Twig

by wildbow

  “How do you normally do it?” I asked. “Putting the firstborn together.”

  Clifton answered for the shaky Carmen, “Most of the time, we get the remnants of other failed projects. They’ll have weapons built in, altered physiology, or they’ll be ravaged by drug testing. It gives us a good starting point. We’ll keep projects on hand that we can apply to build on that, add some personal touches to match them to the parents. Don’t always have to do it, just have to do it often enough that we seed the idea in the population’s mind.”

  “What about the things in the vats?” Mary indicated one of the more twisted vat babies.

  “Have to mix it up now and again to keep it fresh. If they were all variations on the same theme, then they would get complacent. The vat creations let us make something really worrisome, so they always have to worry if they’re going to get one of the really bad ones.”

  “How do you keep them in line? They come programmed, don’t they?”

  “Another team handles that. It’s the same treatment the stitched get, but they’re obviously alive.”

  Lobotomies and brainwashing.

  “Something that sensitive, it isn’t handled here, is it?”

  “At Richmond House, by the senior doctors.”

  It couldn’t be easy.

  Simon spoke, still speaking funny with his face as cut up as it was. “What you’re doing here, with the gas, dressing someone up like a firstborn. It’s clear you’re trying something.”

  “What of it?” I asked.

  “If you cause an incident, the firstborn in the area will react. They’ll hurt anyone in arm’s reach, usually the families they’re assigned to, and then they’ll arrive to help local law enforcement in handling the crisis.”

  “What keeps them from doing that when the Baron goes after a family?”

  “It’s usually quiet. Most families, they don’t fight back, because they know it’ll hurt their neighbors. But the people here, they’re scum, you know that? They’re criminals, the poor, drunks, child abusers, they’re scrapings from the bottoms of the filthiest barrels. Sometimes they’ll put up a fight, because they don’t have the capacity to be social creatures and care about those around them. But even then, the disturbance of a bit of shouting and furniture being thrown around will only bring two or three, from the nearest houses. Only two or three families will suffer for it.”

  “And if someone were to fire a gun?” I asked. I waggled the pistol. “Like this one?”

  “I don’t know how loud that is, and we’re underground, but maybe the whole neighborhood?”

  “I see,” I said.

  It really couldn’t be easy.

  Mary had a knife in hand. She was tapping the flat of the blade against her stockinged leg in an agitated fashion.

  “We could just make a loud noise, then,” Evette said. “Leave them tied up here, draw the firstborn in, let them get torn to pieces by their own creations.”

  “My focus is on this job,” I said. “I’m only saying that because it’s very, very tempting to think about inflicting the worst imaginable fates on you three. My friend here, she’s thinking about a friend of ours, someone who is what doctors should be. She might, like me, be thinking about how very galling it is that you’ve achieved any kind of station or privilege at all, being absolute monsters, while our friend struggles to climb the ladder.”

  Clifton set his jaw. Carmen looked away. Simon’s expression was hardened, but what it had hardened into was hard to read, given the damage that had been done to it.

  “You call the people out there scrapings of the bottom of the barrels, but you might not know that I’m one of those scrapings,” I said. “And I think—”

  I stopped, biting my lip for a second as I shook my head.

  “—I think,” I said, my voice low, “That you’re really not in a position to talk about lack of empathy or goodness in someone. I would be very careful about what you’re saying, because talking along those lines, it’s making me want to be creative in how we handle you three.”

  “Yesss,” Evette whispered the word.

  Mary was nodding. She was listening almost as intently as the trio were, and the knife had ceased slapping against her thigh.

  “What we do, we were forced into,” Simon said. “We were students, we didn’t plan to be this, but we got tested, our talents, such as they are, they got noticed, and we were recruited. We’re making the best of a bad situation.”

  Was he telling the truth? There was probably some kernel of truth in there. It was even possible that it had been true, once upon a time, when they were new to this city. But the language that Clifton had used to describe the locals of Warrick, and the attitudes the three had displayed before we’d caught them… the evil they were doing had been reduced to a casual sort of wrongness. They had ceased to care a long time ago.

  “Well,” I said. I looked at the strips of textured flesh that had been laid out on the table, “That’s good, then. You’ve had practice in this. This situation is similar to what you described. We noticed you. We recruited you. And now you’re going to have to make the best of an even worse situation. Who’s going to be our firstborn?”

  None of them wanted to be it. Carmen shrunk into herself, hands fidgeting at her pockets, eyes on the ground.

  “Clifton?” I asked.

  “I’m still going to be another hour on the gas, and the poison, and the drug.” Clifton said. The answer came quickly enough and smoothly enough that I knew he’d rehearsed it.

  “You bastard!” Simon said, wasting no time in realizing what Clifton was doing, and what Clifton had done. Delaying tactics. “No! You’ve walked away from all of this unscathed. Your face wasn’t ruined, you—”

  I raised my gun, pointing it at him. He stopped talking.

  Ruined as his face was, I could see the resignation on it.

  “Unless you’d rather she wear it?” I asked, indicating Carmen.

  Simon’s face contorted. He shook his head, before drooping into a defeated slouch.

