Twig

by wildbow

  Returning stubbornly to the same track as before. That was a peril when it came to limiting the blood flow to the man’s brain. If we made him stupider with the application of pressure, then there was a chance he might not be smart enough to see the merit in what I was saying.

  “Really now?” I asked. “What’s your alternative? They have their sights on Cynthia. This is only going to be one of several major projects they employ to handle your rebellion here.”

  “We’ve dealt with worse.”

  “Than that? Giant project miff or whatever he’s called? No. We were supposed to be among the old ‘worse’ you dealt with, and we pretty successfully killed Cynthia’s favorite scientists and set her on fire. Everything she was building, everything she was, being the classy lady at an event with aristocrats, clandestine meetings with other rebel leaders, whatever, she was tops at what she was doing, and after the horrendous burns she became a… I don’t know.”

  “Vengeful,” Franz said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Vengeful. And that’s a tricky quality in a leader. Leaders need to be passionate, yeah, but they also need to form connections, establish trust, be honest, show respect for their subordinates and respect the enemy, and they need to put something of themselves into the cause. I’m worried Cynthia misses enough of those marks that it’s problematic for you all.”

  “She’s never done us wrong,” Franz said, stubborn, looking more focused in the moment than he’d looked earlier.

  “I’m arguing she’s doing you wrong at this very moment, if she’s urging you all to self-immolate instead of cooperating and building something.”

  “Sy,” Helen said. She had retracted her tongue.

  “Helen?”

  “I think we’re running into a problem we’ve run into before. One you’ve run into before. It sounds very familiar. Rick.”

  “No codes,” a rebel soldier said.

  “It’s not a code,” Helen said. “I’m talking about someone we used to know.”

  “I don’t remember a Rick,” I said.

  I could see Helen react with mild surprise at that.

  “No codes!”

  The soldier sounded ticked enough that I really believed he would shoot us if we pushed it.

  Not that there was any code I was aware of. No, I suspected this was, going by Helen’s reaction, something that was supposed to be fairly blatant.

  I wracked my brain for ideas on who Rick might be. Past opposition, people we had crossed paths with during jobs, the mice in Radham, the other orphans, the doctors who worked with us, the politicians in Radham. It had to be someone Helen and I were both in a position to know, which was why I kept going back to Radham.

  There was no Rick, no emotional reaction to Rick, good or bad. A nonentity in the Sylvester brainscape.

  “None of that,” Franz said. His words weren’t as crisp as before. He didn’t sound as confident, either, but I wasn’t sure if that was a direct relation to he pressure Helen was putting on him or an indirect one. He was slower to pick up and release sentences, too.

  I needed to change course, assuming that Helen was warning me. The problem was, I wasn’t sure what course to take. I’d been so sure I would be able to hammer him down, especially as we taxed his faculties, but now Helen was saying no?

  Jessie was gone at least. That was promising.

  Fine, I’d change tacks, and knowing that these guys were aggressive and militant, I could try to paint the right picture.

  “Listen,” I said, my voice firmer. I’d continue to press, to make use of the emotional and mental battery. “I was Academy, once, but they took my friends from me. They took my freedom, and they took most of the years of my life from me. I’m not going to say I have more right to be pissed at them, but I’m pretty pissed. We do have common ground there. I want to rescue Cynthia and free you guys to work against Crown and Academy, and as far as I’m concerned, you’re not letting me.”

  “Sy—” Helen started.

  “I’m not letting you,” Franz said, and he drawled a bit, “Because we’re not nice people. We don’t turn the other cheek we don’t forgive. You crossed us once, and so we’re going to remove you. Tha world keeps turning, and people shout and they cry out for justice, and it gets drowned out in the wave of news about this new transplant or that new surgery, about wonder drugs and warbeasts, and about wars overseas and twisted tales about rebellions here, only as told by the Crown. D’you unnerstand what I’m saying?”

  Helen was looking at me, as if waiting for my signal to distract the man or debilitate him.

