Twig

by wildbow

  Not enough mercy in her to spare me, not enough anger in her for her to go straight after Shipman.

  I stood to be a casualty of the middle ground.

  Shipman suddenly dropped another three feet. The movement caught Sub Rosa’s eye.

  The woman looked away from me, the spike pointed in my general direction.

  She walked over to the railing, leaning forward and reaching up and out to seize Shipman by the collar. She tugged, hard, and Shipman came free entirely, the wire from the grip or tie or whatever they’d done up above.

  Hopefully Helen wasn’t too busy lowering Shipman to—

  No. Helen wasn’t too busy. She appeared, hair and skirt fluttering as she dropped from the stairwell above, seizing Sub Rosa’s reaching arm and Shipman both.

  My heart leaped. This hadn’t quite been the plan.

  Sub Rosa was strong, but leverage was leverage. Helen had to weigh about seven stone. Gladys maybe eight. Both weights tugged down on Sub Rosa’s arm as she was reaching over the rail.

  The top end of her went down, the other end went up and over the railing.

  I found my faculties, and half-crawled, half-walked over to the ledge, praying that I wasn’t going to find out that I’d lost Jamie and Helen in the same day.

  Staring down, I saw Helen another floor down.

  If I or another human being had reached out and grabbed the railing after falling nearly thirty feet, I might have lost my fingers or my arm. But Helen was built differently. She hung there, her arm a few feet longer than it should’ve been, a limp Gladys Shipman dangling from her other hand.

  At the bottom of the shaft was a dark blot that marked where Sub Rosa had hit ground. The pale blob that was Gorger inched forward, until it reached her, and then consumed its meal.

  Helen had made it. Shipman too, maybe. Sub Rosa was gone.

  I wasted no time in heading to Jamie’s side.

  Previous Next

  Lips Sealed 3.10

  I reached Helen. She hung from one hand, still holding Gladys, looking abjectly unconcerned with the immense drop below her. Wrist had dislocated from elbow, which had dislocated from shoulder. The skin stretched, and muscles stood out in odd ways in the space between the bones. Not that her bones were the usual sort.

  Because of the way the arm and shoulder were stretched so thin, her face was contorted, the skin pulled down toward one side of her neck.

  “Did we get her?”

  “Exactly right,” I said, quiet, bending down. “Line, hook, and sinker.”

  I took hold of her wrist with both hands.

  “You’re not strong enough, Sy,” she said. She craned her head around. “Help is coming. They’ll help us up.”

  The people who had lowered Gladys down, Gladys’ partner included, coming down the stairs from the level above.

  “Bring them down to me and Jamie?” I asked.

  “Okay, Sy,” Helen said.

  I abandoned her. Down the stairs. My legs were tired, my brain was exhausted, my whole body ached from what had to be the lingering effects of getting shocked, and all of the pent-up emotions were dissolving into something approximating exhaustion. My hair stuck to my forehead, my clothing stuck to my back. My knees were rubbed raw from the way they’d rubbed against the sweat-damp uniform slacks. My skin prickled where I’d rubbed it with the chemical stuff.

  There was no big plot to focus on now. I was Sylvester and nothing more. I wanted every one of my fellow Lambs to be okay, and nothing more.

  By the time I reached Jamie, some of the people from downstairs were already making their way up. A few were clustered around him. Others were standing at the ready, with improvised weapons in hand. Shirts had been pulled off to double as headcovers, cloth was wrapped around hands, and still, they had to fight to keep the bugs off.

  My thought processes and feelings were horribly confused as I wrapped my head around the scene. They wouldn’t be doing that if he was dead, so he was okay. Heart soaring. But he was hurt. Ugly feeling in my middle. And, perhaps the hardest thing to process, I wanted to be the person by his side, helping him. Resentment and anger. The feelings mingled and it felt bad.

  It must have shown on my face, because expressions changed as people saw me drawing nearer.

  Jamie’s breathing was ragged, audible from several feet away.

  If you idiots hadn’t tipped off the monster, Jamie would be okay, I thought.

