by L. J. Hatton
“Any progress?” Warden Nye demanded below us.
“If you’d allow us to remove the impediments—” a man in a white lab coat began.
“Not until we know its limitations. It’s a machine; you’re a mechanic. Figure it out!”
“It doesn’t have systems like any machine I’ve ever encountered; they’re nothing like Roma’s others.”
The man in the lab coat nodded toward a set of bins full of mechanical bits—apparent remnants of Scorpius and the Constrictus. The head of a dead-eyed unicorn sat on a back shelf with a hole where its horn should have been.
“There are no external ports, no visible sources of power. Its access panels, if they exist, are completely integrated. There are no seams.”
“Then make some.” Warden Nye reached for a small, round-bladed saw on the workstation.
“I can hardly believe it was made with human hands,” said the second man in a lab coat. “The design is so complex . . . if I didn’t know better, I’d swear it was born this way.”
The saw fell from Nye’s fingers to crash back onto the table. His face twisted in concentration, fixed on his own hand. It took several seconds before his fingers obliged him in flexing. He picked the saw up again and turned his wrist, testing it.
“He’s worn them out,” I breathed.
Birch shot me a confused look.
“Nye’s hands are metal. He’s worn them so long, they’re wearing down.” And without my father, he had no one to repair them.
Nye stalked into Lab Coat Two’s space, stopping inches from the man’s face.
“Roma’s hardly human. He was protecting this thing for a reason, and I want to know what that reason is.”
“But, sir . . .” Lab Coat One said nervously. “I think . . . I think it may be alive.”
“Open it up, cut it apart, and give me a report on how it works, or I’ll have someone open you and report that, instead!” He tossed the saw to them and stormed out.
His habit of throwing knives made more sense now. He was testing his hands, trying to maintain control even as they failed. A warden with wounds that severe wouldn’t last a day past discovery, and now that he had Klok, he thought he had the means to repair himself.
“They meant my father, not Klok,” I whispered, closer to Birch’s ear. “He was the one you heard them discussing.”
But I had no idea what Nye meant by his being “hardly human.” Or why Birch would have heard him called a Level-Five. My father was a human man with a human sister. What else could he be?
“I’m sorry . . .” Birch said.
“Shh. I think they’re leaving.”
The two lab coats, now terrified, left the area without touching Klok’s body. He was piled against a cabinet, half-sitting and half-falling over.
“Can you get me down there?” I asked.
Birch wrapped his hand around the grate, and it turned from steel to pliable bamboo that we were able to peel back far enough that I could pass through.
“I still don’t understand why you stayed here, especially if things were so awful on the ground with Arcineaux.”
There wouldn’t have been a door or lock capable of holding him.
“I couldn’t leave,” he said seriously. “I was waiting for you.”
He gave me a peck on the cheek, quickly, with a nervous blush, before another thin vine lowered me silently to the floor.
I crept over to Klok, turning his face so I could look in his still-open eyes. A stalled clicking sound came from his display, but I placed a hand over it to hide the light.
“Don’t try to talk,” I said. “Can you blink for yes?”
Blink.
He looked so helpless. His hair was a mess, his arms and hands lifeless at his sides. With his shirt open, all of the fused pieces of metal and wire were clearly visible across his torso. Brass bars traced his collarbone, joining in the center where glass tubes disappeared into his skin. More bars undergirded his ribs, but he’d lost so much color that his scars were barely visible.
“Are you in pain?”
He closed his eyes tight.
That was a relief. I’d never thought of Klok experiencing pain. He’d been as real as a person to me, in the same way Xerxes or Scorpius was real, but not quite human. Realizing I made that distinction was hard to face. I was no better than Warden Nye or Arsenic.
“Did you hear what they said about you?”
Blink.
“Are you scared?”
Tears burned my eyes as his blinked again.
“I have to get you out of here. They’ve got Winnie and Evie in cells, but I haven’t seen Jermay or Birdie.”
The vine beside me began to move, trying to get my attention.
“You have to go,” Birch said from the vent. There was a sound in the corridor.
“I can’t leave him!”
“It’ll be worse for us all if you don’t.”
“I don’t know what to do, Klok. What do I do?”
He rolled his eyes up, toward the vent, then turned them to the vine.
Tears were definitely coming. I took his face in my hands.
“You’ve never lied to me. Say you’ll be okay, and I’ll know it’s true.”
His eyes flicked down to the cluster of hummers in his chest. One melted into him. He was integrating them into his own construction.
“Penelope!” Birch jerked on the vine.
“I’m coming,” I promised. “Be careful, Klok.”
I kissed him on the forehead as the vine grew tired of waiting and folded me into a leaf. I slipped through the bamboo grate just as the men in lab coats returned; Birch turned it back to steel.
“Requesting special equipment will stall the warden for a week, but after that, we’re sunk,” said Lab Coat One.
“Destroy it.” Lab Coat Two picked up the saw. “We can tell him Roma rigged it so no one could reverse-engineer another.” He flipped the switch on the side, starting the saw spinning.
