by wildbow
“Weeks of work to get things set up, then weeks or a couple months of time to get all of the rest of this done. Whatever it is,” Gordon said.
Gordon hadn’t moved far from the hatch, though he was probably long since done examining it. One of his hands rested on the chain, the other on Hubris’ head. He was tired, slower to move, faster to tire. A clock winding down. His color still wasn’t good.
I tried to ignore that. I’d have to pick on him more later, just to bring things closer to normal.
Another organ, one I might have suggested as a mix of a bird’s talon and a monkey’s paw. Three fingers, one thumb, stretched with gnarled skin, black in color with fibrous strands at the base, almost like feathers or fur.
It had been hacked off. The damage to the stump was haphazard, ragged. I reached up to turn the bottle, my eyes on the damage.
I froze, watching it sway slightly within its makeshift, wax-corked bottle as the cloudy liquid responded to my movement.
My eyes had been on the stump, and I’d only seen it in the corner of my eye, but I could’ve sworn I’d seen the fingers move, closing slightly in response to the movement. The time it had taken my eyes to move from stump to finger had been enough time for the movement to cease.
A trick of the light? A natural movement in response to the movement of the fluid within the bottle?
I knocked on the glass of the bottle, hard.
Nothing.
I moved the bottle again, to no avail.
That was annoying.
“Jamie?” Gordon asked. “What are you reading?”
“Papers have a lot of various mentions of viability. They’re referencing tables on a book or text that we don’t have and using shorthand on these tables I’m trying to figure out. I’m not seeing the text on the shelves either.”
“Nope,” Lillian said. “No text, but lots of tools for surgery. Some big tools, too.”
“Big?” I asked, turning.
Lillian reached to the top of a stack of crates and hefted a woodcutter’s axe. It was heavy enough she almost dropped it.
“Don’t go lopping your toe off,” I said.
She turned a little red.
“I like your toes,” I said.
She turned a little more red. “That’s stupid.”
“It really kind of is,” Gordon commented.
“Shush, quiet, I’m still figuring this out,” I said.
He made an amused sound. “I remember the cafeteria at Mothmont. You have a better idea of how to woo girls than people twice your age. You’re being intentionally dorky.”
“There’s blood on the blade,” Lillian said, mercifully changing the subject.
“They’re creating life and taking it apart,” I said. I turned back to the shelves, walking down the length of it. Some of these bottles were dark brown and green, leaving the contents a mystery. I held one hand up to block out the light and leaned close now and again to peer inside. “Hey, can you grab me a lantern or a candle or something?”
“Yeah,” Lillian said. She put down the axe, scooping up one glass lamp on her way to me. Her other hand reached under a flap to fish in her bag. She retrieved a box of matches as she walked the long way around a pile of crates with a few blankets draped over top. I might have taken it to be a table for sharing meals at, but the pile of blankets would have made for an uneven surface.
“Any ideas?” I asked.
“I’d think they were building a stitched warbeast, but no. Testing a poison or pathogen on a variety of parts, maybe. But… these are bizarre.”
“Consistently so,” I observed, looking at each specimen. There wasn’t a single one that I could point to and properly identify. I held out my hand to partially block the light from the unlit lamp, “Careful as you light that.”
She nodded. The match flared, and she held it to the lamp’s end as she turned the dial in the side. The flame ignited, the light not quite reaching the specimens on the shelves.
I found one eyeball, floating in the jar, the orb itself a jaundiced yellow, the pupil round and almost human. I stared at it, moving my hand away from the light source to let the light better reach the shelf. I gestured for her to raise it.
The pupil at the eye’s center narrowed. Lillian nearly dropped the lamp as she saw it happen.
“It’s alive,” she said, in wonder and horror.
“All of it is,” I said, staring at the bottles. “The girl is supposed to be immortal, remember?”
“Her tissues? No. But that same science.”
I nodded.
Thirty or forty jars of very different organs and body parts, no two alike.
All independently alive.
Two short whistles, barely audible, made our heads whip around.
Warning.
Lillian reacted by fumbling with the lantern, as I moved to interject my body between it and most of the room. The flame went out as she cranked the dial the other way around. The front door of the building slammed.
Footsteps, quick, more than one set, moving with purpose as they crossed to this end of the building.
Right for us.
My eyes moved quick, surveying the surroundings. The shelves around us were too littered with bottles and other things for there to be a clear escape route through the shelves, like I’d found in the Fishmonger’s place.
It couldn’t be easy.
The footsteps were closer, a matter of feet away. Lillian spun around.
Putting a hand around Lillian’s mouth to ensure she remained quiet as I startled her, I hauled her back, stepping into the deepest, darkest corner, where one shelf touched the wall of the building. It wasn’t much shadow, so I held her close to me, sandwiching myself between her and the wall.
There’s our girl, I thought. Candy or whatever her name is.
