Twig

by wildbow

  There was no way to track time, but by the movement of the candlelight and shadows, I might have guessed it was two or so hours later that we felt the tremor.

  Every sleeping individual stirred awake as it built in intensity, making the room rumble.

  Gordon stood, crossed the room, and flicked the light switch. The lights that came on were the ordinary ones, not the emergency ones.

  “Gorger passed on word, I guess,” Gordon said. “Problem solved. The released experiments have been caught or contained. They’re letting us out.”

  There were nods and people rubbing at eyes in response.

  “We should wait, there are going to be a lot of people rushing to get out.” Helen said. She looked far less disheveled than someone who had just been sleeping was supposed to look. She had minimal bed hair, and her clothes weren’t even that much more wrinkled.

  I could imagine the pushing and shoving at the top of the staircase.

  “Still sitting tight,” I said. I looked at the others, and saw Mary’s hair. She did have messy hair. I grinned and pointed.

  She smiled back, and set to trying to fix it. Apparently a comb and ribbons were part of her arsenal, tucked away on her person.

  “It’s too bad,” he said. “Feels like it’s been too long. I’m looking forward to some fresh air.”

  I wasn’t the only one to nod agreement.

  There was a knock at the door. Gordon, sitting by the door, opened it without rising from his perch. When he saw who it was, he stood so he could open it wider.

  “Gladys?” Gladys’ coworker asked. “I’m going. If you want to come?”

  Gladys glanced at Gordon, then nodded at the woman.

  “I’ll walk you to the edge of the crowd,” Gordon said, glancing back at us. “And report back to these guys about how things look.”

  “Sure,” Helen said, brightly. “Have fun!”

  Gordon smiled, then left with the two doctors.

  I watched the door slowly swing closed. Mary craned her neck, shifting over from her seat on the stool to match the movement of the door, looking, and I saw her eyes momentarily light up, legs kicking in excitement.

  “What?” Lillian whispered.

  Mary pursed her lips in a kiss, and I felt my heart sink.

  As if to symbolize something, like entombment, the door shut with a woof of air, sealing by way of a tight fit and sheer weight.

  “Not a fan,” I said.

  “Of Gladys?” Mary asked, still smiling a little.

  “Of them. As a pair. I don’t get it.”

  “He got his moment as the knight in shining armor,” Helen said. “I bet he’s the kind of boy that likes that idea. But I think she’s more appreciative of the fact that he explained things after. She seems like the type that’s ignored relationships in favor of work. He must have found a chink in the armor, awakened that interest.”

  “Are you miss Cupid now?” I asked. “You pay attention to this sort of thing?”

  “I prefer Aphrodite,” Helen said, still smiling. “And I’m working on it.”

  I shook my head.

  “Grumpy this morning,” Jamie muttered. He was awake, but he hadn’t roused.

  “Jealous?” Mary asked.

  I wheeled on her.

  She grinned, showing me all of her tiny perfect white teeth.

  “Uh, no,” I said. “Definitely not. Not on any level. I’d take Sub Rosa on a date before I took Shipman, and I’m not jealous of her for having Gordon because I’m a guy and Gordon is most definitely not a girl. No and nope.”

  “But she’s taking him away from the group,” Lillian said, behind me. “It’s okay to be jealous of that.”

  “I’m not jealous!”

  Jamie slowly, painfully reached out, his fingers and hand extending toward my foot. I put the toe of my shoe further out in his direction.

  He gave it a pat. “There there. There there.”

  “I’d hit you if I wasn’t worried it would kill you.”

  “There there.”

  I shook my head, resolving to ignore Jamie. “Is this a long term thing? Him and her? How does that work?”

  “We’ll find out and we’ll figure it out,” Mary said.

  “Ugh,” I said. “You can. I’m going to live in happy little Sylvestertown, where this isn’t a thing.”

  “He’s growing up, our golden hero,” Helen said.

  I shook my head. “First one of us to reach that point, I guess.”