  “He’s a tough one,” a man told me. He had his sweater and a shirt pulled up in such a way that only his eyes were visible, but the skin around those eyes was black. His lab coat was buttoned up to the chin, cinched tight with a tie. A black man in a lab coat—an oddity in the Academy. “He’s breathing on his own, and that says something.”

  I nodded, mute.

  “You should cover up,” the man said, all business.

  “I did,” I told him. “Covered myself with kerosene. Bugs don’t like it, neither do the, uh, things on the walls.”

  “This boy too?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Him too?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Thought he smelled off. You know kerosene will burn you, smeared on like that?”

  “Diluted,” I lied. Jamie’s had been diluted, Helen hadn’t cared at all about the strength of the stuff, and it was slow to really get to me.

  “You look flushed. If you—”

  “I don’t care about me,” I cut him off, before adding, “Sir.”

  I gave a pointed look to Jamie, to make it absolutely clear where my concerns were.

  “Pupils are dilating. He follows my finger with his eyes. But his heartbeat isn’t strong, breathing is taking work. The bleeding at the side of his head makes me worry about a cranial bleed. Spiderweb crack of the skull, complete shoulder break, several rib, arm, and pelvis fractures. His stomach is firm.”

  “Firm is good?”

  “Firm suggests internal bleeding.”

  He had a stern, matter-of-fact way of delivering the bad news. Combined with his skin color, and I could guess his history. Black soldier, with duties of a field medic, possibly because of things he’d picked up from his father, or another family member. When things had gone poorly, the medics had received advanced training.

  Much as was the case with the women who’d worked at the Academy during wartime, the Academy had decided that even if someone was black, knowledge was knowledge.

  That he was here in the Bowels now, that was notable. That he was the one looking after Jamie, that was something else altogether. People who’d had to fight for power so often set everything but their work aside, even decency and kindness.

  Sub Rosa was one such person, I suspected.

  “He’s going to need surgery,” the man said. “I’m doing it right here. I don’t like the idea of moving him, with this many breaks.”

  I nodded.

  In a very serious, low tone, he told me, “It isn’t going to be pretty.”

  “I’ve seen worse,” I said, in that same tone.

  “Sy?”

  It was Jamie.

  “She’s gone, Jamie. Helen and I got her.”

  That turned heads. Fuck it.

  “Sy. I talked to her… I told her lies,” he said. His voice was reedy.

  “I know, Jamie. I was there for the start of it.”

  “No. I… kept talking… wasn’t thinking… not straight… rambling… lies.”

  “I’m not following.”

  “Stupid lies… contradicting… myself… she knew… she listened… stroked my face…”

  “She hurt you,” I said.

  “Don’t think…” he said, but he didn’t find the word or the breath to finish the statement.

  “She hurt you on purpose, Jamie.”

  “I saw her fall…”

  “I told you, Jamie, she’s gone.”

  “Started out… telling her about… her dream… things she might have wanted… but after… was… ugh… hurts.”

  “Wo
rds can wait, son,” the doctor who was sitting with Jamie said.

  Jamie continued, oblivious. “Was telling… her… about my dreams… things I wanted… things… never told… anyone.”

  “You did good, Jamie.”

  “She… was gentle. Made me comfo… comfortable. Without hurting…”

  He was still on that?

  The fingers of his good hand twitched. I reached out to take it.

  He panted, as if speaking had meant he lost more air than he took in, even with the ragged gasping breaths, and he needed to refill the reserves.

  I thought back through what Jamie had said, trying to find the main thrust of it.

  “You reached deep,” I murmured. “To her, and inside yourself, in order to survive, and to help us survive. You were hurting, your defenses were down. The same thing happens with people who are kept as prisoners of war, or kidnapping victims.”

  “No. She was…”

  “Sub Rosa was bad, Jamie. She hurt an awful lot of people, and when it came down to it, she went after Shipman, and that was how we beat her.”

  “Went… after?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Stabbed?”

  “No,” I said. Then I realized what Jamie was saying. It wasn’t concern for Shipman’s welfare, or for Gordon, who liked the girl.

