon Monk

  “It turns out she was much older than eight. Well, her sleeping body was much older.”

  “How much older?” Welton asked.

  “Three hundred years.”

  They let the silence settle between them.

  “Galvanized,” Welton said.

  Quinten nodded.

  “And then what happened?”

  “When Matilda got sick, I thought . . . I thought I could transfer her thoughts, personality, and mind into the body of the sleeping girl. A sister in a coma is better than a dead sister, right?”

  “Quinten . . .” Welton said quietly.

  “I was young. Stupid. In a panic. Grieving. I was desperate. So I performed the procedure, transferred Matilda’s personality. Except I had never tested it before. It was all wild speculation.” He paused.

  “Matilda passed away not long afterward. And then the girl woke. I thought I’d saved her. Saved my sister.”

  I spoke up because it didn’t look like he was going to continue. “She woke up and she wasn’t Matilda,” I said. “She was Evelyn, the original girl who was born three hundred years ago. The original girl who fell into a coma.”

  Welton closed his eyes for a moment. “Oh, Quinten,” he said.

  “It was a shock,” he said. “For everyone. Dad and Mom decided to raise her as if she were theirs, except she was stitched, immortal, a galvanized. There was no safe place in this world for her, except our farm. So we went to some . . . extremes to make sure she remained safe.”

  “But if she was in a coma, then woke and remained in hiding, how does she know Slater?” Welton asked.

  “Because I’m not Evelyn any longer,” I said. “I’m Matilda. And you’re not going to believe this, but the same experiment from 1910 that killed all those people and made just a few people galvanized also fractured time. I’ve lived a life, an entire alternate life, where I was the one who woke up in Evelyn’s body as Matilda. And in that life, Slater was very much alive, and very much the same vicious, power-mongering bastard that he is today.

  “I know him, because in my life, in my world, he’s already killed my family and all the other people I love.”

  Yep. Now he was paying very close attention to me. Probably trying to decide whether I was lying or not. Or if he should lock me away in a little padded room.

  “She’s telling the truth,” Quinten said. “Or at least the only plausible thing that makes sense.”

  “How does that make sense?”

  “It involves time travel,” Quinten said.

  “Bullshit,” Welton countered.

  “The Wings of Mercury experiment,” I said. “It broke a piece of time, killed a bunch of people, and made the galvanized immortal. But then that piece of time winged back like a boomerang and snicked into place, which would have killed even more people—billions. So Quinten and you came up with the formula for how someone could travel back in time to change the Wings of Mercury experiment. And, well, I was the one who went back.”

  He pressed his fingers to his mouth and stared at me. “You really believe what you’re saying.”

  “I wish I had the luxury not to,” I said. “What we need to focus on right now is how to stop Slater from bombing any more people.”

  “All the compounds have increased their security,” Welton said. “Other than you two surrendering—which I doubt will stop him, since he’s already proven that he is more than willing to go back on his word—or killing the man, I don’t know how to stop the bombs.”

  “So we kill the man,” I said.

  Welton considered me. “You do understand that he’s the head of a House, don’t you?”

  “Yes. And that he’s galvanized.”

  “Which was my second point. Difficult to kill an immortal creature.”

  “We’re not immortal,” I said. “We just don’t die easy. The only way to end him, the only way to make sure no one else is hurt, is to shoot him in the brain. Repeatedly. Which means we either get some sniper rifles and a piece of real estate inside House Fire, or we do this up close and personal.”

  “We?” Welton asked. “Are you a trained assassin, Ms. Case?”

  “No, I’m just pissed off. But if we need a trained assassin, there happen to be two we brought along with us.”

  “The galvanized.”

  I nodded.

  “You’re going to trust. . . .” He rubbed his palm over his face, pulling fingers back through his hair. “Okay, so let’s assume I believe you are a strange combination of human and galvanized who just happens to also be a time traveler. And let’s say I believe that you know Slater is out to destroy House Earth because he is a megalomaniacal dictator who has waited three hundred years to take over the world. Fine. Got that. Fine.

  “But if you think I’m going to believe you and two other galvanized are going to kill one of your own out of the goodness of your hearts and your sentimental feelings toward humans, then you are out of your old, weird, time-traveling mind.”

  “Funny how you think I’m asking for your permission,” I said.

  “Matilda,” Quinten warned.

  “Matilda?” Welton said. “So you go by that name now?”

  “I’ve always gone by that name, because it’s mine. Also, it wasn’t my idea to come here for your help.”

  “All right,” Quinten said. “We don’t need to fight. Welton, stop antagonizing my sister. Matilda, you don’t need to get angry at him. It’s a lot to swallow all at once.”

  I realized I’d leaned forward on the couch and set myself in a defensive position, ready to spring onto my feet if I needed to fight.

  This situation we were dealing was bad enough without throwing Welton’s doubting attitude into it. And it was serious enough that there wasn’t any room for my attitude either.

  I forced myself to sit back and take a deep breath. Calm was what we needed here. I could do calm. Maybe.

