by wildbow
“Leave me behind,” I said.
“Alone?” Jessie asked.
“Not quite alone,” I said. “The rebels are almost another Lamb, collectively.”
Jessie stared at me.
“And… you’ll be there,” I said.
“That’s what concerns me,” Jessie said.
“In a different sense. Just… let me believe that you’re coming back. That you’ll be back with the Lambs. I can look forward to that. It’s not something that leaves me empty and hollow. It can keep me going. I can tough it out.”
Jessie shook her head.
“Helen wants to be out and about, and if she’s in your company for most of it, she’ll be okay, right?”
Helen nodded. Jessie looked more dubious.
“You’ve listened and watched with one eye as Ferres worked on Helen, haven’t you? You can do further repairs for the other half of her face.”
“Possibly,” Jessie said.
“It’s not the worst thing if it’s not possible. I’ll manage. You two should go,” I said. “I’ll entertain myself.”
“That’s another thing I’m worried about,” Jessie said. “You being entertained.”
“It’s the best way forward,” I said.
Jessie nodded.
Helen’s hand snapped up, seizing Ferres wrist, where Ferres held the scalpel. She smiled that half smile.
“You don’t need a scalpel to put my face back together,” Helen said. “I’m leaving soon. So please, if you would…”
Professor Ferres stared, still frozen. Slowly, she let the scalpel tumble from her fingers and fall to the floor. She reached over with her free hand, reaching into her kit to get the chemicals and tools needed to seamlessly close up Helen’s face. Helen released her other hand, still smiling.
“I’ll get us started,” I said, standing.
Jessie nodded. Her smile was a sad one.
I was still quite damp as I exited the apartment and ventured into the hallway. Two of Bea’s people were standing guard. I gestured at them, and they fell in step with me.
The torso of the reclining woman was the center of the university, the point from which all other elements flowed. Core labs and exhibition halls made up much of the center portions, set so that other areas could look through windows or down from raised areas to view the ongoing proceedings.
Many students were gathered at tables and seats throughout one of the exhibition halls, which was in the process of being set for the young master’s birthday party, later in the month. Stage decorations were partially grown and partially built. In the meantime, until faculty came marching through at eleven thirty to midnight, it was where boys met with girls, where student workers and staff took off their shoes and talked. Friends gathered and talked about work and about fanciful ideas and dreams.
The various leaders of my groups all met here too, passing messages between them. Each and every last one of them was gathered here. Shirley was sitting at one table, where she had been talking to Possum and Rudy. Rudy was doing tons better, but he still needed crutches to get around, and the crutches rested against the table next to him.
The fact that I was drenched, still periodically dripping, it drew attention. I appreciated that among my people, there were some that kept talking, conversing without much break in stride. It might have been problematic if my arrival had been followed by utter silence.
My hand moved subtly, and a score of eyes watched it.
The movement of my hand gave the signal that they had collectively been waiting for for weeks now.
School. Two fingers held high, hand in a fist. Very close to the sign for ‘mind’.
Fall. Pinky and thumb extended, swept down.
I watched as the Rank stood as a group. They marched off. They’d been content to hang in the background, mingling with Bea’s group. But they’d been the Rank before they’d been hanging out with the Rooftop Girls, and as the Rank they’d brewed chemicals as a collective, for sale elsewhere. Drugs chief among them.
Getting them placed right had been about ensuring that they had lab space, little oversight, and access to key parts of the Academy. Posie in particular had been focused on the mechanical aspect of it.
Gas. It would sweep through whole sections of the Academy. It would take time. That was a part of it that had to start sooner than later.
I gestured for the others to hold on, then took a seat at the table, moving a chair and spinning it around so I sat backwards in the seat.
“I suppose I’ll get us started,” Mabel said. She sat at the next table over, with many members of her Green Team.
I really didn’t like that she stood just as I sat down.
“I’ll come with,” Shirley said. Mabel nodded. I could see that Shirley looked at ease, that she wasn’t running from, but running to.
I valued that a hell of a lot, when it felt like everyone was drifting away or moving away from me and that I had to fight to keep them close.
I still owed Shirley so much.
Mabel’s Green Team would be focused on Hackthorn’s right hip and leg. The leg was the path down into the small town below Hackthorn, the passage to the cliffs. Controlling it would be essential not only because it was a key chokepoint, but because it was a key place where food was stored, where the stables were. Measures were already in place to ensure that there would be no warbeasts available to anyone who tried to hold Hackthorn against us.
Shirley was traveling in that same direction, but she would carry all the way down the leg, where she would talk to Pierre and our gang members, minus Archie, who was still posing as my father, an aristocrat of note. The people who had evacuated the city when Neph had spread black wood over it were in Shirley’s company now. The mad baker was somewhere among them, as was the old man.
“There was a good number of students in the labs the last I checked,” the Treasurer said. He stood, and he gave me a two-finger salute.
The labs were easy. A small team would see it quarantined. It was a process that took time and careful attention to reverse, however. I was reminded of the Bowels, of being locked within with Sub Rosa.
