“And that did not break you?” Walken’s brows lifted. “How did you escape being crushed?” Crushed as he had been, he meant. “How did you escape their attentions?”
“Of the Yathi?” He snorted. “Some days I wonder that myself. I will be honest, I cannot say. Perhaps in some way I agreed with them. Perhaps I wanted to prove them wrong, which is not a cause that I would say is greater than myself, of course. I was a doctor then, just as I am now. I still wanted to make things better for people, even if it was done in an underground clinic.”
It sounded very flimsy, very flimsy indeed. But they were there, and the Stadil-ghost said that he was free of possession. There was more to it, there always was, but at that moment he sensed a spark of humanity there, an ember of pain, that let Walken’s mental grip loosen just enough. “All right.” He fixed his gaze on the ceiling panels. “Open it up.”
Knightley grinned at him. “Irie.” He gestured over a nearby console. The hatch opened and the arms reached out, enfolding him in black chrome and surgical steel.
As it turned out, the probe was not nearly as invasive as he had expected.
Walken learned two things about Lionel Knightley in the following four hours: first, he was an extremely thorough, inventive physician. Second, there was something very obviously wrong with him. The man operated the diagnostic suite like an orchestra, every instrument working in concert with one another. An apparent lack of data ports anywhere on his body proved some difficulty at first, but apparently, Knightley had some other method of connecting with his systems – a link which, much to Walken’s surprise, he could sense as if someone had reached out and stroked his cheek.
Walken witnessed a secondary performance work itself out on Knightley’s face. A storm of emotions, stabs of victory and waves of blood-curdling rage, washed over his features, culminating in an expression of exultant victory as he collated the data. It transcended the emotional roller coaster one would expect from an artist deep in creation; Knightley seemed as if different people had crammed into the space inside his flesh, or at the very least had such an array of intense emotions even Walken’s already muted capacity seemed nothing but a tiny, dwindling flame.
When the diagnostic arms retracted into their compartment, Walken sat up. There had not been so much as a mark on him through the whole process, not a moment of danger, and he felt a hint of contrition. “That was…much less than I was expecting. I’m sorry that I made so much of it.”
“Given what you’ve been through over the last six years, I can’t say that I blame you.” Lionel, now returned to his calm, flat self, offered Walken a thin smile. “I imagine that Babylon brain of yours has a great number of disturbing images inside of it.”
The Mother’s words surfaced in his mind. I could have your limbs disconnected. “Let’s say that elective surgery has been threatened before. And remember I blew my own brains out for a reason, yeah?”
Knightley screwed up his face. “Well, it’s lucky that you failed, because you’re giving me a lot of ideas as to where it is I’ve gone wrong.”
Walken blinked. “I don’t understand.”
With two fingers, Knightley tapped his temple. “You may have noticed while working that I am not the most stable of individuals.”
It was bait that Walken would not take. “You seem perfectly collected to me. Though I did notice that you’ve lost your accent.”
“On that, we can agree,” Knightley said. “Or at least, I am collected at the moment. Let us say that when Cagliostro found me, my studies had driven me down the path toward canvas blazers. I took a similar path toward separating my madness from my body as the Yathi have with you, containing the broken parts of my psyche into a biosynthetic module based on the technology in the Princess Doll.”
Walken stared at him. “You cut up your own brain?” Despite his flat tone, he managed to make it sound as crazy as he felt it was.
“And replaced portions of it with biosynthetic modules.” Knightley nodded. “I was not a sane man, not even when you met me before. A neurodegenerative disease, you see, wiping out everything I had learned, everything that I was. You brought me what I thought was hope. Studying the girl, trying to unlock her secrets – that only pushed me over the edge in the end.” He shrugged, and leaned against a nearby piece of medical equipment. “So, in my madness, I managed to formulate the method by which I could heal myself. Or, rather, I had help.”
“Stadil,” Walken said.
