Twig

by wildbow

  Lillian ignored him. She laid the tools out, and began getting little bottles. The bottles were folded into a set, two rows of three in half of a box, held in place with ribbons, each box-half joined to the next with another ribbon. Made to be bundled together, easily unfolded or stacked without getting lost or separated from one another. She began removing and setting down bottles, one after another.

  The man thrashed, the thing still working its way into his ear, halfway through now, and his arm struck at the bottles.

  I was quick enough to catch the two that was knocked from the table. I moved the row of bottles to one side, out of reach of the man’s arm and hand.

  “What can you tell me about the parasite?” Lillian asked. She was cleaning her hands with a solution from a bottle.

  The Fishmonger was silent.

  Lillian set her jaw. She began cleaning the site of the injury at the man’s middle with the same product, ignoring the parasite for the time being. It was a ragged injury, more like a crack in a pane of glass, branching off in every direction, and the edges were marked with the black thread of sutures.

  “If it goes into his ear, where is it going?” I asked. “Brain?”

  “I doubt it,” Lillian said. “If it went to the brain, the man wouldn’t be conscious. There’s damage to his other ear. It’s already come and gone from there, probably made it through the Eates tube, joins the ear and mouth. There’s similar damage around the nose too, and one of his eyes is damaged.”

  I looked. It was hard to tell with how wild-eyed the man was, like a horse frothing at the mouth, too panicked to even see straight, but one of his eyes was indeed slower to move than the other.

  “In and out of the socket?” I asked.

  “Or it tried,” Lillian said. “Third bottle.”

  I found and handed her the third bottle.

  “Second, I mean. Order got mixed around when he knocked them down.”

  Oh. I’d put it back wrong. She was letting me know I’d screwed up without saying it outright. I handed her a bottle.

  She drew out a syringe, injecting it. Then she began her work, opening the injury wider, reaching in, and then feeling out the interior. “Damage is shallow. No organs damaged, but some bleeds. This is mostly surface damage, made worse by the thing moving beneath and around it, before and after stitches.”

  This was a nasty distraction. We couldn’t let the man suffer, but the game plan we’d had laid out was well and truly out of sorts, now. I glanced at Jamie and Gordon, who were hanging further back, watching through the doorway.

  Escape routes? Most of the windows were placed high, to let sunlight in, and the only one at ground level was boarded up. There was a front door, and if there was a back door, the rows of shelves and stacks of wooden pallets blocked my view of it. I could smell some of the products being traded, so I knew that most of the boxes on the shelves would be full.

  That said, I doubted I’d find any weapons or tools sharper or more effective than a sweet potato, even if I had the chance to look, which I didn’t.

  Six regular thugs, four altered ones, and the Fishmonger himself. Ratface was watching from outside, but he and his two bodyguards were more assets arrayed against us.

  This isn’t your first dance, Fishmonger. You’re experienced, and you’ve preemptively handled more situations than this one with this heavy handed brutality and a total lack of humanity.

  Lillian had tools. Some were sharp. But with all the eyes on us, it would be difficult to get my hands on them. If I messed up in the slightest, I was betting the thugs would be faster to get to their guns than I would be to get to a scalpel.

  While I surveyed the situation, I caught a glimpse of the Fishmonger.

  There was a look on his face. It was a smile in the technical sense, but there was no happiness to it. I had trouble pinning it down.

  Because of Lillian?

  Because of the trap? The idea that Lillian might as well be shackled already, being wrist-deep in her patient?

  I glanced at the door. The men who’d been on either side of it were now standing with their backs to it, blocking my view. I looked between their legs for a glimpse of Gordon and Jamie’s feet, and didn’t see them.

  If Gordon and Jamie had made a move, then the men wouldn’t be nearly that relaxed, blocking the door as they were.

  Gordon and Jamie had been dealt with.

  In saving this one man, we might have been doomed.