Birch had to pin me down to keep me from going back through the grate. My wrist was burning. There was no glass to break this time, but I shorted the overhead lights, causing them to flicker ominously. The power socket that the saw was attached to began to smoke and spark. Lab Coat Two dropped the saw and jumped away. We were too far from the windows to see falling stars, but I could hear them screaming out their song.
Lab Coat One reached for the saw and turned it off.
“Looks like we don’t need an excuse,” he said. “If the power systems need debugging, then we can’t afford to risk running any kind of diagnostics. It might ruin the results, don’t you think?”
“I think I don’t want to try the warden’s temper when it’s already near its end, but I’d hate to waste something so spectacular.”
“So we see what happens, and save the self-destruct as a fail-safe.”
Lab Coat Two nodded. They powered down all of the machines in the room, leaving Klok in the dark, but unharmed. Another set of tiny glowing eyes went out, devoured by Klok’s wiring.
My sisters always said I underestimated Klok. It seemed as though Nye and his minions were doing the same. Hopefully, it would be their ruin.
CHAPTER 36
We were back inside the greenhouse, chatting with our feet dangled off the catwalk, before anyone came to check on us. It seemed safer that way. If we’d rushed out, the guard might have been suspicious.
“I didn’t know a person could live with that much metal in him,” Birch said.
“Klok’s unique.”
I was beginning to loathe that word.
I concentrated all of my focus on a feather tree, until I’d created enough of a draft to send a plume of pink wisps skyward. Soon I’d try creating a golem of my own, something small, like Vesper’s owls.
“I can’t let him
die, Birch. He’s family, and I never even realized it.” Inside, something started gnawing at me.
“Families are complicated.”
“I miss them,” I said. “Not just my father and sisters, but Nagendra, the Jeseks, Squint and Smolly—”
“Jermay?” he asked.
“Yeah, him, too. You’d like him; he can pull flowers out of thin air.”
“He’s like me?” Birch’s face fell.
“He and his father do a magic act . . . did a magic act . . . for The Show.” Thinking of The Show in the past tense made the gnawing worse.
“So it’s not real?”
The way Jermay could make me laugh when I felt terrible was very real, as was the way he could make me feel better if things were too serious for laughter, just by taking my hand.
“Does this make me a magician, too?”
Birch reached behind his back and produced a bouquet that would have put Zavel’s best efforts to shame, grinning as though he’d done something spectacular.
“You wouldn’t understand,” I said sourly, and the bouquet wilted. The branches around us began to rustle, pitching petals like an angry mob with rotten fruit. Birch yelped and grabbed his wrist. The noise died down, and he looked away, ashamed.
The Show was family, but Jermay was more. I missed my family; I ached thinking of the void left without Jermay’s presence.
“I’m sorry,” Birch said. “I’m not trying to make you upset. You’re the first friend I’ve had since the Ground Center. There was a girl there, but I haven’t seen her since the escape. I don’t know if she’s even still alive, and now you’re here, and—I’m sorry.”
The magnificent foliage around us drooped.
Light poured in from the hall. Our guard approached, looking frantic, then confused when he saw we were exactly where we were supposed to be.
“I’ve got her,” he said, touching an earpiece. The guard nodded along to whoever was on the microphone end, saying “yes,” then, “They’ve both been here for an hour.”
“Is something wrong?” Birch asked.
“Back to your rooms.” The guard pointed toward the doors with his weapon. “Curfew’s in effect.”
The guard took Birch to his room first. It was an unceremonious stop, with the guard practically shoving him inside and slamming the door.
“What were you two doing in there?” the guard asked me.
“Birch likes trees. He was trying to teach me their names, but I’m hopeless. I thought brown things on the floor were called palm cones.”
“That’s all?” the guard asked, suspicious of my airhead act. Maybe not my best choice.
“Sure. Why?”
“Keep quiet and keep moving.”
He pushed me forward through the glassed-in breezeway. The moon was still shining, but the eerie serenity of it had been broken by motion. In the distance, streaks blazed across the sky, and closer up, men in high-altitude breathing gear swarmed the outer platforms, putting out fires from ruptured gas lines and tying down cables to stabilize pontoons and walkways. A gaping hole had appeared in one of the catwalks, nearly cutting it in half.
So I guess that’s what happened when I thought the lab coats were going to dissect Klok.
“That bird from supper must have come back with its flock,” I mumbled.
“Quiet,” the guard said, and shoved me again.
One day, I wouldn’t have to guess. Crippling the Commission wouldn’t be an accident; it would be a surgical strike.
No one bothered me for two days; but Birch didn’t visit, either, and my door stayed locked, only opening for food to be sent through. Each day, I’d get a new dress, identical to the previous ones except for the colors. After the blue dress, I put on a gold one, then I exchanged it for green, always feeling like a giant toddler was about to rip my ceiling open and reveal the Center’s true identity as her dollhouse. Sometimes when I checked the clock, it seemed like we were going backward.