  I worried that if we pushed things too much further, we might get shot.

  I worried that whoever this ‘Rick’ was that I was supposed to avoid, I’d bumped right into him, and if any dam had breached with waters flooding out, then it wasn’t helpful.

  I gestured for Helen to ease up on the guy’s throat. I didn’t need him delirious from having his oxygen supply intermittently limited.

  “It’s about having a voice?” I asked. If I couldn’t dissuade him, if he wanted a voice, then I would give him one, lead him on, buy time. It wasn’t great, it wasn’t perfect, but it gave Jessie an opportunity. “Making a statement?”

  “It’s about having a damn impact for once,” he said. “We all get caught up in their flow. The games they play. Do you know what the most important things are? The thing that drives them and that drives all of us?”

  “Power,” I said. “Control. And everything that those two things aren’t. Not giving up power, not letting others dictate our paths. Having an agenda, a belief system. Being free enough to have control of our own destinies.”

  “No,” he said. “No, all of that sounds pretty. But it’s not what it is. I think, we think, that it comes down to history. Deciding it, writing it. Power and control might give them the ability to hold the pen to the history books and ensure nobody else gets their hands on pen or book, but that’s not the important thing. It’s having a legacy. Having made a manifest difference.”

  “And in a vain, desperate attempt to try and shout loud enough to get words printed in a book nobody will read, you’re—”

  More people appeared in the doorway. Too much attention was on them, not on me.

  “They’re all Ricks,” Helen said, her voice soft.

  “You need to switch to a reference I remember and understand when I clearly don’t get it,” I told her.

  The focus was on the door, the people were chattering, and Franz was in Helen’s grip, his attention focused on everything that was going on over there.

  There weren’t many guns pointed at us. I thought about making a break for it.

  The crowd parted.

  “She escaped into the storm sewers,” the man at the door said. He warily eyed Helen, myself, and the various hostages we’d collected. “The monster is tearing up the ground and trying to dig out the pipes wherever she’s going, and she’s crawling for most of it, most of that crawling through or over ice water, but she’s alive and in better shape than she was. Thought you’d want to know, sir.”

  Franz smiled a little, and seemed to relax a touch. “I did. I’m glad.”

  I glanced at Helen. There weren’t many escape routes. Several required reaching the beam that extended across the room and I wasn’t sure we could manage that.

  “Should I be saying goodbye, sir?” the man at the door asked.

  “Don’t know yet,” Franz said. “But probably. Where’s Macuff?”

  “The captain is outside. He’s looking after Daisy. They’re doing something that’s making her head spin. To do with sound. Captain Macuff says that means they’re probably close.”

  Jessie.

  “Which means there’s another one,” Franz said. “At least.”

  His eyes widened, and I could see the expression beyond them, the realization, and the decision.

  “Shoot—” he started.

  Helen snapped Franz’s neck and killed the ghost, and in the doing, she manag
ed to move Franz so he formed a limited human shield, protecting her, her arms going to her head.

  I cut my hostage’s throat, dimly aware that we were surrounded by at least thirty armed men with combat expertise. In the same motion I’d flicked the knife through vitals, I swung my arm out and put it in the back of the nearest thug. I threw it at a third thug, to only moderate effect, and dove for the gun of the first man I’d killed, who was still in the process of dying, blood flooding out of his brain, which was giving him dopamine spark dreams of white and peace, to ease him into oblivion.

  I knew how it was so very little, so very late. I knew that Helen was the bigger target. Even before I could reach for the gun I wanted to retrieve, people were stepping forward and making the choice to shoot.

  Even among thugs of this caliber, so desperate for a voice and an impact, most were reluctant to actually pull the trigger and kill a child, even one so monstrous as Helen. She wore an innocent, scared expression well.

  It would haunt me for a long time, I imagined, that it was an expression she was wearing when they pulled triggers and started putting bullets in her, penetrating her heart, stomach, arm, both legs, and face.

