Stiletto

by Daniel O'Malley

  “There is absolutely no way that Rook Thomas is going in there,” said Security Chief Clovis firmly.

  “Actually, my powers can reach through glass,” the Rook said. She squinted down into the room. “That said, the . . . what do you call it? Gourd? It’s like a little grenade?”

  “I suppose,” said Odette.

  “It’s bloody small,” said the Rook. She leaned against the glass and closed her eyes. “And complex. Very fiddly.” She frowned. “I’ve got it. No, wait, no I don’t.” She winced as she said this last part, and Dr. Bastion and Odette exchanged alarmed looks. “I’ve got it. Oh, bugger!” The two autopsists couldn’t help but flinch. “Nope, I’ve got it!” Everyone heaved a sigh of relief. “Well, don’t just stand there—run!”

  “Oh!” gasped Odette and Bastion. They jerked their hands out of the corpse’s torso and lifted the skirts of their medical gowns. It was impossible to really dash in all the protection garb, so they had to affect a ridiculous sort of high-stepping prancing motion, like dressage horses, while dragging the trains of voluminous material behind them. The hoses of their cooling systems popped out of the sockets, and water jetted into the air.

  “Get that door open!” Odette heard Security Chief Clovis shouting. Ahead of them, the air lock shuddered and ground open.

  “You need to . . . hurry . . . the hell . . . up,” said Rook Thomas through gritted teeth. “I can’t . . . hold it much longer!” On the last word, Odette and Bastion launched themselves clumsily through the door and landed in a tangled mass of nonwoven material, Kevlar, and surgical-grade chain mail. Odette’s helmet cracked against the floor. Behind them, the door slid closed.

  Odette struggled to look back, clawing her gown material out of the way. Through the window in the door, she saw roaring red flames cascade down from the ceiling. The body on the table was completely engulfed.

  That’s light fire? she thought.

  Meanwhile, showerheads in the ceiling of the air lock had begun drenching her and Dr. Bastion with liquid that smelled strongly of chemicals. By the time the outer door swung open and the little surgical squires peered in, Odette and Dr. Bastion were completely soaked. It took several minutes of laborious unpeeling before the two autopsists could leave and change back into their normal clothes.

  By the time they presented themselves to the executives, Marie had arrived at the Rookery and was talking quietly with Clovis. Apparently, the day’s meetings had commenced and security had tightened further in light of the previous night’s attack. Rook Thomas was not scheduled to attend any meetings that day, but Graaf Ernst’s absence had been noted.

  “Negotiations would be probably even more awkward if they knew about the rogue Grafters who tried to kill Rook Thomas,” remarked Clovis.

  “So, not everyone knows about last night? But I called the emergency help line!” asked Odette.

  “We gave them a cover story about a training exercise,” said Rook Thomas. “Only a handful of people are aware of the truth.”

  “So what do we do now?” asked Marie.

  “To begin with,” said Rook Thomas, “let’s establish what the situation actually is. Miss Leliefeld, what can you tell us about the charred semi-consumed corpse downstairs?”

  “He’s a kit thug,” said Odette. “They took this guy and weaponized him quickly. Scars unhealed, weapons shoved in. There were painkiller sacs throughout his body preventing him from feeling any of the aches.” Although there weren’t nearly enough to cancel out my venom, she thought in satisfaction. “I would say he’d been in possession of his implants no more than a week. Still deadly, though. He could have punched through a wall, they’d layered so much cow muscle all through him.”

  “Cow muscle?” asked Pawn Clements.

  “Cows are strong,” said Odette. “And convenient. I’ve got a few pockets of cow muscle in me. Growing human muscle takes too long. Anyway, he’d had bladed teeth installed and some sort of projectile launcher. Multiple lungs, I’m not sure why, maybe they got a job lot or something, and his ribs had been heavily reinforced. Also, his genitals had been, um, enlarged.” She flushed a little. “And, of course, there was that Tartarus gourd they left as a booby trap.”

  “Squirmy little bastard that was,” said Rook Thomas. “I was holding on to it right up until the fire was activated.”