I’d felt the same shift in energy the night we lost The Show. It was the sense that some unstoppable and unavoidable change was on its way.
I dreaded each moment that passed, knowing it was one less chance to save myself and those I cared about. I didn’t know if Winnie or Evie were still locked in darkness. I didn’t know if Warden Nye had grown impatient and Klok had become nothing more than blood and wires heaped together for disposal. I had no idea how fast Klok could integrate the rest of the hummers, or how long before someone noticed there were fewer than there should have been.
Xerxes was my bright spot. The circuit from Sister Mary Alban’s medallion was still functioning. I put on a show for whoever was watching through the burning red eye in the ceiling, but my games with my little golem did more than fill time. I tested Xerxes as far as I dared.
I tested myself, too.
I was one weapon who’d grown tired of misfiring; the problem was that fear and anger were my strongest fuel sources. I’d been striking back in retaliation, which is what the restrictors were calibrated to block. I tried to set fire to my pillows or call water down from the sprinklers, but it always ended in pain and frustration. The entire first day was a series of failure-induced shocks brought on by my planning unkind ends for the wardens. I had to stop thinking that way, or I’d remain my own worst enemy.
“Happy thoughts. Calm thoughts,” I told myself as I took the water pitcher from my tea trolley and set it on the floor. “Think of home.”
I sat cross-legged in front of the pitcher, placing my hands on either side, and pictured Samson lighting torches with his tail. He was leaping in the bonfire. Evie reached her blazing hand out to me; I took it and opened my eyes. Bubbles rose in the pitcher as the water inside began to boil beneath my gaze. It reminded me of how Nim’s laughter burst like froth on a moving stream when she was happy.
Would she ever be happy again?
I wanted to destroy the Commission for what it did to us. . . .
The restriction bands stung, but eased off when I turned my thoughts away from revenge and back to The Show.
Beneath the bubbles, the water churned, defying its own nature to rise in a spinning column, rather than sink into a whirlpool. It launched into the shape of a shimmering sailfish with scales that caught the light.
Xerxes couldn’t resist. He scattered the fish to drops that fell to the floor and soaked into the mossy carpet. It startled me into a fit of giggles.
I’d created a golem.
Trembling, I raised my hands as I’d seen Nim do every night during my tour when Winnie’s part was over. The water beaded up, leaving the floor dry. I lifted my hands, and the water rose, creating an outline of the sailfish that quickly filled in with scales and fins. It tracked my hand, following my lead back to the pitcher, and poured itself inside.
I glanced up at that flashing red light and grinned with as much malice as I could find.
“Gotcha,” I said snidely. Let the ceiling watcher see me—what did it matter? The stronger I became, the less likely the warden’s people would be able to stop me.
A twitch of my wrist summoned the sailfish back into existence, launching it up to shatter nose-first into the ceiling. It stormed back down, accompanied by wind and lightning that formed right there in the middle of my room—the perfect weather to match my mood.
But wielding so much power was as exhausting as running a marathon in weights. Creating that sailfish left me too tired to even get off the floor; I fell asleep leaning against my wardrobe and woke in the same position to the sound of Xerxes growling at my door.
Someone was knocking. I heard the lock click and the door opened.
“Grey—?”
Greyor shook his head before I could finish, but it was only a slight move. Unvoiced panic chiseled into a stone face he couldn’t allow to crack. Warden Nye was over his shoulder.
“Wal
k with me.” Nye pulled me from my room, tucking my arm into his the way that Birch did. He flicked his fingers toward Greyor, who fell in step behind us.
The tanks lining the hall didn’t look like they were filled with plain water anymore. The contents had a pale pink cast and were nearly gelatinous. The alien primordial plasma had fully formed.
“Are we going to breakfast?” I asked.
“With your table manners?” the warden said. “I don’t think so.”
We passed the dining hall. People in the corridors kept watching us, then turning away to whisper.
“Where’s Birch?” I asked.
“Up a tree, I would imagine.”
“I want to see him.”
“And I wanted my Level-Five installed without alerting any of my contemporaries. Now we’re both disappointed.”
“I’m not your anything.”
Except maybe his prisoner, which was exactly the fate I was afraid had befallen Birch. The word of one guard who had left us unobserved for over an hour wouldn’t be enough to convince Nye I’d had no part in the damage done the night I found Klok. He’d obviously used the collar on Birch before. If he did it again, and asked what happened that night . . .
“You could be my greatest asset,” the warden said. “And I could be your greatest ally. Both are hard to come by in this life.”
“For someone who claims to disapprove of my father and his methods, you certainly sound a lot like him. He collected assets, too. Only he didn’t need cages to keep them from running off.”
“The fact that his prison ran on rails didn’t make it less confining.”
We turned a corner at precisely the right moment to see one of the tanks filled. A technician flipped a switch, and clear, pink liquid flowed in from a venting system. He was nowhere near it, but still wore a face mask and gloves.
“Interested in our aquatics?” Warden Nye asked.
“Not in the least.”
“You’re slipping, pet. The girl I used to know could weave words into a golden fleece.”