“Quite.” Knightley tucked his hands behind his back. “I suppose the information I searched for on the Network created a pattern that it recognized. It came to me and told me what I needed to do, once I made it clear that I wasn’t going to be dissuaded from my course. I’ll spare you the technical details, but basically I’ve built myself a new personality through a combination of brain surgery and psychological reconditioning. Translation of my old personality into a digital format also helped. I suspect the same thing’s been done with you.”
Walken’s eyes narrowed. “You’re going to have to explain that.”
“It’s difficult to explain if you don’t know the science, especially since I don’t truly understand it all myself.”
“Yet you’re able to do what you have.” Walken largely succeeded in not sounding entirely skeptical.
“I mentioned that I had help.” Knightley pushed off the machine and walked across the room toward a console connected to a bank of monitors. “The trouble is that comprehending it requires a large amount of knowledge in a degree of interconnected disciplines, most of which were pioneered by these…aliens…a thousand years ago.” He shrugged as he waved his hands over the console and conjured a brace of holographic control panels. “As you can imagine, if I waited until I mastered these sciences, I would probably be dead before I got anything done.”
“Or in an asylum,” Walken said.
“Or in an asylum.” Knightley smiled. “At the same time, however, it’s also managed to solve most of my problems.” He called up anatomical scans, which Walken assumed were his. They certainly didn’t look biological. “And, it appears, the Yathi have managed to do the same with you.”
Walken frowned. “That appears to be the case. But they haven’t constructed a new personality for me, have they?”
Knightley gave him a searching look from over his shoulder. “That remains to be seen.” He turned back to the outputs. “I have an inkling that a great deal can be extracted from the results of this scan, brother, but I don’t want to say for certain. At any rate, it’s going to take some time before I can render a final opinion. I’ll need to complete the examination of your systems, try and figure out what it is that’s inside of you, and then…” He shrugged. “It appears that I’m going to need to go away for a while.”
“Oh?” Walken’s brows arched. “Why is that?”
“Someone came around a little while before you that I’m not terribly happy to see just at this moment. It may mean trouble. You should return to Mexico with Jacinto.”
Oh, good. “Who is it? A Yathi agent? Not one of the Bureau people, surely.”
Knightley snorted. “The Bureau leaves Tenleytown alone. This place has become too hostile for the Yathi. One of the few times their Genefex façade has failed them. Bringing the Bureau in would be too costly a strategy as well, as nobody here would allow the government into the area without conflict. I don’t know if you know this, but Tenleytown has become a state unto itself, really. A great deal of armament lurks in the towers.”
“I did not know that,” said Walken, inwardly astonished. He really didn’t know much about Tenleytown, really, outside of its status as a squatter colony. “Well. Who was it, then?”
“An old associate,” Knightley said with a wave of his hand. “Nobody you should be worried about, but they might unwittingly bring a Yathi tail. We don’t want that, especially if you’re here.”
Walken couldn’t argue with his logic. “All right. But do I need to go to Mexico? What if you need t
o do more tests?”
“I’m going to be out of pocket very soon,” Knightley said. “And I have all the information that I require. I don’t know what’s powering your body, but I doubt it’s food. You’re almost entirely synthetic.”
“Well, there’s still my brain,” Walken said. “And the associated nerves.”
“True. And it appears that there’s some kind of protein sequencer in your body – right next to the power plant and the circulatory pump. So perhaps you will have to eat. We’ll have to figure out what and how much.”
“I don’t have a heartbeat,” Walken said.
“No, but you do have a circulatory system of a kind – synthetic blood has to be circulated in some form or another. And a heart, after a fashion. Probably made from some synthetic diamond analogue, but I’ll have to wait for the material analysis to come through before I can determine that. Probably your skeleture as well.”
He wasn’t expecting that. “Diamond bones…”
“Synthetic diamond,” repeated Knightley. “But more likely it’s a glazing over some other, more exotic material. Yes…there’s a lot of technology here that I don’t recognize.” He paused to squint at the displays. “Especially in your arms. What is that?”
