“Nell, they said I was insane when I told them I could make parts for people that felt just like they were born with them. They said I was wasting my time. They thought my idea was an affront to humanity. Sinful. Sick.”
As he spoke, he began to assemble his arm seamlessly once more. He wasn’t even looking at it, just picking the pieces back up and fixing them into their rightful places.
“They burned the clever machines out of the world, but before the Turn, doctors and scientists had just about discovered how to make things like this. That’s why the first toxic pulses went out; people just loved their clever machines too much. If a machine can give you an answer, what use is prayer? If you can host a revolution online, what use is government? If information is free, how do you keep people under control? All this is penance for the coding, an era of silence after the information age. The age that could have defeated any god. It got swept out from under them, Nell, and I’m not willing to stand by and let all the glories of technology be wiped out just because artificial intelligence scared a government to genocide a hundred years ago. Why can’t we take some of what they had back then and make it better? That’s what your mother used to say. Why can’t we do it better?
“When the thing I built worked, suddenly I wasn’t wasting my time anymore. I was helping. Your nan had some strings pulled for me, some permission granted to use and reproduce salvaged smart metals. After Cora left us, when you got sick and I fixed your heart, they wanted me to give demonstrations; they wanted to make you the poster child of the healing machines. The Miraculous Clock-Hearted Girl they called you. How repulsive. Suddenly, though, I wasn’t a lunatic anymore; I was a ‘genius.’ Everyone forgot they’d ever said those things. Funny how that works, isn’t it?” His daughter nodded, awestruck.
“They’ve been waiting for the next thing ever since. I’ll give it to them eventually, when it’s ready. Sure, Daniel isn’t talking to me right now over it.” Julian laughed a little. “We must be doing something right if we’ve pissed off the Underwoods. We’re miles ahead of them, Nell. They might not like it at first; nobody ever likes the revolution. Nobody ever likes miracles.”
And just like that, he clicked the last piece of paneling onto his arm. He flexed his fingers, and the purr woke up again, the machine of him alive once more. He picked up his mug of tea. It was still hot.
“When the time comes, they’ll recognize your genius, Nell. It’s in your blood, in your wiring. It’s our genius. If this project is rattling cages, you must be on to something.”
Nell nodded, awed by the glow of her father, his brilliance apparent to her for the first time, a lightbulb full of electricity, a filament alight with power.
She wanted to be him.
“Right. Look, write your nan a note, would you? Just let her know you have things under control. Don’t give her too many details. Later, when you’ve built the thing, whatever it is, you can let her see. Secrets, Nell, are the most important thing when it comes to changing the world. Not always the keeping of them, mind you, but the timing of their release.”
Nell nodded again. She had a thousand questions for him, but couldn’t speak.
“I have faith in you, but please be careful. Promise me—” He stopped for a moment and looked over Nell’s shoulder into some strange middle distance. “Actually, don’t promise me anything. You’ll do the right thing. I can’t wait to see it, whatever it is. You won’t end up on the construction site. You’ll figure this out.”
“I will, Da,” she replied, reaching out her hand to him. He placed his steel palm against hers. It was warm.
After a moment he sighed. “Have to get back in there. Something’s cooking, and I don’t need it burning up on me.”
“Food?” asked Nell, realizing at that moment that the tea was the first thing she’d put in her stomach in almost two days. She was ravenous; he must be, too.
“No, no.” Julian barked a laugh. “God, no.”
He swung his legs off the table and stood up. There was a very soft noise somewhere between a crunch and a squish, and he quickly checked underfoot: Julian had stood on a frog. It must have ventured out from under the cupboard to make its way back to the garden, to the lake.
“Oh.” He recoiled. “Oh, dear.”
Nell finished her tea in a long draft. “It’s all right. At least it was quick.”
Her father sighed. “You’re right. I’m sure it didn’t feel a thing.”