  He was trying to gauge whether his estimation of Sub Rosa had been right or wrong.

  I opened my mouth to revise my statement, to clarify, but Jamie cracked his eye open in that same moment. It was barely open at all, squinting against light and pain, and it was so bloodshot it made me think of Sub Rosa’s eye socket, filled with clotted blood.

  “Don’t… lie, Sy,” he told me.

  Even in this state, he had enough of a sense of me to gauge that I was venturing into the territory of dishonesty. For his sake, to soothe his conscience, but I’d been on the cliff.

  I shut my mouth, holding back the lie, and gave his fingers a light squeeze.

  We sat for a good minute.

  I didn’t like how things sat. Jamie was squirming more, and I wasn’t sure it was physical pain. Much as I’d suggested, his defenses were low. This, lying in a broken heap on the staircase, was Jamie laid bare.

  I’d done nothing to assuage his worries.

  “Down there, Sub Rosa killed people, right?”

  “Yes,” the doctor said.

  “What did she have you doing?”

  “The wall came apart. We were pulling out slabs. There were crates at the back.”

  “Crates?”

  “Explosives. Sticks of dynamite, stacked high, inside the wall.”

  “Did she want to bring this whole place down?” I asked.

  “Who knows?”

  A bystander spoke up, “I wouldn’t think it’s that easy. There are mechanisms in place. Sand, water. There’d be damage, but…”

  But she knows this place too well, I thought. She would know the dynamite wouldn’t necessarily do the trick, and the Academy wouldn’t store enough dynamite to destroy the Bowels.

  “Maybe blowing an escape route out of here,” I said. “Or setting a trap for when they opened the seal and came down here.”

  “No,” Jamie wheezed.

  I looked at him.

  “No. Walled up… tunnel… I think. Layout of… Academy, only… one place… she could go… ow, ow.”

  “One place?”

  “This deep?… Radham’s monster…”

  There were murmurs.

  Jamie wasn’t being discreet, but he had an excuse, and I was beyond the point of caring.

  Radham’s monster. Sleeping away in a chamber beneath the Academy.

  “Did she intend to wake it up and destroy Radham? Or was she risking waking it up to get out?”

  “Don’t… know.”

  I watched Jamie breathing, worrying he might stop at any moment. He was squirming less than before. I wasn’t entirely sure what that meant, but I hoped that his conscience regarding Sub Rosa was clearer, and that he’d been reminded what she’d been.

  Which wasn’t to say that who she was and what we’d faced weren’t entirely different things.

  A fresh group of people began making their way up the stairs, carrying tools and kits.

  “If you stay there, you can’t do anything, you can’t move, you cannot get in the way,” the black doctor told me. “No matter how bad it looks, or how violent we seem to be acting.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ve seen worse, really.”

  “Sy, was it?”

  “Sylvester. Sy or Sly to friends.”

  “Sylvester, then. Sit tight. We’ll do what we can.”

  I watched as they got all the tools ready, kit and kaboodle all laid out. There were murmurs from the bystanders, all Academy trained, commenting on what should be done first, where the priorities were, approaches and methods. Yet it was this man who’d stepped forward to help Jamie.

  I wondered how much there was at play in that. Was it the sort of thing where people thought that blame might be laid at the feet of a doctor who tried and failed to save Jamie?

  There was a refuge in thinking about that sort of thing. The mechanisms at work inside people’s heads.

  This was a man who stood alone.

  “Doctor,” I said. “If you save him, you can call me Sy.”

  He didn’t take his eyes off Jamie, but he murmured, “Willard D.”

  I made a mental note, not that my mental notes were reliable.

  I saw Willard’s hands go to the buttons at Jamie’s collar.

  “Everyone else,” I said. “If you don’t have something to contribute, get lost. It’s still dangerous, and enough stings from those bugs will stop your heart. Go to your labs, close the doors, and block any openings.”

  The warning was enough to scare most off. Only a few lingered, out of ego or curiosity.

  I watched as Jamie’s uniform was alternately unbuttoned and cut away. The scars were on full display.

