by wildbow
“Madam Howell told me to,” she said.
I glanced back at Jamie. He looked as surprised as I was. We hadn’t actually had all the information there.
“That’s your job?” I asked.
“That’s my job.”
“Okay,” I said.
I reached out to Mary, and she gave me another look, but she handed me a knife.
I cut the string that bound Wendy to the railing.
“Thank you,” she said, very prim, “And you’re mean. All of you. You’re terrible. Excuse me for saying so.”
“We’re very terrible,” I admitted.
“Sy,” Lillian said. “I hear footsteps. He’s coming.”
“I know, it’s fine,” I said.
“Me, hurt. I’m not fine,” Mary said. “I think something snapped.”
“Lillian will fix you,” I said. “Right now, our concern is Warren.”
That was all it took to get Wendy’s attention.
“Wendy,” I said, patiently, speaking very clearly. “I’m sorry we left you tied up here.”
She stared at me, concern still clear on her face.
“But we did it for your safety. Kind of. People ended up getting hurt. There was fighting. Mary got hurt, and Warren did too.”
“Oh no.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“He’s going to be okay. Because Miss Genevieve did such good work, didn’t she?”
“She fixed me up so nicely! Some of the big scratches, they’re gone now!”
“We were talking about how good her work on you was. And she gave Warren a body, didn’t she?”
Wendy nodded.
“Sylvester,” Mary said. Her use of my full name was telling. The pain in her voice said a lot, too.
I could hear the running footsteps. Our pursuer wasn’t far, and he was most definitely coming after us.
I addressed Wendy, “I have something to ask you, and I want you to think very long and hard about this, okay?”
“Maybe not so long?” Gordon suggested, putting one hand on my arm. I shrugged free.
I glanced at Gordon. Jamie was standing behind him, and Jamie was keeping his mouth shut. He looked spooked, but he wasn’t reminding me of stuff I already knew.
I had his trust, at least.
“Alright,” Wendy said, looking like she was prepared to give the next bout of thinking her full, concerted effort.
“Is Warren happy?”
“Happy?”
“Does he smile, does he laugh? Is this… is this life good for him?”
Wendy’s expression faltered.
Warren was so close, now.
“We go, now,” Gordon ordered, grabbing me.
“You go, I stay,” I said. “This is important.”
“You being with us is important!”
I looked to Mary for support, but her head hung, she was having trouble breathing, and blood was soaking through her clothes, running down her skirt. She wasn’t with us.
Lillian was too scared. Helen was Helen.
I looked to Jamie.
“I’m staying too,” he said.
That’s not necessary, I thought, but I couldn’t argue, because he was backing me up.
“Damn both of you,” Gordon said. “Mary, give me some knives.”
“No!” I said. “No. Just… take Mary, get a bit of a head start, head for the room. Jamie, you should go too, you’re not a fast runner. Leave me here. With Wendy. We’ll manage.”
Gordon stared at me.
“Please,” I said.
He turned to go.
I looked at Wendy, and I reached up, taking the tray, before putting it on the ground. She looked flustered at that, but visibly calmed down as I took her hand.
“What’s going on?” she asked, her voice small.
“We wait for Warren. Just a few more seconds,” I said.
I would have been lying if I said my mouth wasn’t as dry as a bone, adrenalin thrumming through my veins.
Warren caught up, reaching the bottom of the stairs. He’d pulled the weapons free of his palms, and blood had been smeared from the wounds onto his clothes. He saw Wendy and I and he stopped.
“Is he happy?” I asked.
“He’s unhappy because of you.”
“Is he really?” I asked. “If I was gone, if you held me here and let him take me, would he be the same happy boy Mrs. Howell asked you to protect?”
“He wasn’t very happy then either,” she said. “At the start, maybe.”
I knew Warren could hear us. He didn’t move, just staring. His reaction was more like I had a knife to the stitched woman’s throat, holding her hostage.
“I wasn’t dressed, then,” she remarked.
I shot her a look, then shook my head, “Do you think he would become as happy as he was at the start, if you gave me to him?”
“I don’t think,” she said, softly. “I’m not very good at it. I do what I’m told.”
“You were told to protect him. Maybe that means protecting him from himself.”
“Complicated,” she said. It was a negation, a stubborn refusal to understand.
“If he walks up here and hurts me, hurts my friends, I don’t think he’ll ever be happy again. It’s crossing a line, and he may never come back.”
“Complicated,” she said, again, her voice tight.
“He’s not the sort of man that hurts children, is he?” I asked.
She shook her head. “He’s nice.”
“You can’t let him become someone mean, right? Mrs. Howell wouldn’t want that.”
“No,” she said. “She wouldn’t.”
He cares about you. I can see it, looking at him. So long as you’re around, he’s just a little more human. He can’t cross the line and maim or kill if you’re here, watching.
“All you have to do to protect him from that, is come with us,” I said.
Something tells me he won’t leave you behind. He’ll make Fray stay close, or she’ll have to abandon him.
“Are you sure?” she asked.
Warren started, taking a step up the stairs.