CHAPTER 17
Arms, legs, hands, eyes, and feet. That was the hit list. She’d grab other pretty things she saw, too, if she had the time. This was going to have to be quick. An early-morning run to the Gonne Hospital when Oliver presumably wouldn’t be there. That was the big risk. If he was, well, she’d deal with that if she needed to. He wasn’t the kind of boy to fight a girl. Or the kind of boy to set off a time bomb.
Nell hadn’t ever stolen anything before. It had never occurred to her to do so: not a shiny pink apple from the grocer or a stray earring from the market. She’d always had everything she needed and didn’t really want for much more—certainly never at anyone else’s expense. Salvaging from the river didn’t count as stealing. This was no different, was it?
A tight, determined topknot bun somehow contained Nell’s multitude of curls as she pinned them in, tucked them away. One button at a time, Nell buttoned up the front of her short black coat, right to her chin. She rolled her shoulders a little, checking that it wasn’t too tight. She’d definitely be able to run in it without it restricting her movement. The high collar covered most of her scar. It wouldn’t do to wear a scarf on her neck tonight: too loose. Might catch on something. Anything that slowed her down had to go.
It wasn’t like she was doing much wrong, technically. The limbs didn’t actually belong to Oliver. He had stolen them first. From the actual dead no less. From people who had waited on long lists or paid an awful lot of tokens to the guardians of the peace; perhaps saved or worked for years. Oliver was the real thief and was profiting from the theft. His whole lifestyle was supported by it.
In fact, considering that several pieces in Oliver’s collection had been created by her father, considering they were tactile products of her own family’s skill, she was taking them back. She was entitled to them, wasn’t she? Yes. She was. They were already hers.
Nell double-checked the laces on her boots, the high black ones made of canvas. The ones with rubber soles that she seldom wore. They didn’t click authoritatively like her usual leather ones. They seamlessly led into tight cotton leggings that she normally wore as bloomers when she cycled. She was a hard creature and soft shadow at once. She was severe lines in the light of day, but once it was dark, she would be invisible. She was a creeping spider. Her only tell was the ticking, but in the dark that sound could be anything. A grandfather clock. A metronome. A time bomb. A machine gun. A roulette wheel.
Nobody would see her. The limbs were already hers. She wasn’t stealing. Already hers. Not stealing. She repeated it to herself over and over again as she assembled her kit on her bed.
A torch. This one fit right in the palm of her hand: a flat disk of light. She’d found it under the stairs while looking for the canvas bag that she and Ruby had carried their tent in when they slept out under the stars in the hot summer, before the meadow became overgrown by weeds.
The skeleton key. Access to locked doors.
The canvas bag. It was the length of her back and had sturdy, comfortable straps. It was roomy. It had to be. For the limbs. Nell had in mind long legs so the creation would be taller than her. She’d take what she could get, but if she had the moment to choose, she’d like it to be tall. Him, that is. Him to be tall.
She wasn’t sure if it would wake up a him. But it might. A her would be all right, too. They would be tall, whoever they were.
The bag also had lots of pockets; that was helpful. The eyes would need to be wrapped and kept separately; they’d be delicate. The hands and feet, too. She wasn’t going
to be able to find a whole skull or torso, but she’d thought of a way around that.
Ruby would have loved all this dressing up, all this planning. It was such a shame. Nell imagined herself recounting this story to Ruby over tea once it was all over, once she had been lauded as a genius, an innovator, a game changer, a world saver. Ruby would apologize wholeheartedly, and Nell would graciously forgive her because that’s what heroes do. That’s what Nell would be. A hero.
She placed her mother’s leather gloves over her hands. They were soft and had once been jet black and squeaky but were now a soft, dewy charcoal, silent as skin. Somewhere inside them her mother’s fingerprints settled around her own.
Nell was the only person wandering the city in the black sheet of four in the morning. The only heads still awake would be up at the Bayou, Oliver most likely included. There was no stoat with her. She had kissed Kodak’s head and left him at home, sleeping. It was just her and the great sleeping beast of the city, the broken belly of the hospital. A belly full of ghosts.
