by wildbow
“Sy’s plan might actually work, though,” Helen said.
My savior!
“I know,” Gordon said. “But I wanted to let him stew.”
“You pimpledick.”
“I did too,” Mary said. “You missed the hand signal.”
“Pimpleboob. What’s the new plan?”
Gordon didn’t answer, looking smug as he scratched the top of Hubris’ head.
“Time’s a wasting. Didn’t you hear me earlier?” I asked.
“I heard,” Gordon said. He didn’t elaborate.
I could have throttled him, if I wasn’t sure he would win that struggle and make me look bad in the process.
“It’s Petey,” Helen said. “We can use Petey. They’re not saying because it doesn’t matter.”
“You’re just about my favorite, Helen,” I said.
“Good,” she said. “Buy me a treat later.”
“Remind me?”
She nodded.
Petey made her way up the stairs. She looked like she’d been lightly boiled, she was so red and sweaty. Lillian was right behind her, hair still mussed up.
“Can you take the Ghost?” Gordon asked.
Petey scowled. “I’d really rather not.”
“It’s mission critical,” Mary said.
“It’s like sleeping on a bed of swords,” Petey said.
“Mission critical, time critical,” Mary said.
“We did say we’d help you out,” Helen said. “We got you what you need to do the most damage. Right here.”
Petey stared down at the Ghost. I heard a sigh.
“When I’m moving, don’t interfere. Don’t ‘help’ me,” Petey said.
“Why?” Helen asked.
“Because it’s irritating,” Petey said.
She dropped clumsily to the ground, sitting in an almost-cross-legged position, attention on the Ghost.
I leaned against the doorframe, saw Lillian, and then noticed her hair. I reached over to the side of her head and swept my hand through the bit of hair that was sticking up. Lillian started using her fingers to comb it.
There were wet, sucking sounds as Petey worked, her body rocking back and forth a little. Gordon stepped behind her to keep her from falling backward.
“You all knew what Petey was, huh?”
“Just about,” Gordon said.
“You’re all the worst,” I said. “Filling each other in is important.”
“I’m going to remember you said that,” he told me. “And I’m going to use it against you so many times.”
I rolled my eyes.
Petey wasn’t quick. I saw that Lillian was struggling to work out the messy bit of her hair, stepped closer, and began fixing it myself, picking out bits of grit that hair had rolled itself around.
I was preoccupied enough I didn’t see Petey right away.
A fetus, crawling across the hardwood, skin almost translucent, with far too many veins spiderwebbing across the surface. It had been grafted with additional parts, I noted, insect legs that gave it more ability to move in the outside world. All the same, it was no larger than my two fists put side by side.
I remembered what the others had said. That Petey was about our age.
A twelve-year old fetus?
As Petey made it halfway, I could see his ‘tail’. The spinal column extended back, and was attached to a bag, half-filled with fluid.
“What’s that?”
“Brain, in a more malleable, bare-bones package,” Lillian said. “Includes some life support. Tiny body isn’t big enough to sustain a working, functional brain. Life support keeps him alive until the host body adapts.”
“I’d almost think that was neat as anything I’ve heard this week,” I said. “But he’s so goddamn slow.”
“Shh,” Helen admonished me. “He might be able to hear you.”
“I hope he can!” I said, raising my voice. “It’s irritating to be picked up and carried over? It’s irritating to wait!”
Petey stopped mid-crawl, turning very slowly until he was facing my general direction. Delaying more, on purpose.
I took a step forward, and raised a foot, threatening to step on him. Lillian grabbed me and pulled me back, before smacking me in the back of the head.
Petey resumed crawling, moving hand, foot, and spidery-limb one after the other as he approached the Ghost. He disappeared beneath the shroud of her skirt.
“I feel a bit queasy,” Lillian said. “I might wait downstairs.”
“This is what breaks you?” I asked. “How much blood and gore and monstrous stuff have you even seen?”
