Twig

by wildbow

  “Deal with it,” Gordon said. “That’s our offer.”

  “Deliver the note to Catcher and—”

  “No,” Gordon said.

  Fray stood straighter, glancing at Mauer.

  “I don’t think we should trust them, but I do agree with his point,” Mauer said. “If you can’t convince them and convince me they’re worth listening to, then figure out a way to get us where we need to be to make our way out. If you can’t do either, then perhaps you can print your books yourself, and worry every step of the way that my forces may inadvertently interfere.”

  Fray didn’t respond to that. Avis, Warren, and the doctor with the cat warbeast returned. It gave Fray a moment to pay attention to them and pay attention to the current situation.

  Having Gordon on point made sense. When I spoke people immediately started thinking about where the traps and deception were. Gordon portrayed a more trustworthy, straightforward image.

  Which wasn’t to say he couldn’t lie or be clever.

  That said, I was cringing inwardly. I wanted to give him pointers, to tell him that Fray was in charge and her ego demanded a need for a sense of power. That he could make a small concession and win her over.

  But Fray, Avis, Warren, Mauer, and Percy were all talking among themselves, in a hushed, hurried way, while watching us very closely. Gestures wouldn’t go unnoticed.

  “Sy was right, there’s a chance we might side with you someday, if we can reconcile what you’re doing with what we all want,” Gordon spoke, breaking the silence. “Taking our offer leaves that door open for the offer to happen.”

  “And pushing my point closes it?” Fray asked. “A very subtle way of framing an ultimatum.”

  Also a very subtle way of preying on Fray’s desire to win people over and have everyone on her side.

  “I don’t need to tell you you’re running out of time,” Gordon said. “What you did, stirring things into a frenzy, people are going to calm down.”

  Not soon, I thought.

  “There’s still time,” Fray said, echoing my thought. “But you’re right, there isn’t a lot of it. If everyone agrees, we should move.”

  “You actually trust them,” Mauer said. “I don’t.”

  “I don’t either,” Percy said. “Even if one of them is mine. I’m sorry, Mary.”

  His eyes met Mary’s.

  Not quite so harsh as Mary’s request that Percy be put down, but it did suggest he was stepping away, cutting ties to a similar extent. I had little doubt the apology was genuine, but he’d made a decision that if it came down to it, he’d sacrifice Mary to save his own hide.

  A gulf stood between them.

  “If I may,” Fray said. She approached Mauer.

  He tensed as she drew near, then in the moment she took another step, he pointed his pistol against her side.

  She raised her hands back and out of the way. “Dolores is on the table back there.”

  I turned my head. The air-breathing octopus-thing was on the table a bit beside me. Helen was poking at it, letting its tentacles coil around her finger in response.

  Mauer watched Helen and Dolores for a moment. He didn’t speak or move a muscle.

  Hands still held back out of the way, Fray leaned close.

  She said something.

  Seven or eight words.

  Then she stepped back, slowly lowering her hands, until they were clasped in front of her.

  What’s she saying?

  I want to know what she’s saying.

  “What did she say?” Percy asked.

  “It’s sufficient,” Mauer said. “I’ll tell you later.”

  Percy frowned, but he nodded.

  “Helen,” I murmured. “What did she say?”

  “I didn’t hear.”

  “Were you listening?” Gordon asked.

  “Yes, and I didn’t hear,” Helen said. She put on an annoyed expression.

  Fray approached us.

  What did she say?

  “Coordinating an attack on us?” Gordon asked.

  “No,” Fray said. “We accept your terms.”

  Gordon glanced at me, and I nodded. He glanced at Mary, and Mary nodded.

  Gordon indicated the door. Fray stepped away from the group, heading toward the octopus. Helen was faster, snatching it up.

  “Got it,” Helen said. “I’ll bring Dolores.”

  Fray didn’t say anything, apparently content to leave that situation be.

