Twig

by wildbow

  Shirley smiled.

  “How are you getting by, Pierre?” I asked.

  “Doing just fine,” Pierre said. “Tired.”

  “I thought you didn’t get tired.”

  “It was a lot of running yesterday, I’m sore,” he said.

  I nodded.

  “But I’m glad to be moving,” he said. “Most of my favorite people survived.”

  “Good,” I said. “Good, that’s excellent.”

  Four things to tackle, then.

  “Shall we demonstrate our charms and wiles?” I asked Helen.

  “Yes sir,” she said, giving me a crisp salute.

  “We’ll start with the biggest group first,” I said. “The group surrounding this Otis follower.”

  Helen smiled.

  Rather than ask for a location from Shirley I asked students to point me in the direction we had last seen the guy. A crude method, but the people in our camp paid attention, they gathered notes and they shared information between them. Even the normally sealed family bonds of a greater faction could be undermined by one follower with doubts.

  “Want to bet?” Helen asked me.

  “Bet?”

  “On who can accomplish the most.”

  “Well aren’t you feeling as lively as a figged pony today, miss Helen.”

  Helen smiled.

  “What’s at stake with the bet?” I asked.

  “If you win,” Helen said, “then…”

  She trailed off. I noticed the shift in her posture. There was swagger, a pronounced and cocky addition of sway.

  “I’m not that easy to manipulate,” I said. “I’m not Duncan.”

  “Oh?” Helen asked, teasing. “But I was going to say that if you won, you could do anything. I would be your obedient slave.”

  “Ha ha,” I said. “No thanks.”

  “And if I win…” she said.

  “My ‘no’ doesn’t count for anything then?” I asked. “What?”

  “If I win, I get one favor,” Helen said.

  “One favor?”

  “One deal. It won’t be anything you couldn’t do on your own.”

  “Uh huh,” I said. “You’d have to run that by Jessie. She’s paranoid I’ll make a promise to do a favor and someone will take advantage of my lack of memory to get me to deliver on the favor over and over again. You’re trustworthy, but…”

  “Promises to Jessie must be kept. That should be fine,” Helen said. “You get me as a slave if you win, I get a favor if I win.”

  “Again, I don’t want a slave,” I said. “I have too many people to risk throwing too much away for a meager advantage. I’m trying to dissuade them of that kind of thinking. I want healthy thought processes and motivations in all of this.”

  “It’s fine,” Helen said, still swaying and sashaying.

  “Is it?”

  “I won’t lose,” she said.

  “Oh, the figgy little miss is cocky?”

  “The twiggy-thin runt of the litter is complacent, I think,” Helen said.

  I whistled, low and long.

  Helen wasn’t actually competitive. This wasn’t a deeper facet of Helen, I knew. The enthusiasm, the excitement. No, if anything, this was a reflection of how very trepiditious she was in this new environment. Camouflage, hiding places, but it was emotional, a facade. Blending in with the enemy ranks and then carrying out the Lamb tradition of undermining the enemy from within.

  This was a mask, one purely for my benefit, to cheer and encourage. To make bets I might well lose, to get hooks in deeper, to distract.

  “Sure,” I said. “I’ll try my hand at this bet of yours.”

  Helen smiled. The she reached out, putting a hand on a boy’s arm as we passed him.

  Helen named our quarry, Hank Miller, and we were pointed out to the chicken coop. I recognized the thug. Twenty years old, wearing Otis’ style of dress, with laborer’s clothes and a fair bit of excess dirt, his ears bent down at the sides where his flat cap pressed them down.

  “Miller,” I greeted Hank.

  “And the boss comes calling,” Hank said.

  “You expected me,” I said.

  “You and the secretary,” he said.

  “You’re aware that the ‘secretary’ can kick your ass?” I asked.

  Hank smirked.

  “Alright Hank,” I said. “Let’s talk business and let’s talk reality, because I’m getting the impression you’re lacking both of those things.”

  Hank glanced at Helen while I was talking. I followed his gaze, saw he was staring down her chest, and I paused, very diplomatically and dramatically, in hopes of breaking the spell.

  Helen was posing, and while she wore a winter coat, the ‘v’ of the collar and front of the coat was such that her cleavage was on display.

  “Hank,” I said.

  Hank didn’t listen up until Helen opened her mouth. He’d gotten into trouble for the sake of a dispute over a girl, and Helen was subtituting for that same girl. His attention had been moved off of her.

  Helen’s smile as she looked at me appeared wholly, perfectly genuine, which made it all the more suspicious when I had to look past it and work out the shape glee and excitement took in her character.

  You win this one, Helen, I thought.

  ☙

  “Why, though?” I asked. “Something drew you three here in the first place. You had a reason to stay. If it was the fighting, I can assure you that isn’t going to be a regular thing.”

  The three would-be defectors exchanged glances.

  “If there’s something you’re looking for, I think there’s a very good chance you’ll find it or something like it if you stick with us a bit longer. New places, new interactions, new people…”

  “It’s not like that,” the sole girl in the group of four spoke.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Being new, I think I can see where they’re coming from,” Helen said.