“The Ghosts are dumb,” Mary said. “They’re like animals, with only enough cognition to play at being people, if they have a script.”
“I’m not sure that makes it any better,” Lillian said, backing down the stairs. “Or if it does, it’s not better enough. You can call me a crybaby all you want, Sy.”
My mouth opened, then shut. I’d given lots of thought to the dynamics between Lambs, and to the fact that one Lamb was now gone. Jamie had been my counterpoint, someone I could rely on when my own abilities lacked. In that odd way, he’d been a support, someone who had my back. He challenged me at the right times and backed me at the right times.
I was missing that, just a little bit, a fact that was highlighted by the recent conversation and teasing. There wasn’t a need to push quite so hard here.
I fiddled with the ring at my thumb. “Nah. You’re good, Lil.”
“Thank you, Sy.”
She went back downstairs. The rest of us were left to watch and wait.
Petey’s host jerked. Helen restrained the movements.
Then the Ghost reached out one hand, giving Helen’s hip two light taps.
Helen released Petey.
Petey’s movements were awkward, clumsy, and I thought she might fall as he rose to her feet.
“Good to go?” I asked.
“Ah—” he started, but his voice was strangled. He paused. “Hm.”
Ghosts couldn’t speak.
“Good enough,” Gordon said.
Previous Next
Tooth and Nail—7.7
“It’s more halting, like this, but higher pitched,” Helen said, before making a series of high-pitched squealing noises that made sparks appear behind my eyes.
“Got to warn you, Helen, I almost hit you on reflex there,” Gordon said.
“Shh, Petey’s trying it. Good. That’s close. But make each sound shorter, I think, and you’ll have to do it loud when it counts” Helen said, “that’s ‘many’, they did that when the building back in Radham was surrounded. Now do this.”
Helen squealed again, in a way only young girls and very talented babies could. She maintained the noise for three seconds, then five, then ten.
Gordon clapped his hand over Helen’s mouth just as she reached the ten second mark, which made me think he’d also been counting the seconds until she stopped.
“You could weaponize that,” I said.
Helen’s response was muffled. Unable to turn her head, she pointed at Petey, then raised one thumb in approval.
“Think you got it,” I said.
Helen tapped twice on Gordon’s hand. He moved it away.
“That’s a big threat. They keep making that noise when the Superweapon is close. Don’t do that willy-nilly, okay? They’ll figure out you’re faking.”
“Petey knows what he’s doing,” Gordon said.
My estimation of Petey wasn’t very high. Everything I’d seen about his coordination, his work ethic, his communication, the amount he whined, it didn’t inspire confidence. I was left to wonder if he really did know what he was doing.
We reached the ladder, and started our climb. The Brechwell Beast was in Fray’s general vicinity, if our experiment with the map was right. Shots from the tower were a regular thing, now, though none seemed to be directed at us.
Further down the ladder, Helen was still coaching Petey,
making an assortment of sounds. It felt like each one was specifically designed to drill at a particular set of nerves. Gordon was already getting irritable, but my mood, at least, was improved by the fact that things seemed to be at least partially on track.
“What’s next?” Mary asked, from above me.
“We get as close as we possibly can,” Gordon said. “Track what they’re doing.”
“Yep,” I said. Gordon’s on the same page as me, at least.
“We either move as a group to try and get ahead of them and disrupt their retreat, or we send Petey out alone or with a friend and do what we can independently.”
“I prefer the latter,” I said. “They’re shaken up, there might be vulnerabilities, or information, or something we can use.”
“Thought you’d say that,” Gordon said.
The rote action of climbing up a ladder was starting to tire me out. Muscles here and there had been strained or pushed to their limits by my earlier fall and a night of full-body exertion. The repetitive movements were slowly and steadily making it worse.
My mind was in five different places at once, free associating. There were too many notes to hit, here, and too many little details that tied my hands. The rampaging superweapon wasn’t one of those details, oddly enough. The possibility that Petey or the Wry Man could sabotage us, maintaining the general safety of the Lambs, and the time constraint were issues that I kept running into.