Unlike her parents, Candy looked like she was fit for the aristocracy. A long neck, paler skin, and platinum hair that had been artificially lightened, cut short like a boy’s. Everything else about her screamed of an attempt to rebel. She wore a man’s overalls and shirt, though the shirt was tied short, so it knotted at her solar plexus, allowing a glimpse of her belly. Tattoos marked her arms, small thorns or horns sprouted from her skin at the one cheekbone I could see, and two curving horns rose from her forehead. I could tell that her eyes had been altered, but not how, not at this distance, in this lighting.
The one accessory she had with her, however, that screamed of her rebellion against her parents, was a boy. He was tall, lanky, and probably had as much muscle on his frame as I did, after adjusting for height and proportions. Artificial scales decorated him, mingling with dark, swirling tattoos of indeterminate subject. It was a lot less dramatic and haphazard than what Candy had done to herself. It was as if she’d decorated herself with whatever came at hand, spur of the moment, while he’d done the work on himself with an artist’s eye and a goal in mind.
She pushed him down onto the stack of crates with blankets, pinning him, and he didn’t put up much of a fight at all, even as she opened her mouth, revealing pointed teeth, and bit his shoulder.
It was very possible he was even worse at fighting than I was. I felt a kind of pity and camaraderie for the guy.
She shifted her position, straddling his torso, then pinning his arms against the surface with her knees, before reaching up to undo the buckles on her overalls.
Oh.
I revised my opinion. This wrestling match would be a win for both participants.
I didn’t dare move, my hand over Lillian’s mouth, because we were in their peripheral vision, and any movement could tip them off.
Heck, if they even turned their heads, they might make us out in the shadows.
Lillian’s breath was hot against my hand as I continued to cover her mouth. My breath had to have been tickling the back of her neck, as her back and butt pressed against my front.
With our present view of the scene, there were only so many things to look at, other than the scene, o
r the back of Lillian’s head, or the skin of her neck, or her shoulder. One of those things was the window I’d opened.
Still open, the pole still moved from its original position.
They were supposed to be sleeping in, after working late. Gordon said he saw them burning the post-midnight oil. The place was supposed to be empty.
I guess Candy and her boy knew it would be.
If the young man happened to stop kissing Candy and look up and a little to the left, he would see the open window.
We would be found if they took just a moment to look.
My back was pressed to the outside wall of the building, and the cold of the fall had seeped into it, now seeping into me, cold, uncomfortable. In contrast, the front of me pressed against Lillian.
I wanted them to stop what they were doing, because this was agony. I didn’t want them to stop. I felt antsy. They hadn’t even properly taken off their clothes. They were saying things I couldn’t hear, she was nibbling on him, and they kissed and ran their hands over each other, drawing it out.
A part of me was sad, because whatever followed from this, it would be weird, the next time Lillian slept beside me.
Candy pulled off the top she’d knotted at her middle, turning around to find a spot to put it. Maybe a place that wasn’t too dusty. Her back was defined by muscle, beneath the straps of her brassiere.
Lillian chose that same moment to squirm. I was sure we’d be spotted. We weren’t.
But Candy turned to face the other way, and she paused.
Did she see Jamie? Gordon? The window?
No. The angle of her head. It was the axe. Lillian had left it lying on the ground.
Candy said something to her boy. He responded, curious, starting to sit up.
We were done.
I pinched Lillian’s derriere, my hand still pressed over her mouth, and she huffed, before pulling away enough to let me slide out from behind her.
I held my finger to my lips as I faced the pinkest Lillian I’d ever had the pleasure of seeing, before I let go of her mouth.
I took a second to smooth out my clothes and fix my belt. By the time I was done, Candy was peering in my direction, squinting.
I approached her.
Muscles stood out in her shoulders and arms as she craned backward, not even standing as she adjusted from straddling her boy to lunging for the floor. She grabbed the axe from the floor, holding it by the very butt end as she straightened, pointing the axe’s blade in my direction.
I spread my arms, raising my hands. With a twitch of fingers, I beckoned Lillian to follow.
“A kid?” the scaled boy asked.
“No,” our quarry replied. “Remember what our patron said? Things and people to watch out for? Children in the wrong place at the wrong time?”
We’re notorious, now, I thought.
“Does Mauer just tell that to everyone who he sponsors?” I asked. “Watch out for the odd children?”
“I don’t know who or what that is,” Candy said. She was still breathing hard, and not from lunging for the axe. Everything about her, even as the top of her overalls hung free at the waist, seemed feline to me. Fluid in movement, almost liquid, a natural strength, like a tense spring.
She was young, too. Only two or so years older than Lillian, if I had to guess.
“The person who hired you?” I asked.
She shook her head. “He’s an old soldier.”
“Red hair?”
“Black hair, black skin,” she said.
Either one of Mauer’s lieutenants, or Gordon had been misled.
“We’re not your enemy,” I said.
“He said you’d lie to me.”
Even in attitude, she was like a coiled spring. A gun cocked, ready to fire with the twitch of a finger, as reflexes allowed. I was betting her reflexes were better than mine. She hadn’t missed a beat in responding, almost as if she’d expected the statement.