  You can go get bent, Helen, I thought. She was butting in. I had strong suspicions about what was going to happen. I avoided looking at the phantoms to spoil the result.

  “It’s lonely,” Helen said. “Creature comforts are a once a day thing. Even for those of us who don’t get along with our parents, home often means treats when we want treats, tea when we want tea, hugs, sometimes, or a listening ear.”

  A few heads were nodding.

  I abandoned this track of strategy, deeming myself too tired for it, and I focused on the next two tasks. I was not about to let Helen sweep me and claim four out of four victories because my focus was suffering for my mental exhaustion.

  ☙

  “Shirley said—”

  “Shirley needs a break,” I said. “She’s got her hands full. Now, the four of you are in an ongoing dispute. If I’m understanding matters right, Adams and group A here are driven by the idea. Their idea to begin with. Julie and Jim are driven by money.”

  The pair started to protest.

  “Stop fussing about,” I told them. “It’s the money, even if you’re pretending it’s not. Let’s cut through the B.S. Something about that tells me you’ll respect me talking straight to you.”

  “I want respect,” Jim said.

  I started to open my mouth to counter him, but he went on to continue.

  “I want respect, and money is how respect is demonstrated,” Jim said.

  “Great,” I told him. “Let’s move forward like that. You two want the lion’s share of profit if we turn around and sell your work on venomous parasites and when we decide if you sell any bonuses. Then there’s Gerald, who wants the group to stay together and avoid burning bridges, and Christoff, who is happy to burn the bridges and force our collective hand instead.”

  Helen sat back, apparently content to let me do my thing and concede the win.

  ☙

  Two victories for Helen, one for me.

  Our little bet of manipulation, acting, and negotiation ended here, on the other side of this door.


  I knocked, and the reply was muffled, unenthusiastic. I knocked again, and the reply was the same. Finding the door locked, I reached inside my pocket for my picks. I started work on the lock.

  Opening the door wasn’t hard. The locks were flimsy.

  The sense of victory, however, was small and short-lived.

  The young lady who had been afraid to leave her room sat in the center of the room. She’d taken a chair and moved it into position, and now she sat there. The plague blistered on her skin, and thin vines had erupted from her skin.

  Her mouth was open, vines finding lodging in, on, and around teeth, through her nose and sinuses and down her throat, and vice-versa. She was paralyzed, her breathing limited to the shallow.

  Too far gone. I knew it immediately.

  “The plague is so nice to look at,” Helen said. “But it isn’t nice to people.”

  “I agree with the latter half,” I said. “Only maybe a little bit of the former.”

  Helen nodded.

  She didn’t really have cause or an emotional basis to truly care, but she still was respectful and quiet as I approached the girl in the chair.

  “Sorry,” I told the girl.

  Plaintive eyes looked up at me.

  I drew my knife, and I held it where she could see.

  She couldn’t nod, but there was a peace in her eyes that I hadn’t seen before. Hope. Possible relief.

  “We’ll look after you,” I said.

  She nodded.

  We’ll need medication, so she goes easy, I thought. I joined Helen where she lurked at the door.

  “This will be a fair incentive to others to move a little faster to get us all out of here,” I said.

  “I think it might,” Helen said.

  Plague nipping at our heels.

  Helen’s bet had been a way to engage me, to get me paying attention. Helen’s demeanor was meant to play off of me. In a way, we were very similar in this. Helen could conform, but there was very little beyond the primal needs at the very center. I conformed by my nature and by the nature of Wyvern, often to my detriment.

  In this, we played off each other. The bet was minor in the grand scheme of things, but it made it easy to calibrate.

  There were other motivations, I was sure.

  “What were you going to do if I’d won the bet?” I asked Helen.

  “Whatever you wanted. I’m happy so long as we’re moving forward.”

  “And,” I said. “Assuming that we don’t count this last one, you’re the winner of the bet, and you get to make a request.”

  “I do,” Helen said, and she smiled.

  “Are you going to keep me in suspense?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “No. I think I can guess where you and Jessie want to go. You have certain places in mind.”

  “To a degree,” I said.

  “I have a suggestion I’d like you both to entertain, but I want you to consider it fairly,” Helen said.

  We stepped into the outside, and I winced at the cold. I spotted students who looked older, and I flagged them down.

  “I’m listening,” I said.

  “Ibbot has friends,” Helen said.

  “A terrible and insulting lie,” I replied. “Marring the reputation of humanity as a whole with the implication any of us could get along with that man.”

  “He has friends,” Helen said. “He once built superweapons, remember? He built some of the ones in use today, some of the ones the Infante wants to deploy.”

  I paused, taking that in.

  I looked at Helen, and I pushed my attention to her deeper, and I was aware of the wilder, more reckless edge to her. A part of her that was less patient.

  I knew it was the kind of impatience that came when one knew their time was running out. I knew because it was the same kind I’d felt for far too long now. Another way in which she and I were similar.

  “You want to steal a superweapon?”

  “I thought we might steal a professor who manages a superweapon,” Helen said. “And what follows from that follows.”

  Previous Next

  Gut Feeling—17.8

  I waited, my back to the doorframe, listening.

  A question from Mabel. A muted response.