  Whoever Rick was, I hoped he wasn’t the type to laugh or rub my nose in this.

  The other Lambs emerged in full force, Evette included. Fray and Mauer stood on either side of me, Mauer nearer the crowd, and Fray nearer the Lambs.

  They would help steer me through the muderous rage.

  I opened my mouth to roar my defiance, and the building summarily split in two, and this was right and just. I didn’t care how it happened, only that it reflected the feeling in my heart, the pain of a few stray gunshots that caught me and only grazed me. As fire and smoke tore through the air around me, I was already hurling myself in the direction of the enemy.

  Previous Next

  Gut Feeling—17.12

  I was sitting down and surrounded with ruin and smoke, and I couldn’t remember exactly how I’d arrived in that position. My memory wasn’t that bad; the mental image of Helen being shot was clear enough that I knew it hadn’t disappeared outright.

  I couldn’t focus my eyes on any individual point, which was another sign that something was wrong. It was a kind of double vision that closing one eye didn’t help, the world coloring outside lines. Parts of me that were safely nestled inside me hurt.

  But the thing that helped me put two and two together was the fact that my ears were ringing and sounds were distorted, I could hear a voice clearly. Mauer, speaking like Mauer tended to speak, and he sounded clear as a bell.

  The Mauer that kept me company didn’t tend to speak.

  “…bring into justice both the righteous and the wicked, for there will be a time for every activity, a time to judge every deed…”

  I had heard the man rally people, but I had only ever really heard one of his sermons, and that had been years ago. I wasn’t picking this up strictly from that. Other memories, other details. This wasn’t Mauer any more than Evette was the real Evette.

  “…take revenge, my dear friends…” Mauer proclaimed.

  My eyes widened. I couldn’t yet wrangle my vision and thoughts enough to make sense of the battlefield, but I could see a solid kind of movement that wasn’t smoke, people, and I could move toward them.

  Something had detonated, and it had detonated closer to the far end of the room. The fire, the smoke, the pain, it was all fallout from that single event. Jessie.

  “…leave room for wrath, for it is written: it is yours to avenge, and you will repay!”

  Eyes still wide, staying wide even with the stinging touch of smoke, I put the pain out of mind. I made my body move, and this was a thing I had done before, a thing I would do one last time. I crawled and I felt the creak of floorboards beneath my hands, where they were supported only at one end. My weight made them threaten to break in half dumping me into whatever lay below.

  It was cold, for all the smoke. Cold, despite the red glow of fire. The winter air was blowing in, a wind stirred by the difference of hot air within and cold air without, trying to find reconciliation.

  “All of us growl like bears, and moan sadly like doves,” Mauer said, his voice dropping lower, for gravity. He was a very clear image in a distorted, senseless world, and the mention of doves made me aware of Fray.

  Fray was harder to see in the smoke, especially as she wore black, but I could see Helen from the shoulders down, and I had to look a distance over to see where Fray stood, because Fray never appeared alone. Copious amounts of blood dripped down to stain Helen’s simple white dress. I could have looked up to see Helen’s face. I didn’t.

  “…we hope for justice, but there is none. For salvation, but it is far from us,” Mauer intoned.

  There were others nearby, and most of them were reeling as much or more than I was. I didn’t have my knife, but the first person I happened across was suffering more than I was. He had a gun, and he didn’t have the strength to keep me from taking it from him, an act that took two fumbling tries.

  “Whuh,” the man spoke, and he sounded very far away. “We need to get out.”

  “Give me your hands,” I said.

  “What?” he asked, voice drowned out by other sounds that I realized were figments of auditory trauma, ringing and a sound like a perpetual avalanche.

  “Hands,” I said.

  He didn’t fight me as I reached for one of his arms, hauled it across his chest, and then took the other hand, raising it up. He cooperated, even, to bring them up, as I took hold of them, entangling his fingers in my own. I tugged on them, and he took that as encouragement. Struggling to even gather his senses, it was an anchoring point, something to help him get centered and work toward. He managed to sit up, and moved his legs around to where he could maybe prepare to stand.

