Half Life (Russell's Attic Book 2)

by SL Huang

  He was in Tegan’s driveway, near the high fence that surrounded their wooded backyard.

  “What’s going on!” I shouted at Arthur over the near-constant racket of the dogs.

  “Don’t know!” he shouted back. “I keep calling—I tried both Tegan and Reese a hundred times—finally went in, but they ain’t in the house, ain’t nowhere—”

  “Did you try his workshop?” Tegan’s shop was a separate building out back, where he did most of his work.

  “The dogs are out! And Tegan and Reese ain’t gonna appreciate it if I shoot ’em! I tried everything—got some meat from the grocery store, even tried calling a vet for some tranqs and she threatened to call the cops on me. Almost got bit climbing the fence—”

  “I’ll take care of it,” I said, heading for the front door.

  “Hang on, I locked back up,” Arthur called, drawing a set of lockpicks out of his jacket pocket and tossing them to me. “Be careful!”

  I was glad Arthur had his picks on him. It didn’t seem polite to break down Tegan and Reese’s door, even to make sure they were okay.

  Shit, they’d better be okay.

  The dogs in the backyard became more agitated as I approached the house. The sound waves teased out to only four different animals—same as the last time I had been here—but if I didn’t concentrate on the math, it sounded like a hell of a lot more. Tegan’s place wasn’t squished in next to his neighbors like the houses in the city proper, but still, it was amazing no one had called in a noise complaint yet.

  Amazing and lucky. If there was one thing Tegan would appreciate less than anything else, it was having the cops called to his property.

  I slid the metal picks into the lock and felt the pins go up one after the other, the mathematics clicking beautifully into place. I twisted the cylinder and pushed the door open.

  Tegan and Reese had a homey living room, with squashy furniture across from an entertainment center surrounded by shelves of books and DVDs. On the other side of the room from the door a stone fireplace formed a partial wall; behind it opened a large custom kitchen that let out into the backyard. I’d never seen any more of the house, but from the outside dimensions I knew it couldn’t be much larger, and I was right: a bedroom opened to the right of the living room with a bathroom and closet behind it, and that was it. I did a cursory check throughout the house, but Arthur was far more observant than I was and he’d already been through. It was empty.

  I went to the back door. The barking escalated to deafening as I approached, along with scratching and snarling, as if the dogs wanted to burst in, tear my head off, and rip my flesh limb from limb. “See, this is why I don’t like animals,” I groused aloud. “You guys have met me before.”

  To be fair, this was the first time I’d broken into their home.

  I surveyed the house. I needed to get the dogs in here and get myself back out without letting them follow me. I could yank open the back door and then race out the front, but then they’d be free to return into the yard. I needed to trap them.

  My eyes flickered around the space. The bathroom had doors to both the bedroom and the kitchen, so I could potentially open the back door, run through the kitchen and living room, circle around through the bedroom, and then cut back to the kitchen through the bathroom and be out the back door. If the dogs chased me through the circuit, I’d be able to get back out while they were still in the house and shut them all inside.

  I peered out the back window. All four dogs were barrels of corded muscle and fur, coiled power and vicious jaws. I let my vision fade out and concentrated only on the mathematics: the oscillations of movement, the symmetry of gait, the bunching and releasing of muscles bending limbs into locomotion.

  Christ, they were fast.

  Faster than I was, if we were talking a dead sprint. In my head, I extrapolated through opening the door, and the variable values of the dogs’ sheer power crashed against me in hypothetical, tearing me to shreds. Well. That seemed like a nonstarter.

  Unless…

  I counted out the split seconds between when they scratched and pounded against the door trying to get to me. I could buy myself maybe a quarter second’s delta by forcing the dogs to push open the door themselves. But it still wasn’t going to be enough to keep me from getting ripped open.

  I cast my eyes around the kitchen, and my gaze fell on the polished hardwood floor.

  Hmm.

  I scuffed my boot against it, estimating the coefficient of kinetic friction. Then I started pulling open cabinets.