“This is the best thing for him and for you,” I said, and I actually meant it. “Come. Let’s run.”
I tugged on her arm, and she didn’t move. I did it again, with no luck.
On the third tug, something seemed to fall into place. She connected, or she pulled it together.
We ran, and Warren chased.
But at the top of the stairs, he stopped.
The shout at our backs was ragged and loud.
“Wendy!”
Previous Next
Stitch in Time—4.10
Warren didn’t give chase. Wendy and I made our way to the room with the coats. The room’s resident and her monster were still unconscious, but the others were already outside, standing a few feet away from the open window, a vantage point where they could see within. The snow was falling all around them, it was dark, and the little light around the place cast long shadows.
There wasn’t any commentary as I reached under the bed, grabbed my jacket, scarf, cap, and gloves, and pulled everything on.
I glanced at Wendy, who looked like a ghost in more ways than one. Fine, pale hair, a haunted expression on her face. She wore a calf-length dress that was crisp and tidy enough it was almost a uniform, complete with a smock, and her hair was tied back. I could see subtle differences in the color and texture of it, suggesting that hair had been transplanted—a stitched’s hair didn’t tend to grow, or it fell out faster than it grew in, and it was telling that she’d been looked after in that regard.
“You need a coat,” I told her.
“I don’t,” she said. “I’m always hot, I—”
“You need a coat,” I said. “You’re always hot because it keeps you healthy. If you’re out in the cold, your body will have to work harder to stay hot, and you might run out of energy too quickly.”
I walked past her, stepping past t
he monster on the floor to get to the wardrobe by the door. I popped it open, then rifled through the hanging garments until I found something suitable, a long coat of black, lab-grown wool. I handed it to Wendy, and watched as she put it on. Her movements were stiff, and once or twice she paused, as if she had to remember or puzzle out the next sequence of movements to put her arms in the sleeves. I stepped in to grab the jacket and help it over her shoulder.
“It’s big,” she said. It was true. Two of her could have fit in the jacket.
I grabbed a long scarf from the closet, then wound it around her waist, cinching the coat closer to her body.
“Come on,” I said. I saw her look back, the doubt on her face, and grabbed her hand, pulling her along. It was a strange inversion of adult and child, the child leading the adult by the hand, but in reality, she was the innocent. She was the key to all of this, our last hope in figuring out how we were going to address the Fray situation.
“Through the window,” I said.
I gave her a hand in making her way down, and the others moved to the base of the window to help her down. She was a little heavier than someone her size should have been, and her movements were stiff. I’d interacted with stitched in general to know that sometimes patience was required.
She’s not so different from me. We lose what we don’t hold on to.
Except it was poisons that had eroded my faculties, and it was death that had eroded hers.
I wondered if Fray had made the same connection.
“Here we go,” Helen said. “That’s it. Lower your left foot just a little bit. That’s your right. There. Good job.”
Good work, Helen, I thought. I’d brought her here, but I wasn’t necessarily the person to keep her, if that was even possible in the long run. Wendy would feel more comfortable in Helen’s company than anything else. Gordon was a possibility as well, and Lillian likely had as much passing experience with the stitched as any of us.
Once Wendy was down from the window, I climbed out onto the snow-dusted windowsill and pulled the window shut. I dropped into the grass at the base of the window.
The evening was cooler, which contributed to the heavier snowfall, but it still wasn’t enough to cover the grass completely, nor to do more than layer the trees. With the sky getting dark, the odd and unusual trees of Kensford took on a more haunting appearance, jagged black lightning bolts with highlights of white here and there. The cottage-like dormitory houses were lighting up within, and they were small enough that each little window of orange flame or flickering voltaic power had silhouettes moving within. Young women were moving down the main streets in groups, accompanied by their monsters, but the sounds of conversation and footfalls didn’t reach us.
“I have questions, but it’s hard to ask them, given present company,” Mary said. She was scuffed up, but Lillian had applied bandages and applied a shot of something.
Wendy was looking around, oblivious. She seemed anxious, but not out of any concern for her personal safety. When Gordon took her hand, she wasn’t surprised or spooked. She took his hand and held it firm, not even questioning it.
Some stitched were made for battle. Wendy wasn’t one of those stitched. Someone could likely have come after her with a weapon and she wouldn’t have defended herself. On much the same level, an enemy might be able to give her a hug without her even thinking of resisting. There were vital parts of her psychology that were missing.
But Gordon being the one holding her hand helped. He had always had an affinity for other experiments. There were maybe four people who could communicate with Dog, despite Dog’s general inability to vocalize; Catcher was one, two scientists who maintained and looked after Dog were another couple, and Gordon was a fourth.
There were even some Whelps that he could pet without getting his hand bitten off, and the Academy doctors who worked on the Whelps weren’t even capable of doing that.
Gordon saw me looking at him and asked, “We aren’t being followed?”
“No,” I said, simply. No use agitating Wendy.
“We can’t go back to the dormitory house with our stuff. If Fray has any brains at all, she’ll send Warren that way.”
“It’s possible,” I said, but I wasn’t convinced.