  “That gourd is very concerning,” said Marie. “They should not have been able to get hold of one. Those items are incredibly rare and dangerous to make—we haven’t grown any new ones since 1976—and there is a strictly limited number in the vaults.” She sighed. “I’ll have to order an inventory. God knows what else they’ve managed to snatch.”

  “Could its contents have survived the fire?” asked Chief Clovis. “Do I need to fill the room?”

  “You said that before,” remembered Odette. “What do you fill the room with?”

  “Concrete,” said Clovis. “We’ve a mass of wet concrete churning above the examination room—if something goes really wrong, we can just pour it in.”

  “You were talking about filling the room with us in it!” shouted Odette. She looked to Dr. Bastion for support in her outrage, but he just shrugged.

  “We can’t be too careful,” said Dr. Bastion. “We work with dangerous things. Dangerous people. Room two got filled in three years ago when one of the Pawns had a very bad reaction to some routine inoculations. The Pawn and his doctor and a nurse were all entombed in there. It won’t be unsealed for another two years.”

  “Oh,” said Odette. Then something occurred to her. “Did someone let Marcel know? Isn’t he working on one of the other corpses?”

  “Yes, we’ve pulled him out,” said Clovis.

  “Anyway,” said Marie, who seemed to approve of the Checquy’s security measures, “the fact that they all suffered simultaneous seizures is not good news. Odette, did you see anything that might give us a lead?”

  “No, I’m sorry.”

  “You’ll need to provide us with files,” said Security Chief Clovis. “All the information you have on the Antagonists. We’ll want photos—”

  “Photos won’t do you any good,” interrupted Odette. “They’ll be wearing new faces. It would have been the first thing they did.”

  “Sure, right after they murdered the house,” said Rook Thomas. “They couldn’t just abscond to St. Barts to tan with all the other rebellious rich kids.”

  “This isn’t a tantrum!” said Odette sharply. “They believe this is the right thing to do. To them, the changes you’re making—all of you,” she said, including Grootvader Ernst, “are unforgivable. They’ll die for this if they have to.”

  “Passionate little clique, aren’t they?” mused Clovis.

  “They’re young.” Marie shrugged.

  “Be that as it may,” said Rook Thomas, “they constitute a significant threat. Which leads me to a point. We can’t be pulling any punches. If it comes down to it, we’ll kill them rather than risk their escaping. But if we do capture them? Frankly, I don’t like the idea of trying to imprison them. Gallows Keep is the most secure facility on these islands, but word would leak out to the Checquy troops eventually.”

  “We can execute them,” said Ernst coldly. Odette felt like she’d been punched in the stomach, and she made an involuntary sound of distress. “But there is another possibility. The Broederschap possesses the means to strip them of their memories and their knowledge.” Odette looked away. She could almost feel scaly lips on her own and a writhing mass of slender tentacles pressing at her mouth. She shuddered and noticed that, oddly, Rook Thomas looked a little nauseated as well.

  “Well, we’ll discuss it if the situation arises,” said Rook Thomas finally. “But where is this going? What’s their endgame?”

  “I don’t know,” confessed Odette.

  “Do they even know?” Clovis snorted.

  “I think they want everything to go back to the way it was,” said Odette helplessly. She winced under Rook Thomas’s scornful look.
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  “The way it was,” said the Rook. “Where they enjoyed immeasurable privileges and no responsibilities.”

  “They don’t know if they’re conservatives or radicals,” said Ernst. “You almost have to pity them.”

  “Sure,” said Rook Thomas in a tone that suggested no such pity would be forthcoming. “Now, we’ve got only one lead left, so let’s see whether he’s of any use at all.”

  35

  Rook Thomas swept through the hallways of the Hammerstrom Building, Odette and Pawn Clements hurrying behind her. Various Checquy personnel stood back against the walls to make a path for the Rook and her entourage. Each person made a hurried obeisance to the Rook, a nod or a slight bow. Then they saw Odette and did a double take (or, in the case of the Pawn with three heads, a sextuple take), followed by a narrowing of the eyes (or, in the case of the Pawn with no eyes, a pursing of the lips). Many of them tried to back even farther against the wall, as if they were in danger of being infected by her.