  I counted ninety long seconds before I heard Mabel’s boots scrape and shuffle.

  She exited the room, wearing another improvised quarantine suit.

  “Alright?” I asked.

  I wasn’t sure if I was asking if she was alright or if the situation was.

  “I don’t think I want to do that ever again,” she said.

  “Okay,” I said. “Sorry.”

  She shook her head. The makeshift quarantine suit was all raincoat fabric and tape, and it didn’t move as her head did. “It needed to be done. It was the nicest way to end her pain, and I don’t mind that it was me. But between last night and this, this morning, I’m almost as emotionally exhausted as I’ve ever been.”

  “We’ll have to see what we can do about fixing that,” I said. “How do you normally shore things up when they’re crumbling?”

  “Hm?” she asked.

  “What?” I asked.

  “No, just… weird wording. I think I usually wait. Rest. Or I just push forward until I get to a good stopping point. End of a shitty day of class, or the next weekend where I don’t have a lot to do, or the end of a tough semester.”

  “How well does that work for you?” I asked.

  “Well enough, I think,” she said. “I don’t know. I think this is going to sit with me for a long time.”

  I invited her into the hallway, glanced within, and then closed the door. I picked up my tools, and I started removing the doorknob.

  “It’s allowed, letting it sit with you for a while.”

  “Uh huh,” Mabel said.

  “It’s a way of respecting her,” I said. “You carry that with you. It’s good if someone passes and life gets a little harder, if there’s a weight and a ripple that extends outward.”

  I pulled the doorknob out. I put it in the toolbox.

  “You’ve been involved in a lot of lost lives,” she said.

  I looked down the hall. They hadn’t been there before I started looking, but they were there by the time my head finished moving and my eyes found the shadows to either side of the window. Jamie, Gordon, and Hubris.

  “I carry them with me in other ways,” I said. I collected a hammer and a few long nails from the toolbox.

  “Oh, you mean the phantoms,” Mabel said. “I was thinking of other deaths.”

  I looked her way.

  “In your tenure as a Lamb?”

  Oh. The people I’d killed.

  That was a thing too.

  “I carry them too, I suppose,” I said.

  “Sorry if I made things queer, bringing attention to that.”

  I shook my head. “I’m a queer fellow. I hear you talk about things like how you unwind from emotional exhaustion, and I don’t know what to say.”

  “No?” she asked.

  I drove the nail into the door at an angle, so it penetrated both one edge of the door and the frame itself. With the amount of my back and shoulder that had been carved away, it was a bit of a task to drive the nail home.

  “I don’t know that I get emotionally exhausted. I get emotional, I get exhausted, but when push comes to shove, and my feelings are tested and fail the test, it’s my brain that breaks more than my heart.”

  “I think that’s a reflection of heartbreak, Sy.”

  “You might think differently if you were there,” I said. “It might be what happens when you have the right tools—”

  I paused to made sure I drove the next nail in straight.

  “—to dodge the worst of the heartbreak and go down another path. I have lots of fun tools like that.”

  “I see.”

  “Rest and time don’t do much for me, either. Time heals all wounds, but you have to let it, and I’m not willing to let
it. If you’re a Sylvester with a brain like clay under running water, you can shape that brain, sure, but you’ve got to make the choice. That painful memory of that person you cherish, do you let it go? Or do you make the effort to keep that memory clear and safe from being washed away? Do you keep etching it in and reinforcing it?”

  “You etch.”

  “Yeah. I etch,” I said. Still holding the hammer, I grabbed a small paint can, pried off the lid, and stuck my fingers inside. I finger-painted letters on the door. “As best I can.”

  Plague, my letters wrote.

  I made a mark below the warning, using fingerprints and smears to form something akin to a leaf with a curling line beside it, then crouched a bit before finger-painting another message.

  Edna-Joan Eccles.

  “How did it go?” I asked. “That quote that Edna’s friend from the animal team said?”

  “I was busy getting my suit taped up. I barely heard what you were all talking about, and the girls were crying. I thought you would remember.”

  “You’re putting far too much stock in my brain. Something beastly?”

  “Um. Wasn’t it something like, ‘roar, my beast friend?’”

  “Sure,” I said. “Beast?”

  “I think it’s a play on best friend, and because she liked animals and warbeasts? She was really excited about the pheromone warbeast we were going to be working on, even though she wasn’t project lead.”

  I was already painting the letters before Mabel had finished talking. “It’s an especially large shame then. I like people who are passionate about what they do.”

  Mabel nodded, but she didn’t verbally respond.

  It took a while to write even the short sentence, one stroke at a time.

  “There,” I said, when I was done. I set the can of paint down without closing it, and abandoned the tools where they were. An oily rug helped me get most of the paint off of my hand. I didn’t fuss too much over getting perfectly clean.

  “I wish I could take her somewhere she could be properly buried,” Mabel said. “Shit. I never used to be sentimental.”

  “She was fused to the chair and floor,” I said. “It’s not worth the risk to you.”

  Mabel nodded. Again, her quarantine suit obscured the motion.

  “Burial is a funny thing, too, the more I think about it, but I think that’s mostly personal perception. Come on, let’s get out of here.”