The memory of blue flames flickered in the corners of his vision. “I think it’s some kind of offensive measure.” He looked down at his hands. “Last night, when I was attacked by their robots…something happened. From the look of it, I think it’s plasma. It enveloped my hands and forearms, allowing me to deal significant thermal damage.”
The Rasta doctor quirked a brow. “That’s unusual. I’ve certainly never seen anything like that before. Plasma weapons are still very large, aren’t they?”
“They put them on military vehicles.” Walken approximated another sigh. “You’ll please tell me what you discover as soon as you can, won’t you?”
“Of course.” Knightley pursed his lips” “This is going to take some time. I’ll call my people, brother, and have you delivered to the pickup zone. Do you have any other questions?”
“All kinds,” Walken said. “But in the meantime, the analysis is the most important thing. Oh. When am I supposed to meet this other conspirator?”
Knightley turned to face him. His hands slid into the pockets of his scrub pants, and he looked intrigued. “Stadil has been extremely forthcoming, I see. You’ll meet her soon enough. I’ll need to communicate my findings to her first – she is understandably very anxious about your appearance on the scene.”
With a shake of his head, he got to his feet. “Why, Lionel… You make it sound as though she doesn’t approve of me.”
“She doesn’t,” he said bluntly. “In fact, if she had her way, she’d probably do everything she could to kill you. I’ve had to be very careful just to make sure she doesn’t try anything stupid with Sister January. Brother Scalli might have been suspicious of her over time, but he never would have harmed her without reason. This sister, she’d kill the other just for breathing.”
“Apostate,” Walken said with a frown.
“Exactly, brother.” Knightley’s expression was grave as well. “Bullets are the only way she knows to deal with things she can’t understand.”
Walken could not argue with that. Human history painted a long, miserable tapestry full of people like that, bullet, blade, or spear. It didn’t bode well. “Call your people. If what you say is true, then I’d best get out of here while the getting is still good.”
God only knew, if He existed at all, what would be waiting on him if he stuck around.
ome on, we don’t have all evening.” Tanaka squinted through the mouth of the hospital at where Bobbi and Violet stood, hands frozen in the middle of checking their guns. He didn’t seem at all surprised, of course. To her credit, neither was Bobbi.
“So I guess you were waiting on us.” Bobbi let her needler clatter to the ground. Without the block of metal in its grip, after all, it was damn near useless. It didn’t even weigh enough to serve as a club. “Is that it?”
Tanaka squinted at the two of them.” Tell your girl to knock it off with the pheromones.” He gestured at Violet with his pistol. “We got filters implanted, ain’t gonna work on us. Can’t say the same for this, though. And the needler, yeah, that’s it.”
Violet glanced at Bobbi, hate reflecting in her eyes like the green flash of a spotlight off animal retinas. “Yeah, all right.” She dropped the gun, teeth bared. The violence radiated from Violet’s body stronger than any chemical she could give off. “You wanna answer her question?”
Tanaka chuckled. He was a short, lithe ribbon of muscle packed into his fatigues and bomber jacket. He wore his shirt unbuttoned a bit, exposing the thin, angled pads of an armored vest underneath. The shining beneath the bangs of his short, styled black hair resembled pools of frozen pitch. “We were in the neighborhood.” He shrugged. “Now you just stay there, both of you. I know you’re fast, but we’re packing autos and you’re in a very tight space. You wouldn’t have a prayer.”
The fighter in Bobbi tensed at that. Tanaka was right, of course. They’d been ambushed in the narrow space of the lobby corridor, a sealed door at their back and a pair of guns ahead of them. Bobbi and Violet were basically unaltered meat from a combat perspective. No chance at all. “Yeah. All right. We’re easy. So what now?”
“Now we talk about why you’re here,” said Syme.
