Twig

by wildbow

  I looked again for Lambs, and when I didn’t see any, I made some up.

  “If you strike out on your own, you’re going to unravel, Sy,” Gordon told me.

  “Yep,” I said, my own voice barely audible.

  “Are you passionate about anything?” he asked. “Because if you’re going to go out in a messy blaze of glory, you should pick a good cause.”

  “I’d like to help the mice,” I said, muttering. “There are some in every city. Though some have different names and different structures.”

  “Not very intense,” Helen said. “That kind of love is like a hug, it’s nice and simple but it’s not going to get to the center bits of you and really nourish.”

  “Except when you do it,” Ashton said. “You squish and the center bits become outside bits.”

  Evette cackled at the image.

  I shook my head a little.

  For a moment, the Lambs were gone. I stared down at the snow below my dangling feet. My legs were going numb from having sat for hours.

  “Killing nobles?” Mary asked, her voice hard.

  I looked at her, then wished I hadn’t. Blood, a destroyed knee.

  “Killing nobles, maybe,” I said. “But I’d want it to matter more than it did with the Baron.”

  “The King?” Mary asked.

  “Ha,” I said.

  “The Academy?” Lillian asked.

  Her voice sent chills up my spine. I looked at her. I hadn’t heard her speak since I’d left Radham.

  “Aren’t they the cause of all of the worst pain you’ve experienced? The biggest losses?” Lillian asked.

  “You wouldn’t ever forgive me,” I said, my voice hollow.

  “I understand more than you let yourself believe,” Lillian said. “I care about you, and I’m horribly conflicted about what the Academy does. I love the Lambs almost as much as you do, and I know about the expiration dates. Don’t you think I care?”

  “I know you care,” I said.

  “The number one thing you need to do, Sy, is get inside from the cold,” Lillian said. “You don’t have a lot of meat on your bones, and you’ve been sitting there for a long time. Okay? You’re going to freeze.”

  I shook my head a little.

  “Oh, honey,” Lillian said, and the word choice was so jarring and the caring I put into her tone nearly broke me. I hunkered down further, bringing my knees up to my chest, my hands to my head.

  “Sy,” Jamie said, as if he was trying to get through to me. Jamie had always cared, too, even if he was hard to face, sometimes.

  “Another half hour or an hour,” I said. “Just a bit longer. Then you can all convince me to go inside.”

  “Sy,” Jamie said, again. He put his hands on my shoulders, and he wrapped me in a hug.

  I went still.

  One by one, I pushed the Lambs away, dismissing the false, vaguely reassuring images.

  I made Jamie the last, because I wasn’t sure, and I couldn’t bear for him to fade away.

  He didn’t fade. He gripped me tighter instead.

  “I’m sorry it took me so long,” he said.

  “You can’t be here,” I said, blinking fiercely. “You can’t. Without the Academy, you’ll—”

  “I’ll manage,” Jamie said. “We’ll manage, the two of us, okay? I know how to create Wyvern. You and me, we’ll figure out an answer for my problem. There’s time.”

  “You can’t,” I said, again.

  “Be selfish, Sy. Just this once. Put yourself first when you know it matters. You need a Lamb in arm’s reach.”

  I nodded, no longer able to speak. I screwed my eyes shut.

  “I want you to take the ghosts, or the hallucinations, or whatever you were talking to, and put them away, okay, Sy? I don’t want to hear you sound like you were just sounding again. You can talk to them again when you’re in a better place.”

  I nodded, though I’d already put them away.

  “Okay? Come on, Sy. Let’s get you warm.”

  I nodded. My body was stiff as I climbed down from the table.

  “It’s—” I managed, before my teeth chattered. I reached for the luggage, but Jamie beat me to it.

  “It’s what?” Jamie asked. His hand found mine, gripping it fiercely.

  “The Academy experiments, the Academy itself, even the Lambs, especially the Lambs, they’re going to come after us. Because of what I did, and what I’m doing, and because you’re with me, now they’re the—”

  “Enemy,” Jamie finished for me.