  Willard looked up at me.

  “Don’t cut across the scars,” I said.

  “Can I ask what they are?”

  “Classified,” I said. “I don’t think you have permission to know.”

  “Looks like I signed on for quite a task, then,” he said.

  I watched him making the initial incisions in Jamie’s belly. My eye didn’t leave that scalpel, until I felt a hand on my hair.

  Helen, sitting on the stair above me. She’d mostly fixed her arm, but the wrist hung limp and there were light bruises.

  She stroked my hair again.

  I returned my eyes to the scalpel, as if I could will it to be steady.

  ☙

  The agreement had been to take turns watching Jamie. When this had been decided, Gordon, Gladys, Lillian, and Mary had insisted that they be the ones to watch, as they’d slept through the finale with Sub Rosa.

  I lay my side with a rolled up lab coat for a pillow, another lab coat draped over me, lying on the floor of the lab where the others had dozed off, now free to rest and recuperate, exhausted to the bone, but instead I’d spent hours watching the rise and fall of Jamie’s chest, and watching Mary.

  Mary’s watch had been spent sharpening a knives, until Gordon muttered something rude at her. After that, she’d taken to coiling the remainder of the razor wire, unwinding it, then fixing it, over and over.

  I watched through half-lidded eyes as she suddenly rose, walked over to the clock on the desk, lit a fresh candle, positioned the case around the new candle to reduce the light, then went to rouse Lillian. Without compunction, Mary took the space Lillian had been using to sleep, makeshift pillow and the fire blanket both.

  Lillian didn’t fidget. She didn’t read or pace or do much of anything. A few times she rose from her seat, she checked on Jamie, then returned to her perch on the stool.

  About thirty minutes in, I heard her making small sounds.

  Thirty-five minutes in, I roused. In the gloom, I approached her and put my
arms around her. She started squirming, trying to wipe away tears, but I shifted my grip to hug her tighter, holding her arms to her side.

  “One of the worst things that could have happened to you happened yesterday,” I whispered in her ear. “You made it, Lil.”

  “Don’t—”

  “Lil. You made it, and you did well.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “I’d be the first person to tell you if you didn’t,” I said. “Right?”

  She made a small incoherent sound that might have been reluctant agreement.

  “You did well. Carry that with you. You faced your worst fear… now leave it behind,” I told her, voice soft, with cadence, soothing. “Today, you made great strides toward being the very awesome Lil-the-adult you’re going to become.”

  She nodded, the back of her head rubbing against my chest.

  “Come on,” I whispered. “Over here.”

  I led her to the spot where I’d been lying down. She obeyed, wiping again at her face now that I wasn’t keeping her from doing it. I’d meant it to be a kind of permission to keep crying, but she’d gone and stopped. Silly.

  “Lie down,” I whispered.

  “I’m on watch,” she whispered, in an even quieter voice.

  “I’m not sleeping anyway,” I said. “Lie down, rest easy. You’ll wake up tomorrow, and this whole thing with me being nice will have been a dream.”

  She let out a hiccup of a giggle, then wiped at her face again, but she did lie down.

  I helped her fix the lab coat blanket, then sat down, my back to her stomach, arms around my knees, watching Jamie.

  For his part, he watched me. He’d seen it all.

  I’d chosen a position, unfortunately, that didn’t give me a good view of the clock on the desk. I didn’t want to move for fear of disturbing Lillian, so I stayed where I was.

  The hours passed in a vague, dreamlike way. I didn’t once come close to nodding off, sitting there listening to the pattern of breathing from the six Lambs.

  I sat there watching, as Gordon and Gladys roused together, taking a seat on the table opposite me, and spent a while watching together. I gave him a little wave, to let him know I was awake, and he waved back.

  I could have gone to sleep, knowing they were on watch, but I didn’t. I might have done it or pretended to do it to give them privacy, but as much as I liked Gordon, I didn’t like Gladys enough to go to the trouble. They talked amongst themselves, confiding, Gordon keeping the periodic chuckle quiet.