First she disappeared down the side alley that Oliver had used, to check that door. No use in straying if the way was paved for her. She took the torch and key out of her pocket and cast bright, clean light onto the rusty filth of the keyhole.
She shifted the skeleton key this way and that, put pressure on and off, to the left and up: nothing. It only succeeded in making far more noise than she was comfortable with. Something skittered, maybe a rat or a fox, and her whole body froze. She didn’t want to draw attention to herself.
She sat down for a moment on a step beside the door to gather her thoughts. Trust Oliver Kelly to finally exceed his lessons and forge a lock so complicated that even the cleverest key couldn’t convince it open. It was almost as if he’d known. Nell fumed at herself for not guessing, fumed at him for laying claim on this entrance for himself. The building didn’t belong to him! She leaned back a little, elbows on the step above the one she sat on. Wait, there was another step above that, too! An iron fire escape ran up the side of the hospital. A flight of rickety stairs leading to a window. Well, most of a flight of rickety stairs. Nell leaped to her feet, wrapped one hand around the railing, and placed the strap of the torch around her palm so that light shone from her hand. One step by one step, she ascended. She pointed the beam of light at her feet, at the precarious black steel grid on the steps.
Fear was a dead weight in her gut. The ticking in her chest was a rising percussion. The steps were mostly quiet; but when they creaked, the whole world moved with Nell, and she gritted her teeth so tightly for a moment they could’ve shattered to chalk in her mouth.
Every time she passed a window, it was boarded up or barred. Breaking past the wood on a surface as precarious as the fire escape was too risky. So she tried the next floor and the next floor. Up and up she went, eyes ahead. Vertigo threatened the seams of her balance.
It was a long way, and Nell had to stop every step to make sure she was still alive. The torch might draw notice, but she needed it; there was nobody to catch her if she fell. Each step was a survival. A slight breeze moved around her and lifted a few stray curls from her brow. She looked up.
The sky was black with clouds. The breeze was dense. Something was coming. There wasn’t even a glowing swell where the moon should have been. The clouds were laden with something new; rain, electricity. Storm.
It wasn’t until she reached the top of the landing that she came upon a window she could enter. The tallest room in the highest tower had a window of smoky, charred glass, not boarded up, and cracked so she could unsettle it a little to get in. She sat for a moment on the window ledge to catch her breath. Her chest panged a beat, then two, the ticking sending sharp reverberations of pain through her shoulders. The ticking, for a moment, sounded thicker. Nell knit her forehead and took slow breaths; she’d never felt like this before. Then again, she’d never scaled the side of a building before either.
As she waited for her breath to ease and the pangs to calm, she looked out over the city. Light from the sparse streetlamps was like sparks spit from the mouth of a fire: orange, dazzling, beautiful in the dark. By daylight the sorrow of the city was a gray blanket. But at night it slipped into this black and amber gown. The breeze touched her again, and she leaned into it. The heat would break soon. She could feel it.
The tip of the Needle blinked its constantly watching eye, a sinister red atop the sea of burning lamps. Nell blew it a kiss. “I see you, sailor!” she called. “Do you see me?” She felt better, as though the crackle of the city had eased her grinding cogs, her worrisome breath restored. There was power in this view.
The stone goddess of Kate, Nell’s faceless sister, was still incomplete. She couldn’t see Nell’s ascent, couldn’t watch her. It was so late that the watch folk’s torches were dimming.
“I’m almost as tall as you are, Katie!”
Her voice carried. It had never felt so huge before, so powerful. Recklessly, Nell hoped they could hear her. She laughed, shrill over the dead quiet of nighttime, her voice a burst of color, hysterical. Relief and adrenaline coursed through her, and the clock in her chest almost sang One more time.