  Couldn’t dwell on that. I was focusing on the work we were doing, handing over tools as Lillian asked for them. I couldn’t spare a glance to the Fishmonger, but I imagined that look on his face.

  Setting up something like this, he had a mean streak. The torture this man was going through? No question of malice, here. He also desired power and control, and he was careful about it, setting himself up in the houses on the mountain.

  Except, was he looking at us with anticipation?

  The Fishmonger had us. He had absolute control. The torture the man was going through was enough to satisfy just about any sadist. The emotional strain Lillian was going through, it was gravy to this lump of a man.

  What more could he be hungry for?

  “Doing okay?” I asked.

  “Trying,” Lillian said. “Working out in my head how we might do the parasite, while I’m doing the tears inside. There’s still a time limit, even after I sew him up. He has only so much strength.”

  That was it.

  This was too easy. The time limit wasn’t enough of a catch. The cut in the man’s side didn’t do more than delay Lillian in getting to the parasite. That could be a problem unto itself. Lillian being set up to fail.

  The other possibility was worse.

  “Small scissors,” Lillian said.

  I found and handed her the small scissors. When she went to take them, I held for a moment. My hand was there, one finger extended.

  Alert.

  “Got it,” Lillian said. “Can barely hold onto this. Hand wash?”

  I got the hand wash. I held the bottle in a particular way, gesturing as best as I was able while holding something, upending the bottle over her hands. She rubbed them together and shook off the blood.

  Trap.

  “Don’t drop it,” she said. “Your hands are messy too.”

  “I won’t,” I said. I changed my grip. The gesture this time was for inside, caged, encapsulated.

  She stopped where she was, her hands poised above the victim. Her hands were trembling.

  “I’d hope a third year student of the Academy could handle some surface wounds to the stomach,” the Fishmonger said.

  I watched Lillian as her eyes roved over the man, top to bottom.

  Then her hands came down, one on either side of the wound. She shoved.

  The man squirmed, fighting her. The thing at his ear was mostly inside, but for a bulb of flesh at the end, the only part of it that wasn’t squeezed into a space as large around as a finger. The flesh was stretched so thin I could see veins standing out against the surface of it.

  Lillian released. She huffed out a breath. “Help. And watch yourself.”

  I put my hands together, one folded over the other, pressing against one side of the wound. She did the same for the other.

  “Three, two, one…”

  We shoved simultaneously. Blood gushed out, flooding the site of the injury. I was pretty sure we tore the opening in the skin even wider.

  Then it lurched out, a second parasite, flailing aimlessly, reaching for us. I pulled my hands away just in time as it slapped out against the victim’s lower abdomen. Smaller around and perhaps longer than the other.

  “A second parasite,” Lillian said, hands up, stepping away.

  “Is there? What a pleasant surprise!” the Fishmonger said, sounding entirely too pleased with himself. His lie was such that it would be obvious even to a distracted Lillian, “I thought one had escaped, it’s good to know it will find its way back to me.”

  �
��It was probably anesthetized,” Lillian said.

  “This poor man has some wits, to manage that!”

  A win-win for our sadist. Either the prospective ‘hire’ has talent, or he gets to see her reaction when the parasite latches onto her.

  It had been close, too. He’d almost gotten her. If she’d spent any more time rummaging around that particular wound…

  I had a good imagination. The mental picture was too real. Lillian, with the parasite on her arm. The Fishmonger taking action to keep her from using tools or chemicals on it, kicking me way, possibly kicking her to the ground, stepping on her free hand. Watching while she struggled. The begging, the frantic screaming.

  From my estimation of him, he wouldn’t listen. He would let it break her, then put her to work. The damage to her body would be a reminder for the rest of her days, while a threat of a repeat performance would be enough to cow any dissent or rebellion.

  I’d developed a profound sort of hate for this man in a very short span of time.

  He would have to die horribly. The parasites were too kind a death. For that to happen, however, we’d first have to get out of this situation.

  I saw movement and turned my eye to the door.

