Twig

by wildbow

  People muttered as he raised Eric to his feet.

  “I asked,” I said. “I clearly think it’s a point worth addressing. Doubly so now that you’re being evasive.”

  “Then are you going to use that Wyvern-washed brain of yours and find a line of questioning that makes me talk about the syringe? Torture me and my children?”

  He was surrounded by citizens and aristocrats that saw him as someone friendly and someone to be respected. That had to play a part in his power play here. His confidence level hadn’t changed, but it seemed innate. I might almost believe that a drug had given him that confidence level, but I’d met too many other professors over the years.

  Could I shake him? Possibly. Could I worm my way into his head and get what I needed out of him? Yes, given time.

  He knew I didn’t want to spare the time.

  “You know who and what I am, professor. You’ve read my file.”

  “I do. I have.”

  “Then let’s leave it at that,” I said. “You know enough to know the consequences.”

  He didn’t flinch. He only pulled his strings and commanded his puppet.

  I turned away, my mind whirling, working out all the possibilities. I had friends nearby, I had more friends on the other side of that open space of no man’s land. He had only a few key opportunities for attack. Had he given himself the contents of the syringe? Eric? One of the children?

  Was it a bluff?

  I turned toward the crowd, and I raised my voice as I spoke to them. “There are more rebels downstairs. You all stick near me, don’t speak of anything relating to the professor, and this all goes smoothly. Let’s head down to the first floor.”

  The people were a buffer. They put bodies between me and the lesser rebels, they blocked vision, and, I was suspicious, they were ostensibly on my side rather than the rebel’s.

  Shirley and Otis drew nearer to me, and our reduced collection of thugs followed. More security. More of a buffer. I was given pause when I saw that Shirley wasn’t wearing the quarantine outfit.

  Florence was. She was small enough that it bunched up all around her. It wasn’t even a complete outfit, because she’d left one glove off, freeing her hand to manipulate strings. She wore a leather glove, tight against her small hand, and some of the adhesive wrap blocked off the gap, but it wasn’t the same thing.

  “Pierre is going to be mad at me,” I said. “I made him promises.”

  “He’ll understand if you explain.”

  “He’ll understand, but he’ll be mad,” I said.

  “Please?” she asked.

  I looked over at Florence.

  “She reminds me of myself as a child,” Shirley said.

  “Having actually talked to her for a short while, I’m pretty sure you couldn’t find anyone more different,” I said. “In looks, yeah, she has a lot going for her, she’ll grow up to be a beauty, but—”

  Shirley swatted my shoulder lightly.

  “—I don’t see any of my favorite parts of you in her. Okay, maybe the cleverness, but—”

  “You’re a relentless flirt, Sy,” she said.

  Doctor bad, I gestured. Children bad. Betrayal soon. “I don’t see that as flirting. You should see me when I really flex that angle.”

  Yes, was her only gesture. She didn’t have a lot of vocabulary. She got most gestures when I communicated to her, but it didn’t go the other way, from her to me. She’d picked up my message.

  “I’m still not wearing that suit,” she said.

  I drew in a breath, then nodded.

  We made our way down the stairs, at the tail end of the group.

  I was careful to position people between myself and the professor. He had Eric in tow, and I made sure that the professor and Eric couldn’t lunge for me.

  I met the eyes of Charles, who looked very concerned for entirely normal reasons that had to do with venturing into the cold, plague ridden, conflict-torn outside.

  I looked for Florence and I saw her near Berger. She wore the suit, and her head was aimed more toward the ground, one leather-gloved hand on the strings, the other hand in a thicker glove, on the man’s back, giving her balance as she focused on descending the stairs while wearing a quarantine mask with virtually no visibility.

  The lowered head was indicative of something else, too. The nearer she was to Berger, the more submissive she appeared, her head bent low, as if expecting him to strike her at any moment. I wondered the degree to which that was true, the degree to which it was meat to manipulate him, and the degree to which it was meant to manipulate me.