  Previous Next

  Lamb—Arc 10

  “Idiocy!” Ibott produced a spray of spittle as he shouted. “This entire project, doomed to fail. All it took was for the weakest link to break.”

  “Yes sir,” Helen said.

  “I should have made you as something standalone, not hitched myself to this sinking ship,” he said. He paced across the room, then wheeled on her. “My reputation!”

  She remained quiet. He was hard to deal with when he was like this.

  “Did you know anything about this?” he asked, his voice now low and dangerous. “The runt’s defection?”

  He wanted a target for his feelings. Helen understood this.

  “No sir, and I don’t think it was a defection. He just ran away again.”

  He raised his hand to his nose, pinching the bridge. “I’m irritated enough without you disagreeing with me.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “No you aren’t,” he said. “You’ve been disobedient lately. Talking back, making comments.”

  She remained silent.

  “Their influence, I suppose. The other children, trampling on my work, muddying the water, teaching you things you don’t need to know.”

  “I try to learn from everyone I can, so I can act better when it comes to the job.”

  “And you spend the most time around them,” the professor said. He drew nearer, leaning over Helen, one hand on either side of her head. His voice was a growl, “Don’t try to be clever.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “How has your range of movement been?” he asked.

  “Perfect.”

  “Strength?”

  “I’m doing the exercises, professor. Improvement is very slow.”

  “Mm hmmm,” the professor said. He picked up a scalpel. “Contract your bicardia…”

  She did, suppressing her hearts and constricting blood vessels throughout her body.

  He sliced her, from collarbone to lower stomach. “Open wide.”

  Helen moved her shoulders back and arched her chest and stomach open. The tendon net drew her ribcage open. The act of opening would have torn her skin, but her skin was elastic where it counted.

  He was rougher than necessary, raising organs and examining them, pinching slightly as he used the calipers. “Dialimbics are swollen. How are the cravings?”

  “Better, professor.”

  His glasses caught the light as he looked down at her. His lips pressed together for a moment, before he parted them to say, “Don’t lie to me.”

  “I’m not lying, sir.”

  “The throughput is clearly more than you’re processing. There’s build-up. Build-up affects your judgment. Tell me again, Helen, how are the cravings? Take a minute if you have to, assess it carefully, but don’t lie to me.”

  The ‘cravings’ were her mingled desires, gathered together into one strong force. To eat, to desire someone, to want to be close to someone, to want to inflict violence on them, the feelings were one and the same. They were strongest when she dreamed, though she didn’t dream like others did, and when she hunted with the Lambs. The feeling when she got to satiate the craving had been built into her, made a part of her psychology.

  But she hadn’t really had cravings recently. There had been some when she was with Mary, but those were the kind of cravings she thought of as supper cravings. She wanted, then she consumed, and then it was all better. Over and over and over, she’d enjoyed indulging
those cravings with Mary. They’d divided up the victims equally, Mary with her knife and wire, Helen luxuriating in that feeling of bone breaking and muscle twisting free of where it was supposed to be. It was the tactile equivalent of eating tasty meats and potatoes and vegetables and breads, her body pressed and wrapped around someone as they shuddered, spasmed, and shivered through their death throes. When they were strangers, ordinary people, then it was just dinner. There was none of the rise and fall, the dizzying feeling of awe and being awed, of earning the fear of people that had the fear of others. They were just suppers. Sometimes they were just tea.

  But she had barely tasted the more delicious cravings. Mary might do, but Mary was off-limits. The most she could do was play with the idea and tease herself. She hadn’t had any big enemies lately. Ever since the big interrogation surrounding Brechwell, where she had acted like the cravings were more than they were, just to get out of questioning, Professor Ibott had been watching carefully for altered levels. Now he believed he’d found them.

  “I think,” Helen said, interrupting the professor from his examination of tendon nets, “That they’re a little worse.”