  Either Tegan or Reese was quite the chef, because I found seven different types of oil in glass bottles. I collected them along with the dish soap and the dishwashing liquid and shook out a droplet of each one in turn onto my fingers, wiping my hand off on a paper towel in between.

  The oils won hands down. I took the slipperiest one with me and returned to the back door.

  I emptied the entire bottle in a broad slick right in front of the back door, taking care to keep my boots out of it and leaving a tiny strip of dry wood against the wall. Then I stood on my toes on the very edge, creeping along the dry bit I’d left until the door was within reach. I leaned across the puddle, put my hand on the knob, and took a deep breath—my equations here were not exactly ideal, and had far too many variables I couldn’t control.

  The dogs pounded against the door, untiring. Bam. Bam. Bam. Scratch. Bam.

  I unlocked the knob. Bam. Bam.

  Just as the next beast hit, I turned the knob ever so slightly so the latch disengaged, leapt over my slick of oil in the other direction, and ran like hell. A quarter of a second later, the next dog threw itself against the door in my wake, and it burst open.

  I flew forward, toward the front of the house.

  The dogs piled in on my tail with a roar of barking, leaping forward with a terrifying amount of velocity—and slipped.

  I heard them behind me, their claws scrabbling for purchase as their burst of power turned them into cartoon figures bicycling against the floor. And then they clambered through it and gave chase, right on my heels, the deafening roar of their barking enough to rend me to pieces all by itself. My adrenaline spiked into overdrive as I swung into the bedroom. I wasn’t sure I was going to be fast enough.

  The dogs skidded after me, all four of them, and the definite snap of jaws closing on air rang right behind me—the only thing that saved me was that they tried to take the turn too tightly and their oily paws slipped again, sending them into a pileup against the bedroom door—

  My vision tunneled. I sprinted for the bathroom, head down, legs churning. I wasn’t going to make it to the back door. They were too fast.

  I dove into the bathroom and kicked the door shut behind me as hard and fast as I could. The monster at the head of the pack slammed into it, snarling.

  I didn’t have time to breathe—they would come back around through the living room. I practically leapt over the width of the bathroom and back out into the kitchen, then over my oil slick and to the door.

  The dogs burst back out into the living room and shot at me. I fell out onto the deck and took the knob with me, slamming the door so hard the window panes rattled in the wall. Something very heavy, very angry, and very vicious pounded into it from the other side an instant later. And then another.

  They couldn’t get through. Could they?

  I did a quick force calculation to make sure. Then, just in case my estimates as to the strength of Tegan’s door jamb were too low, I took out Arthur’s lockpicks again and used them to turn the deadbolt home from the outside. My hands were shaking more than I wanted to admit.

  I drew in a deep, shuddering breath and staggered back a few steps, away from the snarling and scratching going on inside the house. That had been way too close. The muscles in my legs felt like I’d liquefied them.

  I stumbled off the deck and onto the hard-packed dirt of the backyard, trying to slow my breathing. Arthur vaulted down from the fence and came over. �
��You all right?”

  “Child’s play,” I said, still panting. “God, I hate animals.”

  We hiked back to the workshop. I still had Arthur’s lockpicks out; I slid them into the lock and opened the door.

  “Oh, Lord,” whispered Arthur, and pushed past me.

  Tegan and Reese were bound and gagged on the floor of the shop.

  I spent a moment in paralyzed shock before I dashed after Arthur. He’d pulled out a knife and was cutting Tegan’s bonds; I did the same for Reese, dragging the gag off and sawing through the thick ropes that knotted Reese’s muscular wrists and ankles to the bolted-down workbenches. I consciously didn’t think about the stench in the air.

  “I gotcha,” I heard Arthur murmuring, over Tegan’s coughing. “Just breathe. I gotcha.”

  I wished I knew what to say. Both of them were moving limply, lethargically, their faces strained and hollow. I didn’t know whether to offer a hand up or turn away so they wouldn’t have to react to me seeing them this way.