  The moment of silence that followed the statement caught me off guard.

  “Which point?” Mary asked.

  “Liking someone?” I asked, back, a little confused.

  “No,” Jamie said, softly, head down against his pillow, eyes closed.

  “No,” Mary said.

  “No?” Lillian said, uncertainly.

  “Gordon’s a late bloomer, all things considered,” Helen said.

  All eyes fell on me. The latest of bloomers, it seemed.

  “No,” I said. “No way. That’s not fair!”

  “You’re one of the youngest of us, and you’re a boy,” Helen said. “Don’t worry. Your time will come.”

  “You’re all a bunch of dirty liars, you’re doing this to mess with me!”

  “He is grumpy,” Mary commented.

  “There there,” Jamie said, patting my foot again.

  I pulled it away, and mimed like I was going to kick him in the head. It prompted the softest of laughs, which became a hacking coughing fit.

  The door opened. Gordon. He gave Jamie a concerned look.

  “Way is clear,” he reported.

  We started getting ourselves pulled together, the people who’d slept without shoes pulling them on. I hadn’t taken mine off, and helped Gordon with Jamie. I was actually a better choice than some of the girls, because I was short enough that he could put an arm around my shoulders without reaching up and over.

  Once we were all sorted, Gordon told the girls to go ahead and make sure nobody would jostle or bump us.

  Our movement as a trio was excruciatingly slow, and I knew it would be worse once we reached the stairs.

  As we hobbled and limped forward, trying not to jar Jamie too much, Jamie spoke up. “Sy.”

  “Hm?” I grunted.

  “Based on recent events, I think you’re—ah! You’re in good shape.”

  “Mmf,” I grunted, again. “How so?”

  “I’ve seen the better side of you. You don’t have anything to worry about.”

  “Mm,” I grunted, bearing as much weight as I could while trying to keep Jamie from bobbing up and down.

  “Her crying was annoying me,” I said.

  “Hm?” Jamie made an inquisitive sound. “Ah. I’m sure.”

  ☙

  As a group, Jamie now in a wheelchair, we met Hayle and Briggs. Rather than going to them, we’d apparently earned the right to have them come to us, a short distance from the exit to the Bowels.

  The leaves were bright, the rain light, and the sun even penetrated the clouds to a degree.

  “Gorger communicated that you played a big role in this,” Briggs said.

  “Sy, Helen, and Jamie, toward the end,” Gordon said.

  “Jamie,” Briggs said. He gave Jamie a once-over. “There’s an operating room waiting. You can go. I’m sure the others will catch you up.”

  “No,” Jamie said.

  “You’d rather stay?”

  “I…” Jamie made a face. “I forgot something. Missed something. I need an appointment.”

  I saw his hand shake as he moved it toward his book.

  “I see. Appointment first, then operation?”

  Jamie nodded, a movement made jerky by nervousness and anxiety.

  Rather than make him keep reaching, I stepped close. I took the battered book I’d recovered while he’d been getting set up in his wheelchair and checked over.

  Jamie smiled.

  Briggs signaled someone, and they approached to wheel Jamie
away.

  I watched him go, a sick feeling in my middle.

  His appointments were worse than mine, in a way.

  “In his absence,” Briggs said. “I’d like written reports from each of you on the incident.”

  There were a few suppressed groans, mine was one.

  “It’s a third strike in the last year,” Briggs said. “I’ve already been told there will be changes. Radham Academy’s underground laboratories will be refurbished and redone entirely. Radham Academy’s staff will be overhauled.”

  I felt a note of alarm. I looked in Hayle’s direction.

  “Rest assured, Professor Hayle will retain his post,” Briggs said. “However, I will not.”

  My eyebrows went up.

  “The sentiment across the Crown States is that there is something brewing, and apparently I am unfit to lead the Academy through it. It may be right,” Briggs said.

  I didn’t miss the hint of bitterness in his voice.

  This was a demotion he would never recover from.