  I would’ve liked to see more of her face and body to read her for cues, given the difficulty in reading an accomplished liar and politician like Berger, but I wasn’t so lucky.

  The stream of people flowed out the door with almost no hiccups. Some mismatches of people got wedged in the double doors, too large or trying to go in three-across instead of two-across. Others stumbled or slipped as they transitioned from hard floor to a street covered in wet snow that had been trampled by a hundred people ahead of them.

  Jessie and her squad waited on the other side. I saw their postures change noticeably as they spotted Shirley and I. Perking up, taking notice.

  Berger slowed to a noticeable degree. Lagging.

  I expected him to draw a gun, perhaps, or to pull the bug free and release the rebel leader with some prearranged agreement to attack me, augmented by drugs. I expected a gas canister. The position I’d chosen in this careful stampede of my own design was meant to account for all of that. So was the position I’d chosen for Shirley. Tall thugs from Otis’ group.

  He didn’t go high. He didn’t try to go through. He didn’t even do anything overt.

  It had to amount to reaching into a part of his voluminous lab coat and simply dropping it to the ground.

  The bug leaped from a point on the wet ground, passing through a narrow gap between two of Otis’ people, and lunged straight for me. I was primed and on the alert, and my hand went out, grabbing for it. Hook-like limb-ends caught on my arm, found purchase in the flesh of my forearm, and like the hammer of a gun firing, it fired forward in another explosive leap, going for my neck this time.

  Straight for me, of all the possible targets.

  I’d stood too close to him as I’d worked my shenanigans on the roomful of people. He’d given it a thorough sniff of me.

  “Go,” I said, in the same moment I realized I couldn’t tear it free without the risk of the hook-limb tearing at something vital in my neck. “Leave me!”

  It moved of its own accord, crawling around the side of my neck to my spine.

  Whatever he’d dosed it with, it seemed more or less immune to my poisonous taste.

  I landed face down on the road, paralyzed from the neck down, and I didn’t see anything else of what followed.

  Previous Next

  Head over Heels—16.8

  The insect that had latched onto my spine rocked back and forth in a rhythmic way. With it, my lungs kept operating, breathing in, breathing out. The control wasn’t mine. I felt a cold sensation, as if winter-chilled water was trickling into the back of my neck to my throat, spine, and pooling in my actual body and extremities. Venom of a sort, from the mouthpiece of the insect. I opened my mouth, and that numb cold kept me from properly speaking. I could make only a few, limited sounds that consisted of the regular exhalations and some mouth shapes. Not proper speech.

  It didn’t help that one side of my face pressed against the ground.

  I heard commotion, the tromp of footsteps, and then a hand seized me by the neck. I was lifted up, my face no longer on cold wet road. I had no idea what the rest of my body was doing.

  “What do you think you’ll accomplish?” Berger asked.

  I couldn’t answer, and the question wasn’t directed at me anyway.

  “I wouldn’t be doing it alone,” a man I didn’t recognize said. One of Otis’ thugs. “I’m thinking we can make you let go of him, t
hen we get around to tearing the giblets out of you.”

  “Sylvester said to go,” I heard Shirley. “He had a reason, I imagine.”

  My mind was flying through possibilities, which was just as well, considering it was the only part of me that was working. Shirley was right. I did have a reason. Berger was the sort who wouldn’t pull something like this unless he was sure he could see it through. So, rather than risk good people, I’d jumped straight to letting Berger see things through, which bypassed the question of how entirely.

  Had I had more time, I would have double-guessed him. I would have accounted for the possibility that he was thinking I’d think this way, and perhaps urged everyone present to turn on him. Perhaps. He was a control freak, and—

  “Fuck this,” Otis’ thug said.

  “Don’t—” Shirley started.

  I was dropped on my face again. I heard what followed, and I deliberately put it out of mind, keeping myself from connecting to who was where and what was happening so I could think more clearly about what I needed to think about.