Tanaka she didn’t know, some bruiser recruit from after the breakup, but Syme was a different story. Bobbi always used him as a negotiator when dealing with their black-market sources, when working with Pierre may have exposed their activities. If Syme was here, she reasoned, then perhaps the situation might not be as bad as she had feared a moment ago. But then again…
“We’re here to see the doc,” Bobbi said. “He and I go back a while.”
Tanaka screwed up his face. “So we’ve heard. What do you want with him?”
“Been a long time since he was in the world,” said Violet. She seemed in no mood to take shit from either man, but at the moment, behaved herself. “We wanted to see what he had been up to all this time. We thought he’d might have gotten snatched, you know?”
Both men kept quiet. Bobbi wondered if they muttered to one another over a subvocal link too.
she murmured.
Bobbi sighed inwardly.
“In point of fact,” Syme said after consulting with Tanaka – who, Bobbi realized with another inward sigh, was in charge, “He has been snatched, after a fashion. He’s working for us.”
“He’s working for you,” Bobbi repeated.
“Pure humans working against the enemies of humanity,” Tanaka said. “What do you think? Of course he’s working for us. He might be a black-market surgeon, but he wants to keep in business.
Bobbi frowned. “I guess. I mean, I know he’s a smart guy, but he doesn’t seem entirely―”
“She means he’s fucking crazy,” Violet interrupted. “He manages to keep it in, but you can see it in his eyes plain as day.”
“You would be an authority on crazy.” Tanaka sneered. “Yeah, I know. He’s seen some shit while he’s been underground. But he’s ours, now. So you two need to march, and stay far away from him, you hear? Our little tribes aren’t exactly on friendly terms as I’m sure I don’t gotta tell you.”
Bobbi wasn’t having any of that. “I want to talk to Scalli.”
Tanaka’s scowl deepened. “Don’t we all. What makes you think he wants to talk to you?”
“If I may…” Syme coughed delicately, his long fingers brushed at the lapel of his battered leather jacket. “Our fearless leader is just a bit occupied on his own at the moment, I’m afraid. He’s not in a position to take on visitors. Is there a message that you’d like us to take back to him?”
The two women looked to one another, Bobbi’s green eyes on Violet’s blue, silently weighing their options – and coming to an agreement, as Violet nodded and Bobbi turned back to them.
“So look,” she said. “You heard about that hit on the Trans-Sound bridge, I figure.”
“Yeah.” Tanaka squinted at her. “Heard that was real interesting, drone strike or something.”
“You fuckers should know,” Violet hissed.
Incredulity came and settled on everyone like an unwelcomed guest. Tanaka’s eyes grew wide, though at first Bobbi could not tell if his reaction came from Violet’s bared teeth or from her words – a surprise which Bobbi would share, because she hardly wanted to tempt the guys with the machine pistols into violence.
To Bobbi’s surprise, however, Tanaka next spoke not with hostility, but open shock. “Holy shit. That was you guys?”
“Of course it was us,” Violet hissed, but Bobbi laid her hand on the other woman’s shoulder for what seemed like the hundredth time that evening to still her.
“We were the ones in that car, yes,” said Bobbi, narrowing her eyes as she looked between the two men. “And we were both very nearly killed.”
“Well no shit,” said Tanaka, his eyes wide. “The news was sanitized, but we’d heard about there being a drone hit on this car, and we thought―”
“We thought it was a gang hit.” Syme took over now, his expression unreadable. “Well, that explains some things. Mark, would you say it’s time to put our guns away? I don’t think they’re here to hurt Lionel.”
Tanaka blinked once. “Yes.” His machine pistol disappeared into his jacket. “Man, I don’t know what you’re thinking, January, but we didn’t put that thing on you. Like I said, we thought it was a hit.”
“It was,” said Violet. “Are you not paying attention?”
Tanaka shot Violet a dirty look. “I mean a hit that you guys put together. I mean it wouldn’t be the first time you took a milkblood off that bridge, yeah? It fit the profile.”
Gathering Ashes (The Wonderland Cycle Book 3) Page 17