  “Besides taking out Slater,” Quinten said, “which we intend to do with or without your help, why we really came here was for this.” He tapped his fingers on the wooden case he’d put on the chair beside him.

  Welton’s eyes lit. “What’s in there?”

  “The cure.”

  Welton drew his head back, and his face was very, very serious. “Don’t joke about that, Quinten.”

  “I am not. I’ve gone through the last of the data, and I believe this can cure an infected plague victim.”

  “Gloria?” he asked.

  “If I can, I want to try to save her. But this is untested. And my tests . . .” He flicked a look at me, and it was filled with a guilt I’d never seen there before. I just shook my head.

  “. . . my tests don’t always go according to plan.”

  “Gloria would rather have a chance at life, no matter how uncertain, than no chance at all,” Welton said. “Have you talked to her yet?”

  “No. I thought I’d get your go-ahead first. If this works, we’ll need to begin manufacturing. We’ll need the ingredients, a lab that can handle the production, facilities to administer it.”

  “Done,” Welton said. “Anything that I have is yours. And if there is something I don’t have, I will acquire it.”

  Quinten nodded. “Good. I hoped you’d say that.”

  “How long do you think it will take before you know whether the cure is effective?”

  “After I talk her into it? I’ll need to filter her blood, and I’ll want to do it slowly,” Quinten said. “Eight hours for that. Twenty-four hours after that, we should know where we stand.”

  A day and a half. I hadn’t realized it would take so long to see results from the cure. There was no way I was going to let my brother come with me to kill Slater when he had a chance to stay here and save the woman he loved. And I didn’t want to entrust this experimental cure to anyone else. I was sure Quinten
didn’t either.

  An uncomfortable reality settled on me. I’d need to kill Slater. Without Quinten.

  Maybe that was for the best. Even though Quinten knew this world far better than I did, he was still human and injured. It would take almost nothing to kill him.

  I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t watch him die again. It was too hard the first time.

  This was my fight. This had always been my fight. And I would be the one who ended it.

  13

  Slater has enough power here; the Houses won’t stand in his way. He’s sending armed squads to kill anyone in House Brown who doesn’t bow to his rule.

  —W.Y.

  It was decided that Gloria was the most pressing problem, with the clearest solution at hand. Welton called Quinten a cab, and he was sent to the hospital halfway across town to tend to her.

  I offered to help. If what Abraham had said was true, I couldn’t catch the plague, which would make me a great assistant. But both Quinten and Welton thought it would be better if we didn’t draw any attention to the procedure.

  They didn’t want me there because I was galvanized, and no one trusted the galvanized.

  Normally that would have made me angry, but I decided it might be for the best. I’d have a chance to talk to Abraham and Foster alone, without Quinten questioning me.

  And we’d need that time to plan how we were going to kill Slater.

  Two of Welton’s guards silently escorted me in a car to the apartment I’d be staying in.

  The sidewalks of the compound were made of level brickwork, the street a single lane of concrete. All the buildings we passed were sturdy single – and two-story structures that seemed to be warehouses. Solid wood or metal doors, glass in the windows. The street was clean of litter, except for leaves that had piled up here and there.

  Not a lot of people milled about on the sidewalk and street right now, which could be chalked up to the time of day.

  Anyone who needed to work the fields would have left at dawn and wouldn’t be back until almost sunset.

  Or it could be that no one wanted to be out if there was the possibility of a bomber in their midst.

  The people I did see lingered outside buildings, a few on motorized and nonmotorized bikes, and several leaning over balconies or out windows.

  The thing that immediately caught my attention was the wild array of colors everyone was wearing. In my time, you wore the color of the House you worked for, the House you were indebted to, the House that claimed you. On special occasions you could wear a splash of another color, but mostly once you worked for a House, you were required to announce that by what you wore.

  But here the men, women, and children wore some sort of brown on them—shirt or trouser or skirt—but all other pieces, from hats to shoes to scarves and coats, were the color of the rainbow.

  I smiled seeing this, and was even happier to see that everyone here appeared healthy and clean, just like the people I’d seen on the road.

  Not that I thought this was a world without poverty or crime or sickness. But, in general, these people appeared to have more than just their necessities available to them.

  House Earth, or at least this compound under Welton Yellow—I supposed he might not go by that name anymore—seemed to be thriving.

  The second thing that caught my eye were all the stitched things. Little four-legged, furred chickens ran across the road in front of us like a flock of quail; bat-winged cats curled in windowsills; and a fenced-off area next to one building corralled llama-bison that looked like they could provide enough wool and meat to keep an army set for ten winters.

  The cab took a side alley between two buildings and then stopped in front of a house with wooden siding that looked like it had been built around the same time as our farmhouse.

  Of course, some of the similarity might also be the full fenced-off yard that encircled it, holding it oddly outside the flow of the other buildings, like an island in a sea of copycat structures.

  The sign on the wooden front gate read STAY INN, which was a pretty groan-worthy pun.

  The guard next to me in the back of the car opened the door and held it while I got out.