  “Radham will be looked after by a Duke, I believe the man is sixteenth in line for the Crown, and he has led armies in war,” Hayle said, looking at me. “If I actually have to convey to you why you are not to get on his bad side, I’ve failed on multiple levels.”

  “I understand,” I said.

  “I really hope you do,” he said.

  “The transition period will be difficult,” Briggs said. “At Professor Hayle’s recommendation, I’m assigning you a task in the meantime. A task for which you’ll need these.”

  He reached into a deep lab coat pocket and retrieved a small bottle. He shook it, making the pills rattle. Though the glass was thick, I could tell that the pills were a deep purple.

  “This is the same material we feed into the rain and the drinking water,” he said. “Without it, you’ll find yourself quickly sickening and dying.”

  “We’re leaving Radham?” Gordon asked.

  With a time limit, I thought. Only so many pills.

  “As soon as Jamie is out of the hospital and you’ve each had your appointments,” Hayle told us.

  “What for?” Mary asked.

  “This time, we’re dealing with a young woman on the run,” Briggs told us. “She was one of several in line to become a professor, a young one, and a woman, no less. When she didn’t get her position, we had to take measures, given the knowledge she’d picked up. A brief incarceration, then work in the underground labs until an opportunity came up.”

  “She was a prisoner,” Gordon said.

  “With emphasis on ‘was’, Gordon,” Briggs said. “She escaped, with the head of another prisoner. Her name is Genevieve Fray, and she has a deep grudge against the Academy.”

  “Okay,” Gordon said. “We find her, we stop her.”

  “I would very much like you to do that,” Briggs said. “But there’s another concern at play.”

  He turned his eyes to me.

  “What?” I asked, confused.

  “To make sure everyone is on the same page,” Hayle said. “Mary, I know you don’t know the full details about the other projects, unless they’ve told you things they shouldn’t.”

  We had.

  “Sylvester was an extension of an existing project, one that used minute amounts of chemicals and poisons to maintain and stimulate brain liquidity. Faster learning, faster adaptation, more connections. Many students opt into this program, taking small amounts. Sylvester was a stress test for the program, to discover the effective maximums and breaking point.”

  I swallowed hard.

  This wasn’t news to me, but…

  “With his inclusion to the Lambs, we stopped pushing as hard as we were. We left things be as they were, and another Academy took on the task of testing the limits of the Wyvern project,” Hayle said.

  “Miss Fray was someone who benefited from what we thought were small doses. Part of the reason for her loss of professorship was that she was manufacturing her own doses, for herself. We discovered this, among other things, and thought her too dangerous.”

  “When you say she’s manufacturing her own doses,” I said. “Is she taking as much as me, or…”

  “We don’t know,” Hayle said.

  “She’s angry at the Academy, her brain is working very much like yours does, Sylvester, and she’s running. We have a dim idea of where she is, but she’s proven too evasive for Dog and Catcher. You need to find her, and you need to do it fast.”

  I nodded.

  But my brain was only fixated on one thing.

  I have a sister.

  Previous Next

  Enemy (Arc 3)

  Winter

  “Is Mr. Howell expecting you?” the stitched asked.

  Warren stared. There were so few of the stitched in Pontiac, and they were the sort of thing that was ignored and people who used them were looked down on. Pontiac was still a city in the Crown’s dominion, but it was a good distance from any of the Academies and there wasn’t much love for the Academy’s work there.

  Now he was home, and a dead man stood in his father’s entryway, dressed in a footman’s clothing. Warren glanced back over his shoulder at his companion, Harry, who quirked an eyebrow in response. Harry’s sandy-hair was tucked beneath a cap, and he wasn’t clean-shaven, unfortunately. They’d stepped right off the train and made their way straight there. Warren had decided to shave while braving the periodic bumps and jostles of the carriage, and had made out with only one nick at his jaw.

  “I’m his son,” Warren finally managed, still a little dumbstruck. “I sent a telegram ahead, he should be expecting me.”

