Twig

by wildbow

  I felt Jamie’s hand on my arm tighten. I wasn’t as fast to see what he saw, but it was a question of my being an inch or two shorter than him.

  A man on the far side of the street, approaching.

  He held his head at a strange angle, like his neck was broken, and a earlobes on already large ear dangled, a weight pinned to the bottom. He had unkempt black hair, an unkempt beard, and strangely spaced out features on his face, as if someone had grabbed the back of his head and pulled, everything back out of the way, eyes to either side, mouth down, nose flattened and broadened. He wore a soldier’s uniform, and he was weighed down with canisters. A length of chain was wound his right wrist and hand, and something that looked like a lantern dangled from the end of that chain, nearly touching the ground by his right foot, with spikes radiating from it.

  Plumes of something were puffing out from the end, as it swung in time with each step of his left foot.

  My arm at my side, I reached over, tapping the gun in Jamie’s pocket.

  The three of us walked, eyes forward, pretending not to have noticed.

  As carts and carriages passed up and down the street, a group of people blocked our view of the man for a few long seconds.

  When they moved out of the way, he was gone. I felt Jamie’s grip tighten, but he wasn’t indicating anything in particular.

  Just worry.

  Helen reached for her bag and broke the cookie in half. She broke one half into two quarters, and held them out for Jamie and I.

  Jamie took his bit of cookie, letting go of my arm.

  I saw the man walking in the midst of a group of woodcutters, his hair and beard almost camouflaged among theirs, only his features standing out, and only barely then. Helen pushed the cookie at my mouth. I opened up and accepted it. The damn cookie was good, but I’d have to talk to her about things, after.

  “Good cookie,” Helen said, as the man came to be about five paces away. Four. Three. “I really like—”

  She didn’t stop talking so much as segue. Switching modes, fast enough it caught me off guard, let alone our assailant. She ducked low, lunging at the man in the same instant he shoved the two men in front of him out of the way. He had the smoking lantern thing in one hand, clutched with spikes radiating out between fingertips, and was already swinging for Helen’s face—except she wasn’t there anymore.

  Jamie didn’t miss a beat. He fired.

  It was loud. People screamed, and they scattered. The lumberjacks around us backed away, ducking.

  They realized we knew. They communicate without words, just as well as we do.

  Helen grabbed his arm, keeping it back and out of the way as he dropped to one knee. Jamie fired again, placing each shot into the center of the man’s body mass, carefully enough to avoid hitting Helen and I.

  Jamie was slow, he lagged behind the rest of the world as he processed and studied everything. But with forewarning—well, he was keeping up.

  A canister hanging off the man’s body took a bullet from Jamie’s gun and went spinning off. Thick black-grey smoke expanded out in the middle of the street.

  I turned my attention to the others. Figuring out where the knife man and the one on the rooftop might have gone. I spotted the knife man with the scarf, approaching at a run.

  “Go,” I said. “Nearest alley, go, go!”

  Achieved what we needed to achieve, I thought. Slowing them down, passing on word to the others. When they heard that children had been involved in a gunfight, they’d know something was wrong.

  It wasn’t elegant, but it was us.

  Damn all the other parts of the plan. It was worth nothing at all if the Lambs didn’t make it out okay.

  The moment that thought was through my head, something struck me in the side, with surprising force. It felt big, like I’d been kicked by an oversized horse. My hand slipped from Jamie’s arm, and I felt Helen grab me, failing to stop me from falling belly first to the street.

  “Sy!” Jamie called out. “No, no!”

  The two of them grabbed me, trying to help me stand. I didn’t grasp why it was so hard, until I felt the pain in my side. A burning point of light, deep inside, a small pain.

  Helen made a noise, and shoved Jamie to the ground before ducking low. Something struck the wall with a surprising crack.

  I stared at the smoke in the middle of the street, at the pouring rain that had to have obscured the view. So far away I hadn’t even heard the shot.

  The man on the roof. He shot me.

  “Sy,” Jamie said.

  Ow. Oh man, it was really starting to hurt.

  I found my feet with their help, I stumbled, and nearly fell again. The two of them had me, almost dragging me.

  Two of our slowest runners, and me with a bullet in my midsection. The knife wielder was close. We had the alley, and we hopefully had cover.

  But we were surrounded, with one of them missing, no doubt waiting in the wings. They had no reason not to call the local soldiers in and draw the net closed.

  “If you don’t move faster, gunshot or no, I’m never speaking to you again,” Jamie said.

  I couldn’t have Jamie refusing to speak to me.

  No way, no how.

  I did my best.

  Previous Next

  Esprit de Corpse—5.5

  I watched Helen and Gordon chatter, joining in now and again with a comment. The topic was our etiquette and presentation class. It still put me off, having known Helen for a few months, how she could switch from eerie deadpan to animated and normal, demonstrating the very subjects that Gordon was bringing up. The two of us gave her tips, and she demonstrated each of them with an uncanny accuracy, shaping and refining her body language, tone, and overall presentation.

  They were as different as night and day, at the fundamental level, human and inhuman, but they had still found a connection.

  I realized we had a fourth member present. The new kid. Quiet.