“It’s possible, but you don’t sound confident,” he said.
“No,” I replied.
“Why?”
“It’s what you’d do in her shoes, but that’s not who she is. She’s indirect. She just revealed the big plan to us, she did it for a reason. We got close, and if Warren doesn’t stop us, she wants us distracted, dealing with it. It was always part of her strategy. If we cornered her, she would distract us. She doesn’t do the ‘direct attack’ thing.”
“She sent… you know who after us,” Jamie remarked. “Twice.”
“Who?” Wendy asked, looking concerned.
“It’s okay,” Helen said, giving Wendy’s hand a squeeze. “Can you hold my hands between yours? They’re toasty.”
“Oh, okay,” Wendy said. She looked happy to do it, and Helen’s smile brought out a smile on her face.
“The first time was indirect,” I told Gordon. “She was trying to divert us, and it worked. We had to deal with the medicine angle, we were distracted, led to chase her, and it gave her an opportunity to have a discussion with one of us. This time…”
“This time?” Gordon asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “We caught her off guard. This time, she didn’t expect us.”
“A cornered rat bites,” Mary commented, under her breath.
There were a few nods from the group at that. Mary had been bitten as hard as any of us.
“I don’t like rats,” Wendy said. “Not unless they’re the clean white ones in the labs. Those can be cute.”
“Can’t they!?” Helen gushed. “Did Miss Genevieve have any?”
“Any…?”
“Did she have white rats to help her in the lab?”
“Yes, she did. I liked them. There was one and it would crawl on my hand and I would pet it. But I had to be gentle.”
“Of course,” Helen said. “You’re so lucky, having hands as warm as yours.”
It was a silly, stupid compliment, but Wendy seemed to like it.
The rest of us were silent, watching and listening intently.
“She wasn’t mean to them, was she?” Helen asked.
Wendy shook her head.
“She didn’t give them medicine to make them sick or stick them with syringes?”
Wendy kept shaking her head.
“But she was paying a lot of attention to the rats?”
“No, not a lot. But some.”
“Some?” Gordon asked.
“Some,” Wendy said, as if that was a complete idea.
“When you say some, do you mean it was once in a while, or were there other things she was more focused on?” Helen asked.
Wendy didn’t answer, raising her hand to her mouth, as if she were going to bite her nails, then pulled it away. She looked between us, as if she was completely lost.
“You don’t understand, do you?” Gordon asked.
Wendy shook her head.
“It’s okay,” he said. He reached out and put his hands around hers, which still held Helen’s. “Do you remember what we were saying about the white rats?”
“We were talking about rats?” she asked. I couldn’t tell if it was a question or if it was a statement she wasn’t entirely sure about.
She felt emotions, and the spectrum of emotions might well have been limited or more riddled with bumps and messiness, but that part of the brain was still intact. She could think and reason and perform set tasks, but her faculties outside of the tasks she was meant to perform were hampered. When it came to logic and interpretation, well, this very conversation had evidenced that a single stumble could take us back to square one.
No, I realized, looking at her. A step back from square one. She was anxious now, bothered. She didn’t lik
e being lost, and the combined efforts of Gordon and Helen weren’t enough to reassure her.
She was our sole source of information, but an interrogation couldn’t proceed like this. We had to move slowly, carefully, and as gently as humanly possible, and we had to do it knowing that Fray was very possibly working on her next move.
“Let’s give her a few minutes,” Gordon said.
No! I thought.
Then I reminded myself that his instincts were very often good ones, when it came to dealing with experiments.
“Okay,” I said. “But let’s do something productive in the meantime.”
“What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking we need to slow our adversary down,” I said, keeping my voice quiet and calm for the benefit of our stitched guest, “She knows we have the means of figuring out what she’s doing. She dropped hints. She’s ready. If there’s a catalyst she needs to enter into the dynamic, or if there’s a switch that has to be pulled, a person that needs to be contacted, we need to get in the way of that.”
Talking in abstract terms and long words wasn’t helping matters. Wendy looked more confused and alarmed than before.
Bring things back, Sy. Connect it to something she understands.
“Our goal,” I said, talking more slowly, not looking directly at Wendy, even as I recapped things for her benefit, “Is to keep people safe. We want to find Genevieve, we want to find and help Warren.”
I put emphasis on that last part, so the others could know just why Wendy was here.
“That’s doable,” Gordon said.
I saw a smile find its way to Wendy’s face.
“First instinct, each of you,” Gordon said. “How can we accomplish this?”
“I go hunt,” Mary said. “I can stay out of Warren’s way. Maybe catch Fray off guard.”
Gordon and I exchanged glances. I could see the doubt and concern.
A lack of trust. Mary was hurt, and she wasn’t immune to making mistakes.
I gave him a nod. We needed to do this, if only because Mary’s pride couldn’t take anything else.
“Okay,” he said. “If in doubt, favor scouting over trying something.”
She nodded.
“Helen?”
“I’ll stay with Wendy. We can go to the campfire, where you met the girls,” Helen said. “We took the time to recruit them, we should use them.”