Start with the obvious, see if I can’t see other angles. Frontal attack. Obviously no. Why not? They’re strong, they’re prepared for a fight, we’re weak, risks the well being of Lambs.
Bait, sacrificial play. We have three solo operators, and even only raising the idea might reveal things about them. Too willing, unwilling, lack of cooperation.
Resources, resources, where do we have resources? Lillian’s stuff, not good enough, Academy burning…
Environment, then. What can we use? What can Fray use? She’s going to want to take the towers. She probably already planned to. Surest way to turn things around on us.
My thoughts continued to turn over in the back of my head, sometimes switching back and forth at a moment’s notice, while my mind’s eye was on the current prize.
Well, my eyes were on Mary, who was higher than me on the ladder. She was wearing hose, which denied me the ability to poke fun at her and get a reaction. Alas.
“Thinking aloud,” I said, very slowly.
“Good,” Gordon told me.
“Petey goes ahead, we flank. The less time they can spend discussing and cooperating, the better. If we can ratchet up pressure, distract, capitalize on their weaknesses or change their priorities, we win. Best case scenario, they implode. Worst case scenario, they lose time.”
“I prefer to think in terms of hard victory conditions,” Gordon said.
“If they’re still here when everyone else arrives, we win,” I said.
“Will that really do it?”
“It might not be so bad if they evacuate as a group, if they split up after, but our true ‘win’ is if they’re confined in the city when the soldiers and superweapons congregate. After that point, things are out of our hands. Maybe we keep going, maybe not,” I said. “But if they can escape with everyone else here and surrounding them, then it’s really not our fault, is it?”
The question inspired a thought. With Fray, we had to consider if we were playing straight into her hands. Right now, assuming she wasn’t preoccupied as the mediator between two factions, she was busy anticipating my and everyone else’s next steps. Was she counting on all of our forces assembling? Would we surround her, only for one side to turn on fellow soldiers or deploy a weapon?
I felt like something was missing. We needed to catch her off guard, but she’d already planned so much for what was happening right now, she had traps and countermeasures already in place, and there was no amount of thinking I could do to catch up to her. She’d had a chance to study the area, she’d had a chance to think on this at leisure.
Every time my mind touched on the vague image of the situation I needed to contrive to put Fray on her heels, there was a lot of violence, fire, and there was a vague mental image of the Beast bearing down on her, which was an amusing mental picture, if a dark one.
It was like having my thoughts caught in an endless loop. Needed to pressure her, catch her off guard, that was best done by tearing down everything around her, but her gathered forces probably beat the Lambs and our temporary allies in a fight, and I didn’t trust the various superweapons or soldiers on our side. I needed to find another way to pressure her, then, but my mind kept going back to blood, explosions and tragedy as the way of achieving that.
I wondered if I’d accidentally imprinted my malleable brain with that particular pattern, creating a rut of sorts I kept falling back to.
Change tacks, abandon that line of thought. We scout. Need to put ourselves in the best possible position to spot any vulnerabilities, and there have to be some. Not necessarily with her.
“We split up,” I said. “Gives us more chances to capitalize on any mistakes or fractures.”
“Can I go with Petey?” Helen asked.
“Bad idea,” Gordon said. “You two have a lot of the same weaknesses.”
I could have hugged Gordon. I didn’t like trusting any of the Lambs to the company of the solo operators. Instead, I just nodded, “Let’s say, Petey goes with… the Engineer. Then Lambs in two discrete groups. Not that sure I like that, I have to admit, but—”
“Why?” Mary asked. “Why don’t you like it?”
“Because it’s… because I don’t trust myself, I don’t trust Gordon, and I don’t trust you. Too much at stake, and I feel like we’re all emotionally compromised.”