  “I thought so,” he said, sounding so very self-satisfied. “Whatever the other experiments told you or taught you, you can’t lie to me. I can look at this body of yours that I built and know exactly what state you’re in. Now, be more specific, are those cravings a little worse or a lot worse?”

  She started to answer, then paused. “I don’t know.”

  “Mm hmm. I’m going to encourage a stricter limbic cycling and extract some of the material from the central limbic gland. This should keep the more aggressive feelings from building up and depress the cravings. Literally less of the emotion circulating through your system, affecting the various systems.”

  “Yes, professor.”

  He was silent as he took a syringe to the organ, withdrawing clear fluid.

  “A quick bar test… respiration systems are both working fine. Hearts…” he touched her hearts, one with each hand, and looked to the clock in his office, “Synchronous but beating faster than the norm. Digestion…”

  He gripped her stomach. It churned within his hand, to the point he could feel it.

  “Digestion is agitated,” he remarked. “Heart rates and digestion should normalize with the dampening of the cravings.”

  “Yes, professor.”

  He carefully set everything back in place, and she craned her head forward to look between cresting ribs and into the inside of her own body, shifting her muscles and tendon nets to hold things in place once they were in the right places. She closed her ribcage without being asked, and waited patiently while he closed her up. The glue would hold the seam closed. He applied powder, and the nutrients in powder and glue would help keep the bleeding at bay while providing nutrients that helped accelerate the healing. Her body would naturally heal it until there wasn’t anything even resembling a scar.

  “Stretch tests, then strength tests, then get dressed. You’ll prepare my dinner.”

  Dinner with the professor? It wasn’t usual. Still, she would play along. “What are we eating?”

  “I’m eating. You’ll eat when I’m done.”

  She felt a spike of emotion, coinciding with vivid mental pictures of bones breaking, muscle twisting, blood spilling, and agonized screams.

  “Aw,” she said, in a vast understatement of what she was feeling.

  “You’re well into your adolescence, Helen,” he said. “You’ve been influenced by lower quality experiments, and the two things combined have left you rebellious. The Academy wants to keep the Lambsbridge project on hold for the duration of all necessary investigations, which I see as a fine idea. Some time away from the other experiments will do you some good, and we can fill the time with some sharp reminders about the hierarchy between you and I.”

  “Yes, professor,” she said, holding back the welling emotion and confusion. No Lambs? Delayed meals?

  “Stretch while you listen to me,” he told her.

  She touched her foot to one shoulder, then the other, then did the same, extending her leg behind her. She switched legs.

  “My plan for you was always to prove your worth as part of this insipid project and then leave it in the final years to be my companion, caretaker, bodyguard, and an icon of my talent as a creator. I will not have you be lured down this damaged, broken road that the other experiments in your group have laid before you. Your stomach, above all else, is the easiest way to rebuke you. I will see you be obedient, Helen. You will eat what I deem appropriate, when I deem it appropriate, until we’ve established a pattern of behavior for you that I deem appropriate.”

  “Yes, professor,” she said, now very subdued. She used one hand on the table to help rotate her torso around, then rotated it back one hundred and eighty degrees to its usual position. She wanted to say things but she didn’t know what to say. Her own silence felt so uncomfortable. She carried through the routine movements, arms out to the sides, her head dropping down to touch her kneecaps, then reversing direction, to touch the back of her knees.

  “If the program is even resumed, I may pull you from it,” he said. “We’ll see how your behavior adjusts in the interim.”

  “Yes, professor,” she said.

  There was a knock on the door. Helen and Ibott both looked.

  “Enter,” Ibott said.

  The door opened. Helen smiled as she saw the woman enter. Red haired, pretty, with a white coat. The woman looked at her, then looked away, one hand raised to block her own view.

  “Lacey!” Helen exclaimed. She spotted a figure hanging back behind Lacey. “Lillian!”