  As one, we headed out into the hallway. Soldiers were standing at attention on either side of the hall, no longer waiting tensely for things to get underway. Less disciplined than Academy soldiers and cadets might be, they let concern show on their faces.

  They weren’t convinced this situation was entirely in control, and they hadn’t seen any of Fray’s doubts or the arguing over options.

  Lillian had taken out her pocket watch. She showed Gordon, who checked, then gestured.

  Good.

  The second message we’d written had acknowledged the tight time limit and we’d left a request to drop additional shots after the fighting started. Things were a touch more chaotic than I had anticipated, however. I was really hoping that things weren’t so bad that we didn’t have an escape route, or that the soldiers we were counting on to drop the bombs and provide cover of smoke and dust weren’t on Fray’s side, disobeying because they had switched sides.

  It sounded worse than it was. For them to disobey and effectively sabotage us, they had to be on Fray’s side and simultaneously aware we weren’t. The commander who we’d talked to had sent us to go talk to Dog and Catcher and the other experiments. He’d heard the horn, and would have drawn the connection to the experiments.

  To be on Fray’s side, know we weren’t, yet be unaware of the fact the horn had helped us?

  Questionable.

  That a bomb had obliterated them or the infighting was distracting them too much?

  Less questionable.

  I couldn’t let my nervousness show. Eyes forward, walk with confidence, pretend everything was going according to plan.

  There were gaps in this plan, but Fray’s plan was still intact. She had believed she would have a course she could walk to freedom, with the forces on the perimeter sufficiently occupied.

  A variant on that plan, how much more dangerous could it be?

  It was so annoying, being a child. We had soldiers behind us, Warren to the left of us, and to the right and a little in front of us, we had Percy and Mauer. Visibility was limited by the fact that people were taller, and I couldn’t help but feel surrounded. It didn’t help my growing feeling of anxiety.

  This would either be marvelous or it would fail marvelously.

  “The men from the other room?” Fray asked. “If they aren’t ready now, then—

  “They’ll be ready. Get them,” Mauer said.

  One of his lieutenants broke away, opening a door.

  More soldiers filed into the hallway alongside the soldiers at our back. These ones wore uniforms, but they weren’t the uniforms of the rebellion.

  Cadet uniforms, military ones.

  To add an element of confusion? Or to achieve a certain goal?

  It didn’t matter.

  We reached the doorway. The final group of soldiers was there, one man crouched by the door. It was cracked open, and he peered outside.

  “The situation?” Mauer asked.

  “Cynthia’s group took drugs,” the man said. “They started grinning, mad smiles, wide-eyed, veins sticking out on their faces. No combat drug like I’ve ever seen before.”

  “I know the one,” Fray said. “Rictus grins, a full body rush. Enhanced strength, reflexes, adrenaline. It also demolishes the mind’s ability to manage inhibitions. The Academy discontinued it, and it saw use in the black market for a time. People liked how confident and invincible it made them feel.”

  “It shaves off years of your life with every use,” Lillian said. “It isn’t very sustainable t
o sell on the streets when four or five uses can ruin a thirty year old’s organs so badly he looks ninety inside. Even the Academy can’t fix the kind of damage it causes.”

  I gave her a curious look.

  “I know stuff!”

  “The cost in lifespan isn’t something Cynthia cares about,” Fray said, looking at our group’s medic. “Nor was it the reason the Academy stopped using it. They didn’t like the fact that less disciplined soldiers fired at friendlies, and how bad the crime rate became. Cynthia is liable to shoot at us if we cross paths.”

  “Hmm,” Mauer said. When he spoke, it was to the assembled army of sixty-some soldiers, forty in rebellion uniforms and twenty who weren’t. “From here on out, we shoot at her or her men on sight.”

  There were one or two cheers, which drew quiet the moment Mauer shot a sharp look back.

  Not much lost love.

  We waited by the door.

  Gordon met my eye. He wasn’t gesturing, but I got the impression he was trying to communicate something.

  Something hit, close by, the force of it making Fray and the soldier on watch work to keep the door from flying open. Gordon had taken Lillian’s pocket watch, and the moment he was done covering his head and ear, he checked it. He shook his head.