“Gordon is?” Mary asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe don’t pay attention to that part,” I said. But I brought it up and you brought attention to it so it’s definitely in mind. I lied, “He’s been working at a different rhythm all night. Trying to prove something?”
“Have I?” Gordon asked, sounding genuinely curious.
“Take my word for it?” I asked.
“I can,” he said. He seemed very accepting of the possibility.
Not so much it matters, but I’m not about to go into detail about the fact you wanted to go with Fray last time. This is the next best thing.
We’d reached the top of the ladder. He climbed off, then let Hubris climb down from across his shoulders. I wondered how tired he was, lugging a large dog up and down ladders like he was. Anyone would be exhausted, except he was the most athletic of us.
“Well, I already know how I’m compromised,” Mary said. She stepped off the ladder and extended a hand, helping keep me steady as I stepped onto the roof.
I could see the little mannerisms, the fidget of fingers, the way she stood a little straighter, a little more rigid, the young lady who had been raised with culture and forged into a weapon by Percy.
She didn’t like admitting personal flaws. Gordon could do it, but for Mary, it stung.
“Sorry, Mary,” I said. I ran my fingers through wet hair and then made a gun with my hands and touched it to the side of my head, “I’m in this weird place. Trying to be honest, but I’m not very good at that. I figure it’s better to say it badly or say it while stepping on toes than not to say it at all, right now.”
“Not that I’m disagreeing with this specific scenario, but don’t compromise what you’re good at,” Gordon told me.
I nodded. I wasn’t sure what he was saying, or why, but I had the gist of it. Maybe he’d noticed Mary’s reaction to how I’d pointed out the Percy situation.
“Which brings me to the subject of, well, you said I was off-rhythm.”
“Different rhythm,” I said. I was a little proud of myself for remembering the exact phrasing I’d used no more than a minute ago.
“Whatever,” Gordon said. “You called me on that, I’m calling you out. I feel like you’re trying to
o much. This doesn’t feel like our Sy. How you’re acting isn’t quite natural or fluid. This thing with being honest is part of it.”
“Forced,” I commented. I extended a hand and seized Lillian’s wrist, leading her up to the apex of the roof.
“Nine months of ‘gimme’ jobs leaving you a little rusty? I know you slip easily without practice—”
“That’s not it,” I said.
“Oh. Okay,” he said. He shrugged. He wasn’t pressing any more. He’d raised the idea, he seemed to grasp that I had a bit of an idea of what was going on, and was content to leave it at that.
In the spirit of honesty, I said, “I’m just trying to adapt.”
He clapped a hand on my shoulder.
The little gesture only made me feel an ache for Jamie, in a weird way.
I took in a deep breath, and took note of where the Beast was. He was near another area where an gray plume of smoke was rising into the sky, periodically flickering orange from the flames beneath it. Would he press on through and escape into another part of Brechwell?
While the other members of the group reached the rooftop, I pulled my shirt into a better position. It was wet enough to cling to me.
The Engineer made it over the top of the ladder and handed over the rifles he was carrying. Gordon and Mary each took one. Petey took a third.
“That’s the sound for death, right? If you mix the two, like you did with ‘new’ and ‘threat’, yes. Exactly,” Helen was saying. “Exactly like that.”
Petey only seemed to glower back in response, mouth slightly parted.
“Is Petey good to go?” Gordon asked.
“Almost,” Helen said. “Trying to cover the bases. Studied the captured Ghosts in Ibott’s lab as practice for my new ears. Complex parts of the language might be tricky to do, but being loud can make up for not being very subtle, right?”
“Right,” Gordon said.
“So, just to try it out, maybe ‘new’ and ‘big’? Follow with the lighter ‘back’ cue, without the bob. Loud as you can.”
“What’s this?” Gordon asked.
Helen’s expression changed, as she went wide-eyed, almost horrified. She reached out and grabbed Gordon by the shirt front. “There’s something here! Surprise attack, and it’s big, I’m getting out of here!”