  Ibott gave her a sharp look, and she shrank back.

  “No need for shyness, doctor,” Ibott said, voice dripping with derision. “Helen is wearing underclothes, undergoing a routine examination. Have some respect for what your profession means, and don’t be so shy about the human body.”

  “My apologies, professor. Ahem,” Lacey said, clearing her throat. She dropped her hand and looked straight at Helen. “Helen. Your presence is requested at Claret Hall.”

  Helen looked to Ibott. She didn’t want to do the wrong thing and have her meals delayed.

  “I’ll come too,” he said. “Dress, Helen.”

  She turned to her folded clothes and quickly put on her stockings, skirt, blouse, scarf, and coat, stepping into her boots. She produced a comb, picking it up and running it through her hair, being careful not to comb out the arranged rolls, and set the comb down before she reached the stairs.

  Lillian looked so unhappy. Helen calculated the best smile to give her, warm and sympathetic.

  She liked Lillian so. She didn’t ever crave Lillian like she sometimes craved the other Lambs, but she still liked Lillian, which was a weird thing she sometimes struggled to process.

  “Mary’s back,” Lillian said, her voice hushed.

  Helen’s eyes widened. Mary was back!

  “She’s hurt. We think Sy—Sylvester hurt her,” Lillian said.

  Helen blinked. There were things she was supposed to say here, but it was complicated territory. Ibott was so close by and he didn’t like Sy at all. Lacey was here and she didn’t like Sylvester much either, but she worked with Sylvester before and she understood him. That was probably why she was here.

  But Lillian especially-specially had been close to Sylvester. She’d slept in Sylvester’s bed and Sylvester had slept in hers, the two had kissed and called each other boyfriend and girlfriend, and those things were nice but not too important. What was important was that when Lillian was happiest she used to always look to Sylvester first and when she was saddest, it was the same.

  And Mary, in a very similar way, was an important person to Lillian. One important person of Lillian’s had hurt the other, and Lillian had to be feeling like she wanted to turn to someone for comfort. Except the person she wanted to turn to was the source of the hurt and he was gone.

  It fe
lt so wrong.

  Lillian flinched as Helen moved, stepping in close. She flinched again as Helen wrapped her in a hug.

  “Helen!” Professor Ibott barked.

  Helen ignored the man. He could punish her and make her eat mush or not let her eat at all, but this was more important. She hugged Lillian tight, but kept it a safe-tight, and she felt Lillian relax, hugging her back.

  “Helen!” Ibott shouted, harsher. All around them, students who were going about their business turned to look.

  With her mouth a short distance from Helen’s ear, Lillian spoke under her breath, so quiet that ears that weren’t augmented wouldn’t have heard. “Jamie’s gone. They’re looking for him, but I don’t think they realize he actually left.”

  Helen didn’t reply or give any signal she’d heard.

  Ibott seized Helen’s shoulder. She didn’t let go at that, but Lillian did, pulling out of the hug and stepping back.

  Jamie was gone, too? Mary was back, then Jamie was gone, and all this while, Lillian was miserable. Helen processed it, but she couldn’t simplify it down. It was a big, complicated thing that reached into too many parts of her life, from one Lamb to the next, to food, to Ibott, to the future, all like a big branching tree that she had to somehow figure out how to put into a box. She couldn’t, so it loomed, lingering, taking up far too much space in her head.

  Ibott kept one hand firmly on her shoulder, steering her as they walked to Claret Hall.

  In silence, They made their way to the same place they’d gone during the Brechwell interrogation. Ashton was there, with his team of doctors. So were Mrs. Earles, Sy’s other doctors, and Jamie’s doctors.

  Yes. This was a big, nasty, branching tree. It all reached very far, too complicated to put away neatly.

  “Helen, stand here,” Ibott said. “You are not to approach the other experiments.”

  “Yes, professor,” Helen said. He was still so agitated and upset. She could feel the pain from where he’d gripped her shoulder.