  “Have you had the class yet?” I asked him, to make conversation.

  He shook his head, then raised a hand to push the glasses up his nose.

  “They make us do it, so we can fit into more situations, and so we don’t embarrass Mr. Hayle, I think,” I said.

  “Seems like Helen and Gordon took it to heart,” the boy said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “They know their stuff.”

  “You don’t? I’m still trying to figure everyone out. I think I understand them, Gordon more than Helen, but she’s—”

  “An experiment,” I finished.

  He nodded, looking guilty for even saying it.

  “To answer your question, I think they’re trying to decide if I should keep going or if I’m a lost cause.”

  “Oh,” he said.

  I cracked a smile. “I’m more interested in the professors than anything. They find really interesting people, four so far, and I’ve made it a challenge for myself to see how fast I can get under their skin.”

  “I’m starting to get the picture,” he said.

  I smiled wider.

  “I still feel so lost,” he said. “And I’m not catching up. I sleep sixteen hours a day, I have more appointments than anyone, I have less time in class, less time with the rest of you, it’s not helping. They say it’s going to get better, but…”

  He trailed off.

  “Whatever happens, we’ll help,” I said. “We’ll understand. Honest.”

  He probably wasn’t aware how much doubt came across on his face.

  There was something he wasn’t telling me.

  “I’ll start,” I said, smiling. “I’ve completely forgotten your name.”

  “I’ve told you four times.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “What is it, again?”

  “Jamie.”

  “Jamie,” I said. I closed my eyes and tried to commit it to memory. “They tell me this will get better too, as they fix the dosages. And it is. But right now it sucks. I know what it’s like to feel like you’re falling behind.
”

  “Speaking of,” he said. “I think I’m dozing off. I can barely keep my eyes awake. Those two talking is putting me under.”

  “Then sleep,” I said. “I don’t mind.”

  “I’m afraid to sleep, sometimes,” he said, his voice soft, still watching them. The sudden onset of fatigue was obvious.

  “Why?”

  “Sometimes, I fall asleep, and when I wake up, they’ve got me hooked up, and there’s nothing I can do before they throw the switch.”

  I remembered the chair, the cloth-covered tanks. I’d snooped. I’d met Ashton and Evette, in a way. I’d seen the aftermath, the labs where their remains were interred. Evette dead before she even awoke, Ashton an effective abortion, left in a tank that now smelled of formaldehyde. On bad days I’d slept on the floor in their rooms, or stayed up all night with them, talking to them, knowing they couldn’t ever respond.

  That thought on my mind, I spoke without thinking, “Whatever happens, as long as I can help it, and I can help a lot of things, I will not let them do that again. At the very least, I’ll wake you up before they take you.”

  He smiled for the first time. A real smile, anyway. “You sound so serious.”

  I reached out and took his hand, squeezing it hard enough that it made my own hand hurt. When that wasn’t enough, I grabbed it with my other hand, squeezing his between the two of mine. “I am. I’m promising.”

  “I owe you for one good nap, then,” he told me.

  “You don’t owe me anything. That’s not how we do this.”

  “I stand corrected.”

  “And that’s a promise that applies to every nap, every time you sleep.”

  He frowned a little, eyes opening more as he studied me.

  “We’re going to go live somewhere else starting this summer. Until then, I know how to get out of my room. I know where your room is.”

  “It’s not that important. You’ll get in trouble.”

  “It is important,” I said. “I’ve promised, and I can’t break my first ever promise to you. Not when we’re all going to be together for the rest of our lives.”

  He nodded slowly. I thought for a second that he was nodding off.

  “Who were you, before?” he asked me.

  “Before all this? Don’t remember.”

  “I can’t imagine that. Isn’t it scary, not knowing?”

  “I found my file, I read it. I know they didn’t expect me to look for it, so I don’t think it was a trick,” I said. “I wasn’t anybody special.”

  “That’s hard to believe.”

  I shot him a look. “That line is so lame. Oh, I don’t even have words—”

  “Stop.”

  “So lame!”

  He gave me a light push.

  “Unforgivably lame!”

  He pushed me harder. I nearly fell from the edge of the table I was sitting on.

  I settled down, still laughing, dragging my fingers down one side of my face. Gordon and Helen were staring now, but I hadn’t distracted them sufficiently to break the stride of their conversation.

  “What can I do for you?” he asked me.

  “Never say—”

  “Forget what I said! Really. What can I do?”

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “It’s okay if you can’t do what you said. I’ll understand—”

  “—I’ll do it. I promised.”

  “Then I want to know what I can do to help you. I’m going to find a way to help you, Sylvester.”

  I shrugged, shaking my head.

  “Nothing bothers you? Nowhere you need help? When I first met Gordon, he said you have a hard time after your appointments?”

  “Oh, did he? Yeah, I guess.”

  “Why?”

  “It hurts,” I said. “It hurts so much it makes me feel like there’s nothing else. After, I feel like less of a person. More like I’m a piece of metal, thrust into the fire, over and over.”

  “And they’re hammering you into shape?”

  “No,” I confessed. “Mostly, I get to hold the hammer. There’s that, at least.”

  He was nodding off, now. Slumping forward.