The Treasurer’s group would need to be reinforced. Davis was meant to be second in command, in charge of that aspect of things when I wasn’t present. I knew from his expression that he was fully aware that my absence meant he was being forced into a position of leadership again.
Every group had a place. There were things to look after.
Bea was dressed in an Academy uniform with no jacket and an apron instead of a coat, was representative of the students who worked at helping keep things running. Some were assistants to faculty. Others delivered mail or ran errands.
Bea smiled, and she almost looked as if she enjoyed this on a level nobody else had indicated, except for me.
The Rooftop Girls had been rebels before they had been rebels. At Bea’s behest, they would act within the next thirty minutes, turning on the faculty they had been working for. A small share of that faculty would be sequestered away and imprisoned.
Cut the head off the dragon.
We’d marked out the reclining woman as someone else might dissect a body or quarter livestock.
Gordeux would be working as a liason between Davis and the Treasurer. He’d overseen a handful of projects. Warbeasts, chemicals. They would be our attack dogs, watching bridges. For a time, we would keep students confined to the dormitories, and the projects would help with that.
Other students in the exhibition hall were looking restless. Too many of our people were marching off with a mission. There was nervousness apparent throughout, and that nervousness communicated itself in little ways to the bystanders.
“You’ll need to control the room,” I told Davis. “They’re getting anxious.”
Davis nodded. He was hesitating.
But he gathered his courage, and he turned to one of his subordinates, who sat next to him. A junior member of the student council, young. In another world, if Be
attle hadn’t fallen, the boy might have eventually succeeded Davis as student council president and gone on to lead the student council of Beattle, a nice little note in his record that would give him a leg up.
The boy ran off, to spread the word to the able bodied Beattle students and the other rebels we’d collected who were confident with guns.
I really hoped we wouldn’t have to use them.
Davis remained seated, thinking. He wasn’t fond of the role, even if he was good at it, and for the time being, he was introspective, preparing himself for what would come later in the evening. His job wasn’t pretty, and I was already planning to shoulder the bulk of the burden. At our behest, Ferres had made sure that the Academy’s native security forces were at the perimeter, facing outward, in a manner of speaking. Watching the wastes and the water, while trouble brewed within the heart of Hackthorn.
Davis’ group would see bloodshed before the night was out, handling that side of things, reinforcing groups as the native population of students fought in defense of their Academy and, for some, their homes.
The weather outside was whipping itself up.
Rudy had his hand over Possum’s. Possum would be running the kitchen. We had twelve thousand students in the school. There were more people in the city below, running the essential services, the shops and more, but in keeping students sequestered and the situation under control here, keeping the masses fed would be a task. Possum would tackle it, with Rudy encouraging and reassuring.
But that came later. Possum’s job for the now was to wait.
“That’ll do,” I said. “I’ll be back in two minutes. Running an errand.”
Davis nodded, still introspecting. I suspected he even knew where I was going.
A quick skip down stairs. Past students who stared or looked concerned. One even tried to call out, asking me why a dozen students had been hurrying downstairs. I didn’t answer.
Lab One was lit by lanterns, the voltaic lights off. Most of the lanterns were set up in one area.
Alvin was burning the midnight oil, it seemed, looking over notes and scripts. He didn’t notice me as I approached.
I was tempted to slit his throat, but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to play violent when my hallucinations were already trending that way. Not when Jessie and Helen were leaving me alone.
I pressed the knife to his throat instead.
“What?” he asked. He turned his head just enough so he could look back and see my face in the gloom. “Oh no.”
“Yes,” I said.
“I knew there was something off about you,” he said.
“I get that a lot,” I said.
“Stealing projects? Spying on Ferres?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “Oh no, no. Alvin, sir, you’re about to realize this is far, far worse.”
We were well ensconsced within the Academy, with staircases and hallways separating us from the exterior walls. But the wind blew, and with it, the reclining lady shifted position. The building creaked.
“I believe you,” he said.
“Walk with me,” I said.
With Alvin at knifepoint, I walked to the cells. The children within the cells reacted to the light. Faces appeared at the bars.
“Thank you for your patience,” I said.
Reaching into Alvin’s pocket, I produced the key. I stuck it through one lock, opening it.
Goldilocks took the key I pressed into her hands, and went to the next cell.
“They’re supposed to be drugged,” Alvin said.
“They are,” I said.
“The drugs were in their systems.”
“Switched the usual drugs with sugar pills. I gave them evening doses instead of the morning doses. Haven’t gotten around to tonight’s.”
Alvin grew more and more tense as the number of youths and experiments around him grew thicker and thicker. Some were irate. Intense, hostile.
I could sense the anger, and I knew that Alvin could tell as well. That this was a mob that had been sleeping a few moments ago, that was quickly stirring itself up.
Before anything could happen, I flung Alvin into a cell. I slammed the door.
Poll Parrot looked even more dangerous in the gloom, his feathers crimson, his eyes a glare that suggested killing intent. Others had more mixed emotion. Faces that had tracks of tears on them, before they turned away or tried to hide their expressions.