  The group from outside were coming in.

  Jamie, limp, was being dragged in.

  Then the two adults we’d brought with us.

  And finally Gordon. He was dragged in by one arm. Whatever had happened, he was groggy and sluggish. A knife was embedded in that same shoulder, and each pull on his arm made the blood flow more freely.

  Lillian didn’t even seem to notice. Her eyes were fixed on her patient.

  “Two points of attachment are making it hard to remove,” she murmured. “The first, it’s a kind of anchor. A tendril or some other form of attachment, reaching forward into a new hole, or reaching backward, into the patient. One at each end, very strong, impossible to access without carving the patient up.”

  “Sure,” I said. I managed to sound calm, which helped keep Lillian from looking up and seeing the others.

  “The second, it’s the grip on the patient’s skin. The underside of this thing, or maybe the entirety of it, it’s covered in setae, or something like it. Tiny hairs, providing an absolute grip, like a barnacle to the underside of a ship, but gripping and releasing and moving in a cycle, so it can inch forward. Touch it, and you don’t get it free.”

  “Short of removing the skin,” I said.

  Lillian nodded. “Which is why… I could deal with the setae alone, flay the affected body part. But the anchors mean the thing can just reel itself in or hold itself in place. I could deal with the anchor, cutting deep and surgically prying it free, wherever or however it’s latched on…”

  “You can’t handle both at the same time.”

  “I can, but it’s messy.”

  “How?” I asked. Keep her focused.

  “Scalpel.”

  I handed over a fresh scalpel.

  “Okay,” she said. She rummaged in her bag. She found a cloth sack for a number of pills. She dumped it out, handing it to me. Then she found another sack. This one had soap in it. “Wear these.”

  “Wear?”

  She pulled the soap one over my hand like a mitten. Then she gave me the other. “I hope it won’t stick to you like this.”

  “You hope.”

  “I think. Grab it, by the lowest possible point. Haul it up and away. Whatever you do, you have to keep your grip.”

  I huffed out a one-note chuckle, “You know I’m not that strong, right?”

  “Be strong,” she said.

  Her eyes were somewhat wild as she looked at me. Then she looked down at the patient. “Please.”

  I wasn’t sure if the please was for me or for a higher power. Or maybe the parasite.

  I grabbed the parasite. The texture of it was different than I’d expected. It looked slimy, smooth, but it was like the fuzzy sort of leaf, where it had a shocking amount of texture. I nearly lost my makeshift mitten as it flexed.

  My arms strained as I lifted it up and away. My legs, inner core and arms were tight with exertion as I tried to lift it up and away from the table.

  If the Fishmonger wants to fuck with us, all he has to do is nudge my arm, poke me in my side.

  Lillian reached down into the wound with the scalpel, bare skin inches away from the parasite.

  Then she cut.

  Ichor went flying from the thing’s rear end as it lashed out, flipping around, fighting my grip. It was all I could do to keep it away from Lillian’s skin as she pulled away, back out of my field of vision.

  The more it struggled, the less it held on to the patient. I maintained my grip, praying it wouldn’t whip around and find its way to the space of bare skin between jacket sleeve and mitten.

  Then, all at once, it was free of the patient. I stumbled, nearly losing it, then wasted no time in dropping both mittens and the specimen to the ground.

  I looked to Lillian, and I saw her with the Fishmonger’s hand around her throat. She struggled.

  Catching my balance, I moved to help—and a thug grabbed my arms. My struggles were in vain.

  “I told you,” the Fishmonger said. “Preserve the specimen.”

  Lillian couldn’t even speak. Her hands clutched at the Fishmonger’s wrist.

  I saw that grim smile spread across his face. A look of anticipation, as cold as a crocodile licking its chops pre-meal.

  He was strong enough to lift Lillian clean off the ground. I saw her scrabble for her collection of tools and come away empty-handed.