  “Ari,” croaked Reese, in a voice so hoarse it faded out for a hitch in the middle. “You all right?”

  “Nothing a shower, a hot meal, and a good night’s sleep cannot cure,” said Tegan, waving off his partner with his good hand—his left hand and leg were prosthetic below the elbow and knee. The trembling in his fingers belied his statement, but none of us called him on it. “Are you all right, my friend?”

  “Angry,” answered Reese, very deliberately. Reese was a person of few words.

  Tegan, on the other hand, epitomized gentlemanliness and set very high stock in being cordial, and he had the look of a thin but sprightly grandfather to go with it, complete with downy white hair and long mustachios. “Arthur. Cassandra. Thank you both.” He touched Reese on the arm. “Will you check on the dogs?”

  Reese grunted and staggered upright, wobbling only slightly. Reese might have been the same age as Tegan—it was hard to tell, especially as I suspected Tegan looked older than he was and Reese younger. Athletic and muscle-bound, with a deep tan and short bristly haircut, Reese had been a fixture here since I’d first hired Tegan for his forgeries years ago, and to this day I didn’t have the slightest clue as to whether Reese was a man or a woman. Reese was just Reese.

  Reese pushed up to standing and limped out the back door, toward the house and the howling dogs.

  Arthur grabbed a water bottle off a nearby workbench and twisted off the cap. Tegan set it aside after only a tentative few sips and then leaned on Arthur to gather himself up and seat himself on one of the workshop’s stools. I stood by awkwardly.

  “Thank you,” murmured the old forger. “So kind of you, my friend. My thanks.”

  “Who did this to you?” asked Arthur, sounding pained. I didn’t blame him.

  Tegan didn’t look toward me. Or maybe he didn’t know. “Oh, Arthur. You know I don’t get involved.”

  “Seems to me someone already got you involved,” said Arthur.

  “Ah, well, yes. That is between me and them.” He sounded wistful, like someone who missed playing with fireflies as a child, not someone who had just been hog-tied on the floor of his own shop.

  “They hurt you?” pressed Arthur. “You need to see a doctor?”

  “No, no, thank you. The people who were so impolite as to involve us, as you say, were at least quite…gentle.”

  My jaw was clenched so hard my teeth were grinding together. I forced myself to unclamp it. I was very, very carefully not letting myself react yet, not letting myself think, because if I registered what happened here, if I considered my part in it—

  Reese came back. “The dogs are okay.”

  “No ill effects?” Tegan sounded concerned.

  “I didn’t hurt them,” I assured them quickly. “Only locked them in your house.”

  Tegan and Reese looked at me as if they had just remembered I was in the room. They hadn’t been talking about me.

  “How’d they get past the dogs?” asked Arthur.

  The room got still and awkward.

  Reese came over and touched Tegan’s elbow, ignoring Arthur’s question. “Ari. Come inside.”

  “I do find myself sorely in need of a bathroom and a bed,” admitted Tegan. He turned to us. “Might I beg your leave, with my apologies for so brief a welcome? Did you have an urgent business need?”

  “No—God, no! Don’t need nothing,” said Arthur. “But what if they—can you be sure whoever did this won’t come back? I can stay for a while. Watch your backs.”

  “Unnecessary, though I do thank you,” said Tegan calmly. “I believe they got what they came for.” Reese stared at him, arms crossed, and for some reason I became suddenly certain I was watching a bizarre, silent argument, even though neither of their faces had changed expression.

  “We’ll talk,” Reese told Arthur after a moment, and then helped Tegan up and back toward the house.

  Arthur and I followed slowly. The dogs, released by their masters, came and nosed at us, solid masses of brown and gray muscle. I watched them nervously, but they didn’t seem to remember wanting to tear me to pieces, or at least had no hard feelings about it.