She pushed her torch up to her wrist and shut it off, her eyes adjusting to the dark, somehow brighter up here from the glow of the city. It was as if the streets had given her permission with their illumination, as if their lamps were burning for her, for this moment. She knelt on the fire escape and put her hands to the glass. She took a deep breath and pressed.
The feeling of glass giving way was a strange one, like the rules of the world around her breaking to her whim, something that usually separates people collapsing at her command. Nell drank in this power. The glass came apart quietly, piece by piece, as though it had been waiting to for years, the spiderweb crack only barely holding it together. She moved the shards onto the fire escape, and they caught the light, almost like prisms.
Slowly Nell crept through the window, careful not to let the remaining jagged glass touch her. The room smelled like fire. Nell felt like fire.
Nell’s torch shot a beam of light around her: an empty, scorched ward. The remains of bed frames lined the walls in threes; some machines were fallen like lost soldiers. There was nothing else, only the black circle in the center of the room where the fire would have been lit when the virus got out of control, when it had taken to crawling the walls, discoloring the paint. Nobody in the room would have survived, and the air was strange with this memory, the architecture drunk with it.
Nell was too elated by her climb and successful break-in to be harrowed. She took in her surroundings like reading a list of numbers; there was nothing in here but a door out into the rest of the building, as far as she was concerned. There was no time to mourn the strangers who had been consumed by the epidemic. Not them, not her mother, not anybody. Not tonight.
She strode with confidence across the room. She walked over the unholy black spot as though it were just a patch of linoleum, eyes on the beam of light. Dust blurred the edges of its piercing, bright truth. The room might as well have been an empty street at midday.
Nell turned the handle on the door of the ward and walked out into the corridor. The air was fire and bleach in its filth and age, in the sorrow it had seen. She shut the door behind her. She’d had the epidemic and lived. She’d eat it alive if it tried to come for her again.
Her confidence bloomed like a flower, a fat bleeding rose bursting inside her. This was just an empty building! The hollowed-out whale of it was reduced to nothing by her adrenaline, to no big deal. Her chest ticked calmly. She was going to walk down this corridor with her bright and powerful torch. She would find the stairwell and walk all the way down to the ground floor and from the atrium would find her way to Oliver’s laboratory. Nothing was frightening, and the smell was not making her sick. She was not holding her breath. She was nearly running, her feet so light that she was barely touching the ground, almost silent in her dash.
Nell clenched the skelet
on key in her fist like a tiny sword, like a hungry blade. She had made it herself; this was her first design, her first little creation. It would lead her to her next. Her greatest.
When she reached the end of the corridor, she pushed open the door and arrived into the stairwell. Her beam of light shot around her; there were stairs leading to the roof and a spiral of stairs leading down. The walls were filthy.
She leaned over the banister. It was so far that her torch didn’t even hit the floor. It just pierced the endless darkness and ever so slightly illuminated the circular stairwell another two flights down. Some of the steps were missing. There were more below, obscured by the dark. This was going to be precarious. She heaved a sigh that echoed down the stairwell.
Nell Crane had had enough of walking down the stairs in the dark. It was time for some real light.
She turned back to the door and shone her torch around its perimeter; there must be a light switch somewhere. This was not the most sensible choice, switching electricity on in a burned-out cavern of a building, risking a fuse sparked too far, setting something alight. Still, when Nell spotted the line of switches, she didn’t hesitate and, with a single move, illuminated the long way down. Reckless, absolutely. But blood thrummed close to Nell’s skin, and her ticking was up. Not with fear, but with adrenaline. She was so alive. Too alive to worry about dying.
The light merely gave dimensions to the space, barely illuminating it at all. It revealed cold gray filth but no color. It was enough to see the devastation of the stairway down, though. She switched off her torch and shoved it onto her wrist. She clenched her teeth again and steeled herself.
One hand on the wall, the other on the banister, and she descended. Her step was still light, if maybe a little too rushed. She looked at the steps in front of her and not at the walls. She couldn’t. She didn’t want to read what was written there.
Spare and Found Parts Page 13