  By the time a pair of massive iron doors leading to the detention area of the Rookery split open in front of them, Odette was completely lost. They had passed through so many security checkpoints and signed so many release forms that she half expected to go through a door and see the crown jewels on display, possibly while still on the monarch.

  The part of the Rookery in which prisoners were kept, although it was several stories underground, was quite bright and airy. Or at least the administration area was. A warm light filled the room, and several large displays of flowers were scattered about.

  “Hello, Rook Thomas. We weren’t expecting you until later today,” said the head of the section, a burly woman the sight of whom made Odette’s head ache. It looked like someone had taken a blade of unutterable sharpness and sliced her down the middle, from the crown of her head to, presumably, the base of her torso. However, instead of settling for being two parts of a dead body, the woman, whose name was Pawn Camden, had elected to continue going about her business in a position of some responsibility in the Rookery’s detention facility.

  At least, that was how it appeared. Although Odette doubted that the woman had come to this situation late in life. For one thing, the two halves of her were separated by about four centimeters of empty space and were contained in a business suit. For another, she seemed entirely unconcerned by her situation.

  Be cool, Odette thought. Don’t stare at her. She could see the gap only down to where it vanished into the woman’s collar. She took a cautious step sideways so that she could see into the gap. Huh, fascinating. The inside surfaces of each half of her head, where Odette might have expected to see a cross section of brain and other head matter, was covered in tight, smooth skin. Does that gap go all the way down? How does she hold together? How does she walk? And what about the connection between the two hemispheres of her brain? And her spine? And her bowels? Pawn Camden’s eyes blinked in unison, she smiled like one person, and when she spoke, both half-mouths moved simultaneously, producing a strangely choral effect.

  “How’s the prisoner?” asked Rook Thomas, looking over the file Pawn Camden had handed her.

  “Sleeping like a comatose baby,” said both halves of Pawn Camden. “Pawn Motha said he was clear of any booby traps—”

  “Oh, good, I feel so much safer,” muttered Clements.

  “—and we’ve scanned him, done MRIs and x-rays, taken photos and samples. He was deadly still for all of them.”

  “So . . . vegetative state?” asked the Rook.

  “There have been a few little blips, actually,” said Pawn Camden. “Three times, his brain has fired up again, and he’s opened his eyes and looked around. The third time, he just rolled over in bed and went back under.”

  “That’s weird,” said Odette thoughtfully.

  “This is Odette Leliefeld,” said the Rook absently.

  “Oh,” said Pawn Camden, “with the Graf—” She broke off, having turned her head toward Odette and then flinched, which Odette thought was pretty rich. “The, uh, Brotherhood of Scientific Scientists.” Odette looked down at her feet, but then guilty fascination dragged her eyes up to the divided woman once again. “It’s delightful to meet you,” said the Pawn unconvincingly.

  “You too,” said Odette, equally unconvincingly.

  “And this is Pawn Clements,” said Thomas. The two women nodded to each other. “So anything else I need to know about this guy?” asked the Rook.

  “We’re not having any luck mapping his DNA.”

  “So he’s not in any of the databases?” said Thomas.

  “It’s not that,” said Pawn Camden. “The results are odd. Apparently there are gaps in the code, and the films seem almost, I don’t know, smeared.”

  “Huh,” said the Rook. She passed the file over to Odette. “Thoughts?”

  “I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Odette as she scanned the material. “Very odd.”

  “I gather from our scientists that we’ve never seen it either,” said Pawn Camden. “Not in any Checquy personnel, not in any manifestations.”

  “And the other attackers didn’t have this issue?” asked the Rook.

  “No. Standard DNA.”

  “But this guy was the normal one among them. No implants, no modifications. What does that mean?” mused the Rook.

  “Do we need to worry about his unleashing any powers or anything?” asked Clements.