  He wasn’t strong enough to keep holding her off the ground, but that wasn’t the intent. His leg came forward, and when he brought her back down, it got in the way of her firmly placing her feet under her. She went all the way down to dusty floorboards, hard enough to have the air knocked out of her.

  Head a matter of a foot from the parasite.

  It was a still tableau. The parasite writhed in place, the Fishmonger held Lillian where she was. I’d already ceased struggling, feeling how futile it was. The Fishmonger panted.

  Then the parasite flipped itself over. It began to crawl in Lillian’s direction.

  For his own enjoyment, or perhaps to see the look on my face, the Fishmonger loosened his grip enough to let Lillian voice that scream that had haunted my imagination just moments ago.

  Previous Next

  Bleeding Edge—8.7

  Being in a dangerous situation was rarely something that scared me, in itself. It had been the case, once upon a time, when the Lambs were new and we didn’t even have a medic as part of the team, that a young Sylvester had felt his knees go wobbly and his hands shake, his thoughts falling to pieces as emotion took over.

  The problem was that that kind of thinking was antithetical to efficient thinking. It clogged things up, drove one to run away, escape, do the simplest thing possible to get out of that bad situation. An artifact of our ancestors’ functioning, before higher thinking had been a thing, according to Wallace.

  Faced with any number of monsters, thrust into bad situations, I’d adjusted. All of us had, really, with the exception of Helen, who had never experienced true horror and panic as we did. That said, the Wyvern formula had helped me make the adjustment more quickly. I’d helped Gordon and Jamie figure it out, more the latter than the former. Gordon, more than any of us, had always been more comfortable doing things on his own. Even if it was figuring out how to face life or death situations, or how to create those situations for others and follow through at the end of the day. I’d figured it out, counseled, and offered the help I could, a push here and there.

  Learning to deal with the other Lambs being in imminent danger had been harder. But I’d more or less learned. Seeing them hone their abilities, I’d told myself and taught myself that, even when situations looked as bad as they could get, that we would see it through.

  Years of experience, a full third of my life, teaching myself and my training my brai
n an almost careless disregard for the rules of self preservation that gripped ordinary people, and the ability to look past the threat to my loved ones to see the solutions to those threats.

  Years of experience, and yet it was proving awfully hard to do in the midst of this, hearing Lillian’s screaming.

  I was caught, Lillian was pinned to the ground, and the others were lying on the ground over by the entrance. We were outnumbered and we were weaker than our adversaries in general physical strength. The parasite was inches from her face, covering an inch every few seconds, periodically stopping, twisting up like a snake in pain, blood spitting out of the wound. The twisting and rolling over moved it horizontally, but not enough to move it away from Lillian.

  Both of my arms were being held. If the thug had been holding one wrist only, that would have made things harder, not easier, necessitating that I elbow him and clutch at him enough to make him grab me.

  As it was, I bucked, forcing him to bear my meager weight as I lifted both feet off the ground. Both shoes came down hard on the floor, as I grunted for effect.

  Test done. Now for the gamble.

  The best questions to ask were ones where one already knew the answer. Question: how would the Fishmonger react? I had no idea.

  But I didn’t like hearing Lillian’s scream, and the thought of this being some lingering memory of her last moments, so soon after talking to Jamie?

  I’d dropped the parasite at my feet. I went limp, dropping as far as I could, legs out and forward.

  I clamped my feet around it.

  The screaming stopped. I saw Lillian’s eyes, wide, tears in the corners, filling with wonder and a hope that probably wasn’t justified. A feeling swelled inside me, and a lot of things that hadn’t ever made sense to me suddenly clicked.

  There was no time to explore that feeling that made me feel twice as big as I really was, making me want to be a hero instead of a bastard. The thing was fighting to get out from between the edges of my shoes.

  ‘Throwing’ it at the Fishmonger with a kick-out-and-release maneuver would have been a proper sort of justice, but the clothes he wore and the wide-brimmed hat gave me an awfully small target—the face beneath his hat, or perhaps his hand.