  He met my eyes with purpose.

  What are you doing? I thought.

  Mary was looking between Gordon and me. Lillian looked terrified, very small while surrounded by opposing forces, shrinking down. Helen stroked the octopus she was carrying as if it were a dog.

  Gordon didn’t break eye contact.

  I looked at the open watch in his hand, checking the time while it was upside down, and then looked back up at him.

  Not a flicker in his expression.

  “Through the door, two by two,” Mauer was addressing his men. “Don’t press, keep one pace behind the pair in front of you. If you rush, you’ll get stuck in the doorway or you’ll start pushing the people in front of you, and you won’t be following them, you’ll be directing their movements.”

  I saw Warren place a hand on the shoulder of the stitched girl. He pointed at Avis.

  He’s too big to pass through with someone else, I realized.

  “I’ll lead the way,” Gordon said. He finally broke eye contact with me. “Listen to my instructions.”

  An explosion sounded, a mortar shell, very close by. The door was only open a crack, but the smell and taste of smoke and gunpowder in my mouth was enough to gag me. I imagined my spit was a brownish-black.

  Gordon watched the pocketwatch. Then he closed it. His lips moved slightly.

  He made eye contact with me again.

  I can’t read your mind, however you’d like me to.

  “Sy,” Mary said. She reached back and touched my hand. She smiled.

  “No codes, no gestures, if you please,” Fray said, sternly.

  Code? Gesture? She’d caught something I hadn’t.

  Not a gesture. In fact, Gordon had been avoiding gestures since the beginning, except when Fray was very clearly occupied.

  Code?

  Before I could reach the end of the train of thought, more shells came down. A trio, blasting into road and sending rock and mud cascading into the air, an earthen geyser.

  “Now!” Gordon shouted.

  The door was heaved open. Two by two, we passed through. Fray in the lead with the man who’d been watching the front door, Gordon and Mary, me and Lillian, Helen with Hubris and the octopus-thing, then Fray’s group, with Percy and Mauer.

  The smoke had darkened the sky, the smoke was thick, and I couldn’t see ten feet in front of me.

  The code.

  In a way, it was like the gestures. Our signs were abstract. We’d started with the basic directions and six very general signs that encompassed a very wide variety of things. The closed fist for aggression, violence, force, attack, impulse, anger. Then we’d expanded that, adding new signs, modifying old ones. There’d been too much need to communicate silently.

  This was very similar.

  Sy. He’d been focused on me. Not trying to read my mind or make me read his.

  My mind. My strategy, my way of thinking.

  A ploy, one he couldn’t easily share in the midst of things.

  I exhaled as slowly as I could, as I ran forward, blind. I could extend that trust to him. He’d done it often enough for me.

  “Reverse direction!” Gordon called out.

  I stopped before Lillian did, but I’d been expecting something. My shoe slipped on the cobblestone road, but I caught myself. I tugged Lillian, reached out, and prodded Helen’s side. Giving her a nudge.

  The order was called out, passed down the line.

  We stood in smoke and in the line of fire, while the order for the forward charge was called out, passed down.

  It took twenty seconds before we were back inside. I was surprised it was even possible. Humans were so naturally disorganized, and even with Mauer’s warning, I’d expected a jam.

  They listened to him like nothing else, it seemed.

  The door slammed closed as Fray returned inside. The man on watch cracked it open a moment later, peering through. The rest of us knelt or crouched on the floor. More explosions sounded outside. There was a warbeast on the loose on the rooftops, by the sound of it, smaller than the Brechwell Beast, larger than the cat.

  “What the hell was that?” Mauer asked. “A test?”

  “Yes,” Gordon said.

  “This isn’t a joking matter. Every second we spend out there is a second we could get shot.”

  “If you happened to kill us the moment you thought you had a way out, then you would have been stranded,” Gordon said. “Now that we’ve done that, you know you’re reliant on us. At least until we get to the perimeter.”