  I could move my eyes and I could blink. This was all I had at my disposal. Eye movements weren’t worth a lot, unless I wanted to look at someone in particular. I was left with blinks. The tap code worked for blinks, but only Jessie knew it.

  What was Berger going to do? He was going to retreat to safety. No man’s land was his land. So long as he had Eric and me with him, his black coat in full display, there weren’t really any people who would open fire on him. He could retreat, find sanctuary amid the Crown forces, and move on from there.

  Someone fell to the ground near me. A large hand smacked my rear end before sliding off, coming to rest beside my leg.

  “Stop, just stop—” Shirley started. Then, more fiercely, she called out, “Back off! Everyone back!”

  “Do as she says!” Otis barked.

  A hand seized me again, wrapping around to the front of my throat.

  I was held by the rebel leader, who was puppeteered by Berger in turn. He raised me up, holding me by the throat, facing outward, so I could see the small crowd in front of us. Two of our thugs lay on the ground.

  Berger was a control freak, and he wasn’t about to put things in strange hands. He had the tools necessary to seize control of the situation, dispatch anyone who tried to rescue me, and now he dragged me a little distance back, venturing away from the barricade and a few strides back down the street that constituted the no man’s land around the Little Castle.

  I looked past Shirley, past the thugs that were still standing, and to the barricade.

  Jessie.

  The tap code was the same mechanism as the hand signs, in a broad sense. When we had to be even more subtle, we could communicate a code by touch using two variations. Short and long, hard and soft. It worked with sound, light, anything we could translate into time and two separate notes. We’d really only worked out the basic signs. The six or seven basic ones we’d used with gestures and a couple of others.

  I needed to communicate something to Jessie. I did what I could to work out the message to be conveyed. I settled on ‘You distract Berger, I free myself.’

  You. I indicated the crowd, eyes moving to all the key players I could see, with repetition and regular blinks for emphasis. Otis, Jessie, Shirley, Jessie, Archie, Jessie.

  “You’re sure we can’t negotiate?” Jessie called out. She signaled yes.

  Berger backed up a little more. “I don’t see what you have that I want.”

  Jessie paused. Then she gestured. Certain. Question.

  Was I sure? How confident was I in my plan?

  Fifty five percent?

  Did that count as sure?

  Probably not. But the alternative was that Jessie and the others would mount an effort to free me, in a territory stricken by plague. It meant time and effort, and every second spent exposed to this air was a risk.

  I blinked once for ‘yes’, then dropped my head as much as I was able.

  “What if we have something you don’t want?” Jessie said.

  “What is this? A game?” Berger asked.

  I felt my blood run cold.

  I’m not that sure, Jessie!

  Whatever. I had to work extra hard now. Distract. Two quick blinks for no, then a glance away. I returned my gaze to Jessie, realized someone was beside her that hadn’t been when I’d looked away—

  And I experienced a feeling much like Jessie must have when she’d dropped a memory back in Laureas. I stared into oblivion as I reached for something I knew had to be there, and found nothing.

  “While investigating, we crossed paths with a Mr. and Mrs. Block, Professor. They were integral to tutoring young nobles, before they were even out to the public. We found them in New Amsterdam, and we’ve secreted them away.”

  No, no, no no.

  Yes, this would normally be something I could leverage, but not when I wasn’t prepared to follow through. No, no, no.

  Now the cat was out of the bag. I couldn’t even tell Jessie to stop, because then the cat would be out of the bag and we wouldn’t have leverage.

  I’d always held onto the Lambs. I’d always held onto the cardinal and core skills. The gestures, the carved mouse-signs, the dances that went hand in hand with being in near-perfect coordination with someone.

  The tap code wasn’t at that level of importance, but it had been important. It had been related to something integral.

  I reached for the interpretation of distract. No and then focus, then Berger. It should have been simple. I still knew the gesture for focus, for learn, memorize, study. I just couldn’t translate it to tap-code. It eluded me.