  “…For man is born for trouble, and sparks fly upward,” Mauer said.

  I used my foot to block his legs from moving the full way around. Then, forcing my brain to focus, using all of the practice I’d had over the years to seize control of my brain and put it to the one task of dealing with the current confusion, I lined up the gun, and I fired it so it penetrated both of the man’s wrists with one shot.

  If I hadn’t already been nearly deaf, my own gunshot would have

  I had to drop to one knee, falling on top of his legs, to keep him from kicking me or getting away from me as he screamed, arms flying back and away, flinging blood and gore into the air in an arc.

  I had to work far harder to line up a shot to destroy his ankles. I wasn’t sure, but I might have only damaged one ankle.

  “I’ll do to them as they have done to me,” Mauer said, right in my ear.

  “I get it,” I said.

  “I’ll pay them back for what they did,” he said, his monstrous arm settling on my shoulder, fingers digging into flesh.

  “I get it,” I said, again. “Enough.”

  One of his wrists shattered by a bullet, the man on the floor in front of me clubbed me across the face with one arm. With the state of the arm, I imagined it hurt him more than it hurt me. He certainly screamed like it.

  Breathing hurt. I wasn’t sure if it was the sudden, bitter influx of cold air, the smoke, emotion, or something else, but it made for a bitter sort of intake of breath.

  The screaming was drawing attention of the others. Someone fired a gun, more a warning shot, or something meant to provoke a response.

  I brought the pistol to the man’s face, pointing it at his jaw. I could take that too.

  “Count your bullets,” Mauer said. “Plan.”

  I counted. Four bullets remained.

  Rather than shoot, I brought the handle of the gun down on the man’s mouth. I heard and felt teeth break. The screaming quieted, but the moans of pain and alarm were almost as loud. I brought the gun down again, smashing one lip and several already broken teeth. He tried to turn his head, to spit out the first taste of blood and the pieces of broken teeth that had fallen
back into his mouth, and I grabbed his jaw with one hand, wresting it back so it faced up, facing me. The wrapped-up fingers at the end of that hand protesting from the fierceness of my grip, and they protested again from the secondary vibration as I hit the man’s face again, splitting his upper lip to the nostril.

  He raised his arms, shielding his face with the parts that weren’t damaged, and I swung. The pistol’s grip struck the parts of his arm that the earlier bullet had already ruined, and he pretty quickly abandoned that line of defense.

  My perception of the world veered in a direction, and I toppled onto the floorboards, eliciting a protest. He had flipped over, and my balance wasn’t entirely there. I was gaining more focus, I’d been able to aim, but I wasn’t at my best. It took me a second of staring at the four limbs and one head in front of me to figure out how it was put together as a person.

  Another second to figure out how I wanted to take it apart as a person.

  I reached for hair, gripped it, and pulled it back, before smashing it into the floorboards. It didn’t knock the man out, but a combination of the blow and the earlier smacks with the butt end of the gun served to reduce nose and mouth to a bloody ruin. He lay there, eyes open and staring, bleeding, unable to use two arms and one leg, and I was able to convince myself that even if I wasn’t satisfied, I was ready to move on.

  I swayed as I rose to my feet. My lack of balance threatened to topple me, and so I made myself fall strategically.

  With every second that passed, I was gaining control of my faculties. The problem was that the opposition was also recovering.

  Two men had fallen in a pile. I reached for weapons first, grabbing one gun, clumsily pushing a knife out of reach of either of them. The clumsy part was that I’d put it out of my own reach too.

  The more alert of the two men said something, but between Mauer’s ramblings in the background, the noises in my ears and the creaky-crackle of wood declaring a dangerous lack of structural integrity, I would have only really been able to understand the man if I’d been listening and focusing.