  I could see the ridged scar running up from the collar of his shirt to the nape of his neck. His head had been shaved for the last surgery. It was still so short that I could see his scalp.

  “Wish I could help, somehow,” he murmured. I gave his shoulder a push, and he roused enough to shift position, leaning back against the wall, the ends of each leg dangling off the edge of the table.

  “Nothing you can do to help,” I said. I didn’t speak my thoughts aloud. Except maybe talk. Beats talking to Ashton or Evette, at least.

  He was already out. He’d fought it and lost.

  Now it was more like talking to Ashton. I murmured to myself, “It’s up to me. I’ve got to get used to it somehow, make friends with the pain.”

  ☙

  I nearly fell as the other two urged me through the door. Jamie let go of me to close the door, very softly, and Helen wasn’t strong enough to hold me up. She did what she could to ease my collapse to the floor.

  Pain. I’d thought I’d achieved a serious tolerance to it over the years, but the very real imagery suggested a lapse. I’d nearly passed out, drifting into memories.

  Was this what it meant to see my life flashing before my eyes? It was as good a starting point as anything else. I didn’t have many memories of things that came before. Some games with Helen and Gordon, some antics after I broke out of my room, time with Evette and Ashton. Less meaningful things.

  “You with us, Sy?” Jamie asked.

  “Yup,” I said, putting all my effort into sounding casual as I let my head sink back to the floor. I was in a kitchen, I realized. Checkered drapes at the window.

  The small pinpoint of pain had spread and expanded until it felt like my stomach was three times the size, filled with agony. It wasn’t swollen, though. It was a regular, too-skinny tummy with a hole in it and a lot of blood leaking around it, into my shirt and the top of my pants. I had blood that had dripped around the side of my body and into my butt crack.

  This kind of agony was something I was used to, though it limited how I could move and pull my thoughts together. Blood in my butt crack somehow drove the point home better than my life flashing before my eyes. It was a signal that things were horribly, horribly wrong.

  People should never ever have blood in their buttcrack.

  “They’re close,” Helen said.

  “I know,” Jamie replied. He stared down at me. “I’m going to find a way to help you, Sy.”

  I nodded. I winced as I inhaled and swallowed at the same time and that somehow made the wrong thing move, touching on the area where I’d been shot. “We should go.”

  “We should,” Jamie said. “But we need to stop the bleeding, at the very least.”

  “Need Lillian, but she’s too far away,” I said. I blinked with more force than was needed, because I didn’t want to have my eyes close and stay closed.

  A very deep, male voice cut in, “Who’s Lillian, and what the hell are you doing?”

  I saw Jamie go limp, his head bowing. Defeat.

  Helen, of course, was Helen. I looked over in the direction she was staring, and I saw a man in the doorway of the kitchen, a wife and child behind him, staring.

  I looked back to Helen, and tears were falling down her cheeks. Crying on command.

  I met Jamie’s eyes, then spoke, “The Academy’s attacking.”

  I watched the expression on the man and woman’s faces. The wide eyes of the child, who was young enough to be of indeterminate gender. The man was young. He’d probably had the child in or just after his teens. He was like an older Gordon, if Gordon had a weak chin. His expression changed as he wrestled with fear and trying to summon his courage.

  He only needed a push.

  “Help me,” I said. My ability to almost take the pain in stride made it more difficult to find the piteous tone
I needed.

  He rushed to my side, twisted around, and told his wife, “The kit! It’s under the sink!”

  The woman took the little kid with her as she left. Hopefully to get the ‘kit’.

  “They attacked in the street,” Jamie said. “You heard the gunshots?”

  The man nodded. “We were looking out the window at the other side of the house.”

  I spoke, wincing as I did, “They looked like the resistance members. Black coats, black shirts, those rifles—”

  “Exorcists,” Jamie said.

  “I saw one standing there. His face changed, eyes and nose and mouth and ears going all wonky,” I said. “Then he saw that I’d seen him, he shouted something, a signal, and then he shot me, before he started shooting at the crowd.”

  Tension lines stood out in the man’s face and neck. He didn’t move his eyes from the bloody hands that were pressing down on my wound. It damn well hurt, but I could push through the pain, I could find the presence of mind to lie.

  Might as well foster paranoia and propaganda while I’m lying here bleeding.

  “They looked normal?”

  “Yes,” Helen said, still crying. “It scared me.”

  The man didn’t budge. I could imagine he was processing, trying to grasp the situation, and what the course of action should be.

  His wife came down, with a large kit and no child trailing behind.

  “I don’t know what to do,” the man said.

  “I do,” Jamie said.

  He did?

  I watched as Jamie opened the kit. I could see the label on the lid. It was the sign of some Academy or another, ironically enough. A full kit for medics. Many had been sold to the public after the last war. By the time another war rolled around—this one, as it happened—there would be better kits, with better tools and components.

  He moved with a quiet assuredness as he picked through the various things. I watched him, periodically blinking with more force than was necessary, breathing shallow breaths to keep my stomach from hurting. He gathered special pliers and a long syringe with two handles, powders, and metal clamps.

  He met my eyes, and there was an awful lot communicated in that look.