  Evette stood shoulder to shoulder with Jessie, and she shook her head, because she was fully aware. I’d had it, and now it was gone. A memory and thing I’d been very intent with practicing and keeping.

  “That’s knowledge that hurts you more than it hurts me,” Berger said. He’d stopped dragging me back away from the others.

  “You’ve got roots in the Crown States, Professor Berger. Family, friends, your children. I researched you once upon a time. I know the particulars, and I know that you’re immersed in the politics on this side of the pond, you know what’s at play. Yes, it hurts all of us if this gets out, but you lose everything but your education and what you manage to take with you when you travel overseas. Assuming you get the chance.”

  Not distract then. Occupy? I could play off the tap-code for manipulate, operate, use, control, turn it into a negative. I could tell Jessie to keep the professor’s hands full.

  Evette shook her head.

  Blank. The void in front of me yawned open even wider. If I could have even tapped on the side of my leg, the tactile aspect of it could have helped me access it. I couldn’t. There was only oblivion. The Wyvern had eaten a piece of me without my being aware of it.

  Berger, too, stood blindfolded before a chasm. He could hope there was a bridge, or he could buckle, and submit to the people who had driven him to this point.

  I knew which way he would move, though.

  Berger stepped back, moving me with him, setting foot on the bridge. “I’ll take my chances and trust you’re smart enough to leave Mr. and Mrs. Block where they are.”

  “The problem with that,” Jessie said, her voice modulated by the gas mask she wore, “is that you all created a collection of little Lambs with absolutely nothing to lose. We don’t have any more than a few years. You’ve read our files, no doubt. If you’re threatening to set our world on fire, that’s fine. Do it. We’ll do as much damage to you as we can in the meantime.”

  I’d already signaled no. That left me the negations of the other core signs, the other tap codes we’d worked out.

  No aggression? Leave Berger alone? Just the opposite of what I wanted. I needed a window.

  No support? No protection? Again, I wanted the opposite, I needed help. and the negations of that one were too muddled.

  No cooperation? No.

  “The
problem with that, little Lamb, is that just ten minutes ago, your friend Sylvester here went to great lengths to save Miss Shirley over there, and it was abundantly clear just how much he cares about her. I’m going to call that a bluff.”

  Seeing Shirley react to being used against us in that capacity almost sucked as much as anything.

  A lot of this sucked. I might have felt gorge in my throat if I’d been able to feel my throat. I might have felt my heart hammer and felt the need to control my breathing to avoid showing signs of panic, but I was a head with no connection to its body.

  Other options.

  ‘No go’? Don’t approach Berger? It amounted to a sacrifice. It meant to stay away. Trust me. It meant implying to Jessie that I could handle this. There were a dozen possibilities that unfolded from that command, and if I were Jessie and using a memory database of Sylvester to simulate what I might do in that circumstance, it could imply a bomb going off, a lot of chaos that I needed her and the others to steer clear of. Except I didn’t. I’d get dragged away, Jessie would hopefully get out of this city and retreat to the Sedge camp, and she’d wait for me until it became clear I wasn’t going to make it back to her.

  It was the best way to keep her clear of this. As far as the various commands went, it was the only good option so far.

  “Berger,” Jessie said. “You know it’s not that simple. We could tie you up in it. Make you culpable.”

  Berger chuckled. A motion in my peripheral vision suggested he’d gestured, or the rebel leader had. A way of the finger.

  Jessie was trying to buy time. I needed to finish communicating.

  Except for the part where it would tear her up, see her putting pieces together in the wrong way.

  The only sign left was watch, alert, attention. Fundamental, one of the first we’d learned, that we’d taught Catcher, that we’d taught Mary. Negated, it could be implied to mean blinding him. Confounding his senses. It could also be implied to mean that Jessie should ignore Berger. The problem was that the first sign I’d forgotten would’ve implied distract, and the overlap was heavy enough that Jessie might connect the dots all wrong, and assume the ‘ignore’ interpretation. Because why would I say confound if I could have said distract?