  “Thanks,” I said. “I got it from here.”

  “We’ll escort you in,” he said. “To make sure everything is satisfactory.”

  I was pretty sure he meant to make sure I didn’t do anything stupid, like declare war on the inn owner.

  The guard opened the gate for me as I walked through. He had impeccable manners.

  “Thanks,” I said as I strolled up into the house.

  It was nice inside, a mix of white paint and dark wood rubbed to a shine. The entryway opened up to show a staircase going upward on the left, a sitting room or library also to the left, and a large living area decorated with furniture taking up the rest of the space. A door directly on the other side of the room was open on what appeared to be another hallway.

  A slender bird of a woman in her fifties strode into the room, her gray hair pulled up in a wave that ended in a bun on the back of her head.

  She had on a pale blue silk blouse, black wide-legged slacks, and a smile. A chain with several small keys hung from the belt at her waist.

  “Saul,” she said to the guard. “It is so good to see you. Have you brought this lovely guest to my fine establishment?”

  She folded her hands in front of her, rings on each finger throwing off glints of light.

  “Poppy Stevens, this is Evelyn Case, a guest of Custodian Welton this evening,” Saul said.

  Poppy. Nice name.

  “I believe she is to be set up in the arrangements you offered to the others of her kind.”

  “Her kind?” Poppy looked at me. Her eyebrows lifted, folding wrinkles across her forehead.

  “The other galvanized who roomed here,” I said as politely as I could. I didn’t like being a kind or a type, and it grated on me that I was being treated differently just because I looked different on the outside.

  Well, and also because people with similarities to me had committed crimes.

  How was it fair to instantly judge me by people I’d never even met?

  “Oh, yes, I see.” She nodded, as if I’d just let her in on a secret. Then she stepped over to me, her wide-heeled shoes making a schoolmarm thunk against the wood floor.

  “Thank you, Saul,” she said. “I’ll see to her being set up as is appropriate. Is there anything else I can do?”

  Saul hesitated. What did he want—to guard me twenty-four/seven? I sure hoped not.

  “No,” he said, “that’s all we need at this time. Thank you, Ms. Stevens.”

  “Then we won’t keep you from your duties any longer,” she said.

  Both guards took the dismissal for what it was, and left the room.

  She shook her head. “They mean well,” she said, “but sometimes I think the responsibilities they are given change the way they look at people. So.” She pressed her hands together in a muted clap. “You’re Evelyn. I’m very pleased to meet you. Come this way. I have a room set aside for you, and there will be another right next to it open for your brother.”

  “Thank you,” I said, “but I don’t want to put you out. We could share.”

  “Nonsense! This is going on Custodian Welton’s bill, and he is a rascal of a man. It will be good for him to pay a fair price for a service for a change.”

  “That bad?” I asked.

  “The man will negotiate the angle of the blade that kills him, given the chance.”

  “Still, I think I’d prefer to share a room.”

  “Well, then. We can make that happen too.”

  She strode off down the hall, comfortable in this place as if it were her own home. Which I thought it might actually be.

  “The gentlemen Neds Harris are staying in this roo
m,” she said, pointing to a door on the left of the hall. “And this will be your room.”

  She walked the hall, past three doors, and opened this one with another key.

  The door swung inward, revealing a nice room with two neat beds separated by a nightstand with a lamp on it. Lace coverlets covered the beds, with warm blankets and pillows stacked on the foot of each.

  In the middle of one of the beds was my duffel.

  “Is this mine?” I asked, walking into the room.

  “Yes. Just your clothing and other personal items. I was told that the weapons you were traveling with are still at the clean station and will be returned to you when you leave town.”

  If I was going to follow through with the plan I was making in my head, I’d need those weapons. But not yet.

  This room also had a little wooden fireplace in one corner, and a stack of dry timber in a crate next to it.

  But what really caught my eye was the bookshelf. A single padded chair took up the side of the room opposite the beds, and behind it was a floor-to-ceiling shelf filled with dozens of books.

  “Oh,” I said before I could curb my reaction. “Am I allowed to read the books?”

  “Of course,” she said with a chuckle. “Anything in the room is yours for the night. Will they do?” she asked. “I have other titles.”

  “This is lovely. Thank you. Very, very nice.”

  “Good. We have hot running water down the hall to your right for bathing,” she said. “Towels are in the bottom drawer of the dresser. We also have indoor toilets down the hall and to your right. And, if you’re curious, the two other men who arrived with Neds Harris are sharing this room.” She pointed one door down. “I tried to offer them each private rooms, but they insisted they’d rather bunk together.”

  “Thank you for making me feel welcome,” I said, really meaning it from the bottom of my heart. From the way people had given me side glances on the street and the constant presence of guards, I had begun to feel like a monster. A thing that didn’t belong.

  “My pleasure.” She handed me a key for the room, which I slid into my pocket. “If you need anything, I’ll be at the front desk. Oh,” she said, and half turned. “Dinner will be served at sunset.”