  Conscious of both the mercurial dogs and of Arthur still next to me, I tried to control my breathing, to keep my muscles from tensing. But a raging, animalistic temptation was rising in me, urging me to start an all-out war with a certain crime family, because to hell with it, you don’t get away with this, you do not get to drag other people into the middle of a private vendetta and almost kill them because they won’t give you a fucking reference—

  “Checker said your job went okay,” Arthur said quietly. “Got a hold of him before you and me caught each other.”

  The words gave me whiplash, swinging me back around to my Liliana problem. My stolen mechanical child, who was unsettling me more than I wanted to accept. I tried to steady myself. “Yeah. It went fine, I guess. Did he tell you anything else?”

  “Yeah. Robots. Unbelievable.”

  Unbelievable was one word for it.

  We trailed Reese and Tegan back into the house—one of them had thrown down paper towels to soak up my oil slick—and stood in the living room waiting. The sound of running water reached us from the bathroom.

  “Checker told me another thing,” said Arthur, his hands shoved in his pockets like he was about to bring up the most casual subject in the world, which probably meant I needed to brace myself.

  “Jesus. What?”

  “Said you’re giving her back if the poor man can’t pay you.”

  “I said I might,” I corrected. Arthur giving me shit was all I needed right now. Not when I still had no idea how I was supposed to feel about a little girl who wasn’t, not when I had a Mafia boss attacking people I knew just to facilitate setting me up. “Aren’t you against stealing? I thought you’d be all for me returning a company’s rightful property.”

  “This ain’t a usual circumstance,” Arthur answered.

  I’d never figure out the logic of his morality. “This isn’t a hobby. If I do work for someone, I expect payment.”

  “You got plenty of money. Can afford to do a good thing for someone.”

  “I can afford it, sure,” I said, for the moment ignoring the fact that I wasn’t sure I’d be able to give Liliana back myself. “How is that related to whether or not I get paid?”

  “The man got kicked out of his home.”

  “And that makes what I do less valuable how?”

  Arthur gusted out a breath and sank down on Tegan and Reese’s couch. “Come on, Russell. Please? You can’t take his money.”

  Something in Arthur’s voice made me stop and focus on him more fully. He gazed up at me with terrible earnestness.

  “I can so take his money,” I said, though not quite as glibly. “What’s it to you?”

  Arthur’s shoulders rose and fell almost self-consciously. “Just think a dad shouldn’t lose his kid, is all.”

  “His fake kid?”

  “He ain’t hurti
ng no one,” said Arthur. “Please, Russell? Consider it a birthday gift to me.”

  “Wait, what?” I said. “It’s your birthday?”

  “No, but—”

  “Hang on, I’ve known you for almost a year. When is your birthday?” Shit, I’d never even thought about this. Birthdays. Obligations. People who wanted me to do them favors. Jesus.

  “Ain’t the point—”

  “I think it is. I didn’t even know when your birthday is, so it’s pretty clear I wasn’t going to get you anything.”

  Arthur sighed, a long drawn-out breath I had come to recognize as the sound he made when I wasn’t being normal. “My birthday is December twenty-fifth.” He said it as if imparting something deeply personal.

  “You were born on Christmas?”

  “Yup.”

  I had never celebrated Christmas. Or birthdays. At least not for as long as I could remember. And I hadn’t gotten Arthur a Christmas present, either.

  “So when’s yours?” said Arthur.

  “My what?”

  “Your birthday, Russell.”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “Because next time, we should celebrate.”

  Which sounded worse than getting my teeth yanked out with rusty pliers. “That’s a stupid reason to pry into my personal life.”

  He half-smiled. “You trying to make it hard to be friends with you, girl?”

  “Of course,” I said. “If it were easy, everyone would do it, and I’d never get any work done.” I flopped down next to him on the couch, pissed off at Arthur and the world and the fact that having friends now meant people expected things from me and the horrible reality that I couldn’t even protect a delicate old man anyway, and why couldn’t everyone just not matter—

  “Take the dad’s case,” said Arthur softly. “You want a reason, well, you keep trying to pay me for stuff. Pay me by giving this guy his daughter back.”

  “He owes me a lot more than—”