  “At least you’re a gentleman,” Mary said, in her coldest voice.

  “Get to work,” I told Carmen, indicating the strips. Then I looked at the man with the mustache. “Clifton. Give me an eye.”

  ☙

  I felt as though I was more conspicuous without an eyepatch than I was with one. My eye was a mess, watering constantly, and it still lacked vision. I’d had a featureless orb beneath the eyepatch for the sake of keeping my overall face in the right shape, and to keep to the Baron’s rules, but it drew attention and served as the sort of thing that people took notice of and mentioned to the people in the know. Eyepatch, featureless orb, neither let me blend into a crowd.

  This, at least, was an eye that would look more or less where I looked. The ointments smeared around my eye would reduce swelling and the appearance of redness. It didn’t look pretty, I was sure, but it didn’t draw nearly so many curious glances.

  Clifton and Carmen had been left behind, bound with razor wire to the furniture and to each other. If what they’d said about the firstborn was right, then they wouldn’t be too inclined to scream and shout for help. We’d gagged them anyway. The razor wire served as a restraint that could cut them or cut the person they were bound to if they struggled too much.

  On Simon’s part, the strips of flesh fit together with barely any seams, sucking close to skin, as though he was wearing leeches from head to toe. His covering of skin was ridged, moist, and already becoming touched with frost where the cold froze the mucous layer. His eyes were deep-recessed, and one of them, thanks to the damage done by razor wire, was distorted slightly in shape, with a notch in the lower eyelid. His mouth, due to the weight of what had been attached to his chin, hung slightly open, his breath fogging in the air.

  Now and then, he huffed out a breath or flinched, as though he was in pain. I highly suspected that Simon had gotten the better end of the deal. He was mobile, while the other two were left in the dark, unab
le to move or speak.

  Mary and I led the way to where we had stashed our bags. We pulled them out of hiding, then rifled through the contents, picking out clothes.

  “Turn your back,” I told Simon.

  He did.

  Mary and I turned our backs to each other, each keeping an eye on Simon. I shed my outer layer of clothes and changed into something that matched the locals more closely. I found wool socks and pulled them on, before putting my boots back on and lacing them up. Mary added more blades to her arsenal.

  “You’re going to have to lose the ribbons,” I told Mary. “I’m dressed, by the by.”

  “Three seconds,” she said.

  I waited, counting.

  Six seconds in, she said, “Okay.”

  She was, like I was, wearing nice clothes, but she was dressed in a nice black dress with a white lace collar. She chose to wear a black rain-cloak, the sort with an inner lining for winter and a hood. I’d layered jacket over a dark green sweater, which I wore over a collared shirt.

  “I didn’t expect a job,” she said. “I only have the knives I normally wear.”

  “Is it enough?” I asked. “We could go looking.”

  “I have about twenty of the balanced knives, two of the longer ones with hilts. It’s enough,” she said. “I could do with more wire, but I’m not sure where we could get any.”

  She pulled off her ribbons, and was very careful to avoid the wire that was worked into the middle of each ribbon as she stuck out a leg, pulled her skirt up a bit, and tied the ribbons around her upper thigh.

  I nodded, tearing my eyes away. I patted myself down, making sure I was equipped.

  I had the pistol, I had the gas, I had a knife of my own tucked into my boot, and I had the syringe with the wyvern formula in it. I also had the stimulant and a vial of liquid poison, the remainder of Clifton’s projects, finished after the gas, while Carmen had still been working on our firstborn.

  Drugs didn’t work so well on me, be they stimulants, depressants, hallucinogens or the performance enhancing sort. The reasoning for why was much the same reason that poisons, diseases and parasites didn’t find much traction in my system. I’d built up tolerances to most things, and had been given medicines and drugs to help my body cope with the toxic loads that wyvern put into my brain and blood. I could take some drugs, if they were concentrated enough, but once certain volumes and tolerances came into play, there was often a very thin margin of ‘the drug works’ between ‘doesn’t work at all’ and ‘kills Sy’.

  But many poisons could double as a medicine, given the right dosage and method of application, and many drugs could double as poisons. That was useful, and poison served as a weapon both Mary and I had some experience with.

  In this case, there was also a third benefit. If our ‘firstborn’ Simon started getting antsy for his next dose, as Carmen had been doing as we’d walked away, then the stimulant might serve. I knew it had been made with drugs they’d had on hand for their personal use.

  Mary straightened out her skirt, gave me a once-over, and then reached up to fix my hat. Eyepatch aside, my wild black hair was one of the most distinctive parts of me. The cap helped.

  I straightened her collar, rather unnecessarily, and flicked at a bit of hair that had fallen forward to drape over her shoulder.

  “I’m still mad at you for Lillian,” she said. The cold glare cut right through me.

  You’re more emotional than I’ve known you to be since the day we met, or the day you thought we could cut our way past the ghosts and find Percy.

  Was she sensing that something was wrong, that my behavior had changed? Consciously? Subconsciously?

  “You’d be mad at me, whatever happened,” I said. “It’s okay. I think she’d be happy to know you were mad on her behalf.”

  “That’s the important thing,” Mary said. “That she’s happy.”