Bo Peep flung herself at me, wrapping arms around me, soft wool pressing into my neck as she buried her head in my chest.
Others looked more lost and unhappy than they had been when they’d been resigned to their fates.
“Come on,” I said, barely sparing a glance for Alvin. “Everyone stay together for now.”
Jessie and Helen were in Lab One when I emerged from among the cells. I’d almost missed them, making sure that the littlest ones were being watched. The three blind mice chief among them.
Jessie navigated the mob of children.
She gave me a kiss, and in the distance, I could hear the alarm bells going off. The quarantine, the alerts that the academy was under attack. Different parts of our hostile group would hear the sounds and use them as a cue to mobilize.
My hands went up, to hold Jessie, to draw her close and keep her for a little while. Her hands went up too, fending me off. She broke the kiss.
“If you hug me, I don’t think I’ll be able to let go of you,” she said.
I didn’t speak.
“Be sane when I get back?” she asked.
“I’ll try,” I said. “I’ve got these guys to keep me company. A box of bugs that’s been nicely shaken. I’ll endure.”
Jessie nodded. I thought I saw the glint of a tear in one eye. With the lights off and the lanterns in the background, it was hard to tell.
“You have to do your part too,” I said. “Be Jessie.”
“I’ll try.”
She stepped back, and as she pulled away, our inter-knit fingers pulled apart. My arm fell to my side.
“Be good, Helen,” I said. Though Helen had already faded into the gloom, following Jessie.
“Be good, Sy,” she echoed me.
I stood there, my hands tingling with what might be my last contact with Jessie.
Small hands found their way to my hands, clasping them, gripping them. Other hands touched my forearms, and clutched at my shirt.
The Crown had made the Crown States small, so the nation was easier to control. They had isolated, so it was easier to exert power over populations. We’d simply taken advantage of that. Now we did much the same, dividing and conquering that which had already been separated and left vulnerable.
We had turned Academy against Academy. Students stolen and set against other students. Faculty stolen, used against her own kind.
The nobility would be next on the chopping block.
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Enemy I (Arc 18)
He walked slowly, taking in the scene.
He hadn’t walked slowly in a very long time. It wasn’t how he operated. It wasn’t what he was. He always had a mission, if not several, and that mandated that he constantly be in motion, or that he be set in place, doing what the Crown needed him to do.
His memory was exceptional, his brains the best brains the Crown could provide. When he turned those brains and that memory to the task of thinking back, trying to picture the last time he’d strolled, as one might stroll in a garden, he only found scenes he’d staged, scenes where he was conveying an image. In those moments, his brains had been set to the task of focusing on the individual or individuals that he was strolling for, so it was never truly an opportunity to stop and smell the roses, so to speak.
But it was important to convey that he was unruffled, whether to an ally who needed reassurance or an enemy who needed to know their enemy was invincible.
As he dug through his memories, he had to reach back to childhood to find a time and place where he’d truly focused on the moment and not the destination. H
e’d been confined to a chair, legs missing, his upper body as much a series of containers and vessels for organ systems and ongoing work as it was actual body. He’d pushed himself, while his team of doctors followed behind.
He couldn’t remember the why of that moment. He’d been upset, angry at a relative, and he had wanted to think, so he had pushed himself out into the garden, and nobody had stopped him or wrested control of the chair from him. It was curious, because it must have been a justifiable anger, but when he’d found himself in the garden, the anger had faded, and he’d been free to witness the moment. Even now, he wasn’t sure what it had been about.
It was a very different sort of garden that the Infante found himself in now.
One hand raised, he held it up, and he watched as red petals blew in the wind, brushing his hand and fingers. His fingers traced the growths that sprawled across the city. A system of water absorption and transfer drew water from the coast and fed the plague growth that smothered the city. At the water’s edge, tendrils like the ones that had snared the plague victims floated on the water’s surface, a film that was alternately pink and brown, depending on how the light caught it. It might gain ground on that front if the ocean currents started to push a great deal of seaweed or other material toward the coast.
The ocean here didn’t smell like ocean, the city didn’t smell like city, and the countless dead who scattered the streets, buried under the carpets and tangles of red vines. Here and there, dessicated bodies lay, mummified by the environment, faces pulled into mocking smiles by the retreat of skin and the pull of the vines that were still hooked into them.
Everywhere, red flowers carpeted surfaces. From a distance, it looked like the buildings and streets were drenched in fresh blood. From as little as ten paces away, they looked like flowers. When he reached out to tear one free of the vine and held it before its face, the makeup of it looked more like a chimerical hybrid of a starfish and a snowflake.
No weeds grew, no birds roosted, no rodents or insects crawled through this very alive place, that whistled with the wind and gurgled with the movement of fluids.
Only his Professors kept him company, and they kept their distance, hanging back. They wore quarantine suits and were accompanied by gargantuan stitched servants in shrouds, with modified quarantine masks. The stitched were ten feet tall, and they shambled, bent over by the burdens they bore, laboratories packed into five hundred pound boxes. They were wearing robes that trailed on the ground behind them, and their expressions were limited to what the sculpted masks.