“The project you’re working on, it’s a disaster waiting to happen,” I said.
“You know about the project?”
“No,” I said. “But I know it’s a disaster waiting to happen. If it was this easy to do, the Academy would have done it already. There’s a reason they haven’t.”
“The reason is that it’s a new technology,” she said. She glanced at the door.
She was going to bolt, and I doubted I could catch her if she did.
Lillian approached from behind me. When she spoke, her voice was soft, “It’s older than you think.”
Candy held the axe out adjusting her posture, so the side of her body faced me, one leg out in front, almost a fencer’s pose. She measured her steps, pacing, wary. “Does it matter?”
“The approach you’re using here might be new,” Lillian said. “But we’ve seen how it unfolds in the past, and nothing I’m seeing here suggests anything is going to turn out different than it did then.”
With Candy’s posture, I couldn’t see the hand she held behind her, but I could see part of the arm. The muscles shifted slightly as she moved her fingers.
“Gordon!” I called out, in the same moment Candy’s boy leaped from the makeshift bed, running for the door. I’d taken a step forward as I shouted, and Candy moved to intervene, barring my path.
Hubris charged to the fore. I watched as the boy bounded over the dog. Hubris coiled, hunching down, then leaped, teeth parting to latch on. He missed by a hand’s span.
The boy landed and didn’t even pause as he ran from the moment his feet touched ground. He caught the door handle, unlocking it and heaving it open—
And Gordon was on the other side. I heard a few grunts from clear across the building.
Candy’s boy fell to the ground, curling up into a ball.
Candy glared at me. The coiled spring wound even tighter.
“Believe it or not, we’re on your side,” Jamie said, from behind Candy. She spun to face him, then realized she was surrounded, and couldn’t give him her full attention without turning her back to Lillian and me.
“You’d be surprised how many people have told me that over the course of my life,” Candy said. “The only people who haven’t are Drake and my friends here. They know that when someone says that, they’re lying.”
“You’re right,” I said. “We’re on our side first and foremost. “You don’t even come second, or in the top ten.”
“Speak for yourself, Sy,” Lillian murmured, behind me.
“I’m speaking for myself, I guess. Lillian, the girl of our group here, she has a soft heart. She’s still trying to decide what to do with you.”
“I was asked to fetch you,” Lillian said, her voice soft. “Take you home.”
My eyebrows arched in surprise as I looked back at Lillian. A part of me expected Candy to bolt as I took my attention off her, but she remained where she was.
“You used my full name,” she said. “I thought you probably were aiming for more transparency, more honesty.”
“You’d be right,” I said, looking back at Candy. “Nice one.”
“I’m not going home,” Candy said, her voice tight.
“I’m not taking you home,” Lillian said, her voice pitching higher in her insistence. “I’m not. I was planning on doing it, then I saw you and—”
“Drake.”
“I saw you two. I’m sorry. And I thought—I thought that was nice and right and good for you, and I can’t—”
Lillian’s voice got more halting.
I could see Candy’s muscles relax a bit.
“Candy,” I said.
The muscles got tenser than I’d seen them yet. The look she shot me was one fit to kill.
“Candida,” Jamie corrected me.
“I hate Candida,” she said. “I hate Candy more.”
“Sorry,” I said. I spoke to her like I was placating a snarling warbeast. “Sorry. Really, I am.”
Her eyes were wary as she studied me.
“We need to know what exactly
it is you’re doing,” I said.
On the other end of the building, Drake got to his feet, wary of the dog and Gordon both. Gordon said something I didn’t hear, and Drake responded.
Drake crossed the room, returning to his girlfriend’s side. After a moment, he walked over to where she’d left her shirt, and tossed it to her.
She was busy studying us, even as she pulled it back on.
“We’re not supposed to tell,” she said. “And I’m supposed to assume anything you do is a lie or an attempt at sabotage. You’re the…”
“Lambs,” Jamie said, behind her.
He was instinctively doing what we’d done to the Fishmonger, speaking in turn, so we took turns, kept her off balance.
Perhaps a bad idea, given how skittish she was.
“You’re creating life,” Lillian said. “Refined life.”
Candy nodded slowly. “You read our notes?”
“Your notes didn’t mean anything without the reference material,” Jamie said. “She intuited that on her own. Because she’s an Academy student, and she’s read about this.”
“Can you open the hatch?” Lillian asked. “Or is it dangerous?”
Candy shook her head. “It’s not viable. Not yet.”
“Small mercies,” Lillian said, her voice almost inaudible to me, and she was closer to me than to anyone. “Show me?”
Candy nodded slowly, a frown on her face.
She walked over to the chain that was connected to the pulley. There was no crank or winch. She simply hauled down on the chain to haul the hatch up.
It was akin to a sewer grate in how it was fit to the floor. Trails of blood and other fluids dripped from the underside and into the hole.
The slaughterhouse smell I’d detected earlier increased in intensity a hundredfold.