  It was such a simple thing to say, and it cut me to the core, because I knew the consequences of what I was doing, the steps that followed after this job, and I knew that none of it would put a smile on Lillian’s face.

  I couldn’t find a response. In a way, I was saved by the ringing of a bell.

  Both Mary and I looked at Simon.

  “A train,” he said. His transformation slurred his words even worse. “We’re supposed to get out of sight. They evacuate the streets, and only the local law stays, looking for anyone that’s slow.”

  I gestured. Mary followed, and Simon hurried to keep up.

  Good boy.

  “It’s—”

  I glanced back at our pet monster, with his face that looked like it was melting off, forehead too high, jaw too low, rolls of flesh around the neck, disappearing beneath his clothes.

  “What?” I asked.

  “It’s just strange. The trains pass at regular times.”

  “This isn’t regular?” I asked.

  He shook his head, wattles and rolls of loose skin shaking for several moments after his head had stopped. He closed one eye in a wince of light pain as the alien tissues reasserted their grip across one side of his face.

  “We’ll watch,” I said. “Mary? Keep an eye out for any officers or firstborn.”

  She nodded.

  We found a bit of a vantage point, at a rise where several general-purpose stores were clustered. A tailor’s, a grocery.

  The train rolled into the station. There were more uniformed members of staff than there had been when we’d departed. That was the first sign that something was up. The soldiers came next. Standing guards, dressed in what would normally be their formal blacks, saved for special events and funerals. Long coats with shiny trim, tall hats, guns at each shoulder. They lined the way from the train to the base of the station, a row of men on each side of the path.

  Mary turned her head to look for a moment before going back to keeping an eye out for trouble. “It’s what Mcormick’s wife was saying. The nobles? They were expecting multiple trains to arrive with guests.”

  I watched as the people departed the train. Something about their body language. They were dressed well, in some of the highest fashion, but they weren’t dressed like true nobles. They didn’t give off that air.

  “No, not quite,” I said. “The upper crust. Politicians, top-tier merchants, military men, the rich. Maybe the most minor of nobles, maybe.”

  Mary nodded. She gave up on watching out for trouble. It was fairly clear that nobody was sticking their head out. We were safe for the moment.

  “This is the prelude to the real guests arriving,” I said. “I would be very surprised if the Gages weren’t guests of honor down there. I didn’t expect all of this so soon.”

  “It’s the wedding party, for the Baron and Emily,” Mary said. “Complete with a small army in security.”

  More people and layers of defense between us and the Baron, I thought. This was what it was to be in a position of power. He didn’t even have to try, and he just drifted out of easy reach.

  “After these people, after even more trainloads of them with their personal retinues of soldiers, the nobility should arrive,” I said. I took in every detail I could as I stared down at the people who were now moving off of the train platform, not even daring to blink. “Not just a few, but large numbers of them. The Baron’s extended family, at a minimum. Once they start showing up, everything inevitably gets darker, bloodier, and harder for us to manage.”

  “What you and Lillian said about Mauer… do you think he’s here, with those guns of his?”

  It felt too early. He would still be getting his feet under him, gathering intel.

  But Mauer and Fray had surprised me before. I wouldn’t say ‘no’ because I didn’t want to tempt fate.

  If Mauer’s men were here with the guns, then the Baron would only show his face for as long as he needed to in order to create plausible deniability. If they weren’t, then we still had a dozen or more nobles to contend with.

  “Let’s hurry,” I said. “We have
to be in position.”

  With every passing moment, our hands would be further tied.

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  In Sheep’s Clothing—10.12

  All things considered, with the precarious situation and the immense danger we faced, our situation could have been far worse. The preparations Mary and I had made were now paying off. We were largely invisible, walking down the street in the company of Simon. His flesh hung loose on him, his lips parted in a permanent leer, and he limped as he walked. Yet because of him, we barely got a second look from the people around us.

  The arrival of the hoity-toity types to Warrick might have played a part in that. As citizens emerged from their houses, the new arrivals made their way through the city. All were dressed in their finest, and given the status they held in society, their finest was impressive. I was more worldly than most, and I didn’t recognize some of the fabrics they wore.

  Man, woman, child, and the occasional monstrous pet. They were colorful, crisp, and eerily bright as they walked through the city, gawking at those they passed, talking noisily.

  Mary and I were part of the crowd at this point. Earlier, I’d observed how people spaced themselves out. Now I could see how they gathered together, trying to flee indoors and watch from the windows, clinging to the sides of the streets when and where they couldn’t. Members of the local police force were blocking them from retreating further.

  The locals were a stark contrast to the upper crust types. Their heads were bent slightly, their eyes averted from making any lingering contact with anyone around them, and they were dressed in dark, drab clothing. The clothes were nice, really, without any loose threads or worn patches, but they still weren’t the sort of thing that was meant to draw attention to the wearer.

  I watched, Mary close beside me, as the officers of Warrick gathered together. The uniformed men formed something of a wall, keeping the new arrivals from progressing down the street, much as they’d boxed in the locals. They were tense, I could see, and very mindful of where their pistols and swords were, pistol at the right hip, sword at the left, with exceptions for those I had to assume were left-handed.