  “The cell is very secure, with all the standard immobilization measures, and we’re not getting any odd readings” the bisected Pawn said with a shrug. “He hasn’t disconnected any of the monitor sensors. Right now, he’s comatose. Dr. Crisp is scheduled to see what he can do this afternoon, but I’m afraid we’re not at all prepared for you. The prisoner is still in his cell, Dr. Crisp is out to lunch, and we haven’t hosed down the interrogation room yet or gotten the buffet ready for the observation roo—”

  “Don’t worry, Pawn Camden,” Rook Thomas reassured her. “This isn’t some snap inspection. I just want to have a quick look at the prisoner. Is he restrained?”

  “No. We thought about it, but he’s evinced no sign of any special abilities, and they didn’t find any trace of Grafter implants in him. He’s behind unbreakable glass, but he’s just in a bed hooked up to monitors,” said Pawn Camden. “If you want to give us a few minutes, we could put him into stocks, or maybe decant him into an oubliette.”

  “No, I think that’ll be fine,” said the Rook. “Is he gagged?”

  “No, but the cell is soundproof except through the intercom. We’re keeping an eye on him and recording everything with cameras and microphones. But orders from Clovis were to keep him isolated.”

  Of course, thought Odette. Can’t have word getting out that one of the Grafters tried to kill the Rook.

  “Excellent, Juniper,” said Rook Thomas. “Please take us to the observation room.” The woman nodded and guided the three of them to a small wood-paneled room with a red chaise longue in the center. One of the walls was glass, and on the other side of it was the cell with the blond man lying in a hospital bed.

  “Rook Thomas, here is the control board for the cell,” said Pawn Camden, handing her a tablet computer. “It’s all very simple. If you wish to activate the intercom or make the glass transparent so that the subject can see you, just use this. And of course, if there are any problems, you can call one of us with the button by the door.”

  “Thanks, Pawn Camden,” said Rook Thomas. The Pawn nodded her half-heads and left the room.

  “That was the most insane thing I’ve ever seen!” Odette burst out, still reeling from the scientific impossibility. Pawn Clements made a little sniffing sound, which Odette decided to ignore. “What on earth happened to that woman?”

  “She was born like that,” said Rook Thomas, taking the file back from Odette. “She’s very nice. Paints gorgeous landscapes; I went to the opening of one of her shows a couple weeks ago.”

  “Is—is she actually in two pieces?”

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sp; “Yes,” said the Rook distractedly as she flipped through the file.

  “But how does she not fall apart? Or die?”

  “I believe it’s something to do with magnets,” said the Rook with an obvious and, to Odette, astounding lack of concern.

  “Magnets?” repeated Odette. “I don’t think that can be right.” The Rook shrugged. “So how does she go out in the world?”

  “A burka,” said Rook Thomas. “They’re tremendously handy. Lots of our more unorthodox-looking staff wear them.” Odette stared at her. “Okay, now, you and Pawn Clements sit there,” said the Rook, pointing toward the chaise. “And shut up for a little bit.” The two women looked at each other but sat down. Odette’s gaze wandered to the adjoining cell.

  In contrast to the dark paneling of the observation room, the prison cell was a bright white, not unlike the surgical rooms that she had visited earlier. The only furniture was a hospital bed containing the prisoner. He was curled up, his face buried in the crook of an arm. Various cords had been affixed to his body at strategic points on his head and chest, and they ran to locked cabinets against the back wall. The only movement seemed to come from his breathing, and Odette had to peer pretty carefully to catch even that.

  The Rook, meanwhile, was eyeing the tablet computer. Finally, she pressed something on it. There was an audible click and they could hear the sound of breathing coming through the speakers. It was the prisoner.

  “Can he hear us?” asked Pawn Clements uncertainly. The Rook shook her head.

  “Can’t see us, can’t hear us,” she assured them. “Especially since he’s currently in a vegetative state, if I’m interpreting these readouts correctly.” She held out the tablet to Odette, who took it and glanced over them.

  “Comatose,” she agreed.

  “Well, that’s disappointing,” said Thomas, taking the tablet back from Odette and giving her the file again. “I’m going to have a little sift through his physiology and maybe give him a jolt or two to see if that wakes him up. He seemed not to be a fan of mine, so I think a conversation between us might yield some details.”