  “This way, sir,” he told me, stepping back and gesturing.

  The stitched in Pontiac hadn’t been so well made. They were haulers, dirty and covered up with heavy clothes and caps, they did the dangerous work until they overheated and fried. Even before the overheating, though, they were rarely able to speak more than one slurred word at a time. Warren had always avoided them.

  It walked just a little bit stiffly. Harry fell into step beside Warren, exaggerating the stitched’s gait. Warren elbowed him, hard, and Harry resumed walking normally, still maintaining a shit-eating grin.

  On a good day, Harry was such a character. On a bad one, he was incorrigible.

  Warren hoped Harry could lose the smirk soon. The were just now approaching the sitting room.

  The manservant opened the double doors, and Warren’s hopes were dashed.

  The sitting room itself was as he remembered it. There were three sets of arching double doors opening to the outside, partially made of glass, a large window, and more archways that hid slightly recessed bookshelves. The hardcover books had gold lettering, some faded more than others. The furniture was ornate, some of which had been antiques when his grandfather had been young.

  His father and another man stood in the middle of the sitting room, beside what looked to be an eighteen year old girl in a state of undress from the waist up, only a brassiere covering her.

  Warren’s father looked at him with a moment’s surprise, then smiled. Harry’s grin was ear to ear, positively delighting in Warren’s situation.

  “Father.”

  “Warren!” his father said, approaching. “So good to see you!”

  Warren accepted the hug stiffly, not quite sure what to do. His father was a tall man, but he’d dropped some weight, and felt surprisingly frail under Warren’s arms. His father was from Cardiff, tall, dark, and surprisingly genial for how grim he could look.

  His mother, not yet present, was short, but of brawny English-speaking German stock. Warren had been blessed with the best traits of both, putting him above average in height and of a respectable solid build, and years at university had put some muscle on his frame.

  “You look different,” his father said.

  “I feel different,” Warren said, trying not to look at the elephant in the room.

  His father smiled.

  “It’s been a lo
ng time, Warren,” the other man in the room said.

  Warren paid attention to him for the first time, an old man with a very thick beard and a white lab coat.

  “Doctor Pegram? You’re right. It’s been forever.”

  “Not since you were small. I watched you grow up, and now your father tells me you’ve just finished your studies?”

  “Halfway across the Crown States, Doctor, yes. I’ve been learning about machines and machinery,” Warren said, feeling a little embarrassed at the admission.

  “Good on you. Not enough young people working with the hard sciences. It’s all chemicals and biology, ratios and balances instead of numbers and calculations,” the doctor said, gesturing at himself. “Why machines, Warren?”

  “I, uh, always liked cars, sir,” Warren said. His eye flickered toward the woman.

  The doctor smiled. “Don’t mind her.”

  “It’s rather hard not to,” he admitted.

  “Ah, of course,” his father said, “Wendy, get dressed, please.”

  The woman moved, and immediately Warren recognized her as a stitched. The movements were slightly off. Her scars, however, were so faint that they only appeared in the right light, light pink and faintly reflective.

  When she raised her hands up to pull her hair out from beneath her shirt, he saw how there was a piece of metal embedded into the side of her neck, back near the spine.

  “She’s yours?”

  “Yes. She cleans and runs small errands. She requires a little bit more care when instructions are given,

  “I’ve been gone five years, and when I return, you’re employing stitched?”

  “Times change, son. All the arable land surrounding Radham is being co-opted by the Academy. I manage the farms and farmers as best I can, to give them work, but the Academy grows bigger, stronger, better crops. Blight doesn’t touch their plants, and they use stitched labor. I have to make concessions if I want to compete.”

  Warren glanced again at Harry, worried it was too sensitive a discussion when they had a guest. Two, if Dr. Pegram was included.

  “It’s alright, Warren. There were a few bad years, but we’re managing well enough. Using stitched for the field work was a hard choice, it meant turning some laborers away, but…”