  “Games,” the doctor with the cat warbeast said.

  “Strategy,” I said. “I assume you’ve given thought to what happens when we actually reach the perimeter? I was working on the assumption that they wouldn’t have time to waste, or that they wouldn’t be willing to risk attacking us if we could call for an alert.”

  “Lillian,” Gordon said. “Your bag?”

  Lillian shrugged off the strap for her satchel, then slid it across the floor to Gordon.

  He opened it, reaching inside, and grabbed a canister.

  Mauer reached for his gun. Several others did too.

  Fray reached out, extending a hand, a signal to wait, holding back.

  It was a grenade, like the ones we’d used to set fires, back when I’d set Cynthia on fire, as a matter of fact. A long lever ran down the side, and a pin was jammed in the top.

  Gordon handed it to Helen, who had to disengage from the octopus. “Hold it tight.”

  She nodded.

  He pulled the pin. Nine out of ten people flinched.

  “There,” he said. “Don’t drop it, unless all is lost, okay? That’s our insurance. If you loosen your grip on the lever, then we all go up in flame a second or two later.”

  “I have a good grip,” Helen said.

  I could tell at a glance that a large number of the more important people here, Mauer, Percy, and Avis included, did not like us having insurance to this degree.

  Gordon opened the pocket watch.

  “Is the next one going to be a ruse too?” Percy asked.

  “We’ll see,” Gordon said.

  I nodded slowly.

  The smoke outside was a problem in that it limited visibility and increased the chances of us making a mistake, but it was a problem that had small benefits. Fray couldn’t look outside to clearly see the damage from her bombs or the troop movements on the roof, and the people up there couldn’t see us clearly. Fray having people wearing Crown uniforms helped muddy the waters.

  Fray liked having nine of ten degrees of control, with that tenth part being something she was free to manipulate and control.

  This didn’t feel like a nine of ten. A solid two out of ten factors in play we
re outside factors, the chaos of battle, the fighting atop the rooftops, and an environment I did not feel comfortable navigating. But Gordon’s trick here had bumped us from a solid five or six to a seven.

  Seven was fairly comfortable territory.

  So was our seven running headlong into a wall and dipping into the twos and threes.

  Gordon looked up. He met Mary’s eyes, one hand going to his ear, protecting it.

  Seconds passed.

  An explosion. Close, but not as close as the last had been.

  “Go!”

  We were out. Running.

  This was the one.

  If I was the indicator he looked to to signal trickery the index and middle finger extended, together, Mary was the straightforward one. The extended thumb with the hand left more open or closed. The thumb didn’t necessarily indicate the target, but the opposite direction to the target. One of the earlier signs, the execution, the job, the focus. It meant to watch, prioritize.

  I found myself unconsciously making the sign with my right hand, as I ran blindly through smoke, my other hand on Lillian’s upper arm.

  “Stop!” Gordon called. His voice was almost drowned out in the sound of rain, the irregular staccato of gunfire, and the distant roar of the Brechwell Beast.

  We stopped.

  My eyes were wide open, and I couldn’t see much of anything past Fray and the soldier at the front of the line. There was too much smoke and rain, and the vague shapes I did register were impossible to make out at first glance.

  I realized why Gordon had called the stop and I shut my eyes, turning my head away, my hand losing the gesture to cover my ear. My forehead touched Lillian’s as I bade her to turn.

  I really hoped the shock of the hit wouldn’t cause Helen to drop the incendiary canister.

  I also really hoped there was a second hit.

  A bullet struck cobblestone not far from where we stood. I saw the flash of light or a spark as it bounced off.

  A moment later, as if the bullet had been prophetic, the shell hit ground.

  We ran through the debris, and I saw Gordon and Mary stumble on the irregular ground, where cobblestone street had been thoroughly shattered. I was more balanced, expecting it, and helped steady Lillian. The ground was particularly hot in one spot I stepped, and I wondered if I’d burned or melted my shoe.